Happy Holidays!

HEY! IT'S HOLIDAY TIME!!

Sorry it's been so long since I have put a post on. We started our Texas Twister fairs the first of April, and finished the middle of October. A twister is a drink we make with fresh squeezed oranges, lemons, and limes in our family's secret base. It's so fun, but a lot of work. We took two weeks off to take a cruise to Alaska and LOVED it. We only had one or two other weekends that we didn't have a fair, but were so tired we barely had time to prepare for the next fairs. I felt bad about leaving all the work to my daughters, (especially Juli) but didn't have a choice or the energy. Hopefully I can get back into the swing of things. I'm having lots of fun with my sewing machine again. So many cute things, but so little time to do them all!! Here are a few of the things I've been doing. Hope you enjoy them.

Sewing/Embroidery

This will be a cute pillow for a bed. Sorry it's not
ironed! I was in Oregon and in a hurry to get the
pillow front and quilt block to the buyer.













This is the Mt. Timpanogos L.D.S. Temple in
American Fork, Utah. It will either be a quilt
block for the middle of a quilt, or a pillow.

I love Thanksgiving! Especially when it can be spent with family! 

It's fun to have things around the house to remind you to "Count Your Blessings". 

We have so much to be thankful for, it should take the whole season to think of them all. 

It's fun to have towels for every event, season or month.

Here are a few I could have made.

It almost seems like Thanksgiving get left out because all the retailers are excited to get Christmas merchandise out, but we don't have to forget it. Here's another towel to get people in the mood. I will be doing sets of towels for months, seasons, and holidays, so these will be included in one or more of the sets.

Placecards/Invitations

I found a cute idea in a woman's magazine that I just had to try. If you live in a place that has large oak trees, you will have much bigger & cuter acorns. I went up the canyon to Maple Grove and picked up several acorns. Our trees are small, so the acorns were small. If the cap still has the nut attached, just twist the nut and it will come right out. Several of the ones I found were doubles (attached at the top), so I made balls for both sides. I started by cutting circles out of minkee or some other fuzzy fabric. As you can see, my circles are not perfect because I didn't use a pattern. It really didn't matter in the end.

Stitch around the circle with thread, put a cotton ball in the middle, pull the thread tight to make a ball, stitch through the top until it's secure, and then tie it off. Since my acorn caps were pretty small, I had to cut the cotton ball in 4ths so the ball was the right size for the acorn cap. If you live where there are BIG acorns, you'll have to make bigger circles with bigger cotton so they fit nicely. We just have small oak trees, so hence, small acorn caps.

















After stitching around the edges, adding the cotton ball, pulling it tight and knotting it, I used my handy glue gun to fill the cap half full of glue and then stuffed the gathered end into the cap & hold! They turn out really cute. The only other thing I would do is spray the acorn cap with shiny craft spray to make them glossy. My spray was way up on garage shelves with the Christmas stuff, & I didn't go to the trouble of searching for it.















Here are a couple of ideas for their use: Party invitation or a way to let people know where they are sitting at a dinner. I'm sure you can think of others.







Thanks for reading our blog!! Hope you had a fantastic Thanksgiving! See you soon!! Mother Hen--Barbara

Birthday Book

Hello there!!
Today I want to share a gift I made for Mother Hen last month for her birthday.  As some of you know, Mother Hen travels a lot.  And when I say a lot, I mean A LOT!  She travels all over the country selling Texas Twisters at fairs, normally every weekend from June to October. So when it comes to kids and grandkids birthdays, she has to send cards for most of them.  More than once I've gotten a call from Mother Hen, asking what birthdays were coming up for the next couple weeks.  I really don't mind telling her, but I decided I could come up with something cute to help her keep track of the birthdays.
So I made her a birthday book!  What is a birthday book, you ask?  Well, here ya go!  Prepare for picture overload!

I'm sorry I don't have any before pictures, but I basically took an old photo album that I had, recovered it, and re bound it.  I was initially going to keep the same binding that the photo album had, but after decorating each of the pages, the book was too big.  So I punched holes in each page, attached eyelets, and bound it with fishing wire.  Not my first choice for binding, but it worked!

For the pages, I cut a piece of cardstock to the size of the cover. Then I used another piece of cardstock, cut it an inch shorter, and folded the edges over the back, making a pocket in the front on the right side.  For the left side, I just printed out a calendar for each month, wrote on the birthdays, and glued it on, which covered the folded edges from the pocket side (did that make sense??).

I wanted to have a pocket for each month so she could keep birthday cards in it.  I made a few of the birthday cards, and then bought the rest.  So not only does she have a calendar that she can take with her, but she has birthday cards ready for an entire year!  All she has to do is fill them out and mail them!  I also did the calendar this way so she can write in birthdays when needed.  Our last birthday calendars were missing quite a few grandkids that hadn't been around when the calendar was made. 

So here's how I decorated the pages for each month.  I owe a huge thanks to my awesome sister Jacki for helping me do some of the pages.  I'm pretty sure this would have ended up as a Christmas present for Mother Hen if Jacki hadn't helped me! :)  On the right side of each page, you can see I attached ribbon.  I was trying to figure out how to print on ribbon so I could type the month on each ribbon, but it just didn't happen.  So I just picked ribbon that coordinated with each page.

I finished off the book by adding some ribbon to tie it closed.  It was bound with fishing wire, but the ribbon helped keep it together.

I love how it turned out, and I know Mother Hen really appreciates it!  So what do you think? 
Thanks for reading!!
-Juli-

Linking to these great parties!