Hi all…just ducking in to wish you all a blessed and peaceful new year filled with joy and creativity!

Made using Susan Brubaker Knapp's pattern in Quilting Arts Gifts 2010-2011 issue

This past week we became tenants…yes, we sold our house!  It was on the market for an unbelievable twelve days before we had an offer!  That good news has led to a bunch of difficulty, however, with the owner of the house on which we had already made an offer (the only reason we listed our house was to purchase the one we had just seen).  Let’s just say things are turbulent, so please send good wishes for the desired outcome!  We are renting back for the rest of this month, but at the moment we don’t know where we’ll be living in six weeks!!!! EEEK!Let’s just say things are tense…..

That, of course, has seriously stymied creativity.  That and the fact that I should be packing and cleaning out in preparation for our move!

The photo above, by the way, I’ll blog about more…. I had a pattern included in the Quilting Arts Gifts issue for this year (2010-2011), my fabric frames.  My favorite other pattern in the issue is my friend Susan Brubaker Knapp‘s beautiful mistletoe.  Since I didn’t have the embroidery floss or wool balls I had to improvise, but I love the way these turned out.  I made them as gifts for my Frayed Edges friends, so will blog about our Frayed Edges meeting soon and also the making of the mistletoe.

Now it’s time for dinner, so I’ll sign off and wish you all a Happy new year!

Yes, while the turkey was roasting on Christmas day and the potatoes were boiling and the pie and stuffing were done, I took a little time for art!  About a thousand lifetimes ago (meaning last winter, maybe February-ish) I took an online class with Sharon Boggon (her site is here and is now called In a Minute Ago, here blog is  Pin Tangle)  about a “working” sketchbook.  Not a fancy, work-of-art-in-itself journal, but about using a journal as a way to flesh out ideas and stimulate creativity.  Here’s a link to the class description…I really enjoyed the class!  Alas, I have been abysmal at keeping up with it–simply too much life happening.  BUT…. I have the journal and the supplies and the desire.  So on Christmas I made the time!

I just LOVE how this turned out....it makes me happy. Being creative and noodling around just makes me content. I should do this more!

I took some of the squares I had cut from magazine pages, and some words and phrases, and started gluing them up.  One page became two…. then I took my WONDERFUL Christmas gift from hubby:  a set of 72 Derwent Inktense pencils

The Inktense pencils are in the upper left. My magazine snippings are in the box, and the bag on the right is my travel-art bag, with room for a set of 6 graphite pencils, a 12-travel-set of watercolor, a waterbrush, glue stick and a couple odd pens are inside in their custom-made pockets

and a waterbrush and, in the evening after supper while watching Starman with my family, colored in the background.  I LOVE IT!

And I cannot let the last Christmas posting pass without Kate’s candles–I’ll blog about our Frayed Edges meeting in a few days, but I had to share these.  Kate found the votives in cylindrical glass cups then re-purposed old (tossed out) sheet music.  The large one is from Stonewall Kitchen (a Maine company) and smells of “Maine Forest.”

My new Canon G12 has a "candlelight" setting on the dial, and this was taken just holding the camera still, no tripod or bracing...love it!

The pug always gets top billing...and he loved his raccoon! See how proud he is!

The before:

Twas the night before Christmas, and the goodies were actually wrapped!

The stocking were hung by the chimney with care (using my new best thingies, easily removed “command strip” hooks):

I promise...the stockings really are there, just off to the left....

The during:

That's Paul's hand in the lower right--he tends to glare at the camera so I mostly take pictures of the boys, when they tolerate it....

We had a lovely Christmas and hope you did, too!  I recently killed my beloved Panasonic DMC FZ-30 camera.  The first death blow was when hiking about 3 years ago and I slipped and the camera banged against a rock hard enough to chip the metal on the rim…miraculously, the camera still took good photos…good enough that all the studio / in progress shots in my book are taken on that one “after the fall” (and no, I didn’t get but a scrape…I was a lot more upset about the camera)!…the final death blow was a couple weeks ago when it slipped off a pile of fabric on my work table.  I had moved it, foolishly, to the top of a not-terribly-stable or flat pile to make room to cut something.  Then I bumped the table.  Ooops.  Landed lens down, and that led to a repair that led to the front of the lens coming off.  Erg.  So I bought a Canon G12 as a carry-around camera (not one of the fits in a jeans or shirt pocket size, but fits in a jacket pocket or purse easily) and have discovered it takes AWESOME pictures.  These were almost ALL taken *without* flash and handheld…. I could never have done that on the old camera!

The not-roast beast:

Thumper had to check out Paul's gift of salami, which beloved SIL Joyce sends from California since we can't get this here on the East Coast

We will only touch briefly on the fact that Paul left the salami on the table and the next day the pug, temporarily persona non grata, helped himself to one of them.  Including a lot of the paper wrapper.  Astonishingly, the pug was not sick. Paul was a bit queasy about the loss of the one salami, but he didn’t ask the dog to return it.  Ahem.

Are you done taking pictures yet?

After snapping about a dozen pictures of the boys and Paul, I hit their limit….. but I DO like the camera!

Here’s what we woke up to this morning….much more snow than anticipated…WOOOHOOO!

Looking over the front lawn to the street

The front porch...hmmm....

The driveway---or it will be once we shovel!

And a perennial favorite of mine, snowy woodpiles!

Eli helped a lot… it is so wonderful to have someone else in the family who totally “gets” the tree thing, and the tradition, and is interested in which ornaments came from where (literally all over the world!) and when…. and that would be me and Eli!   We assembled the tree (more on that in a sec) and got the lights on over the weekend, and the ornaments on yesterday!

The tree!

Here’s a close-up.  Even *I* will admit my ornament collecting (it was supposed to be one a year, but is usually more what with gifts from friends and my inability to stop at one of the purchased kind too….).  We’re hoping in the new house (moving locally in late January, fates willing) that the tree will be in a spot where we can reach the back side of it so we can spread out the ornaments!

LOTS of ornaments! On the center right, a chola from La Paz, Bolivia, on the center left one Eli made, the red reindeer is from when I was in about 1st grade and to his left a painted lantern from my last overseas trip with the Foreign Service to Moscow. Tthe tin reindeer is from the Waterford Craft Fair in Virginia, Top right has an orca from when we lived in Friday Harbor; the cub scout is Joshua back in first grade (and it was a Cub Scout project). There's a trillium stained glass on the lower right from my assignment to the US Consulate in Toronto (Trillium is the official Ontario flower), there are miniature Bolivian hats here and there, and in the top right a wooden US capitol purchased when we lived in DC on Capitol Hill. And sort of in the center, Eli's origami bat (made in school) and a little foamie mousie he made, too! Our life, on a tree!

As for “assembling the tree.”  You might wonder why a family that lives in the Pine Tree State would have an artificial tree.  Well, when you are in the Foreign Service and live all over the world, you had best take your Christmas goodies with you.  La Paz, Bolivia, for example, was in the barren, nearly treeless, Altiplano.  The next overseas assignment was in Gabon, in Central Africa.  LOTS of trees….jungle!….there.  But Christmas trees?  Not quite.  So we had an artificial tree that traveled all over the world with us.  And by about 1995 it looked like it had been around the world.  We donated it to a charitable auction (they decorate trees and auction them) and bought a new one on sale after Christmas.  It was also larger, to better house the growing ornament collection.

Fifteen years later, I think I need to prune what goes on the tree every year! Even the larger tree is crowded.  That’s in part because Mom sent me ALL the ornaments I had sent mom and dad over the years.  The good news is that when the boys have their own homes, I can divide up everything into three piles, and each of the boys will have  a matching set since I usually bought one for mom and dad and another of the same for me—two sets!  Good thing we didn’t have three kids!  So that’s my story…  after nearly 30 years, we’ve had two trees.  I like them. They’re part of the family tradition just like the ornaments.  Enjoy the love and the lights of the season, Sarah