Re-purposing and Christmas Baking

I have been busy making centerpieces for our next Monday night quilt guild meeting. Since I am the VP this year it is one of my responsibilities. Every December we have a covered dish dinner together. So each table usually has some kind of center piece which will be a door prize. My daughter brought these vases and green ribbons home from one of her retail jobs. The store was going to throw them away so she brought them home. So I began to think how I could use these and save the guild some money. So these center pieces are what I came up with. Each has the shimmery silver flowers, candy cane, and two fat eighths of red and green fabric. I am pretty pleased at how they look. Too bad I can't win one. lol
I went to the grocery store this morning to get some ingredients to start my Christmas cookie baking. I am linked to Klove.com so I can listen to Christmas music while I do some mixing and baking.
I just had to show you all my newest Christmas ornament for this year. It is a Hallmark ornament. This is the third in a series. I have the other two. I wonder how many they will make in this series? Cute, isn't it?

I think my butter is soft enough to get started on my baking so I will talk to later.

With Passion,

Carrie P.

Give Thanks!

With the help of my daughter who drew the little manger I created a new Give Thanks quilt. This little quilt is on its way to my sister to add to the wall hanging. Jenny had made a new little quilt which Give Thanks for homecomings which you can get from her blog now. It is so sweet and I will make it later. But I wanted to send one to my sister that spoke about why we have Christmas. I added one of Jenny's signature roses so that it will go with all the other little quilts.
I also wanted to share a giveaway that I am thankful for. As a quilter I am always glad to win some fabric. I won this from Sally back in November. Thanks Sally for picking my name. The fabric is called a Rollie Pollie which actually came from The Intrepid Thread. And thanks you Julie for sending the roll to me.

At all times and for everything giving thanks in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ to God the Father. Ephesians 5:20

With Passion and a Thankful heart,

Carrie P.

Got Wood?

Yep! we got lots of wood. This is how I spent my Saturday and Sunday.

If you read my blog much you know that my husband and I have been clearing some of land to have a garden. That meant cutting lots of trees down, mostly tall pine trees. This weekend we had a sawyer come out with this big saw mill to cut the tree trunks into planks.
As you can see we have a pile in our garage now. It smells like Pine-sol. My #2 son came and helped on Saturday and then on Sunday it was just me and my husband rolling tree trunks onto the lifter, moving the planks off the mill, sweeping the saw dust off the planks and then carrying them to the garage to stack. The owner of the mill was controlling the saw blade as it cut the logs into planks.
Did you know that a fresh cut tree is 40% water until it drys out? So you can imagine how heavy those planks were. We stacked the planks with spacers in between so the wood dries out. It will take about a year for those planks to air dry. One day these planks will be a wood floor in our home that we plan to build in a few years.
This photo is all the outside leftover pieces. We will do this again later in a few months because we have more trees that we just haven't brought out of the woods yet. Ibuprofen was our friend this weekend. lol It was tough job but it will be worth it to see the beautiful wood floor one day.

With Passion,

Carrie P.

Tuesday Sewing

This past Tuesday I did get to do some sewing. I made the new blogger's BOM which was designed by Stephanie. Here are my three blocks so far.
I also got to make my Quilts of Valor block which I made to be donated when I attend the Modern Quilt guild this month. This block is called Skewed Star by Toby Lishko. I got this pattern from Volume Three of the Quiltmaker's 100 blocks magazine.
With Passion,

Carrie P.

My First Christmas Gift

all the way from the Netherlands. Thanks Simone! "It is beginning to look a lot like Christmas."
Yesterday I was out shopping from 9:30AM until 4PM. I got everything done and found some great deals. There were a few things I could not find in stores but found on the internet which I also found some deals.

Now to get the Christmas tree.

With Passion,

Carrie P.