Christmas Stash

I was SO lucky with the wonderful Christmas presents I received this year.  As well as some stamps, perfume, CD's and chocolate I got some great stash - and not all of it was bought by me to put away!

First off some lovely fabrics I picked up at Harrogate a few weeks ago.  Pumpkin Patch is for doing the Halloween countdown calendar which will be a Crazy January Challenge piece this year.  The others all have plans too but I can't remember which design off the top of my head and the list is upstairs.

Then there are some lovely Crafty Kitten fabrics too.  All of those have plans except for the linen which I just wanted to see what it is like as I'm not good with linen!

Another piece of Sparklies which was missed out in the first photo.  IT IS GORGEOUS!

The Nutmeg Company and Mill Hill kits were picked up by me in Harrogate.  The reindeer were a total surprise and I was thrilled to receive them.  They are something that I have wanted for a long time but apparently they were only on my abcstitch.com wishlist and not my sewandso.co.uk wishlist. I was showing Colin a photo of them on facebook the other day so he picked 2 of them up for me.

2 lovely pieces of backing fabric from Sparklies too - even if it is upside down!

Another kit for my Crazy January Challenge starts.  I saw this in person at Harrogate and it is SO pretty. The chart looks horrendously complicated but Vickie has already taught me how to do the knots to make the flowers and said if I need help to email/message her.  She may regret that...

I also received another Cut Thru to add to my collection.  This one is North Pole House and is so cute.  This may well be the one I start when I finish my stable!

I know it looks like there is a huge amount of things here but with our families living so far away, they send money and we pick up what we would like labelling it from them.  

Finally, when Annette sent me all the bits for making my Gingerbread Cupcake, she also sent me a package to put under the tree.  I was really good and only opened it on Christmas Day.  Inside were a load of gorgeous goodies.  Look at this lot!  2 really pretty backing fabrics, a piece of stripy evenweave and some pretty threads.  I had to add the gift tag which was made by Annette too and is lovely!  Thank you Annette for such a lovely and generous package of goodies.

We had a lovely Christmas Day.  Both children and Colin were thrilled with their gifts but the highlight of the day was Colin's Christmas dinner.  He was adamant it wouldn't be huge...hahahaha.  

So this our Christmas table all set ready, with Luke looking like an alcoholic with his wine glass.  Rachael declined having orange squash in a wine glass.

Colin's dinner - no he didn't finish it all.

Luke's dinner - somehow he did finish it all, and was the first to finish too.  He loves his veg so had plenty of it!

Rachael's dinner - she managed all of hers too.  Heavens knows where she put it all!

My dinner - no chance!  You could probably have fed someone else with what I left!

Not sure as to why I was looking so miserable here.  Obviously just an unlucky moment with the camera!  Dinner this year was particularly delicious, even with there being way to much.  I'm so lucky that Colin is such a good cook!!

I hope you had an amazing Christmas too.

Advent Calendar bloghop

You have no idea how honoured I feel to have 24th December as my Advent Calendar date.  I don't know where Jo gets the idea that I am excited from although she said it's something to do with the fact that her computer glows red and bounces up and down when she receives an email from me!!!  Imagine if it was snowing too...

Anyway, this is my offering for Christmas.  I bought the kit at the Harrogate show and have never tried beading before...well other than adding beads to cross stitch designs.  I loved it!  Something happened to it and one bit came undone so I unpicked it and started it again which didn't take too long.

Spellbound Beads - Starry Night kit

We don't have many traditions as such that revolve around food in our house.  Our big (non food) tradition is doing the Christmas decorating.  The first full weekend of December, the tree goes up.  Our tree is huge!  It is 7.5 feet tall and with the angel on top there is about an inch gap between her head and the ceiling.  So the big tree box comes out of the cupboard and the children sort the colour coded branches out.  Then the 'fun' part of making the branches look like a real tree begins.  The children do the donkey work whilst I add them to the tree and titivate them so they look their best.  Once this is done I put the lights on the tree. Aftwerwards, all four of us take it in turns to choose a piece of tinsel for me to put on the tree with the only rule being not to have two of the same colour next to each other.  Then the decorations come out and we take it in turns to choose one and add it in a suitable space.  The only person allowed to hang the lovely Kris Kringle that I received from Shirlee about 10 years or so ago is me and it goes where I can see it from where I sit.  I also tend to hang all the cross stitch ones I have been gifted whereas anyone can add the ones I have made.

The final thing to be added is the angel on top.  This year she was added by Rachael.

For food 'traditions' we have breakfast first of all.  Breakfast is either croissants or pain au chocolats depending on who wants what.  Sadly Rachael is very fussy and ends up with either a bowl of cereal or bog standard toast.  She might go really mad and have some Nutella on it this year!!

Christmas dinner is cooked by Colin who does a better roast dinner than me.  We have turkey and gammon with mash and roast potatoes.  Veg wise it's a mix of sprouts, runner beans (home grown but frozen!), peas, carrots, parsnips, butternut squash, cauliflower and broccoli.  Different people eat different veg so we cook them in the steamer and add bits for each person! There is also yorkshire pudding and stuffing with gravy. After dinner, we leave having dessert for a long time!  This tends to be a gateau of some kind, this year is a Marks and Spencer's strawberry gateau.  

Then that is all the big cooking done for the Christmas period.  Boxing Day is a buffet meal with everything being a bung in the oven or whip out the fridge item.  From then on, we tend to graze on buffet bits for the next few days just cooking up things as we need more to add to it.

Christmas Day and Boxing Day see the children allowed to eat chocolate/sweets whenever they want to without asking.  Not until after Christmas dinner though!  Usually sweets are a treat which are generally only eaten after meals.

On New Year's Day we recreate the Christmas dinner as our first meal of the new year.

I hope you all have a wonderful Christmas and wish you peace and joy (with some stitchy gifts thrown in).

First of all I thought I would do a quick Christmas round up.  These are the yummy mince pies that  I made with Luke.  I explained the steps to him, he did the work.  Definitely the best way to do the cooking!!  The photo must be a little dark as they definitely weren't as dark as the look.  There is a close up of one of them too.

Something you don't often see is a picture of me.  This is us at the Christmas table.  Excuse the big plastic jug  at the front of the shot.  We don't have a gravy boat.

This is all the presents under the tree ready for opening.

This is the lovely stash I received for Christmas.  There is CCN - Needlework Shop, LHN - Chocolate Shoppe, Sue Hillis - The Key to my Heart and CCN - Santa's Village which is on autoship from The Patchwork Rabbit with the buttons and speciality threads.

We had a very quiet day but it was really nice and chilled.  The children were pleased with their presents which is the main thing.