santa baby . . .

Hello, I'm so glad you're here!  (Who am I kidding??  I'm so glad *I'M* here!  Hahaha!)  

Welcome, welcome to the first post of the annual Online Advent Calendar, hosted by Jo at Serendipitous Stitching! Each day she'll update the source post to reveal the day's guest poster!  It's loads of fun and a wonderful way to count down to Christmas, stitchingly!  Every year, Jo chooses a theme—this year it's Santas—and asks her bloggers to share a theme-related tidbit, and a Christmas stitching! And this year, I'm very honored to be December 1; Day ONE!  So on to it!

I've been a Santa-lover my whole life.  In other words, I still believe.  :)  I used to have an extensive collection of Santas of all sorts, shapes, and sizes, but when we moved from the house to the RV, I pared down a lot, and have continued to do so over the last fourteen years that we've been fulltime RVers.  Still, I have my very first Santa, who's nearly as old (aka "vintage") as I am . . .

Isn't he beautiful?! I also have two beautiful Jim Shore Santas, but would you believe, I haven't decorated yet?  I'm saving that for this weekend!  So they're not out to take a photo of, to share.

We also have lots of Santa traditions in our family.  For example, there's the visit to go see Santa.  Joc has done that with her kiddos from Ellie's first year . . .

Ellie and Santa 2012

Ellie (with Sawyer) and Santa 2013. Love Sawyer's holding his ears!

Merkel Girls and Santa 2014

Merkel Girls and Santa 2015

Merkel Girls and Santa 2016

These just get more hilarious as they go. My-oh-my, what a handful they were with him!  And he was the best, most patient, and hilarious Santa ever!  This year they took everyone including Ezra, and I'm not sure what I was expecting, but it sure wasn't this . . .

Merkel Family and Santa 2023

All I can think of is that Ezra equates men with dark beards to his dad, and men with white beards to his Pawpaw!  LOL!

On Christmas Eve, one of our favorite traditions is to go down to the main circle through Joc's community, and catch Santa coming through on the fire truck!!  

The kids (and this adult, as well) are delighted by this charming service (check out Edith's rapt little face)!

Then there's always the Galaxy of Lights tour at our local Botanical Gardens.  I've done the walking tour the last couple of years, and it's so much FUN to see all the lights and special effects!  But my favorite display is—yeah, you guessed it—Santa and his sleigh!

I think an elf is holding the reigns while Santa slips down the chimney!!

I gave a lot of thought to what I'd share Christmas stitching-wise in this post.  To be honest, other than this cross-stitched tree I shared in August . . .

And this 2008 BOM Christmas Quilt that I finished and shared last December . . .

I haven't done a lot of Christmas stitching over the past two years.  So I decided to share this darling ornament that fits the theme . . .

I loved creating this little fellow! I didn't use a pattern (so I don't have one to share).  He's based off of a tin Santa ornament I had and wanted to replicate in felt.

Such fun!

Glad tidings to you, dear reader!  I wish you a Merry Christmas and a joy-filled New Year!  Don't forget to check in with Jo at Serendipitous Stitching each day, to count down the days until Christmas!  Thank you, Jo, for always doing such a lovely job with your blog hops!

And to all, a good night.  :)

family traditions . . .

This time of year . . . what I like to refer to as the holiday season . . . seems to be a time of enjoying family traditions, or starting new ones, as the case may be, for a lot of folks. It's no different in my family. We enjoy reliving past Thanksgiving and Christmas gatherings and introducing new family members (either by marriage or birth) to our 'ways'. But one of my absolute favorite NEW traditions (and I say new because it's just been the past five years) is the annual Merkel Santa photo.

Jocelyn and Jason take the girls, and with a gathering of their friends--and their friends' children--do the walking trail through the Galaxy of Lights at the Botanical Gardens. (Just FYI, I wait until we can drive through). And at the end of the trail, there's Santa Claus. And the children happily, even eagerly, climb in Santa's lap and share their list of Christmas wishes.

Well, all children but the Merkel children, that is.  Without further ado, I share our family's funniest tradition:

Ellie and Santa 2012

Ellie (with Sawyer) and Santa 2013
Love Sawyer's holding his ears!

Merkel Girls and Santa 2014

Merkel Girls and Santa 2015

Merkel Girls and Santa 2016

Oh gracious, I love these girls! And the Santa is precious -- I'm sure he's had years of practice. Maybe next year we'll have our happy, smiling picture?!?  Or maybe not . . .

It occurred to me this morning that I'd like to make some kind of special ornament for each of the grands.  Hmmmm.  I need to get busy on that. I didn't make a whole lot of poinsettia ornament progress -- I finished two big ones and one little one:

I do love these! I have two or three more cut out that will be a good, slow project for some Sunday afternoon stitching!

Ellie, on the other hand, made FORTY ornaments this past week (with the help of her mama). She crafted these darling little Christmas trees . . . and then sold them for $5 a piece.  She made this one especially for me (it has an extra bead on it, because she knows how much I love beads).

Her mama posted them on facebook and instagram, and Ellie's sold *all* of them. With her proceeds, she's going to go through one of the organizations that helps families in need in third world countries, and send goats and chickens and water wells.  Pretty smart thinking on the part of that mama, is what I'm thinking!  :)

The grandbabies (and their mommies and daddies) are all together in California this week . . .

Look how grown they all are!  The only one missing is Evey.  It may have only been 7 o'clock local time, but it was 9 o'clock Evey time!

My stash report remains an unchanged melody . . .

Same song, second (or twenty-second) verse. A little bit louder and a little bit worse!

I'll be linking up with Patchwork Times and Kathy's Quilts today.

Enjoy this beautiful day that the Lord has made; rejoice and be glad in it!

:)

pumpkins times three . . .

Have I ever mentioned how much I love this month, this season, and pumpkins?

I've done some pumpkiny things this past week. (Of course!) On Wednesday, my bloggy/quiltie/hexie/foodie/purple-loving/cat whisperer/tea party enjoying friend Sarah sent me a link to the Dessert for Two blog and a recipe for Pumpkin Cakes.  Y'all. I was not at home when she sent me the link, but as soon as I got home that night, I made mini pumpkin cakes. 

Todd thought I was a little crazy at first and then he tasted . . . they were GOOD! I mean they were really good.  Lick the dish, don't leave a crumb, scraping the sides of the bowl, wishing they weren't so mini, good. Luckily, they use leftover pumpkin, which I had from last week's Buttery Pumpkin Pie Fudge, and I still DO have some.  I may make mini pumpkin cakes for Todd and me for my birthday (which is tomorrow -- let me just get that out there)!

I also had a leftover banana that *really* needed to be used or tossed. I thought why not use mashed banana in place of the pumpkin, and use nutmeg in place of the pumpkin pie spice? So I did . . .

And those were very yummy cakes, too!

In stitchy news, I did finish my Santa . . .

I do love the way he turned out! Sometimes, when I'm working off-the-cuff, I envision a final product and it doesn't quite happen. With Mr. Crescent Santa, it happened!

I've also been working on something pumpkin. Don't laugh!

Just a little pumpkin stitchery on a kitchen towel. My hope is to finish it up this afternoon. When I'm stitching on pieces like this, where the back will be exposed, I work hard to keep the back clean . . .

I did a pretty decent job of it on this one. When I started to stitch the French knots, I was hiding my floss strand in previous stitches, and it wasn't until *after* I make the knot and rehidden my floss that I realized I was stitching on the WRONG (aka, the right) side.  

Ugh. Silly me! I'm not sure if it speaks to what a great job I'm doing on the back, or the quality of my stitching on the front! {grin} Luckily I was able to pull the "stitches in error" without compromising the existing stitches.

Todd and I were doing some WalMart shopping and I spotted this . . .

Which obviously came home with me.  LOL!  I couldn't resist! Happy birthday to me!!

On my stash report . . . well, there's nothing to report.

Is that like "no news is good news"?  Eh, probably not. Wow -- Week 41 . . . you know what that means, right? Christmas Day will be Week 52 . . . I won't do the math. ;)

That's it for me.  I'm linking up with Patchwork Times and Kathy's Quilts this morning. Enjoy this beautiful day to the fullest! And remember . . . weather is not the only factor in what makes your day beautiful!

:)

rabbit, rabbit . . .

(At least on the blog. It would have been more effective if I'd posted on the first of October. C'est la vie.)

It's been a long, busy week ... and more of the same is promised over the next two weeks!  But there's been happy, fun things, too. We kicked it off with one last "in the water" boat ride with Joc and her family.  The little girls so enjoy it, which makes my heart very happy!

The only trouble with boating on a Sunday afternoon/evening is that it makes for a long night (I know, cry me a river, right?) on a work night. But it's worth it!

The week was filled with long days of prepping for our annual meeting.  One more week of that and then the actual meeting itself the following week.  And then an extended long weekend! 

Friday finally came and the weather cooled off significantly, so I made some Buttery Pumpkin Pie Fudge to kick off my favorite month of all things pumpkin. It's a Paula Deen recipe and it's very tasty, made enough to share with some of my favorite people, and made a pretty decent breakfast appetizer . . .

With a cup of pumpkin spice tea, of course. (Of course!)

Friday afternoon, I met my parents and we hightailed it off to Taft, Tennessee, home to Lyon Family Farms and a fun pumpkin patch.  There we met Joc, Ellie and Evey and headed in for a fabulous afternoon!

What fun to walk around the farm with four generations of family! It really is a treat having my folks here. We had such a blast . . . and we all came home with pumpkins, from the "you pick 'em" hayride. No shock there, right??

Speaking of family, Joc sent me this pic earlier in the week.  You've heard of bats in the belfry, right? 

What about cats in the [dollhouse] garret? Ha! Last week I joked about linking up Todd's catfish to Feline Friday. No joke today!

Saturday afforded me some time in the Nook.  I played around with these hexies for a bit . . .

I have thoughts about them but I haven't settled on anything concrete. I also started and finished this darling little stacked wool Christmas tree.  

It's prettier than the photo shows. It was a kit from Primitive Gatherings, but it came sans pattern. Have I ever mentioned I get by with a little help from my friends?  In this case, it was friend Janet who came to my rescue -- she lent me a copy of the book that has the pattern (and sent some sweet gifties as well), so I could finish it up. One of the gifties was a couple of darling pumpkin prints . . .

I definitely need to use these in an upcoming fall project!!

I also have made good progress on the wool Santa . . .

I'm very pleased with him. I just need to re-cut the stars, blanket stitch them, and attach to the hat. That will be my slow stitching for today and two ornaments finished this weekend. Whoohoo! I was rather tickled with myself to discover I already have a very similar Santa ornament in tin:

I guess I have a thing for crescent moon Santas??

So my stash took a bit of a turn, thanks to pumpkin goodness, this week:

But as I said, I already have a project in mind for it, so it should be right back out in the next couple of weeks!

Linking up the stash report to Patchwork Times, and the slooooow Sunday stitching to Kathy's Quilts. And that's it for me today -- y'all enjoy a sweet Sunday!

:)

a plethora of things . . .

Happy weekend!!  I finally took my birthday hours on Thursday and we are closed on Fridays, so I'm enjoying a lovely four day weekend. I'll go back to work for two days before we shut down for Thanksgiving and a lovely five day weekend (for which I'm truly grateful)! I've had some good stitching time (as you might imagine)!  First off, I finished off the three snow buddies hanger . . .

It turned out so cutely!  I'm really pleased with it.  And even more pleased that out of the seven projects I had, I'm finished with four!  So next up I'll be working on this guy . . . 

My instructions?  This picture . . .

It's pretty self-explanatory, so  I shouldn't get too hung up!  It'll keep me busy on my slow stitching Sunday.  :)

I've been playing in fabric, too!  REALLY!  One crafty fabic project and one quilty fabric project . . . both gifts, so I can't show any of the quilt and all I can show of the craft project is this tidbit . . .

It looks fun, right?? Between the two of them and the 1/8th of a yard I used for my NOEL project:

[Which isn't finished (I needed "an ingredient" to finish it up that I can't pick up until Monday), but at least I know where it's going!] I've made a tidy little dent in my fabric stash this week!

Yay!!  I'd like to finish one more project before mid-month, so hopefully there will be an even bigger 'little dent'!

Last weekend Joc and her crew took their annual family trek to the Botanical Garden's Galaxy of Lights walking tour. As always, they finished up with a visit to see Santa Claus. These photos, through the years, have been a wonderful laugh and this year was no exception (and Ellie has proven consistent through all her four visits):

Ellie, 2012

Ellie (with Sawyer), 2013

Ellie (with Evey--and held by Jocelyn), 2014

Evey and Ellie, 2015

Are they not just priceless??  The Santa (who's the same all four years) simply makes the 2015 photo. Oh gracious, I just love them!

In preparation for our church's annual Thanksgiving fellowship tomorrow, I made an apple pie, crust and all . . .

It smells so good, it's all I can do to stay out of it tonight! It's a dry run through for Thanksgiving -- I'll do this all over again (and then some) on Wednesday!

I'll be linking up to Patchwork Times and Kathy's Quilts.  But before I go, I wanted to share one more thing.  I'll be starting this marvelous Bible study on Monday called Quieting Your Heart for the Holidays.  It's being hosted by Darlene Schacht of Time Warp Wife, and it promises to be wonderful.

I know I can't be the only one who struggles with keeping balance between the craziness that can come at this time of the year, wanting things to be just so, with remembering and celebrating what truly is the reason for celebration to begin with. It's a free study (with the exception of the prayer journal, which I purchased, and isn't required for the study) on her site and she provides lots of pretty freebies to make it fun.

And on that note, I'm outta here . . . I've got stitching to do before it gets crazy up in here!!

:)