December 20, 2004

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  ??? !!! HOW MANY DAYS TIL CHRISTMAS !!! ???   There is STILL so much left for me to do this week. ARGH. I have lost an entire month somewhere along the line. That so stinks...     In addition to totally cleaning my house ...deep cleaning in some cases, I have wrapped NOTHING    and we justdecorated the main tree last night. We have two more trees to put up also. I have done no baking yet..why am I sitting at this computer!!!   AAHHHHHHHHH      I have to finish the four table runners I am giving as gifts to my MIL and SIL.  I have to finish the snowflake placemats for my MIL *and I am safe saying this on here because neither of them read this site * We have to finish decorating, but I can't do my family room until I clean up all the messes from my projects, which means  I have to FINISH the projects! I also need to finish lining two curtain panels for my living room, and I need to cut hem the drapes for over top of the windows in the living room also.  I am going to make a big push to finish all of the curtain sewing and table runners tonight. Then I can finish the place mats tomorrow if I don't get them all done today.   I am very blessed in that I love my MIL dearly and she is a wonderful person to be around and have as my MIL. She is difficult to buy for in that she is at the stage in her life that she pretty much has everything she needs, and what she does need she buys. I wind up making her gifts that she can and will use. Years ago I made her Christmas placemats which she has used every year since then, but I only made 4 as I made them for her kitchen table. She said the only thing she didn't like about them was that I didn't make enough! *G* She wished I had made about 8 so that she could have used them on her dining room table when she has guests.    I thought making her new placemats, and 8 of them this time, would be a good gift for Christmas.   Of course, when I went to get fabric to make the placemats, I wanted quilted, double sided, blue and white or blue white and silver snowflake fabric. Do ya THINK I could find cotton or poly cotton fabric with snowflakes on it ? The answer would be...NO. So, I figured I would buy fabric for backing, blue fabric for the front, batting, and binding and make them for her. I'll just stamp or stencil the snowflakes on.   Could I find snowflake stamps or stencils?   NO.  Cause it isn't July and the retailers are retarded. It's December and I can't find snowflake stencils or stamps but there was VALENTINE'S DAY CANDY at the registers in Joann ETC yesterday.   So here it is 2 weeks before Christmas, and I am totally thwarted in the only thing I can think to make for my MIL that I can actually get done in the time left. Yes, I should have started thinking of this months ago, and don't ask me why I didn't, but I suppose the immediate is always what I deal with daily and the later on I don't have time to deal with until IT is an immediate.  Did that make sense?  So I start wracking my brain, because other than making my own stencils *yech...talk about time consuming*      I am bumfuzzled as what to do. I go to  Joann ETC and Michael's in search of ideas, and voila...I find an $8 tub of Foamies shapes, full of cut outs of 3 inch snowflakes in 4 different patterns. The wheels start turning. Aren't stamps often made from a thick foam ?      Click  CLICK!     I bought the tub of the Foamies snowflakes, glued two of the snowflakes together, glued THAT to a block of wood *I cut down a 2x4* and VOILA! Snowflake stamps! I then tested it on a scrap of the washed, dried and ironed blue cotton fabric I bought for background fabric. It worked!   I then heat set the dried paint with and iron and am going to spray the fabric with a sparkle paint to give it a bit o' glitz. I will toss the whole shebang into the dryer to heat set that paint and then I can join it all together. I will take pics and show what I did later on...after Christmas most likely.   Necessity is indeed the mother of invention!   Dang....   I pray I get this all done    by tomorrow night. I want to make some biscotti, Challah bread and a yule log for Christmas day!   Anyone else out there franticly searching for a place to hide???   Blessings...                                                                                 ...Kathie

  • 12:49 pm
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