December 26, 2011 by Debbie.

Merry Christmas to all, belated as it is! We had such a good time with the family for Christmas. We set up the Snow Village and John’s Lionel train from when he was a child. It was the first time Avery had seen the set up and the boys were all old enough to run the train by themselves.

Lily and Watson, our granddogs,  celebrated with us and Watson got to stay with us for a visit. Watson has adopted John and follows his every move. He’s upset he can’t sleep on the bed with us but other than that he’s fit in nicely. He and Pepper, John’s cat, are still reconciling their natural differences. Pepper is spending a lot of time up high and moving around while Watson is either sleeping or outside with John. Lily never bothered the cats and she was much smaller.

Watson is a Australian Shepard and his coloring is much like a coyote, so much so that the goats won’t come near the fence when he’s outside.

We’ve gated off the dining room, one of the two rooms with carpeting in our house. Watson remembered the ham and other food in there, though, and tried to get to it via the outside window.

 Watson’s going to have a rude awaking when John heads back to work on tomorrow morning. I’m in for a day … Watson pacing from room to room hunting John.

Here’s a picture of the wall hangings I made for the Kindergarten teachers in Whitewright for Christmas. I can do the stitching and designing but John had to write the names in for me! Thank goodness for his strong, steady hand. The Red School house wall hanging was made by a pattern. I designed and created the other two patterns.

Here’s the first wall hanging I made, using the standard house block pattern.

This one will be mine as there are mistakes I wouldn’t want anyone else to share! First mistake was the houses should be all facing the same direction but I cut two out backwards.

It’s a good time to finish up a lot of projects just waiting to be done. I’ve put the binding on 2 baby quilts, one Christmas quilt and the Houses wall hanging this week.  I also finished up the hand quilting on the K classes quilt we’re making together. Tomorrow I hope to bind it so it can be washed before I appliqued the kids’ hand prints on the borders.

John finished covering the grow house with plastic so I could transplant the broccoli, kohlrabi, spinach and arugula. I planted a bed of lettuce with radish inside also. The kale seeds were planted outside as they can take the cold, tasting better after a frost.

It’s been a busy week!

Debbie

Posted in Homestead living | 2 Comments »

December 11, 2011 by Debbie.

I didn’t realize it had been so long since I posted on the blog. I completely missed posting in Nov. We had a great Thanksgiving, with our home grown turkey, Frank. Other than Thanksgiving and sub-teaching, I don’t know where the time went.

I did finish this quilt that went home with a dear, dear friend. For some reason,  I fought with the border hand quilting on this quilt til I thought I’d scream. Still it was a happy quilt to work on. I pray for the person I’m making the quilt for as I work on it and all  I could pray for this friend was joyous psalms. Very appropriate as she’s a happy, smiley person.

This entry will be short, it’s after 8:30 pm which is past my bedtime. I’m going to cheat and send you to www.quilts.beulahland.com to get double duty out of that posting!

Merry Christmas in case I let time slip by again,

God richly bless you all!

Debbie

Posted in Homestead living | No Comments »