Birthdays and Winter Fun

Winter is a busy for me. I'm pretty sure I'm not alone in this. As if Christmas weren't enough reason to be buried in things to do, our family also has 3 birthdays within a 2 week time period at the same time.

The first birthday we celebrate is for our sweet puppy Bijou. I'm sure a lot of people wouldn't celebrate the birthday of their dog on Christmas Eve, but she is an important member of our family. She turned 4 this year.

The next day was Christmas and it snowed ALL DAY! It was great. Behind our house is the Junior High and they have a huge hill. What better thing to do after opening all the presents than to load everyone up in the truck and go sledding?!

Here is Alice flying over a jump on the hill. She got a bit airborne on that one!

 

And my little man taking a break from making snow angels.

 

 

Irene isn't really the dare devil of the family. In fact, she's quite a chicken. She was a bit scared of such a big hill, but once she went down the first time, we couldn't stop her.

 

And this is Sara after a crash... letting me know she's okay.

 

 

The next birthday is my husband's. He turned 34 on New Years Eve. He thought he was turning 35 so he was excited to be 34 for another year =) We went out to dinner with some friends at a fancy restaurant and then went to a kid-friendly New Years Eve party afterward. I love anything sparkly, so to ring in the New Year I got a new sparkly shirt!

 

Irene had the next birthday on January 5th. She's the big 1-0!!! Or as she would say "DOUBLE DIGITS, BABY!!!" We went to her favorite place (a local indie book store) and she got a new book. Then she chose Olive Garden for dinner. By the way... did you know they no longer sing Happy Birthday and give you a dessert at Olive Garden if you go there on your birthday?! Maybe it's just our Olive Garden. Or maybe our server was grumpy and didn't want to. After dinner we played outside in the snow and it seemed like the perfect picture opportunity:

And for something crafty!!!! I've been in a huge crafting slump lately. Working is really putting a damper on my sewing time. I opted for a project that is more transportable. As many of you know, The Frosted Pumpkin has a new cross-stitch sampler. I never did finish my Dessert of the Month sampler, but the latest one is a Woodland Sampler! How could I say no to woodland creatures?

I have all my embroidery floss, but am having trouble finding the tea-dyed linen. I started my sampler but the white floss doesn't show up very well on the ivory linen I bought. I'm going to tea dye it myself and start over!

What have you been up to all winter? Hibernating, being super crafty, or out enjoying snowy weather activities?





 

Dessert of the Month

No, I'm not getting delicious fattening chocolatey goodness delivered to my door every month (although that does sound like a pretty great idea). I signed up for the Dessert of the Month cross stitch sampler from The Frosted Pumpkin Stitchery. Every month I get a PDF cross stitch pattern sent directly to my inbox. The first month was a darling little truffle. And this month it's a devil's food cupcake! I know it's only been 2 months so far, but I am really loving this. I don't see the novelty wearing off anytime soon.

Here's my sweet little truffle. I still have to stitch the month names below them, but I plan to finish that part in the next few days.

And here's my devil cupcake. I love this little guy! As soon as I saw the pattern I knew I had to get started right away. We get the patterns on the first of the month and it is now the second... so, you can see how excited I was to stitch him up.

As for progress on the kids quilts, I have 2 completely quilted (still waiting for binding to be attached), one is pin basted and ready to be quilted, and the other one is still just a top. I have 2 weeks to finish them up so I may end up machine stitching the binding. It's definitely not my favorite method, but I don't think I'll have to time to hand stitch all four of them. Good thing I got the cross stitching out of the way for another month!