SSCS

Thank you so much Lisa for the lovely pillow I received in the SSCS swap.  Your stitching is just beautiful, and the pillow is gorgeous!

I am really sorry my SSCS parcel still has not arrived in Australia, even if it was sent from Norway in November.  I really hope it will arrive safe soon, or I will make another gift and send!

I hope everyone is having a nice Christmas, my thoughts are with our lovely hostess of the SSCS swap, Donna, who lost her sister to cancer right before Christmas.  Sending you lots of hugs Donna!

Wishing all of you a Merry Christmas!

The SSCS sleigh has landed

The SSCS sleigh landed here yesterday, and Lisa V is my Secret Santa!  Of course I had to check her blog out, and she does beautiful cross stitching!

Look at the gorgeous Santa ornament she sent me!  I just love it!!!  

The other gift is hidden away until Christmas Eve- I can't wait to open it :-)

Thank you again Lisa, I LOVE my ornament!

A new ruler to play with.

I have a new ruler, the Rapid Fire Hunter's Star ruler, and it is so much fun to use!!!  I was demonstrating it at the quilt guild the other night, so I thought I'd tell you all about it as well.

The pictures just show a little of how you use the ruler when you make the star points for the Hunter's Star.  Now in my last post I said I would use my NEW fabrics first, and not my older ones, but I failed already.... All the red and cream fabrics I am using in these blocks are from my old stash.... ( Now I can actually close the drawer with red fabrics again :-) )

The ruler makes it really easy to sew the star points to the trapezoid, and you use your regular ruler to trim pthe bits when they are sewn together.

Here is a block almost finished- I just need to trim it down using the Hunter's star ruler!

This is the layout I am using, these haven't been sewn together or trimmed yet, ( well, now they are, but not when I photographed them...)

I've knittesd this weekend as well, winter is here (or it should be), and more mittens need to be made.  Look how huge these are before I threw them in the washinmachine to get felted.

I just hope they are a lot smaller when the wash is done!  I will show you the result :-)

Well folks, that's what I've been up to- oh, and I've mailed off my SSCS package to someone far far away!  I hope it gets there in time for Christmas!

Thanks for stopping by!

Thank you Suze!

Thank you so much for the lovely bunting you made me for the SSCS swap Suze!

As you can see, it is already up!  It fit perfect in our livingroom :-)

Suze also made me this lovely tea towel. Isn't it just adorable?  And she included a cute Koala bear ornament as well, but I forgot to put it in the picture- sorry!

I hope everyone in the SSCS swap had a lovely Christmas! ( And all of you who wasn't as well of course!)

I'm off nordic skiing- enough of the eating for now!!

SSCS received

Today Santa dropped off my SSCS gift.  This year Suze is my Secret Santa, Thank you so much for the sweet Snowman ornaments you made for me Suze!  The two other gifts have been safely put away until Christmas.

Don't you just love these sweet snowmen? They sure look right at home in our house :-)

I also know that the SSCS presents I sent have arrived at their destination in Australia :-)

Thank you for stopping by!

Snowmen

My snowman quilt is finally quilted and finished!  I am really happy with how it turned out :-)

Keeping with the snowman theme I made a placemat from a new Bente Malm pattern.  It was quick and fun to sew!  It seems like I have a thing for snowmen... I just love them!!!! They are adorable :-)  I really hope we'll get some more snow here soon so we can make some real snowmen in our yard before Christmas!

Talking about Christmas.... It is THAT time of year again.... time to get those SSCS gifts sent off to their destinations.  Mine was mailed out on Thusday, and I hope it reaches it's new home in time for Christmas!

That's it for now, thank you for stopping by!

Thank you my sweet secret Santas!

I am so lucky to have two very talented and sweet Secret Santas this year!

My first Santa was very secret, and I didn't find out who she was until right before Christmas when Noela e-mailed me to let me know who she was :-)  Noela made me a lovely bag with the sweetest stitchery, and she even included a lovely Australia Calendar for 2013, a very cute kangaroo fabric, and a lovely tea towel with koala bears.  Thank you so much Noela, I love everything!!!!

My second Secret Santa was Kate.  She made me this lovely wallquilt, and as you can see it's already up!  I adore it, and so does the rest of my family! The little gingerbread man is so cute with the little buttons- thank you so much Kate, you are such a sweetie!!!!!

A BIG thank you again to Chookyblue as well for hosting this wonderful swap- my favorite swap of them all.... You are a true Christmas angel!

I hope everyone has had a wonderful Christmas.  For me it's back to work again tomorrow, but I did get some skiing in with the boys today.  Kristine stayed home and kept the fire burning in the fireplace while we were out :-)

SSCS received

Yeeeey! My other SSCS parcel arrived yesterday!  This one was from Kate .

She sent me three gifts... and one said to open and enjoy right away- so I did :-)

Very yummy Tim Tam's.... Thank you Kate- they are delicious!

Then I opened the ornament package- and look at this lovely angel ornament!  It is so cute!!!!

Thank you so much Kate!  The last present is safely hidden until Christmas- just counting the days now :-)

The SSCS parcels I sent to Australia has both safely arrived at Susan's and Anthea's houses.  I am so happy they didn't get lost in the mail or anything like that....

Thank you for stopping by- have a great day!

SSCS received

Guess what was in today's mail...... My first Secret Santa gift! (I am swapping double again this year) 

I am so excited!!!  Look how pretty my Santa has wrapped the presents.

In the package that said "Open now" was this lovely heart ornament, and chocolate- yummy!!!

Thank you so much secret Santa!

My Santa is VERY secret this time- no name anywhere- not even on the return address..... There is an envelope taped to the back of this gift, so I guess I won't find out who you are until Christmas..... But THANK YOU so much for these lovely gifts.  Now I need to hide this until Christmas.

SSCS mailed off!

Today I mailed off my SSCS parcels to their destinations.  I have two swap partners this year as well- and it will be so much fun to keep stalking their blogs and find out when they receive their gifts..... This is the only swap I have been in this year, but as you can see on my right sidebar, it is my favorite swap in the world!!!!

Since there has been secret sewing going on, and lots of other stuff I won't even get into here, there hasn't been much sewing that I can share.... sorry!  But last night we had block night at the shop, and we made "Happy scrappy houses" quilt blocks from Bonnie Hunter.  Between the six of us we made 17 house blocks in just a couple of hours- fun and very addictive!

Here we are at work (my mom in the foreground), and notice the box of chocolates in the middle of the table.... We have FUN when we get together :-)

Here are all the houses- don't they look great?

A close up of one of my houses- I can see myself easily make LOTS of these!!! They look so cute in all kinds of fabrics!  Have you made any of these house blocks yet??

To mrs. L in Alvdal ;-) and all my friends and readers in the US, - HAPPY THANKSGIVING!!!

Thank you my Secret Santas!

Thank you so much Secret Santa, Christine! Christmas is finally here and I could open this lovely gift and find out who you are!  I hope I'm right.... There's only one Christine on Chooky's SSCS list of Australian swappers.... I love this cute little quilt, and the pincushion is adorable!

This is the lovely ornament from Christine. I know I've shown it before, but I wanted to show it again along with the rest of the gifts she sent.  Thank you so much Christine- I love them all!

Next is my other partner Meg . She sent me this lovely stitched bag which I will use to keep my Some Kind of Wonderful blocks in I think- such a lovely bag with the cutest stitchery

Inside the bag was a cute sketch pad and a pen.

Thank you so much Meg, I love it :-)

And you might remember the cute ornaments Meg sent me as well.  Ola was making a power point presentation on kangaroos for his English class before Christmas and he used this cute Christmas kangaroo for one of the slides.

I also received a surprise thank you package from the head elf herself.

Thank you so much Donna- I love the calendar and cards, and the pad is just so cute!

I hope your Christmas is great- I feel the need to get moving to burn some of the millions of calories off and make room for more chocolate and cookies.....

Second SSCS received

Yeeey- my other SSCS parcel has arrived!!  Like I told you earlier, I have two swap partners this year.  And this Secret Santa is even more secret than my first one, since she only wrote her last name on the return address.... Very sneaky! But I am sure you're reading this to see if the package has arrived- so thank you so much- the ornament is really pretty!  The other gift is safely put away until Christmas Eve!

Look at this adorable ornament, such a pretty heart!

Thanks again to my very secret Santa!