B.J's Bits and Pieces: 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!