Waiting for Win

John Winston that is! They are on their way as I write this; they left this morning and will be here by this evening - it's a loooong way from Hilton Head, SC to Mt. Airy, Maryland. I'm praying that they will be safe traveling over the recently snow cleared roads as they get closer.

This is the antique sleigh that we had stored in the attic. My Mom worked for 25 years for a school that used to be an orphanage in Washington, D.C. and when they found this little sleigh in their attic she brought it home for Jenni who is our youngest - the older two would never fit in this! I remember taking Jennifer (Win's Mom) to a little friend's birthday party in the neighborhood when she was two years old in 1978. It had just snowed, and was too deep for her to be able to walk through it, so dressed in her white hand-smocked (by me!) tea length dress, leggings and white fur coat and covered with a snuggly blanket, I pulled her to the party. Oh how I wish we had a picture of her then, sitting in this little sleigh with a warm furry hat over her long dark hair holding her little gift :-) Isn't this little dolly a dear? - he is one of the ten "stinky kids" who's motto is "Always Be a Leader of Good."

Wonderful memories and more to come . . . . . . . . . .

Merry Christmas to all of you - Blessings to you and your family!

Felt Playmat

I'd planned to make a warm blanket for Win when we took him out on the antique sleigh we had stored in the attic but as I began work, I thought about how practical that would be when he goes home to SC. I then decided to make a rug that would double as a playmat. He loves "Thomas" and trucks so I thought it might be fun to have something to pretend with. It's a good size 3' x 4' and quite thick, in fact too thick for me to manipulate well while wet so I stuck it in the bathtub and "stomped" on it - I felt like Lucille Ball stomping on her grapes! It was a riot, but it worked great! (glad my husband didn't take a picture) It lays really flat and has a lovely texture that you can't quite see if the photo. It had five layers of wool before the surface decorations were added. As you can see, there is a railroad, a little road, a pond, clouds, tiny birds (hard to tell on the photo), tree, houses, sun and a hill. When he is older, he can play trains, cars, boats or people. I'm so pleased with it - now it just has to dry

Feast or Famine

There have been no Blog posts recently because it's hard to bake, felt, shop and decorate while sitting at the computer (and, oh yes, how could I forget about my job and all that entails working at a Church during this Christmas season!). Anyway, I make little hand sugar cookies, iced with Royal Icing and dusted with edible gold every Christmas as everyone just loves them. I have a few different "hand" cookie cutters but this size seems to work best. This year, I decided to add what I feel - I'm so grateful for everything we've been blessed with and wanted everyone else to share the Love. These are the "practice" cookies, left for my husband to enjoy while I had to attend a late night meeting. The recipe I have is for 12 dozen but it only makes half of that number. I do it in stages: make the dough and cut into 4 sections, wrap in wax paper and chill until I get the time to bake a section at a time or all if I can manage.

Snow Men

I do love snowmen and have a special collection. These first two are among my favorites, are made of fabric - muslin? and painted in the softest tones of blues and greens - they are so well done, I wish I had purchased more of them. The detail is unbelievable.

Of course, I do love this little "bobble head" guy - too sweet!

I felted a snowman pillow as a gift for my assistant at work - she loves snowmen too. He has a tiny pointy carrot nose that I stiffened with textile medium but my camera battery just went dead, so a picture of him will have to wait :-(

Snow Princess

I just couldn't resist this "Snowflakes" sign and then I found a Snow Princess a couple of weeks ago - I'm wondering if she is the one who "commanded" this past weekend's 24" snowfall? If so, she's been very naughty as she's caused havoc with our plans to have our SC family with little Win. They were supposed to arrive this past weekend and you know the rest! This picture was taken early evening on Saturday and it kept snowing through the night. Good thing I'm on vacation this week since we have along winding driveway through the woods so I'm not going anywhere for a few days. I only hope that our family will be able to make it for Christmas Eve and we always have the family party; this is baby Win's first and some in the family haven't met him yet.