Disaster Averted

Bad news: My faithful hand mixer died yesterday, with one week left til Christmas, and me with 12 different recipes (maybe more…) I want to bake starting this weekend. 

Good news: K0hl’s had a newer model of the same mixer in stock and the out-the-door cost, with the sale price, K0hl’s cash and a discount code,  was…. drum roll… $8.07. For a $40+ mixer. I love K0hl’s holiday sales.

 Bright pink poinsettia from Matt & Mary

Bad news: My car’s check engine light came on, and stayed on. Hubby is making at least one run to LAX on Monday to pick up kids and grandkids, it’s 7-ish days before Christmas and we have important grandkid things to do this week. 

Old, cute pic from when we first got the car

Good news: service guy says, “Great timing!” They just got the software fix for the recalled back-up camera and they can do that, the 10,000 mile maintenance, fix the check engine problem and get it back to us the same afternoon. For free-ish since we have a maintenance contract. Whoop!

Bad news: it’s fridge cleaning time. I always do it at Christmas because then I can remember when I did it last. Doesn’t matter when I do it in the middle of the year because, come December, I’m doing it again. Good news: it’s done, was less of a hassle than expected and looks so pretty!

Good news: my ‘full-fat real cheese is its own food group’ diet is healthy! At least right now and according to this study. Who knows what it will be in 6 months. But I’ll take it! 

‘Enchanted’ Descanso Gardens

We spent Monday evening at Descanso Garden’s ‘Enchanted’. 

It was pretty much a spur of the moment thing - Sunday we said “how about…” and Monday we were there. 

We talked Donovan into going by reminding him they had light up swords for sale… 

and then he had absolutely no interest in them, 

choosing instead a snow leopard (that he named Cracker) and a blue penguin (named Icy to go with his snow owl, “Snowy”.)

My favorite things were the intricate, fascinating HYBYCOZO sculptures. 

So beautiful.

Second favorite was the stained glass houses, especially the water tower.

Who plans a water tower in an art installation?? So fun.

Photo by Donovan 

I thought Enchanted was going to be the Christmas version of ‘Carved’ (which was Awesome! Here) 

but it was more of a light show, with no holiday theme. 

Very pretty - but a bit of a let down after the artistry and excitement of Carved.

 Still a great way to spend an evening with family.

Donovan’s invisible…

…or maybe not

Part of the glass house installation 

They were making their own ‘fog’ - very spooky!

Hundreds of laser dots, constantly dancing, moving from ground to treetop. Pretty sure this was Donovan’s favorite.

Looking back at the glass houses

Christmas Countdown

 Other Christmas stuff has been happening while I spent 9 days playing with fabric. 

Our aging collection of inflatables is up. We lose about one a year to wear and tear or wind and rain. 

But that just gives hubby an excuse to go shopping for more, which he enjoys. Gotta keep the local hardware shops in business!

Donovan put the ornaments on our tree this year. 

We held a few in reserve so the grandgirls (all 4 of them!!!) can hang a few when they arrive on 12/22. 

Did I mention everyone will be here for Christmas this year? We are very excited. 

Flashback

Back in my 20’s (just a couple of years ago 🙄) I loved doing macrame, 

making a bunch of plant hangers, wallhangings and even a hammock (seriously).

So when Mary suggested the two of us taking a macrame workshop at a local shop, I was all in.

So much fun! 

We were there for a couple of hours 

and finished two cute little gnome ornaments each. 

Now I need to find the same supplies so we can have gnome craft day while everyone is here for Christmas. 

And yes, there may be more workshops in my future…

Day 9, Done For Now

Today was day 9, block 9 of the Winter Wonderland FPP-along. Teena and I went rogue again (so did Karen!) picking something we liked better (and was theoretically easier) than the “planned” block. 

It’s wonky but I still like it

I say theoretically because Teena will be working on hers again tomorrow and Ms. Stubborn (that’s meeeeee) finished up after well over 5 hours of sewing, ripping, stitching, taping, and ripping AGAIN.

It’s not that the pattern is difficult - I’d call it intermediate beginner only because you need to match up a few seams - it’s that if you make a mistake you have (not good) choices - decide you meant to do that (designer’s choice); rip allllll the way back to where you goofed (each green section is half the entire pattern - no seaming little sections together here!); throw it out, reprint the paper piece and start over. 

And we did make a variety of mistakes. I fixed all the little ones I found but my biggest goof was in the very. first. piece. of a long green section, attaching a white rather than green fabric. And when did I spot it? As I was trying to figure out why the very last piece wasn’t fitting where it belonged. Designer’s choice it is - I meant to do that. 🙄 

Note to self: the original WW patterns are 8.5” unfinished, 8” finished. Today’s was 8” unfinished, 7.5” finished. Either enlarge them .5” (1.06%) or add bigger borders. 

A Good Day

 Lunch with a friend,

then a little fabric shopping…

Black sparkle is sashing for the FPP Christmas quilt

Ok, a lot of fabric shopping. Three stores, 11 fabrics, 19.5 yards. In my defense: A) I was looking for a specific fabric to finish a project (didn’t find it ☹️); and B) I have a plan for all of this - a star quilt for me (the 2 left-most brown fabrics), 

A star quilt either like this…

or like this…

a gift (the pastel half-yard lower left) and the rest is for the Christmas FPP-along that Teena and I are doing next year. Did I need a full yard of all those greens for the FPP? Probably not. But what if I run out mid project?!??!? Can’t chance it. 😂

Penultimate, Day 8

We were a bit nervous about this block, which the designer rated as ‘intermediate‘, but it turned out to be fine. 

Sparkly Cardinal

A little color coding (lots of color changes on every pattern piece), some careful pin placement at the tricky bits (mainly around the head), and we Teena was done in 3 hours. 

Color coding saves my sanity

Mine took another half hour since I had to redo one piece FOUR TIMES before I got it right. Sheesh. 

Teena’s blue jay 

We’re taking tomorrow off for Real Life, getting together again on Wednesday to work on the last block. We probably won’t do the last Winter Wonderland pattern (I may do it later), we’ve tentatively picked a Christmas wreath FPP as our final(ish) block before we start up again in January.

This has been fun!