Christmas cooking

And so it begins. The annual Christmas food fest. i always get so keen to cook special biscuits and cakes this time of year. I thought id test these out to see how they would be for Christmas gifts. these ones are off to the GHIU work. I got all the recipes from the Australiam Womans weekly..the one with gorgeous Jop Seagar on the cover. There such marvellous ideas in there that I had to buy the magazine. i dont usually buy magazines ut this one seemed to call out to me. I also had my letter published in the NZ gardenr this month. Yah!!! A gardening voucher for Christmas for me. I really want to treat myself to an outdoor Ornamental Christmas tree this year. Ill use this voucher towards one! I cant have an outdoor party without a outdoor tree.!

Isnt he gorgeous. Symba (Or the ginga monster as GHIU calls hime) Is just so kissable and cuddliable...even with a touch of ringworm...I was a vet nurse for three years and am immune to ringworm fortunately...

Ten gorgeous years with the "gorgeous hubby in uniform" he had to leave early this morning for a job and wont be back until tomorrow. As he left at 4 he said" Thankds for ten lovely years" Awwwww.. These flowers arrived at work on Friday.

Tomorrow afternoon when we get GHIU back we will go down to our favourite Christmas tree farm and earmark our tree. Video camera and camera ready for this tradition. Despite the decorations and cooking I still wasnt feeling very festive. ut tonight we made a trip to town and bought the Best Christmas cd ever..something I have been wanting for ages. I played it and then I was immediately in the Christmas mood ..Hurray.

Happy se3asonal preparations to you all. I am so enjoying the Christmasy blog all over the place!!

Love Cherry

welcome to my christmas house..

More photos from my seasonal abode...yes I know its still only November!!!!

Still havent finished my front door. Hmm ....

A collection of stockings. Three for the cats(decoartions only..they are closed over!) and then Alex and Georgias cross stitched ones.

TRaditional Christmas wall hanging alongside Maori weapon of the day!

Christmas wishes to you all

Cherry

Its Christmas!!!!!!

Yes...In the house Christmas decs have been going up. Theres some old favourites and some new ones...The table runner Im not so keen on but it is dione and that is that!

Little Symba has been very sick and hosptalised. he was so sick i feared it was curtains fior him. But finally he came right and came home :) Now he is a lovekly but expensive little kitten:} This is a short blog i am so enjoying the Christmas blogs going up all over the place.

I an writing this while watching The tudors so I am much distracted. My book of the moment is Voyager by Diana Gabalden. i seem to be living in the past at the moment.

Happy decorating

Cherry

Meet Symba....

Halloween...Im so glad our combined halloween Guy Fawkes party is done!! Having been so anxious aout it and committing to it and a Christmas party I really felt over burdeoned. But now I can see the way clear throught to Christmas! We had good weather for our party and lots of children who spent the whole time ruining their scary faces by swimming in the pool for ages.!!

As soon as night fell we bought out the fireworks and concluded with the tradtional Seal scarer...Our neighbours must love us!!

And so to the news: Last week Georgias beautiful cat Sarah dissappeared. We did all the ususal searches and garge checking, road side checking etc. I had had some concerns of a possible Early sign of kidney problems but scared at the thought of something happening to her and Georgias reaction,I hadnt taken her to the vet..plus IF their was anything it was early early days. She was slees, stealthy and very happy. maybe she really was sick and just left to die. ot maybe someone has been poisoning the pigeons..we saw two dead fat ones in the village just a couple of weeks ago..and she ate one. Pigeons were her favourite prey..She was the supreme hunter!! Anyway georgia was distraught and we said she could get a kitten straight away. The first ad we found was a week later and this little six week long haired tom ahs been in our life ever since. he hadnt been handled much but 12 hours later of two girls fighting a crying and laughing and holding him so much that i feared his leg muscles would atrophy took care of that!! hes just fitted in here so well and has taken to sleeping under the blankets with georgia just as Sarag did. He also extremely gutsy and has so far taken on both our other cts plus our great big lab...could thisd be a tom cat thing?!

I leave you with the photos.

The day after Our halloween party the decorations came down and the Christmas decs went up..well just some of them. I think Im still a bit jaded after the Halloween decorating/ partying. Surprising for me Im just taking it slowly this time!!!

Take care and love to your and your pussy cats!

Love Cherry

A quilting surprise

First of all you know its Christmas approaching around here when i start to produce Christmas quilting and crafting materials. With that in mind i could not get my mind away from the fact that I wanted a Christmas runner in bright materials and that I should use a fairly straightforward pattern I had using four traditional blocks. I spent ages in Spotlight tossing up between a stack of blue Christmas colourway fat quarters and a stack of green. These stacks are new to Spotlight and really nice. I picked the green on the recommendation of my children and the fact that it is my favourite colour and that it has gingerread men on it. But now im thinking (constantly) that i should have ought the blue. As I was meant to have spent nothing and these cost 25.00 Im not going to turn around and yu the blue AS WELL! Im not keen on the two blocks i completed while watching a thriller on tv last night, but am keen to do the rest to see how they go.

Then there was this little Christmas surprise. I CANNOT elieve how well this little table covering came up once binded in plaid and stipple quilted. I love it so much that ive put it up now. This was such an insipid and boring piece that i held no hope for it at all. Just shows how wrong you can be!

After two days of the girls swimming in the pool, today it is cold and wet and rainy, grey and bleak. Its a strange october!!

Happy Christmas crafting!

Love Cherry

Swimming

CHRISTMAS!!

Christmas is coming. Two projects thats I am working on is this (very cheap on sale) panel from Spotlight. It will be once i have stippled it a small table covering for my coffee table upstairs. Today I am boiling my first (Hopefully there will be more) Christmas pudding. I cant leave the house til 4.30!!! Its sucking up a lot of water.

The strawberries are popping up little white flowers that will become fruit. These and my peas I have popping up everywhere. What ideally I want is to have enough of both for Christmas..well the peas certainly but Ive never had the timing right for strawberries yet. I was telling Mum the mad dash around the strawberry farms on Christmas eve has become a tradition ever since my Uncle finished his strawberry farm four years back!

SWIMMING:

And so this labour weekend (Thursday to Monday off!!) and hubby has the pool cleaned and ready to go. Its still freezing..does that deter the kids? No!

Halloween:

This is my primitive cat I made a while back who is currently sharing its second Halloween with us. It will go on the door soon except that I am still taking all the old paint off the door. Actually as half finished and rough as it is it will look the part for Halloween.

Im off to finish the table cloth. I have a million "wants" in my head right now to do. A Christmas tale runner and a unseasonal but "Must do it" urge to sew a russian Babusca doll. My fingers are a mess and its quite painful to sew. really must learn how to quilt with a thimble but I feel so uncomfortable.

happy Quilting

Love Crafty Cherry

happy house haunting

Much to the excitement of the girls I have begun to decorate the house (or the parts of it that will be used) for our annual (bi-annual?!) halloween

party. As we are fast approaching summer here the party will be mostly outside so I will decorate that closer to the time. Ive had fun prowling over martha Stewarts web page. She has daily Halloween advice and a squillion ideas over at her Halloween central site!! Unfortunately being on dial up means we are so ssslllooowwwww and things take forever to come up in order to print off so I will only be skimming the service there. As we are having our Halloween party the weekend after halloween in order to enjoy a double celeration (celebration? Is this the right word for Guy Fawkes ???!) that means that I can go into Spotlight and buy lots of on sale merchandise (if theres much left!) I have many ideas and inspiration up my sleeve ut it means Ill be busy in the two days running up to it. I hope I can pull it all off!

On the crafty front I have quilted and put binding on my Civil War quilt. Ill post a pic next time. ONE DOWN...three to go..Im working on quilting a small table covering. Its a "cheat" quilt, one that I bought on sale and that was small enough to use my walking foot on some of. I need to move forward on this one with Christmas fast approaching. I also have begun work on my sheep wall hanging. Just doing some applique at the minute. I want real type country fabrics from a real quilt shop so wont be able to buy cheap from SPotlight on this occassion. hence I am buying bits and peices over a period of time. Saying that I did actually manage to buy two country fabrics from Spotlight. But they were almost at a normal quilt shop price and it IS rare to find such fabric at Spotlight.

We are on a long weekend this week. Friday is Hawkes Bay Anniversary Monday is Laour day. I thought GREAT! Then rethought that when I remembered I dont get paid!!!

GHIU is cleaning out the pool as we speak. It will be too cold for a few weeks yet (The water, not the temperature) but it has to be done for Halloween (of course..just incase any one feels up to some swimming).

Ill sign off for now.

Happy Halloween in progress to you all especiall in Amercia where I bet you are having the king of preparations that I so love!

Yours in stitches

Cherry