A Few More Mittens...

I have been restless lately, not sleeping well at night. Which many of you know, while there are real down sides to this, there is always one up side. That means time to sew. Last night was no exception to this and I was able to get some mittens finished. Both of them, I absolutely love for different reasons. One is perfect for Christmas and the other was designed with a wedding in mind. Beautiful, good quality cream wool is hard for me to find, And actually, so is the dark kelly green in the Christmas mittens. So, these two pair of mittens are even more unique due to that.

A Few New Things.....

November has brought with it many events in our lives that have caused me to step back from work a bit. I have needed to be a bit more present in our family and use those quiet hours to prepare. My husband just married some very special friends of ours, so we traveled back to MN for that and were able to visit our previous church and some friends there. It had been 8 years since we have been back. Time just goes by in a blink. The wedding was the highlight of our year! Nicole was one of our first students and she promised Matt back when she was in high school, that he could do her wedding! So 10 years later, with a friendship blessed by the Lord, Matt married Jay and Nicole with all hope and conviction that they were brought together by the Lord and that He would bless them and use them in a mighty way!

This was at the rehearsal for the wedding-such a fun time!!!Oh-and just a little side note-Nicole asked me to make the tree behind them for the wedding -such a fun project! Eventually-hopefully-I will make it into a quilt for them.The beautiful bride, one of my most precious friends!

This month also brought the loss of my Grandma. It was expected and in some ways even looked forward too because of the amount of pain she has been in consistently for years, but also brought a real sadness. Grandma knew the Lord as her Savior and it is a joy knowing she is with Jesus and out of such intense pain. I was not able to see her before she died, and there is a bit of a sting that I will not be able to see her again. The memorial service was Thanksgiving weekend and my husband had the privilege of giving the message at her service and burial. It was also a time to see family we do not get to see often since we are spread out throughout the country. I was so thrilled to even see my cousin Gabe who had just returned home from his 2nd tour in Iraq! How proud I am of him and his wife and kiddos and all they has fought for and sacrificed!

All of the great grand kids sang "Away In The Manger" for Grandma Lucy at the grave sight. She loved being a Grandma and loved being a Great Grandma who our children called "GG". I have been so blessed to have had my grandma get to meet all 5 of my children before going home to be with Jesus.

We enjoyed having Matt's family stay with us over Thanksgiving and my sister and brother in law stay with us for the funeral. I loved preparing for them.

All prepared for Thanksgiving dinner!

And here is my sister captivating the kids with a funny animal app on her phone-Talk about giggles!!!

There has been so many wonderful events but I am simply exhausted and attempting to catch up on sleep and work. Thank you to all my customers for being so gracious and patient with my schedule!! I am getting back into a normal routine again. I was able to get some new items listed this morning and thought I would share a quick peek.

A new set of grape jelly mittens for women...

Some new dotty coffee cozies....

And a few new sets of button bookmarks...

The Rescue of My Wedding Quilt.....

A few years ago we decided to get a dog. We had finally bought our first home, we had settled in, we thought we were done having wee ones, and it seems quite perfect to add a dog to family life!! So, that is how Max came to be in our family. We rescued him as a puppy, he was a beautiful husky lab mix with quite the character!!! He was already housebroken and crate trained-could it get any better! We found that he would be much quieter if we laid a blanket over his crate at night. It just became routine. Then life took a drastic change of course for us. We found out we were expecting our fifth wonder!! This news for us was awesome! But also very scary-as I have hyperemesis with my pregnancies and it had increased in severity with each one. I quickly became bedridden and had a home nurse to help care for my needs. We, as a family struggled, but have always been amazed by the Lord's grace and blessings through such a difficult time. But, our poor newest member Max didn't get the best end of the deal! This energetic pup, spent a lot of his time in the crate because I was unable to spend time training and playing with him, and my amazing husband was playing Mr Mom and Dad to our four other kiddos. Max dealt with his boredom in ways like eating everything in sight or reach even when he was crated! One dreadful morning I had come down to get him out of his crate and had discovered that our wedding quilt had been eaten!!! I honestly could not even tell you who put it on his crate-most likely it was me, simply being to tired and sick to even care what I grabbed when I tucked him in for the night. But, my heart was crushed and for at least a year I am sure, the thought of what happened to the quilt would leave a huge knot in my stomach. The quilt was from my Husband's Grandma who has passed away now, and I had always looked at it as an heirloom. Well, I gathered it up and folded what remained and put it awya on a shelf in my studio. I just couldn't part with it and had a vaque hope that I would someday find a way to repurpose it. Well that was over two years ago, alot of life has happened in our family. We had our little Noah-who I always new I had yet to meet. Our oldest son is now not the only brother of 3 sisters! We sadly passed Max on to another family who could enjoy his energy as we began again with the newborn stage in our home. And just this past weekend, I finally repainted our kitchen in a sunny yellow after collecting blue dishes for 3 years!! Little did I know when I picked out the colors for our kitchen 3 years ago, that our wedding quilt would be the cherry on top! I finally pulled my beloved quilt off the shelf today, grabbed a pair of sissors with my heart thumping and made the cuts! The quilt now lays lovingly on my island as the centerpiece and brings with it a wonderful bundle of memories!!! Most of which, I can now smile at.