Exciting times!

It's busy, busy, busy! But December is full of Exciting times in our family.

We started off the month with Birthday # 1, last Monday was Girly~Whirly's birthday!

 

clockwise from the top: day that she was born at 9lbs 2oz. 

1st bday to 5th bday and then in the middle is a photo of her recently.

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This past Monday was Birthday # 2 (I am now officially in the golden age...mid-century...or half a century old...don't they say that 50 is the new 30?...or something like that. :o)

top: my 1st bday, then my 3rd bday...and then this past Monday night at a German restaurant for a birthday dinner with my hubby.

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Next week, along with the wonderful celebration of the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ...
we have Birthday #3 My handsome hubby... He says his mom would tease and say that he was a perfect 10 pound Christmas gift, but once he turned one year old...

Top left: 1st bday, Top right: 2nd bday, bottom left: 3rd bday and bottom right: another taken at my birthday dinner :o) ...since we haven't celebrated his birthday yet.


And we will at one point in time, have all our kids and our grandbaby here with us!

I really like making the photo Christmas cards with our family...this year, it was hard to get everyone toether at the same time, so I used our family photo taken at our son's wedding in Sept.

 (I cropped the bottom of the card, since we had all our names there. Blessed to have my dad on this card too :o)

May you all have a wonderful and blessed Christmas and a very blessed and Happy New Year!

Joining in with Jenny's Alphabe-Thursday's E! (I am still catching up to some return visits to all those wonderful visits that you have made here....slowly, but I hope to catch up!)

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And some art that were also in celebration of some birthdays :o)

 

 This little duck drawn entirely with this little one's first name CLAIRE.

 This little guy goes by his middle name, so it was drawn entirely with CAMPBELL. The little firetruck was from some of the bed linens in his nursery.

Decorating for Christmas

...as I slowly find them in our boxes from our move to our new Kentucky home.

This ledge is on a landing to our finished basement, where we have our tv room, another bedroom, bathroom and my art/sewing/quilting/craft/grandbaby play area.

I love old windows, and one of these are from my parent's place. The little angel on the left is from my great uncle's tree.  The second Santa from the left was my hubby's when he was a little boy. And the wood Santa next to the large printing letter B block is one my mom painted for us years ago.


There are some other decorations that I still have not "found".

But I am so happy for the Rubbermaids and for an organized Handsome Hubby!

(The ones I have yet to come across, are due to my "I'll put these away somewhere safe" way of putting them...but I should have put them away in one of the many storage containers that my hubby marked as Christmas!

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Here are some decorated areas around our home.

Our tree this year is in my hubby's office, since that huge front window is at the front  of the house. And I wanted to have the tree shine out at night at the front.

We have an antique fireplace mantel that is in the tv room and I'd like to put another tree near it as our "Grandbabies tree"with all the cute "jingle bell" ornaments that I have been collecting.

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Here is our living room. You might notice throughout our whole house, that we don't have any paintings or pictures hanging up yet...just the ones that we were able to lean against something.  

I have our kids and their spouses' stockings hanging on the same holders, my hubby's mine and our grandbaby's stockings hanging on their own holders.

(Oh! And for an early birthday gift, my sweet hubby surprised me with the crock that I had hoped to find to add to my other crocks. It is the 5 gallon crock that a Filipino broom called a "ting-ting" in it. The broom is made of the mid ribs of dried coconut palm leaves.)

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These are two bedrooms upstairs...in one of them, I have children's books on the antique desks that I use as  nightstands. And also have children's Christmas books put out now, with other little Christmas sleds and ornaments.  

I still have more decorations to put out in the other bedroom, as well as, decorations in our bedroom, the bedroom and tv room downstairs.

 

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Here on the kitchen/breakfast room windows, I have three square cranberry wreaths hanging from twine. I still have to find my garlands of cranberries.

 We had our island made by a family-run business. They are amazing! They made it just from a sketch I had given them. My hubby finished it with a layer of dark paint and two layers of the off white, so that it could be lightly distressed. We like it as it looks now, so decided to let it get "distressed" as we or grandbabies "bang" and distress it :o)

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 Wishing all a very Merry and Blessed Christmas!
From our home to yours!

 A layer of snow ~ taken after our third snowfall this season.

 Joining in with Jenny's Alphabe-Thursday's D!

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Here is one I have shared before...decorations...ornaments, drawn by a family with a HUGE  Christmas tree and Christmas ornament collection.

This was a photo of it matted and framed.

 

Cathedral Quilt playtime

While spending time with our little granddaughter, I was able to see her play with the little Cathedral Quilt that I had made her.

Here she is putting her two "dog-dogs" down to nap...she puts them on their tummies and pats their backs.

I had sewn this before she was born and talk about it here on Q is for Quilt and also my Cathedral Quilt tutorial post.

I had basically made it so that on one half, a center fabric would match up with another center piece on the other half. So that she could play a matching game or "seek and find" game with the material.

And dividing the two halves, I used solid color fleece to run down the center....incorporating the colors of the rainbow...Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, Violet, as well as pink, grey, black, white, brown.

It was so fun to see that even at 19 months, she is able to actually play the matching game! (She was often actually faster at finding the matches amongst all the different fabric than I was! And she loved to point to the solid color fabric and wait til I said what color they were.  Two of her favorites to say and she knows are Blue and Yellow :o)

 I have a cute little clip of her from our daughter's phone, it has sound, but it won't play here. And it is moving a bit faster than normal speed. (Although she is very quick at it!)  In this one, she is standing up and pointing at the squares as she finds them :o)
We usually point to one square and then she looks for the matching one. On this clip, when we asked her where the duck was, she found the first duck herself and then found the other one.

And here she is on her quilt during her nap time, covered up with her crocheted blanket that her Auntie Girly~Whirly made for her...
And as you can see we read quite a number of books before falling asleep :o)

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Joining in with Jenny's Alphabe-Thursday's C!
And Jen's In the Studio.

And here are some "C" related artwork.

Celtic cross for a little one's birth. This entire cross was drawn with ELI JOSEPH. Additional calligraphy above and beneath written in lettering: Charlemagne

Crocheted Cross for a special event for a young girl. This lacy cross was drawn entirely with the first name CHLOE. Additional scripture verse written in lettering: Edwardian Script

  

 Another repeat posting of this one: 

This Crown was for one of the Derby princesses, when our daughter Girly~Whirly was one of the five Derby princesses. Drawn with CHRISTIN.