Tuesday, December 29, 2009

Holiday hiatus

Happy holidays!!! I hope y'all have had a wonderful holiday season so far. It is so hard to believe that it is nearly the new year. Crazy! It seems that I have taken another unplanned blog break. What with all of the holiday preparations, celebrations, and stress, posting here just fell completely by the wayside. Besides which, I really haven't been doing all that much crafting in the last couple of weeks. Certainly, not as much as I would have liked to do!

But I do have a couple of things to share...

fabric basket and coasters
I made another basket using the fabulous Pink Penguin fabric basket tutorial. I did a little bit of math and enlarged the basket to finish at about 7" x 5" and 4" high. Just a bit bigger so that I could fill it up with more goodies, including a little set of 8 coasters (pattern from the fabulous Joelle Hoverson book, Last-Minute Patchwork + Quilted Gifts).

fabric basket filled with goodies
I also included some homemade spiced biscotti, a mug, and lots of chocolate treats.

One of my son's toddler friends celebrated her third birthday a couple of weeks ago, and so I put together this little apron for her.
toddler apron, sparkly side
The pattern is "Abigail's Apron" by LadyBug Bay, Inc. (I can't find a link to it anywhere, but if you're interested, let me know, and I can give you the info on it.) It's a simple, quick pattern, and it's reversible! I used the super-sparkly dragonfly fabric on one side (because sparkles are very important to princess-obsessed toddlers). And then...

toddler apron, purple side
...a happy, starry purple on the other. I love how it came out, and foresee making more of these in my future.

I did shoot to finish a couple of quilts for Christmas gifts, but it just didn't happen. The "My Friend Maisy" quilt for my son will just have to wait until his birthday next month, I think (but no worries... there were so many other gifts for him this Christmas, that one less was no matter). The other quilt (for my father-in-law) is also a work-in-progress at this point. So he received an IOYAQ (I Owe You A Quilt) card (inspired by Leah Day). I used fabric scraps from the quilt and stitched them to the front of a blank card and wrote a little coupon-text inside. I wish I had taken a picture! Hopefully, I'll be able to fulfill my coupon obligation in the next month or two.

And, lastly, just a little bit of cookie decorating fun:

Cookie fun, 2009

9 comments:

  1. The coasters look great with the ribbon around them. Love the apron! Your quilts WILL get finished...it's good that you aren't stressing over them.

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  2. I love your gift basket with the coasters. What a great idea and I bet the recipient was happy!

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  3. What a great gift idea--I love your basket.

    Looks like you have lots of fun decorating too! :)

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  4. Beautiful gift basket! Do you need my address? LOL. Hope you are enjoying the holiday season and I wish you a very Happy New Year!!

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  5. I love the cookie time pictures! Also, what a great way to use the fabric basket.

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  6. Adorable basket and apron Robin!!! What a wonderful gift :) I love all the treats you put inside! What do you put in your biscotti? I usually make vanilla-almond with cornmeal for extra crunch! Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!!!

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  7. I'm the lucky duck who got the basket! Yay! I just had a cup of that cocoa last night, and it was just as yummy as it sounded. The biscotti was delicious, and didn't last 24 hours! Love that apron - I might have to borrow the pattern. :-)

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  8. Great idea to fill up the little fabric baskets with all those goodies.
    Your cookie photo reminds of the Christmases my kids spent decorating gingerbread men when they were younger.
    Have a Very Happy New Year!

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  9. What a great idea to enlarge the basket pattern. I made three of those same baskets at the last minute for gifts. They were so last-minute that I didn't get pictures unfortunately. I need to get back to blogging myself -- time flies by during the holidays. Have a great new year!

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