Merry Christmas

Wishing all of my blog friends a very Merry Christmas and a healthy and prosperous 2012.

Credits

Tumblefish, Cemerony, Lisa's altered art, Carla Gibson and Tangie Baxter.  

I'll be taking a blog break through the holidays and will return January 9th.

December Daily Day 12

The santa collection!

Credits Ali Edwards and Carla Gibson.

This is the last day I'll be participating in the December Daily challenge.  Will have a Christmas wish for you all tomorrow.

December Daily Day 11

December Daily Day 10

I always like to have a welcoming front entrance for visitors during the season.  This year the urns are stuffed with various greens.  The bird nest was a find from my husband during one of his house renovation projects.  The amarylis are artificial but give a nice punch of colour. 

December Daily Day 9

For years when my husband and I are on a trip we always look for a Christmas ornament to bring home.  It is small and easy to pack providing it is wrapped well.

The face ornament is hand sculpted by an artist in Missouri which I picked up years ago (am sorry I don't recall her name).  The bee ornament is vintage and I picked it up in Eureka California.  The bottom ornament was picked up in Banff, Alberta.

Hope your ornaments bring you fond memories too.

Credits - Ali Edwards template 

December Daily Day 8

Today's DD is about holiday decor and in specific mantles.  The top photo is our mantle decorated to celebrate the season.  Very similar to last year so not much new.

Was visiting Pinterest for some inspiration (bottom two photos).

Credits - Katie Pertiet music cluster

December Daily Day 7

This is the wreath I bought for the kitchen door.  Wish you could smell it.  I love the smell of fresh Christmas greens at this time of year. 

I was experimenting with using words and will likely use these again where they would show up better.

Credits - day number Katie Pertiet

December Daily Day 6

Baking Day on December 6th.  I love mincemeat tarts and think my journaling tells the story.  Was experimenting with creating my own templates in this digital and have a ways to go.

I forgot to add that I make my own mincemeat too which is family recipe passed down several generations with a few changes on my part.  I generally make it a year in advance so it "ages".  This batch was from last year and I'll be making a new batch likely within the next couple of weeks.

Credits - Carla Gibson

December Daily Day 5

What can I say, it was our anniversary on the 5th.

I guess you can tell we had my favourite champagne - YUM.

Credits - day number Katie Pertiet

December Daily Day 4

December 4th I spent the day online getting inspiration from Pinterest!  This is becoming a favourite image gallery for INSPIRATION.  I love both indoor and outdoor flower arrangements at Christmas and this gave me all sorts of ideas.

Credits - Ali Edwards 

Oops, accidentally deleted my signature.....

Lorraine

December Daily Day 3

I went shopping in the city on the 3rd.  Always love to see the decorations both the malls and larger department stores have.  I thought the ornament christmas trees were great.  Although a red and green theme, the gold and yellow were beautiful additions.

Onto Day 4 tomorrow.

December Daily

In 2007 Ali Edwards created December Daily. 

I have always been intrigued by the

project which is a journal of sorts highlighting a story a day leading up to Christmas.  This year I decided (rather late I must admit) to participate and thought it best to create digitally which not only gives me practice but this way I would not have to print up an album unless I wanted to. 

You can read all about the project on Ali's blog and follow along with her daily posts and those of others. 

SO, December 1st is above and I know it is a repeat of an image I posted earlier in the week!  Forgive me for this but I do really like the image.

Credits - Irene Alexeeva

Now for day 2

  

The journaling says it all!  I can't believe DH got it this close - WOW.

Credits - Marsha @ http://tumblefishstudio.blogspot.com/ and Ali Edwards @

http://www.designerdigitals.com
More on Monday!

Gifts and Challenges

During my vacation in November, I got a note from Sharon of Livewire Jewelry to tell me I had won the lovely bracelet she had offered as a blog giveaway. 

It arrived late last week so I thought you may like to share in my excitement.

What a lovely bracelet and beautiful sentiment.

AND look at that lovely embroidered fabric - this is sure to show up in one of my future CQ projects.

 Sharon has recently been selected as a designer for Nunn Designs so check out her blog to see ALL her lovelies.

Thanks so much Sharon for this lovely and special gift. 

2012 is shaping up to be a year of learning! 

Flora Bowley is offering her first online class commencing February 6, 2012.  Many of you may not know but I used to paint, in fact I painted for about twelve years then got involved in textiles.  I admire Flora's free style so anticipate this workshop will be quite inspiring and no doubt a challenge.....

 

Sharon Boggon (Pintangle) is once again doing the TAST challenge commencing January 3, 2012.  The idea is to experiment with stitches so I'm going to be EXPERIMENTING! 

I also decided to register for the Crazy Quilt Journal Project. 

Haven't quite decided what I'll be making but lots of ideas running through my head. 

Have a feeling I will be quite busy - want to join me!? 

Celebrating the season

Today I'm celebrating the season with various retail displays I see locally. 

The Swallow's Nest is owned by a very talented friend Ginny who never ceases to amaze with her wonderful window displays.  What can I say, she has TALENT.

What is inside is just as nice..... 

All of these photos were taken at B and K, a local nursery. 

This is some of what I've been up to - what have you been up to?

Block 2 completed

This is a close up of a small section of block 2.  The lace is embellished with french knots (I think you may have figured out by now that this is one of my favourite stitches).

I added a bit of feather stitching for branches.

This is block completed.  I added beading to fill in the fan shape space as this shape will be repeated in another block.  I'm still pondering whether to fill in the black center - input appreciated!

Although it doesn't show well in the photo, the black velvet is embossed with a butterfly.

Can't quite believe it is December already.

Enjoy your weekend - we are off to get our Christmas tree!