It's time to ring in the New Year....Happy 2009!!!

My last post ended with us leaving for Michigan to see the Hicks Family entertain us at karate with their glow in the dark nunchuk performance and their sparring techniques. We really enjoyed both days we went to see the show. The glow in the dark performance was fabulous and the kids especially enjoyed that. Here's grandson, Austin, looking pretty spiffy in his Star Wars type outfit complete with helmet, gloves and foot protection. The helmet, gloves and foot gear look hard, but they are soft materials covered with a shiny black coating which makes it look hard. Austin is 9 1/2 and his strongest attack is the backwards spin around kick...I'm sure that's not the correct terminology in karate language, but it looks like that to me.

Here's my grandkitty, Minnie, playing with a toy, but looking like she wants to give all of you a hug. She is such a sweet kitty who is 1 yr. old. Here's Minnie's sister, Belle, who has the biggest eyes I've ever seen on a kitty. She's playing Santa here and I know you can't tell how big her eyes really are because she's squinting a bit while she's thinking about her next attack on Santa's hat.

The story here with Ivy is that Mark was wrapping gifts for me and placing tiny little sticky notes on the outside of the packages with the receiver's name written on them. I was stacking the wrapped gifts on the floor until I had time to get the ribbons, bows and tags on them. Ivy always likes to hang out with us and was laying on the floor next to me. After a while I looked down at her and realized she was eating something. If any of you know Ivy, you guessed it! She was eating the sticky notes off the packages I had stacked up! So, she had to be bannished to her leash around the leg of the end table until we were finished. She still got to watch us, but couldn't reach any more of the sticky notes. Of course, we had to unwrap a few to figure out who the receiver was and then rewrap them. One of my friends calls Ivy...White Paw, Bad Dog...I guess that fits, doesn't it? Here are four of the felted birdhouse ornaments I made this year. They're about 2 1/2" high and 1" across. I went into the woods to find the tiny little perch sticks and I needle felted the hole.

Here's our sweet granddaughter, Maya, icing my Christmas cookies. Her mom french braided her hair for her and she has on the Christmas dress she got for her Dec. 20th birthday. That was the other reason we went to Michigan....for her birthday. I don't mind cutting out the cookies and baking them, but I hate the icing part so I always try to rope someone into doing that part. I still have about 3 doz. in the freezer so I guess we'll be eating those in a few months when I thaw them and Mark ices them.

I gave this quilt to Little Jenny for a combination housewarming/Christmas gift. Little Jenny is Mark's daughter who bought her first home in November. The quilt is called Pin Dots. It's a mystery quilt pattern created by Rita Fishel. Jenny also became engaged to B.J. Swaggard on December 14th! We are all so happy for her. B.J. did the traditional request of permission from Mark. He's a great guy and already fits right in to our teasing family.

I made these handwarmers for my hairdresser for Christmas. The pattern is called Fetching and the way the cables twist on them, I would say they are fetching. For any of you knitters out there, the pattern is free at the Knitty.com website. Just search for Fetching. Isn't Maya a great hand model?

Well, that's all I have for today. I wish all of you a happy, healthy new year!

Go Bucks in the Fiesta Bowl!!

Off we went to Millersburg....

We went to Millersburg to pick up the Bears Paw quilt I started to handquilt about 10 yrs. ago. I had the center blocks finished and put it away because it's such a large quilt and I lost interest. My friend Paula Meiler talked to an Amish woman there who said she and her friends could finish quilting it for me and they would try to match my stitches. Her price was reasonable so I was willing to put the quilt in their hands. I dropped it off in October while I was in Berlin at a quilt retreat with my old quilt buddies. It turned out pretty good, not quite like my stitches, but close enough and now I can say that it is finished. It only took them 2 months to finish it! I'm telling you that it sat in a huge rubbermaid container for at least 8 yrs. when it could have been finished and on a bed. What was I thinking waiting that long?? Once it gets washed and shrinks up a bit, I think all the stitches will look pretty similar and no one will be able to tell. At least that's what Paula claims. I think she's right. Tara, my calico kitty has blessed the quilt. If you look really hard you can see her on the quilt there. Cats are funny the way they lay on my fabric in my sewing room. One of my two cats always lays on a quilt after I make it as if to bless it (gee, I hope you recipients aren't allergic to cats!!). You can tell from the photo that I didn't get the whole quilt in the photo, it is larger than I remembered when I first put it in the container years ago.

Mark did the driving while I feverishly knitted on a Christmas gift for my hairdresser until we got into the hills and curves of Amish country. I'm a tough cookie but even I got a little nauseous on those roads. It doesn't help that Mark used to be a road rally driver and still thinks the best way to take curves is fast. After we picked up the quilt, we met Paula at the Inn at Honey Run for lunch. Here' some photos from this quaint inn that serves great lunches!

They had a poinsetta tree in the lobby.

Here's a photo of their tree on the outside deck that was loaded with bird friendly ornaments....I think some squirrels liked it too. This is a close up of the bird tree.

Here's a felt stocking that was hanging on the mantel inside over the wood burning fireplace.

This isn't what I was knitting in the car, but it is another Christmas gift I knitted with wool and then felted. It's a birdhouse ornament....can you see the little stick for the perch?

We're leaving today to drive to Michigan to see Jen, Tim and the grandkids and all their decorations. We'll stay overnight and watch their karate class before we head home on Saturday. Wish us luck with the 6-10" of snow that is predicted to hit there today.

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas.....

I wanted to show you a great photo of Mark and his mother and stepfather. His parents flew into Ohio from Washington state for their first great grandson's 1st birthday party in November.

This is a photo of our live Christmas tree. Mark loves buying huge trees for us. I told Mark this year that I really, really meant it when I said I didn't want another 17 ft. tree in our house that hogged up our whole great room. One that required a phone call to all the neighbors to see who might be home to help Mark carry it into the house. Last year's tree took two neighbors and Mark to get it in the house and up in the tree stand. When he cut the twine it was one of those Griswald moments where we thought the branches would bust out the windows and a squirrel might jump out!! When it was time to take it down, Mark had to cut each branch off and throw it out the window onto our patio because there was no way he could get that tree out of the house any other way. So you can see why I was adamant about the size of our tree this year.

Well, here's what it looks like when I'm not laying under it to get that shot to make it look like it's another giant. This year our live tree is a reasonable 11 1/2 ft. tall which Mark was able to carry in by himself. We were discussing whether the neighbors were using their caller ID right after Thanksgiving so they could screen their calls from the Kelly household knowing they didn't want to help carry a monster tree into our house a fourth year. Mark has come to his senses and even admitted that this was a much easier tree to decorate after setting it up.

Perhaps he also wants to remain married to me.

On to photos of a Bon Voyage

combination Christmas Party I was invited to lastnight.

Jill, our friend who is moving to Lexington, KY is on the left and the hostess of the party, Debbie, is on the right. Jill is a really great gal who shares in one of my favorite pasttimes ....quilting. We are really going to miss her!!

We played Guesstures after we ate some really great food and drank adult beverages. Have you ever played that game? It's similar to charades..... you pick 4 cards that have a word on them that you want your teammates to say and you place those cards in a timed plastic gizmo. If you don't get your teammates to say the word you are mimicking in the alloted time, your card falls into the machine and you don't get points for that one. Needless to say we laughed so much at the shenanigans of some of the newbies at the game!

Here's Gail who brought the game and was the most experienced at playing it. She did get her teammates to guess that her word here was BRACES.

Judy was a first time player and seems to be a little frustrated here with her teammates not guessing what she is sure is the most clever of signs to get them to guess what the card says. Kind of looks like she wants to strangle them. Santa was trying to guess what Judy was doing as well! Jill swore she wasn't going to play, but gave in to trying and got the giggles instead. Needless to say, her teammates could not guess what she was acting out. Debbie's word was POISON....need I say more??? and by the way, her team guessed her word. Good acting, Debbie!!!

and finally, the funniest acting job we saw all night by our first time player, Marilyn!

Her word was MERMAID....and her teammates guessed it from her excellent swimming technique shown here facedown on the rug!! I want her on my team next time we play!!

It's December!!!

I have a few photos from our Thanksgiving Feast. It lasted three wonderful days for me. Most of our kids came to stay overnight on Wednesday to get the festivities started. Mark and Patrick picked Matt up at the airport on Thanksgiving morning (he flew in from Chicago). Then everyone was here for the big meal. Mark bought a 27 lb. fresh turkey that could have fed twice as many as we had at our meal. He always does things up big! This first photo is the expecting parents....Joel and Stef.

This next photo is Little Jenny (she's 27 and not so little anymore, but we still call her that) and her boyfriend, B.J. Yes, we have two B.J.'s in our family too! This is Big Jenny and her two lovelies, Austin and Maya. Can you tell they love their Mom?

This photo (below left) is Ivy wanting back inside after

eating snow.

The photo on the right is the Noble Cowl all finished!