Happy Valentine's Day!

Things have been busy since our spring semester of school started back on January 21st, and I just haven't had too much extra time to update my blogs. My needlework has suffered, too. So, I thought I'd stop in today to wish you all a happy Valentine's day, and to share some pictures with you.



First of all, on a homemaking list we had a Valentine's Day swap, and I received a box filled with fun things from my friend, Susan. Aren't the fabric scrap ornaments she made wonderful? I'm going to put them in a glass bowl on the coffee table. The colors are so cheerful and bright and will add a nice touch of color! (There were also some heart lollipops which weren't added to this photo, but you can seem them in the next one.)











We had a card exchange on both my homemaking list and my holiday list. It was so much fun to open all the envelopes and find such cute cards and great handcrafted gifts. It's fun to be in groups with such talented friends.







Back in January I was so sad to see that one of my favorite shops was closing after being there for eleven years. I loved visiting this shop whenever I needed gifts and was so sad to say goodbye. I went to their shop for the "going out of business" sale and planned to buy lots of goodies to put aside for gifts later in the year. Instead, I bought myself a gift. I spotted this handmade antique cabinet with nine deep drawers, and knew instantly that it would be perfect for all my floss. I spent much more than I had planned, even with the great discount, but it's well built and sturdy, and looks good sitting at the foot of the bed in my crafts room (which is also the guest room).



(I moved it to the side of the bed for photo purposes, since I couldn't get a good angle to take the picture with it resting at the foot.)



I'm so happy that I can fit all my floss in this cabinet ~ DMC, Anchor, and all the specialty threads ~ since it's so nice and large. Now I can empty the two large plastic containers that are sitting on one of the shelves in the closet and give those away. I'm sure I'll have no trouble filling up that empty space, especially the way I keep visiting the quilt shop and buying their beautiful bundles of fat quarters.

Our cat, Dinsdale, decided he wanted to be in the picture. Or maybe he just wanted to show the perspective of how much bigger the cabinet is compared to him :)













As you can see, the people at the shop painted the inside of the drawers, but left the outside "as is". I think I'll leave it, too, since I like the distressed and used look.














Finally, here are two of my current WIPs. I started Christmas Tea back in December and made great progress. Unfortunately, I had to set it aside because I've been having lots of trouble seeing in the evenings due to allergy problems (I'm not a fan of Mountain Cedar, and I'll leave it at that!). I hope to get back to this soon so I can finish up the design. I changed colors a bit and am using a pretty overdye blue for the bird on the left. The one on the right will be in red.








Since I missed stitching, I decided to try something different that I thought I could see in the evenings. I bought 10-count Tula fabric and started stitching one of the Prairie Schooler Santas. I'm going to use some leftovers of different fibers I have here from previous needlepoint projects, along with the DMC and overdyes. My local cross stitch shop had models of a few Christmas projects done on the large count fabric with silks, wools, DMC, ribbons, charms and buttons, and they looked like fun. When I'm finished, I'm going to stuff it, weight the bottom, and use it as a stand-up decoration.