Lots to share today!

The news and papers are filled this time of year with the past year's highlights. I'm going to share a few of the hightlights of my Christmas break from school. Two whole entire weeks!

Our Christmas with our children and grands was the weekend before Christmas, so once they left I truly had two whole weeks left to do things I just can't get to during the work week.

This was a highlight for us for Christmas. Charlie is very into soldiers as many 6 year old boys are. Colin, my son-in-law, is very talented, detail oriented and also into soldiers. He paints them. So his and Lisa's gift for Charlie was a playboard, which Colin made, with soldiers, which he painted, and a burnt out shell of a house, which he painted. Notice the holes in the board. That's so Charlie can move the trees around for different effects. Charlie absolutely loved it and and told me it was "a very special present. "

I like to examine the men closely for the detail Colin puts into the painting.

Those of us who make things and can appreciate handmade gifts would very much agree with Charlie, that this was "a very special present," indeed.

Christmas day. It was windy, sunny and warm enough to hang clothes on the line. Unheard of in Michigan. There should be at least a foot of snow on the ground. Yes, indeed, Patient Husband was doing laundry on Christmas day. He's obsessed.

Christmas afternoon we had Christmas Orphan neighbors Bill and Kathy over for a paella. They'd never had paella before and Kathy is still talking about it a week later.

I read Juliet and started Night Circus. I really, really liked Juliet, but I'm not telling my friend Laurie that. She is a very critical reader. My critique goes this far: if I finished it, I liked it.

Life is short, I have gray hair and just counted up my birthdays. I decided that if I don't like a book I don't have to finish it. I read for enjoyment and I TRULY would recommend Juliet. Night Circus is grabbing me and holding me close.

I pieced Adelaide's I Spy quilt. When I made Charlie's I Spy quilt I used lots of dark colors so when I went to use the rest of the squares for Adelaide's I discovered that making the same sort of design wasn't going to work. Right now her favorite color is blue (and I hope it stays that way for awhile.....I may have to buy her a lot of Blue Moon ice cream to keep that going till the quilt is finished.) so I decided to keep using my stash and brought out this blue and white pinstripe to do a nine patch. I love blue and there's nothing so crisp as blue and white, is there?

Then the saga of the back started. Boy, did I struggle with this. There wasn't enough blue and white pin stripe. I was NOT going to buy anymore fabric so decided to piece the back. I couldn't find anything to really get excited about in the stash and then I noticed the still large pile of cut squares. I randomly pieced a LOT of them together and kept laying them out till I had enough so that the flowered section on the top and bottom would fit. Phew! I think the back took longer than the front! I'll pin baste this at school.

I pinned this quilt. That's why I'm going to pin Adelaide's at school. I just can't crawl on the floor and don't have table space enough at home to get a nice tight back on a big quilt. This drove me nuts so I will either have to buy a ping pong table at some garage sale or do more pinning at school.

My good friend Marge's son and daughter-in-law are going to have a baby boy in May. Mommy likes monkeys so I pulled this out of the drawer and put this together for the coming baby. I always loved that Aunt Grace border fabric and when I really love something I don't want to cut into it. But it really was the right thing for this border. The binding is going to be yellow.

So! That's my two weeks in review. I sat at the machine piecing squares for most of it but the feeling of accomplishment is great. Not a lot of piecing is going to happen till these are quilted so show and tell might not happen again for awhile.