One Creative Family

Summer has come and gone, fall is here and soon winter.  We have been doing some Christmas shopping and trying to get some things taken care of.  While looking at my lists of things I wanted to make I found some great ornaments to make.  I forgot all about them now my plan is to make some to decorate the house with fabric ornaments of some kind.  My tree is decorated with ornaments the kids and grandkids have made over the years.  These are so much fun to look at and discuss as we hang them.   The Granddaughters decorate the tree the day after Thanksgiving, with hot cocoa, and cookies.  Lots of laughing.  This year we will be putting it up a little later.  Hubby and I will be going to Texas to spend Thanksgiving with my siblings.  This will be a week of Red Neck good times.  Fish fries(I hope), domino and poker night, bonfire, lots of good food, visiting long time friends and family.

Here are a few sites for Christmas Ornaments if you need some ideas.                                     https://www.facebook.com/theornamentgirl/                                                                                    http://quiltingdigest.com/prairie-points-make-beautiful-star-ornaments/

What are some of your traditions for the fall and winter?

Do you decorate your house for this time of year?

My tree are starting to turn pretty colors and leaves fall.  I have a large oak tree in the front yard and the oak mites have been terrible.  When they attack you that spot itches like crazy.  But even with these little insects fall is a beautiful time.  Enjoy your days.

The 2nd dragonfly is done and I am trying to decide on colors for the other 3.  I like the idea of bright greens, a purple and need a yellow or gold or something else for the 3rd.  I think the purple will be shades of purple and same as green.  Not sure about the brown one.  Any suggestions?  

I did get a Fairy Princess Dress finished for Destiny.

Leaves are turning beautiful golds and reds.  I can only mean that winter is around the corner.  I love the changing of the seasons.  Tomorrow I will get my fall decorations out and put them thru the house and get ready for little Trick or Treating in a few weeks.  I have an old cast iron pot that hubby’s grandmother made lie soap in outside over an open fire.  I will put candy in it, set it on the front porch and sit out there waiting for little kids to come by.

Today I got 1 out of 4 dragonflies completed.  This wall hanging will be 40×40.  I am loving this.I will need to trim up a few edges, but then it will be ready for another friend.  I also completed my Gingerbread man from The Christmas Sew A Long with Farmhouse Quilts and Teadoodles.  I figured Gingie wanted to go to the beach so here he is.  I will have to make his lady friend next.Working on little gift card stockings for Christmas.  You can see them after I get them finished.  Tomorrow after a little running I will be working on all these little projects.  You working on something special lately?  Love to hear what you are up to this week.

I have finally gotten regular house hold chores done so I can spend time in the sewing room.  Granddaughter #1, Katelin is away at college and wants some ID badge holders and so I have been making some.  They keep evolving.  I found a pattern on Craftsy that was free, but she had too many steps and I got frustrated and confused so I trashed that one and started out from scratch.  Here are two of the ones I did and I have been making changes and now I know what I want it to look like.  Now to tweek the pattern then I will share it.

The one on the left is my favorite.  The narrower one will be the best and there is a  zipper pocket on the back.

I will be catching up on my Sew A long Christmas Ornaments with Farmhouse Quilts and Teadoodlers  http://www.teadoddles.com/merry-christmas-sew-along-ornament-3/.

Then I will be working on this wall hanging by JoAnn Hoffman. “Dance of the Dragonflies”.What projects are you working on?  Starting your Holiday sewing, painting, or gift making?  Do you like to make gifts for people?   I love it.  Embrace your day.

I have been putting things away from our trip and now am ready to start on the next project.  Monique, https://farmhousequilts.blog/2017/09/25/merry-christmas-sew-along-september-ornament/   has sew along Christmas Ornaments going and I am behind on the ornament from last week so I will be working on this, and having spent so much time in Quilt Shops I have so many ideas floating around in the brain.  I will work on things to finish up and then tomorrow will be a day to start a new project.

The first thing I want to try is cork fabric.  I found some while in PA and now I will be using it for the latest ornament from Monique.  I think it will be fun.  Here is a quick photo of the treasures I found on vacation.  We did a lot of driving from Sept 23-Oct 6th, drove a little over 4,000 miles, and traveled thru 13 different states some of them more than once.  I will leave you with a few photos (other than fabric). Oh and I hit 18 quilt shops.

The last 10 days I have been time traveling.  Starting with arriving in the America’s on the Mayflower at Plymouth, MA. We take a trip on a whaling ship to see  how the whalers and fishermen lived. Then on to the burning of the “Witches” in Salem, MA.  It seems people have been mean to each other when we are a little different for too long. We moved on to the Boston Tea Party in the Boston Harbor.  Then  we arrived in Concord and Lexington to fight the British and the new little country wins her Independence.  Now we jump ahead the American Civil War and the Union wins.  This has been a great vacation, and I have traveled thru many years in a few days, and am bringing home some wonderful memories.

We walked over 5 miles today walking the Lexington/Concord Minutemen trail this morning and then spending over 2 hours walking around Boston.  Tomorrow will find us walking around Boston some more.  Had some great Lobster Rolls for dinner..  It was good, but tomorrow we will have whole lobsters.  Fabric shops are closed today, it being Sunday and so we will see what happens.  I think the site seeing will take over and we will then go to Rhode Island on Tuesday.  Leaving you with a few photos of Bar Harbor, Maine,

I know I missed day 4, but we were so tired last night we crashed.  Today was Vermont, and Maine.  We did stop at Keepsake Quilts and got some goodies and then spent the day in the mountains.  For dinner tonite we had pulled pork and beer at a place in Freeport, ME called Gritty’s.  Was so good  I tried their raspberry beer.  It was light and good. I wouldn’t have thought to put fruit in beer.  Last night I tried seafood chowder for the first time.  Pretty good also.  Tomorrow may bring lobster to this girl. Who knows.

We are used to the Rocky Mountains in Colorado, and to see the Mountains in the East are so different.  Both are so beautiful.  Yes, the leaves are starting to turn.  I can’t wait to see them in the Acadia National Park.  I think that is tomorrow.

So many new things my head is spinning.  Till tomorrow.

Oh here is a little snippit of what I bought early on in the trip…

Till tomorrow.

Got to Gettysburg, PA early and spent 4 hours  driving around the battle field.  Seeing all these markers, cannons, and reading about each person makes you FEEL the history and understand more the agony, sadness, and the passion each side fought for.  It is so different seeing places like this than reading about it in books.  Pictures of this to come later.

Later in the day we were on the way to Kingston, NY and I realized no fabric stores from PA so we found a wonderful one in Lebanon, PA.  It was “Martin’s Fabric Barn”  This was down winding roads, some country and some were thru farm country.  It was a wonderful place.  I found lots of fabric and all I bought were on sale for $3.75 a yard.  

We have has some Very long days in the car, but it has been so worth it.  I have been to 5 states and 3 quilt shops.  Today we went to a quilt shop in a ladies home, this one had a 5 star rating in the Row by Row quilts and it earned it.  Nonna’s Cottage in Zanesville, Ohio.  I loved that shop and the lady was so nice.  We then went to one in St. Clairsville, Ohio.  I wasn’t overly impressed with this store.  When walking into the shop the front was a chaos mess where she had all kinds of items covering the top of the work area.  When she wanted to do something she had to make room, then dig around to find a sack to put my purchase in.  Her prices were at least a dollar more than other places for the same fabric.  She just seemed very disorganized and in return it was hard to want her fabric.  On the bright side we got to see a wonderful small “Norman Rockwell” town.  It was great.  We were there at Noon the Court House bells played “Proud To Be An American.”

From here we went to the Flight 93 Memorial.  This was so emotionally amazing.  These are the photos we took of this.

Inside the building were very chilling recording of the calls people made home to their loved ones.  Photos of the crash and recordings from the first responders.  On the Memorial site are planted 40 groves of 40 trees in each grove for each of the 40 passengers and crew members who died.