Christmas Catch UP!

 Ben stopped over to visit the other day, so I asked if he wanted to put together a Christmas present for Dylan. Sure! 

There is a little copy cat here..... Anyways, It's a table and chairs set I got for Dilly. Assembly challenged the adult and amused the toddler.

Here's the finished project.

I took Ringo for a nice Christmas Day walk at Kent Park. The weather was very nice! 

I sewed small string backpacks for the kids to put their Christmas haul in. It's a very cute, handy project. The directions can be found at Sew Can She. 

We had supper at our house on Christmas Day and handed out the gifts.  Not that we handed out appliances or anything, but, I paid for Bean to have these beautiful appliances installed at their house. 

For some reason I didn't take pictures of presents opening!  Only this one!

And the annual family snapshot...always a challenge.

At least Bean looks happy in their picture!

It was a bust few days wrapping up with Soup and sandwiches at Julie's house. 

I rolled up the saran wrap game once again. They seemed to like it pretty well again. 

This year I had smaller items to roll in the wrap, so a smaller ball.

Everyone had fun with that.

Phew! I'm going to go sew a little bit now and relax! 

The annual Bonnie K Hunter Mystery Quilt is in the works, now's my chance to catch up on this rainy day!

Waiting for the predicted snow to arrive and prepare for another week of Dilly Duty! 

Plumbing And Dylan

 So, we're in a "club" with our local plumbing business, Ackerman plumbing. They come inspect our water lines every year and we get some perks like not having to pay extra for after hours calls and a small discount on repairs.  Anyways it was time for the inspection so I had to move all the stuff from in front of the water heater closet area. 

That's all my Christmas stuff and a bunch of quilts.

Well at least we didn't have any leaks and the anode rod was still good. And we had him fix the drain in the bath tub. It was broken and wouldn't plug. 

Our plumbers from Ackerman's are really good. He's also going to fix the water spigot out front too-it's leaking when it's turned on. 

This guy is busy as always-he wanted his bike out doors and so he carried it down the steps!

This is good progress-he wanted to ride it down the steps last week!

It's been crazy hot-so playing on the porch is about as good as it gets-he loves spray bottles. 

I suppose it's like having a squirt gun-he was fully dressed when we went outside....really!

He knew it was too hot for shorts and T shirt!

And I might have made a poor toy choice at Aldi the other day.....

There are 100 pieces.....deep sigh!

And when it's time to rest, well you rest where you want to I guess!

Almost Christmas

I stitched up this Santa Panel just in time for Christmas decorating. 

I did entirely free motion quilting on Freddie. 

And the backing fabric is so cute! 

On a whim, I stopped by the Goodwill store and spotted this pretty Jadeite bowl! 

It's Pioneer Woman, I think, and it's not old, but DD will like it just fine I think!

I'll put it to good use for Christmas eve at Julie's house!

The tree is ready for the family to come over. Notice there are no candy canes or ornaments at the bottom of the tree....Dilly cleared them out!

I also go this little snowman panel quilted. It fits just right on the door. 

I loaded it on Freddie the long way, still had to roll it a little bit, but it went really fast!

I forgot to take pictures while it was loaded on there, but you can see the top leader is still attached here. 

It looks good on the front door, so that's another project done!

I took Dilly shopping the other day, when we were in DiIllards, they had this big Santa that was singing and dancing-he was enchanted!

Then home for a nap-he fell asleep on Grampa! awwwww

We've had him a few different days-always getting a candy cane.

And it was nice enough that we went outside to swing a little bit

And he always says HI to the big snowman. 

I think we're all ready for Christmas!

Flea Market at The Englert and Christmas Lights

 SO I got the tree up and was really debating if it was worth it to put on ornaments.

Meanwhile, there's a flea market downtown in Iowa City at the Englert Theater. 

Bean and Dilly and Darling Daughter loaded up and we went to check it out. It was cold out!!! And our driver parked about a mile away.....

But we made it.

The theater is really beautiful-a real gem of a vintage theater.  Actually the flea market was more of an art market. Lots of crafty folks with their work for sale. 

The vendors were set up all over the place, in the upstairs bar reception area, downstairs in the dressing rooms and on the stage!

See how pretty the theater is? This is the view from the balcony.  We all had some good looks. but didn't buy anything. SO we also had a dinner plan, but couldn't get a table until later, so we went out to the dam to drive through the light display there.

I had never been out to this annual display, and it was fabulous!

Every kind of light is on!

It costs $10 for a car load to drive through, and it's worth every penny! The funds raised go to the local hospice program. 

It was a great night out with the family. I love spending time with my kids-the available time always seems hard to come by and doesn't last long enough-I'll take all the minutes I can get with these guys!