Davison Christmas

We enjoyed Christmas Day with the Davison side of the family.

This is my dear family.

Here is my father-in-law with all of his grandkids and with his sons.

Finally a picture of FIL and SILs.

It was fun to join the Davison side on Christmas Day.

out with the old, in with the new

I am so blessed to be able to get new carpet in my great room.

as you can see the old stuff really needed replacing, it was damaged, ugly and not wearing well.

So here is the new carpet!!!!

I love it, it has some nice tones to keep it interesting and hiding the evidence of teens and dogs!

Wrigley approves, he loves the new carpet!

cookie cheater

Each Christmas season I am invited to a cookie exchange that a sweet friend from our old neighborhood in Swisher puts on. The exchange is always a lot of fun. She requests each person bring 7 dozen cookies to exchange. That is a lot of cookies! This year, I will admit, I cheated. I used a mix for the base of the thumb drop cookie and the results were fantastic. I held pretty good willpower and only sampled one cookie. I am all set now for the exchange. I plan to freeze the cookies that come home so we will have platters for the Christmas gatherings we are invited to.

still on my needles.................

I am still working on the heather hoodie. I am really enjoying the cables. I am using note cards

that hold one line of each row of the cable pattern. It really helps for keeping track of where I am with the many interruptions I tend to have.

Beginning to look a lot like Christmas

The most wonderful time of the year! It took us a few weekends but the house is finally decorated. The smell of fresh cut pine Christmas tree and cookies is in the air. We started getting fresh trees a few years ago after having an artificial for many years. Now we have several small artificial and one fresh tree each year.

I painted my old ice skates, laced them with ribbon and tied them to my old sled. I like the way it turned out and it is fun to use items from my childhood to decorate with.

I also got craft by painting sticks and pine cones. The inspiration is a combination from an idea my sweet Des Moines sister gave me and an idea that I saw at my beauty saloon. I like the way it turned out for my fireplace hearth.

Thanksgiving

Well after thinking I had time to do a holiday theme in addition to music in my last post, I found out that I didn't even have time to blog. Sorry I have been away for so long.

We had a great Thanksgiving. I had fun putting together this pumpkin pie using the Williams Sonoma pie cut outs.

We have so much to be Thankful for!

Blog changes

I added a few more links to favorite blogs which are mostly podcast blogs. In case you don't know what a podcast is, it is like a radio show that you download from the internet onto your i-pod (or i-pad or computer) and listen to when you want. I listed to all of my podcasts while I am at the gym. My personal rule is that I only listen when I am working out that way I always want to work out.



I added music too (thanks Laura!). What do you think? Do you like the music?



Also, trying to decide if Princess Knit and Quilt a lot blog should change with the season or stick with the pink and the crown that has become it's trademark. What do you think readers? Should I go with the seasons, do you want to see something different every few months for background or do you like the counted on background of pink swirlies? let me know!

blog hits - I have had 14,447 hits so far, considering I started the counter at 5,000 that is a lot of hits. Wow, there must be a few of you out there that never comment. hint hint.....

there goes a piece of my heart

Dear son turned 16 this week. The big deal of course is getting his license and the freedom of taking off in your own car at 16. Every time he leaves the house he takes a piece of my heart with him. I pray he drives safe.

oh and the ice cream cake had 15 WW points per serving! That is almost a whole days worth for me. luckily I only had 1/2 of a piece. yikes, seriously do they have to pack that many calories into things!?!?

and for those of you that noticed, I did not have 16 candles for his cake. luckily he is a big boy and he could handle the fact that his mom did not plan better than that.

What is on my needles, off my needles and other projects

I finished this very sweet hat last week and already shipped it off to California niece for her sweet little boy. She blogged about it here
(aw shucks)
Her little guy looks so darn cute in the hat, I really think he could be in a magazine and I don't think I am biased!


This is from Susan B. Andreson's Itty Bitty Hats. I used cotton since it was going to be worn by a little guy in San Diego.



















I just started the Heathered Hoody and I am loving it. This is my first cable knit sweater. It is a short sleeve hooded cardy. The yarn is lovely and not pink like the pictures are showing but red, a cranberry red. lovely!!!

Sweet daughter helped me pick out fabric for her graduation quilt. Thanks to Bette (Coralville girl) for helping us pick out wonderful fabric at Common Threads in North Liberty. Sweet daughter loved the blue and red that made the fabric pop. I am throwing in a few of my stash pieces so we can make it a good twin or full size quilt (depending on my patience when sewing the roses).

Other projects I am working on.... not fun projects but the weekly 12 loads plus of laundry (depending on sports season). Here is where I found Wrigley when I was getting ready to dig in to the pile. Those of you that aren't dog lovers probably don't appreciate a dog in clean laundry but I found it adorable. He dug a hole in the middle of a pile of clean that was on my bed waiting to be folded and he took a long Sunday snooze. awww.... I bed the fresh from the dryer warmth felt so snuggly. OK this was a silly attempt to get Wrigley into yet another blog post but seriously, he is the world's cutest dog after all!

Craft day

I enjoyed hosting a spinning / craft day at my house yesterday. It was so fun to get together with a talented group of gals and spend the afternoon spinning and doing hand needle work.

Sweet daughter even joined us while working on art.

Michigan girl gave us a few tips on spinning and even taught a newbie to spindle.

Boggie visited in his spiffy Halloween vest and Wrigley enjoyed showing off his pumpkin costume. Wrigley was not quite sure what to do with Boggie.

It was nice to be able to get out some of my Halloween dishes.

I made 1.5 point brownie mini-cupcakes, spiced apple cider and sliced apples w/ aged cheddar.

zoom zoom

Here is dear son and his first car. He turns 16 November 8th and is very excited to get his license. It was really fun to see his joy when he saw his new (used) car.

Trick or Treat?

Wrigley and Annie waited for the kids to come-a-beggin' this year. Wrigley loved his costume!

Sweet daughter made a fairy costume, she looked awesome!