Good Bye 2014 ... Hello 2015!

With 2015 just hours away I am reminded of happy moments as well as a few sad ones during 2014. My daughters wedding in April is a memory I'll never forget.

Tiffany Allen - April 6, 2014

 July I journeyed east to Ohio to attend the Longaberger basket Bee and spent a few days visiting my cousin Maryann.

Judi, Michelle the Bee, Amy and Me at the Columbus Convention Center

 

Maryann and myself is a rainy parking lot!

 I always love to go back to Ohio and visit with my family, Amish county and anything Longaberger!!

Summertime is Angels Baseball season, this year I was able to go to games with friends like Paula and Darrell visiting from Northern California.

Darrel and Paula at Angels Stadium! Great time with great friends!

 By late August I was preparing myself for bilateral knee surgery. After a two month recovery time I was feeling well enough to host a few Longaberger events, attend a quilting retreat in October and host a Horizon of Hope Breast Cancer luncheon. 

Sadly I had to say good-bye to a few long time friends, most recently 94 year old Jewel. 

My hope is for a healthy and blessed 2015. I'm looking forward to travel, some time sewing with friends and enjoying my family.

May all of you have a wonderful New Year as well!

CHRISTMAS 2014

Awww yes, another Christmas season has come and gone. Everything seems to be on hyper speed these days. This holidays arrive much to fast and and then in a blink of an eye they are over.

2014 seemed to become the year of the Elf! Little Betty the Basket Elf arrived early and spread her cheer all over the house. She was then followed by these very large elves on Christmas eve. Our family went to Christmas Eve mass, followed by dinner with our friend Fr. Kelly.

Fr. Kelly, myself and Joe enjoyed a holiday meal together!

Once we got home we got settled into our comfy clothes and began watching A Christmas Carol ... something I have done every Christmas Eve for over 30 years. All of a sudden our family room was attacked by giant elves ... oh my it was so scary!

First they captured Betty the Basket elf and the rest was downhill from there. These giant elves were running a muck all over the house doing crazy elfish things!

Shawn the elf had a big red blinking nose .... to go with his giant ears!

Christmas morning ... the elves had spent the night and Santa filled their stockings

These two crazy elves brought a lot of joy and laughter into our home. I hope they come back next year for another exciting time.

Joe and I with our stockings, many, many years ago my mom made these stockings for all of us. Every year one or two of them need repair, the crocheting is coming apart. As long as I can repair them they will be a part of our family traditions.

7 am Christmas morning ... Santa was here, Santa was here!!!

I hosted Christmas breakfast this year so the kids could spend the afternoon with Shawn's family. I served this delicious cranberry walnut wreath, OMG it was delicious!!

Finally, it was time for the elves to head out and on to their next destination ... another beautiful Christmas in Southern California!

So long Christmas Elves .....

Farewell my sweet Jewel ....

Yesterday, December 21, 2014, the day of our Winter Solstice my sweet friend and surrogate mom Jewel left us and moved on to live with our heavenly father.

Sadly, in early August Jewel was at my home for a party. As her daughter Barb was packing up to go home Jewel experienced a stroke. Since that time it has been a slow and gradual decline. Barb took such loving care of her mom making life as comfortable for her as possible. Like all of us she knew her mother's days were short. At 94 years old Jewel had an amazing life. She was loved by many and will be greatly missed. 

Here is Ms Jewel on her 94th birthday with her daughter Janice. Look at that smile, this is how she always looked.

Jewel loved nothing more then her family and her flowers. Sitting in the back yard watching the birds and being surrounded by the beauty of nature was when she was the happiest.

When I received the call of her passing I wept. I will miss her happiness, the love she gave to all of us and her zest for life. After sitting alone for awhile I went into the kitchen for some water. Sitting in the kitchen window are the Paper Whites I received for a gift on Thanksgiving. Finally, after a week of watching it bud the very first bulb had a partially opened bloom!This was no coincidence, Jewel loved Paper Whites, this little bloom was telling me she was re-born now and resting in God's loving arms.

 

Thank you Jewel for so many happy memories ...

Christmas 2014

After a visit to Downtown Brea Tiffany and I took a pic by the Giant Christmas Ornament!

Let's Bake Cookies!

Finally ... my daughter has finally decided she wants to learn how to make Christmas cookies. I quit baking them several years ago for a lot of reasons ... too fattening, a lot of work, not enough people eating them. My daughter asked for them last year and I told her "sure, if you're willing to help make them." No cookies were made. So this year, early in the season she asked again and we set a date.

Yesterday, December 20th 10:00 am was cookie day!

I was up bright and early, Betsy my blog dog and I went to McDonald's and got my iced coffee, came home and by 10:00 I had already baked two batches of cookies. Pantry Shelf and Gingerbread cookies, oh so yummy.

Dry ingredients, melted butter a whipped egg and poof, you have Pantry Shelf cookies!

 

Four dozen cookies done and ready to package!

Everything is ready for the Christmas cookies to be made, now where are the bakers?

Ms G came to join in the fun as well. She was assigned the job as official cookie dough roller.

Tiffany and Donna opening their first very own official cookie cutters!

Yep, the cookie cutters are working, the aprons are on, flour is everywhere, all is good.

Tray #1, sad looking group aren't they! The girls called them the Whoville Cookies from the Grinch! They were lopsided, mis-shaped, with pieces missing. Yep, we're in business!

After numerous trays of cut out cookies things were looking up. The dough stopped sticking to the rolling pin and the board. It was hard to stay back and let them learn on their own. I knew they would taste great no matter what they looked like!

Cookies, cookies everywhere cookies. Donna buckled down and got serious in the decorating. She even put on her glasses!

A few of Donna's masterpieces, she was quite the artist!

And mine .... orange Santa's ... yep we had all colors of Santa's!

 Tiffany was very creative and made Angels baseball stars. We shared a lot of laughs, created memories and we could feel the presence of my mom in the kitchen. I have all of her old cookie cutters from many, many years ago, I have used them for at least 30 years and now my daughter will soon carry on the tradition. 

I love traditions, family memories and laughter. All of these make the holidays special. We hope all of you are making your own holiday memories with the ones you love.

The past few days have been a whirlwind of Christmas gatherings with friends.

I began the week with a dinner for my Longaberger

Home Show hostesses on Saturday evening. It was a nice evening that concluded with a ride through Fullerton looking at Christmas lights.

Sunday I took a ride out to visit my dear friend Jewel who is quietly slipping away due to a stroke and just plain aging. She slept the whole time I was there but at least I had a chance to see her sweet face one more time.

Tuesday evening Joe and I hosted dinner for some long time friends. We caught up on family news, events in the world and shared all of our aches and pains!

Wednesday I met with my quilting pals to sew a bit, eat a bit and celebrate a bit of Christmas gift giving.

By Thursday I felt full of food and sweets but I had one more gathering with some very dear long time friends. After they left and while I was cleaning up it occurred to me that there was a common theme to some of my gifts .... cookies and candies! I so love that my friends think I look so thin that I need goodies.

Saturday there were chocolates from Sees Candies, Tuesday we were given a jar of Reese's candies and Salted Caramel sauce, oh yum!

The cute little elf shoe on the left was filled with mint Oreo's, the box to it's right is a dozen homemade cookies, Caramel sauce and everything one needs to make Oatmeal Chocolate Chip cookies.

Flour FREE cookies! Aren't they beautiful all stacked neatly in a re-purposed box.

What you say is a re-purposed box? My very creative friend Debbie has taken retired boxes of Christmas cards lined them with parchment paper, filled it with cookies and added the recipe to the bottom! How clever is that!!

 

Here is the bottom of the box ....

And ... the front! She had it wrapped with bakers twine and a cute gift tag.

As I grow older and find myself needing fewer "things" I love the "love" that went into this handmade gift. Now, I will eat the delicious cookies and store the

creative box away until next year. I can then bake the same cookies and present them to another lucky friend!

The same will apply to my friend Penny's cookie gift. I will make the cookies & share them with my family. Store the Tupperware container and recipe away in a safe place an recreate this gift as well.

 

LOVE these recipe cards! This is for the Pantry Shelf Cookies. I am keeping this copy, hopefully I will find some cute cards by next year to copy the recipe on!

 Before I sign off for today I wanted to share with you Betty the Basket Elf's new clothing accessory. Yep, dear Rita received this cute little jar collar and thought my Betty would just love it. And yep, she does, she's accessorising her skirt! 

 

Back view including the how to find an elf tag ....

And side ways, you have to agree, she is just adorable!

 

Another Tote ...

Recently I received an email from a quilt shop offering a variety of classes for the holidays. I scrolled down the list of Advent calendar's, candle mats, crayon aprons etc., then all of a sudden there was this wonderful Civil War fabric tote! It was like TADA, here I am! That kind of moment when The Griswold's tramp through the snow searching for the perfect Christmas tree and standing there, all alone in the wild is the perfect tree. It glows as if God has shed his grace on the tree.

 That was the moment I was having! I found a friend to join me and got the two of us registered.

Friday was the first REAL storm of the season and of course that was the day of our class. Not to be deterred we left very early and plowed our way south into the pouring rain. Flooded freeways and wind couldn't keep us away. We pulled into the shop parking lot a full 30 minutes early!

Like two eager little girls waiting for the gates to open at Disneyland we watched the door for any signs of life inside the shop. 

shortly before 10:00 we were let inside and quickly settled into our space.

We each received a decorated folder with our instructions, a cute jolly box filled our first set of fabrics and a burlap bag of treats, complete with a jingle bell!

Debbie has her machine up and ready to go. Still wearing our coats since it was chilly inside!

 And me, still not quite set up. I'm fascinated with all the little goodies!!

Within minutes  though we were set up and ready to sew. How is that when you look at something you think, "wow that looks simple, no problem." Then when you've been at it for 4 hours you realize, this is far more time consuming then I thought it was going to be! About that time we were offered some adorable as well as delicious designer cupcakes.

Isn't this the cutest snowman! Debbie had him and I indulged in an espresso flavored cupcake ... moist and so yummy.

 By 3:00 neither one us was near completion of our tote. We did manage to finish the pieced blocks for the outer pockets. We will need to gather in the new year to get it wrapped up. 

Here is what the finished tote will look like if we're lucky!

 This was such a lovely break from the holiday hustle. Doing what quilters love to do, sew, chat and eat wonderful things!

A Piece of this and a Bit of That!

So many things coming together right now. I sent four small quilts off to the long arm quilter a few weeks ago and poof, she had them done in a flash.

Three of the four. These have the binding on them and I even put name plates on the back.

This is the First Ladies quilt. I love it, I have not yet finished it but soon ... soon!

 A week from today I was busy in the kitchen getting things ready for Thanksgiving dinner. In just three short weeks it will be Christmas Eve, yikes, it's flying by, time that is.

The table was set and ready for our 11 guests.

Complete with a See's Chocolate Turkey for each person, oh yum.

And it's time to eat!!

 Then in no time at all it was time to do those dreaded dishes. Yuck. I lucked out this year, since I did the bulk of the cooking this hearty group did the clean up.

Mom and daughter at the sink. Pam was the washer and 5 year old Olivia was in charge of rinsing. She was such a trooper, she rinsed every dish till they were done!

 

 

And finally Penny, Paula and myself celebrated our friend Rita's birthday this past Monday.

The birthday girl with a gift ...

We enjoyed a light breakfast of chocolate croissants, yogurt with fresh raspberries, fruit, mimosas and coffee.

Oh yum, protein, fruit, grain ... just missing a vegetable!

A beautiful tray of festive fruits! Penny did such a fabulous job with the food!!

As I proceed further into the holiday season I hope to have my handy camera in hand to share the festivities with all of you!

Simple and to the point ....

Thank you Weeping Cedar for a beautiful picture. May you all share a Thankful moment tomorrow ....

Quick as a Flash ....

The holidays are breathing down our necks hard and fast. They just arrive earlier and earlier each year, I don't know how it happens but it does. Thanksgiving is late this year making the holiday hustle seem even more intense. To help in easing the frenetic pace I decided to begin my decorating. I have most of it done and will finish after Thanksgiving day by putting up our tree and decorating the outside. To help me remember how I do things from year to year I like to take pictures. Here are a few I can share with you blogging gals!

Above the TV

Family room ....

With the help of my daughter we picked pomegranates from the local junior college. There trees were bursting and no one else was interested in them. I picked up the great pineapple while I was in Ohio at Curry's Homestead.

Nestled on the center of my dining room table is one of Santa's Reindeer.  A shop in Iowa by the name of Gatherings is were he heralded from and I just love him to pieces.

 Bath room, Love my Arnett Americana Santa

Bathroom ...

And ... my bathroom! A wonderful stitchery from my friend Penny Hunter ...

Family room, one of my small quilts and another hand stitched piece from my friend Eileen ...

Kitchen island ....

Kitchen ...

Dining room, a huge dough bowl filled with Santa, candy canes, doll quilts, skates and so many other treasures!!

A few of my angels ...


I hope you have enjoyed your journey through my holiday home! May all you days be blessed as you begin the holidays ....