The Christmas Rush

Being a basketball coach's wife, my Christmas rush is really before basketball season starts.  Once the season gets going, it seems like what little spare time I had goes with it. We do love basketball season and especially our players (and all of his other students too, of course) - so it's well worth the sacrifice.

I say all this as an explanation to my absenteeism.  I've been trying to get as many things on my Christmas to do list done as possible the last few weeks.  I have lots to catch you up on!

The beginning piecing class I've been working on is this Saturday!  It's been a lot of work, but I'm excited it is finally here.  Here are some of the kits that the students will be using to make their quilts - for several of the students, this will be their first quilt - so exciting!

I wanted them to look special so I packaged them up with Mom's help (thanks so much, Mom - you really need to move closer!!) and added some little tags using my new Sizzix Christmas dies. 

I reused the cardboard squares that came in some of the fat quarters as the base for the tags so they would be sturdier.  On some of them I used a Stampin' Up snowflake punch (who doesn't love snowflakes?!) - those wound up being my favorites.

I finally finished the example quilt top this evening that we will be making in class.  This guy is also doubling as my brother's Christmas gift - I'm not too worried about him reading my blog, so I feel safe telling you about it.  :)

Sorry the picture is so dark - silly daylight savings makes it dark before I can even get home from work.  My tree has been decorated for a couple of weeks now - again, if it doesn't get done before basketball season, it doesn't get done.  If you look closely (click on the picture for an enlarged view), you can see my newest decorations.... pheasant feathers.  I love how they look in the tree.  Mom came up with that idea last Christmas when we were decorating her tree so I took some feathers back with me to decorate my tree this year.

I have plans to start 2 different "series" on my blog, I'm in the process of gathering information and resources, so stay tuned, I think they're going to be a lot of fun.

Speaking of a lot of fun, a blog I follow, Lolly Chops, helped post 12 days of Christmas tree ornaments tutorials on the Little Blue House blog - use the blog archives links on the right to see all the days.  This one is my favorite!  I would love to make some of these and decorate my whole tree, but I'll just have to live vicariously through them.  :)