Starting to Settle!

This is Asia, she thinks she is the best present!

Well, Christmas is all over but the clean up, but I am in no hurry to get on with that!  I am taking some time to be with my family, most of whom are sick...yep it has been one of those years!  I was supposed to be off work from the 18th of December until the 6th of January but.... a few patients were not doing well, so I made a trip in to the office for a couple days to get everyone through until January.

As I was enjoying an uninterrupted scroll through my reading list and a peek around blog land tonight I found this post which is definitely worth passing along. Home Spun Threads is offering ALL her patterns for free!!  I don't know how long this will last, but she has some really cute patterns in her shop.

Outside of all the sickies in my house I had a great Christmas!  My hubby bought me an Ipad, which wasn't even on my list but I had mentioned a while back that I would like one. (I just thought that it was entirely too expensive for us as a gift!) I am thrilled and scared all at the same time!  I am not very tech savvy so it will be a learning curve for me, but if I can figure it out it will be a great asset for work and of course a little play!  I found a great sewing app that keeps track of all your patterns and fabric yardage and projects at various stages. "Santa" was also very good to me this year!  I was asked for a list of gift ideas in early December.  I am entirely practical and don't like to have money spent on things I won't use so a list is the best idea for all of us.  My hubby is not familiar with sewing things at all and I had put on my list a pair of KAI scissors as a gift.  Well he thought scissors would be a great stocking stuffer!  He really just about choked when she said "that will be $110.00 please." Of course he was too embarrassed to say "oh sorry I must have misunderstood" or something...anything!  He explained later that the clerk had the scissors on hold for someone else and she had called the woman to ask if he could buy them as a Christmas present if she didn't need them right away!  So he felt obliged to buy them.  Poor loving man! I do admit that I am thrilled with them though.

Well I can finally post some of the gifts we made this year for presents:

Placemats with pockets and fingertip mitts for my step daughters 

These are the mitts my son made from a felted wool sweater!

Moo's painting for her Dad....it is just beautiful!! She doesn't usually look this sleepy!  

Mug Rugs for the girls in the office...my first "free motion" quilting attempt! 

 This is the sweater for Bean and night gown for Moo that I made..  Thankfully they love them!

Well there are more things to see but my monkeys need to go to bed so good night for now!