Happy Thanksgiving.......

Blessings, Cathi

Losing one of my favorite trees.....

Since 2003, I have had a Christmas tree in the boys room with just purple and orange on it. That was the year that Dear Son moved away to the college of his dreams.....Clemson. Every year, I have bought him a new Clemson ornament. Fortunately he graduated last December and found a job right away. But this year he wants his tree in his apartment. Can't say that I blame him. It's a 1-bedroom apartment with just enough room to turn around in so this tree will be the perfect size. It will be going back with him tomorrow afternoon after the Thanksgiving dinner (along with lots of leftovers!)



So that leaves a void in that room. Dear Son #2 still lives in that room. As you can kind of see from the picture, it is painted to look like a log cabin so I think the tree from our bedroom will look perfect in there.

But now there is nothing in our bedroom. Darn, I'm going to have to start a whole new tree (wink, wink). Something romantic this time....

Blessings, Cathi

New cheap ornaments...........

I love making things out of scraps and these little dudes are no exception. I made these this weekend out of left over muslin, some stuffing, discarded buttons and some thread from my vast collection of No. 8 perle cotton.

Besides these, I made some other ornaments from oranges I dried last year after Christmas. I hope to give my tree a little more primitive pizazz for cheap. (Is it possible for primitive to be pizazzed?) I am going to have one of my daughters make a popcorn and cranberry garland. We used to do that for years but then she moved out and it kind of fell by the wayside. She told me that she misses doing that so I'm definitely going to let her have at it.

Blessings, Cathi

Hello, nonreply-comment bloggers!

I don't know how the rest of you feel about comments. Sometimes I get frustrated when someone leaves a comment and I can't send an email back because they are a "noreply-comment" blogger. And they don't even know they are. Case in point........ME. I left a comment for myself on one of my blogs. Sure enough, a few seconds later the email comes to me and it is from "noreply-comment@blogger.com" After what seemed likes days of searching, I found out from Amanda at notsoextraordinary.blogspot.com, that all it takes is a little teeny tiny click of a box on your blogspot profile to fix it.

Now maybe you don't want people to reply to your comments and that's fine. But I love getting (non-spam) emails. I would even love to comment back to some people but can't find an email to send back to them. If you would like to join the non no-reply world, here's all you have to do....

• Go to your dashboard
• Next to your picture, click "edit profile"
• Click the teeny little box (third one down) that says "show my email address"

So simple.....I feel so silly. I swear I looked everywhere for that little toggle. Now I know.......now you know.

Blessings, Cathi

What too much planning will do........

I changed up the colors of my living room Christmas decorations two years ago. We had the others for more than 10 years and I was ready for a change. You can really see a difference between when the lights are on and off on the tree. I thought I had enough ornaments on the tree until I turned the lights off. See how dull it looks.

And with the lights on it is so much nicer.

But I still think I planned it too much to the point that it looks boring. My goal this year is to buy different types of ornaments but stick with the three colors......grinch green, red and pearl. I'm more of a primitive person, too. And this looks like it is going too much in a sophisticated direction. So I think we will be adding some more prim. Any suggestions?

Blessings, Cathi

The 12 Days of Christmas and my Christmas notebook.....

Thought I'd give you an update on the Christmas notebook that I made to keep in the car with me. (Click here for the original post) It is in the car with me and I have all the pages labeled. This year I am doing things a little different with the gifts. Can't give too much info because both my daughters know about this blog! How often they check it is something else. This year, in addition to the regular gifts (which has been cut back due to economic stuff), I am doing the 12 Days of Christmas for each of my kids and Dear Hubby. Each day from Christmas to Epiphany, they will each get a small gift bag with a treat in it. Some days will be bigger than others but each gift has to fit in a white paper lunch bag. I am NOT tying each gift to any symbolic meanings.....that requires too much thinking on my part. But I will put a note in each one explaining some historical meaning to each day. Found some good stuff on the internet.

Back to the notebook. Boy, has the notebook made it easier to keep up with the 12 days gifts. There are 4 kids (DD that is married is sharing her gifts with her hubby.... in case she reads this) and Dear Hubby. So that is 60 gifts to keep up with. The girls are so easy to shop for. Two boys, 19 and 24, not so much. The big thing I have to remember is cost. Even at $1.00 each, that's 60 bucks. And I don't want everything from the dollar store.

Other pages in my book are:

• A master shopping list
• Gift page for each person
• Decoration page (as I see something I like, write a note as to where and price)

There are enough pages in this book to last me several years. Project for January......put tabs in the book.

Blessings, Cathi

Only 46 days left.....am I ready?

Are you? Of course we aren't! If we were, we would just have to find something else to do. It's just the way we are.

DH and I went to Sam's earlier today. I managed to talk him into going into Garden Ridge which just happens to be next door. I shouldn't say I talked him into it. He really enjoys Christmas very much and wants to be involved. I wonder if it is because he secretly wants to keep me in check?! We bought a few little things for the house that I was looking for last year. We haven't really done any gift shopping. Two years ago I had all the shopping finished by the first weekend in December. I was so proud of how organized and efficient I was. A week later, DH asked when we were going on our annual marathon shopping day. In all my proficiency, I forgot that DH had really looked forward to doing most of our gift shopping on one day in the midst of the craziness. Well, I didn't really forget, I just didn't realize how much he looked forward to all that. Lesson learned.

So I don't get all my shopping finished early, but I can get all the other stuff done that I always do by myself. Like the Christmas cards, stockpiling food for the many larger meals I have to cook, baking lists, etc. I have my cards finished already. We usually put a picture of us in with them but this year we decided to put a picture of my Dad in with them. Dad passed away in the middle of September. No one had a recent picture of him so that is what we will do.

Blessings, Cathi

I miss this one too much......

I thought I would try to convert to just one blog. The other one is doing great, looks great and fills a need for me but I just can't let this one go yet! Maybe 'cause Christmas is just around the corner. But for now it will stay up.

I thought I would show you a little sneak peak at why I call this "A Quilter's Christmas". I actually quilt more than I do anything else. I have noticed in this blog that I never really mentioned that little tidbit or explained why I chose this name. But there ya go. I have several Christmas quilts started but not quilted. Actually I have a lot of all kinds of quilts started but not quilted. That's for another day on the other blog. This little one is a top I just started and finished within the last few weeks. I just have to find time to quilt it!

Blessings, Cathi