People Are Nice, Life is Good, and Sharon Needs to Start the Hometown Christmas Quilt!

I have some this-and-that stuff to share with you--miscellaneous, non-cohesive, tidbits of chat. I think those words, "miscellaneous," "non-cohesive," and "tidbits" probably describe my life during the holiday season. In fact, I suspect they describe all our lives! If you're anything like me, you've realized that Christmas is now less than four weeks away and you have a lot to do. And you have no idea how you'll get it all done. And you know that you have more to do than you've even thought about yet because the idea of thinking of any more stuff to do scares you silly. And you want to scream. And you want to crawl into the back corner of a dark closet and pull your eyelashes out. But you don't. Do you?

Or maybe you're not like me. Maybe you've already finished your Christmas shopping, wrapped your gifts, and gotten your Christmas cards in the mail. Now you're free to sit by the fire gazing out at the gently falling snow while contemplating world peace, mingle at cocktail parties in a perfect size 5 dress, and hostess lavish charity events for homeless children. But probably not.

I digress. So, you're probably wondering what I did tonight, right? But even if you're not, it doesn't matter because I'm telling you anyway. I went to Target yet again, this time to buy some snowflakes. Why can't I just go to Target and buy snowflakes? Why does a trip for snowflakes end up costing something like $80? One of life's mysteries. But then the national and world economy is a mystery to me too. All I know is that I'm apparently stimulating it. I think I'm probably better at stimulating the economy than a hooker is at stimulating . . . well, never mind. Where was I? Oh, snowflakes. So I came home and told my husband I was starting dinner. In the meantime, because I'm a woman and fully capable of multi-tasking, I got myself a hammer and finishing nails so I could hang the snowflakes on the wall behind the range. My husband had a hard time understanding why I needed a hammer and nails to cook his dinner, but I figured I could hammer and stir, hammer and stir, and before long, we'd have soup AND Holly Jolly snowflakes. That worked pretty well until I accidentally hit the handle of the wooden spoon, which flew out of the pot and onto the floor, and splattered tomato soup all over the stovetop, the front of the oven, and the floor. But at least it didn't get on my snowflakes! And sure enough, by the time the soup was ready, so were the snowflakes.

So here's Holly Jolly now, surrounded by glittering, colorful snowflakes. Better, yes? And I would suggest that if you try this trick at home, you paint the letters a color that contrasts with the walls. Before I added the fabric to the fronts, I painted the letters white. If I had painted them black, for instance, I think they would have "popped" from the background a little more. Live and learn. Read blogs and learn more. Not a great photo but I couldn't wait until morning when the light would be better.

I was reading Sharon's blog tonight to see how she's doing on that Hometown Christmas project and I noticed that Carole had commented on "Rob--I mean Rod--Stewart" and it reminded me that I don't think I mentioned what a nice thing my guy boss did for me a couple weeks ago. We were talking about music one day and a few days later, he gave me two CDs he had made of some music he thought I'd like. It took me awhile to get around to listening to them, but I finally did over the weekend while I was decorating and my husband was gone--I cranked those speakers up so I could hear them no matter where I was in the house. And he was right--I did like them. Wasn't that a nice thing for him to do? Both of my "kids" are great to work with!

And speaking of stuff that makes me do a little happy dance, in yesterday's mail I receive my bingo winnings from my online Thimbleberries group--we've been playing lately for 2-1/2" strips of fabric, and I probably won about the equivalent of a jelly roll--here's a photo:

Cool, huh?! My win, though, means I have to call the bingo words for our December game. Heavy responsibility during a busy time of the year, but I'll try to rise to the occasion.

Tomorrow night (Wednesday), I think I'll work on decorating the tree in the Sweat Shop. Some of what I purchased at Target tonight is for that tree, and I was so excited about the goodies I got that I WOULD have started decorating tonight if it wasn't for having to hang snowflakes, cook dinner, and clean up sloshed soup. But tomorrow night will do. If all goes as planned--and you know it rarely does!--I'll get it done and share a photo with you.

Finally tonight, for those of you working on the Hometown Christmas project, our next section is due by Friday. Have I done mine? Nope! Have I even looked to see which section it is? Nope! But I will! I have a feeling it might be that holly and berries one--someone said it looked like something their cat had walked on and I have to laugh and agree. If that's the one, I'll be doing something completely different with applique, so I may well be late this time. How are you all doing? Who's keeping up? Who's getting ahead? Who hasn't even started theirs yet?! I think it may be a little hard to keep up this month, but you can always catch up in January if you need to.

Have a great Wednesday and thanks for visiting!