New Year Wishes

With Best Wishes for Health, Happiness and Abundance in 2008!

Thank you to everyone who wrote with wishes for the Holiday Season - I do love to hear from you all!

Joyeux Noel

I made this little cross-stitch ornament for my friend. I got the original Eiffel Tower pattern from Romy's blog - thank you, Romy! I don't have the permalink to the pattern, Romy has so many free patterns and I'm not sure which month the pattern came from. I stitched the original pattern as shown in the picture below, then I tweaked it to do the Joyeux Noel one above.

When I was finishing up the ornament and adding a ribbon hanger, I used this tip I picked up somewhere: if the ribbon needs pressing, light an electric light and use the heated bulb as an iron; just hold the ribbon at each end and rub it along the bulb - so quick and handy!

... Merry Christmas - sort of ...

After taking at least 20 pictures of our cat near or under the tree, it turns out that this is the one I like the best - not sure if it's funny or pathetic ... for now, it's all I've got. Will try again tomorrow.

HOLY!!

Remember my friend Barbara of Ephemera that I wrote about here and here? Well, last week she sent me these pictures of her van with the email heading of HOLY!! Just look at the haul of textiles that she picked up last week! Before she offers the quilts, chenilles and bark cloth pieces out for sale she washes and repairs each one - that is a LOT of heavy work; those babies get heavy when they're wet. Plus some need ironing and they all need folding. I sure hope she never challenges me to an arm-wrestling match.

A walk in the park

I love going for walks at this time of year when the leaves are golden and they snap and crackle when you walk through them.

"The woods are full of Fairies;

The Sea is full of fish;

The trees are full of golden leaves;

Let's make an Autumn wish."

~ Anon

Milk Bottle Nostalgia

Our local health food store has started to carry milk and cream in glass bottles. We drink too much milk to be able to always buy our milk this way but it sure feels old-fashioned and homey to use these glass bottles. The cream is delicious with no preservatives of any kind. Sometimes I pour milk from our cardboard container into this milk bottle just so I can get to pour milk from it.

A visit with family & how to 'Follow your Bliss'

Yesterday was family day. My daughter and I picked up my brother across town and headed to my sister's. She lives about an hour's drive from Toronto. Upon our arrival, we got to visit with a couple of my neices and their husbands and young children. We had so much fun with the young ones. The two year old was most exuberant about everything. He is just learning to talk but there was never a question about what he wanted or didn't want; what made him happy or what displeased him.

When my sister made it known that she would start setting supper on the table, he became most excited and repeatedly shouted 'SUPPER!' to everybody in the room. He tried everything on the dinner table and didn't hesitate to grab seconds of things that he liked or to spit out anything that he didn't find agreeable. Upon hearing that there would be a couple of choices for dessert and that one of them was cake, he joyfully made sure everyone in the room got the message. Delighted cries of "CAKE! CAKE! CAKE!" were heard by all. There was no doubt that this news filled him with joy from the tips of his toes to the top of his head.

He was such a delight to behold and a perfect example of someone who is still unabashedly 'following his bliss'. Although I bet if you ask his mother, she would say that he was a handful and that he totally wore her out. And that's understandable; I loved his company for 3 hours but it takes a lot of stamina to be around a whirling ball of energy like this 24/7.