this, that, and everything in between . . .

Looking back, it's been a fairly busy week/weekend!  It started snowing Tuesday afternoon, and continued well into the evening, giving us a full inch of pretty ground covering . . . 

Coming into the camp.  It took me ninety minutes to get home from work on Tuesday evening!

It was still pretty the next morning, too!

Wednesday I finished up the binding on the last of the Christmas quilts . . .

Three little lap quilts, all with their binding neatly stitched up! Ijust need to pop labels on them.

Thursday we had our annual Christmas Open House at work.  I enjoy getting things set up for it.  We generally have a good number of visitors come through the doors!

My favorite table of visitors . . .

The Christmas tree always makes a great backdrop for this pretty trio of girls:

Does that not just deck your halls?!!

Friday morning we had several visitors over for breakfast al fresco . . .

And along with running some Christmas errands and lunch at a new restaurant in town with Todd, I tried my hand at this darling fabric origami hexi ornament:

Well, I tried my hand twice . . .

These whip up very quickly and make a darling addition to a gift!  Not Afraid of Color shared theirs in a recent Slow Sunday Stitching post and also shared the video tutorial she'd used to make them.  You can find it right HERE!

Saturday, was all about tea!  My mom, Joc, Ellie, Evey and I headed to Chattanooga for a Victorian Christmas tea at Polly Claire's!

Four generations!

We had a very lovely time.  :)

Over Thanksgiving weekend, Mary Corbet at Needle 'n Thread released a darling set of snowflake embroidery patterns.  SO pretty!  I'd been watching the sample pieces on her instagram feed, and knew which one I was going to want to stitch up first . . . 

I couldn't wait for Sunday and have taken a few stitches, but this will definitely be my project for some much anticipated slow Sunday stitching!

And I'm using metallic floss, so it sparkles.  ♥

Linking up to the slow stitching post at Kathy's Quilts--stop by and see who's doing what!  

Have you seen one of the latest ornaments on my tree??

Isn't this hand-painted snow fellow the sweetest?  If you haven't entered my 'giftaway,' and you'd like one like him, be sure to check out my Pearl's Peg post!

Happy Sunday stitching!

:)

my new obsession . . .

Gracious.  As if I needed a new obsession on top of those I've already got, right? Right.  There's no *help* for me . . . 

Or is there??!!!!

I'm talking about English paper piecing, which I absolutely adore!!

I've finished up my apple core columns and am now ready to stitch those together.  I'm hoping they go together as smoothly as the 9 columns went.  I numbered them (and marked them with an ↑) so I ensure I'd be able to easily figure out which one was first, last, and how they went in-between!

I was having so much fun EPP'ing those, that I decided to take my original design and put it together that way, too.

I've got the center done and have the pieces cut for the balance.  I decided to leave the outside edges of the yellow and orange pieces un-stitched, so that I can trim them to a 1/4" and stitch them to the purple fabric I want to use to set the block on point.  We'll see how that works.  Linking up my EPP projects to the HeLP linky party over at Sarah Did It!

In other news, we had a fabulous guild meeting last night.  Our guest speaker was Shelly Zeggart, of Why Quilts Matter fame.  Her program was wonderful, and we got to watch one of the episodes of the documentary.  If you've not heard of this program, you really need to check out the trailer for it:

My friend Melissa (of I am Beautiful Bee) and I went in together and purchased the DVD set.  I can't wait to watch the whole thing!

Another perk from last night?  My darling friend Jane gifted me with a pattern for a pinwheel wreath.

She'd made one last year and I fell in love with it -- you can see hers HERE;  it's about halfway through the post.  Isn't it DARLING!?  And wasn't that sweet of Jane to remember how much I liked it?  I also came away with a tidy little bundle of fabrics and some romantic stencils.

My cup (aka my fabric bin) overfloweth!  That will put a little spike in my stash reporting (and my fabric obsession) ... but I'll wait until we return from Maryland -- just in case I happen to acquire some fabric while I'm gone.  Who knows, right?!

I found a REALLY CUTE youtube tutorial for making origami dresses.  As soon as I saw the finished product, I thought it would make the *perfect* place card for a little girl's tea party!  So of course, I tried my hand at it, because I also have an obsession for all things tea!

They got better/easier as I got them done.  I made one and figured out where I'd put the name -- then I was able to run the paper through the printer and cut out my squares.  The tutorial can be found HERE.  For these particular dresses, my paper was 4.5" by 3.5".

And let's wrap this post up with an *old* obsession of mine . . . 

CHOCOLATE!  I had just enough ingredients to make a batch of my favorite fudgie One Bowl Brownies and frost them with ganache!  Doesn't get much better than that, does it?

Cheerio!

:)