Goodbye 2025

It’s time for another end-of-year wrap up. It seems like the years just fly by, and now another one is in the rearview mirror. The weather is cold again—for a day or two maybe. I made chili last night. I made a big pot of it, but I took most of it to my neighbor. She and her son like it a lot, and she doesn’t do much cooking these days. I am enjoying the cool temperatures, but I don’t like wearing a heavy coat. This is what it feels like to me:

No worries, it will be back to 80 on Friday, and I won’t need any kind of a jacket. 

I went through my camera archives to see what I worked on during the past year, and made a collage of the completed projects. 

These were made for me, or for grandchildren.

I ended up selling the red and black one to a church in a nearby town, so only two of these are still at my house.

These were charity quilts that all got donated. 

I made the one on the top left and the one on the bottom right for the Day One graduation project, and the one on the bottom left went to the Gabriel Project. All the rest went to the Mid-coast Family Services shelter. Betty made the mesh bags the quilts in the top middle picture are in.

That’s all of the quilts, but as usual, I got quite a few small things done. Most were donated to the quilt show or to the church sale.

Table runners, bags, placemats, potholders, etc. I crammed a lot into one collage. You can click on the picture to enlarge it. 

I feel like I didn’t get as much done as I should have, but then I need to remind myself I took two cruises and did several two-day workshops through the guild. Also, I’m on two boards plus church council, so that is somewhat time consuming. And then, there are the limitations that come with age. I think I expect too much from myself sometimes. All in all, I’m happy to have this record of where some of my time went. I do find myself looking back occasionally at the previous years’ wrap ups. I only wish I had done a better job of documenting my earlier quilting years. 

A New Day

Happy Sunday everyone. Christmas is over, and it was so busy I didn’t even take any pictures. I was able to enjoy time with my family—I still have my mom and stepdad, so I’m lucky in that respect. My mom volunteered to bring dessert to our family dinner, and she brought a cheesecake from Sam’s. I was so happy she did that—I worry about her over-doing it—especially on holidays. 

Here’s what I worked on Friday and yesterday. 

Remember this bag of scraps Betty gave me? 

I don’t have a box for this size, so I went ahead and started sewing them together. You can see some of the lights are not terribly light, but they also aren’t dark, so……I didn’t have as many light pieces and ended up cutting up quite a few solid white ones. The top I made is 30” x 37”. Once I add a couple of borders, it will be 43” x 50” which will make a nice little baby quilt. I think I have enough for two or three more baby quilts. I’ll continue to work on them until the pieces are used up. It shouldn’t take long. 

Today I want to do some more cleaning in the house, especially the kitchen. There are a lot of things that need to be put away and get things back in order. I also need to clean out both refrigerators. I’m still working on eating all the leftover party food, but I’m getting tired of it. Supper last night was salami, cheese, and crackers.

Pretty soon I will get more serious about what I am eating, but probably not before New Year’s.

The weather should cool off today, although it hasn’t happened yet. The dogs seem a little frisky when we walk. They always get that way when the weather is going to change. Here are the AI pictures where I converted them to stuffed animals. 

Ryder:

Ruth Ann:

And of course, Reba:

I also turned myself into a cartoon:

How funny!

Merry Christmas

From my house to yours. My fervent wish for all my readers is a wonderful Christmas and a happy new year. That’s actually my wish for myself too! 

I found the rest of my ceramic trees and got them put out. 

Of course, it’s almost time to put them all away, but I told myself, “Better late than never”.

I have been walking the dogs after dark so I can enjoy the Christmas lights in the neighborhood. 

The delivery trucks are working overtime to get all the deliveries made. I have to watch out for them when I walk. I stay on the sidewalks, but I do have to cross some streets. These guys are really whizzing around.

The resolution on the night time pictures is not very good. I need to educate myself on how to better edit them. 

I went last night to candlelight service at church. It’s my favorite service of the year, but I was an usher and also ended up helping serve communion so it was a little less reverent for me. I don’t mind helping out, but it was a little distracting. Oh well. 

I have been working on an end of year wrap up and thinking about my 2026 goals, but for now, I’m just going to enjoy the holidays. 

More To Do

I hope everyone is ready for Christmas. Or maybe ready to get it over with, depending how you feel about holidays. I do enjoy Christmas, although I think there is a lot of pressure, particularly on women, to get all the preparations done. All the shopping, cooking, cleaning, and if you are crafty, the gift making. 

I have the desire to make handmade cards and ornaments, but I don’t have the time, and increasingly, I don’t have the energy. I saw some super cute cards on a Facebook post. They were simple ornament shapes or tree shapes cut from Christmas fabric and sewn (or maybe glued or decoupaged) to card stock. I was planning to make some, but I ran out of time. ⌛️ 

I have decided on my next quilt. I maybe should say my next planned quilt—I am always busy sewing scraps together that eventually turn into quilt tops. Here it is:

It took me about four days to get it all cut out. Seriously. My right hand is still giving me problems, so I can’t do long cutting sessions. I try to limit it to no more than an hour or two. I started on the sewing this weekend and got a lot of hst’s made. 

I would get more done if I stayed off the iPad. I have been playing with AI, and amused myself one evening by turning Reba into a stuffed animal.

That might be the solution to a lot of problems. 

I keep thinking I have all my shopping done, and then I think of someone else I need to get a gift for. I usually get my pastor a gift card to Aldi, and I just remembered yesterday when I saw her at church. I will run by there today and get one. 

The Gift That Keeps on Giving

There has been a lot of gift giving this year. Maybe (hopefully) the economy is improving. My favorite gift so far? Betty cut up all her smallish scraps into various sizes and gifted them to me! A whole bag full! 

They are divided into ziploc bags by size. The ones I took out first were the 2-1/2” squares. 

Lights and darks. I started on some 16-patch blocks—just for fun, and because other people’s scraps are more inspiring. 

I haven’t had a lot of sewing time, but I have managed to make 10 of these so far. I think I have a plan to use them for next year’s Rainbow Scrap Challenge. I can make star points with whatever the monthly color is. It would make a 16” star block, so I could end up with enough for a quilt top if I can stick with it all year. Sticking with it is almost always the challenge. 

Also in the bag was potato chips in two sizes. I already took out the 2-1/2” x 4-1/2” ones 

added them to my potato chip box. There are some sizes like 3” x 3” that I don’t use, but I will trim them down to 2-1/2”. 

It’s been a busy week. My mom, granddaughter, Sherry, and I went Wednesday night and saw the Grand Old Christmas Show. 

It has become an annual tradition for us. It was at the Welder Center.

We went back to the Welder Center on Thursday night for my daughter’s graduation from nursing school. 

She already has a degree in psychology and in real estate, and now she is an RN. I think she has already enrolled in the BSN program. I think the end goal is to be a nurse practitioner with a mental health focus, but I’m not for sure.

My other granddaughter had her school Christmas program. She played a hotel concierge. 

She is generally shy, but she did have a speaking part and seemed to comfortable with it. I was happy to see how comfortable she was with the performance. I had to miss the two grandson’s Christmas programs due to other conflicts, but there is always next year. 

Bookmarks

I have ended up down another rabbit hole! I was meeting with the membership group and church, and Pastor asked if Mary and I could make fabric bookmarks for the visitor packets. My first thought was to sew two pieces of fabric with the right sides out and pink the edges. That seemed like the fastest and easiest way to accomplish the task. Then, last week I found a video on YouTube for three different bookmarks.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NI7cBQJCYKY

I think they’re really cuter than what I was thinking of, so I tried it out and ended up making several of them. 

I gave the dark green ones to my volunteer group at church yesterday. I have nine more cut out, and I hope to get that done soon. I may still try some with pinked edges and see how that looks. I think either will be okay.

We have had a little cold snap, although it warmed up quite a bit yesterday afternoon. It was too cold to walk Monday night, and I ended up in the recliner under a blanket watching tv. 

Can you guess what those lumps under my blanket are? My thighs are not that big! Here’s a hint:

I can never get a blanket to myself—there is competition! I had two under there, and they generate quite a bit of heat. I finally gave up and let Reba and Ruthie have the chair and the blanket.

Today is another busy day. I have a doctor appointment this morning, Serenity’s school Christmas program this afternoon, and I am joining my mom for a Christmas program tonight at the Welder Center. I went with her two years ago, and it was a lot of fun. Last year I was sick with RSV and had to miss it, so I’m happy I can go this year.

Just Around The Corner

Christmas is coming fast! I have all my shopping done, but not wrapped. To be honest, I usually finish the wrapping on the 24th. My main priority is getting the gifts bought, and everything else is secondary. 

Everyone wants their quilts finished before Christmas, but I haven’t made any promises. I got five quilted and bound this week. 

This was for a new customer. She is not a quilter but decided a jellyroll race would be easy enough for a beginner. She didn’t have a very extensive variety of strips, and when she got it put together she hated it! She cut it into smaller squares and sashed it and brought it to me to finish. She warned me it was neither flat nor square, but I told her I would do my best. I had to take a few tucks, but nothing too drastic.

Rhonda has a new grand baby coming in March. 

This one has a bright green minky backing. 

I got an Aggie quilt done.

It also has a minky-type fabric on the back.

I took an hour or so for myself yesterday morning and got my car cleaned up. I cleaned up the interior and washed and dried the exterior. The only thing I failed to do was the wheels. It is a little cooler this morning, but yesterday it got up to 80 degrees. It was super humid, and I turned the a/c on for a while to get the creepy damp feeling out of the air.

I have gotten a few Christmas cards —more than usual for this early in the month, I think. I put them on the little sewing table in my family room. 

Okay, full disclosure: one is from my insurance company and one is from the BMW dealership. Basically the places that want my money! We’ll see how many more I get. I didn’t mail any until yesterday, and not very many due to the cost of stamps.

I have some sewing I want to do today, but my main goal is to get home from church in time to watch the Texans game. It starts at noon against the Cardinals, and it is going to be a good one!