Coffee and Cross Stitch

Christmastime Is Here!

Hello my friends!!  Did you all have a fabulous Thanksgiving???  I hope you did, filled with friends, family, good food, and even better wine.  Or maybe some mulled spiked cider instead.  Or maybe both. 

Yummmmm.

We spent the Thanksgiving holiday at my sister's house, where she had the prettiest table set, and fantastic food for us all to eat.

Hi Bean!

After the ridiculously delicious dinner, it was time for dessert, of course.  Since my sister's birthday fell on Thanksgiving this year, and my mom's was Saturday, and my bro-in-law's was last Sunday, I had some serious baking to do.  I made a three-layer apple cider cake for my sis & bro-in-law, and a Hershey's special dark chocolate cake for my mom.  There was the obligatory pumpkin pie, too, but....cake.  Filled to the brim with gluten and sugar, per my sister's request.  Ha.

If you know anything about me...at all...you know my seat at this dessert table was the one with that coffee pot at my right hand.  Duh.

Black Friday was spent in downtown Philly, doing the tradish Christmas stuff down there, like seeing the light show in the old Wanamaker's building.  I am eternally eight years old when I see this show.

I live for this time of year, but it's still nearly impossible to believe that Christmas is right around the corner again already.  I'll be doing another December Daily album like I have the past two years.  I will do my best to provide regular post updates as I build my album, but bear with me as I finish making my Christmas cards and start prepping cookie batters - I may fall behind some days. 

You're all shocked, I know.

It's like I get distracted by shiny objects or things I unearth in crevices in my craft table or start a new cross stitch project when I have three going already or something like that instead of finishing blog posts.  Not that any of that ever happens.  Ever.  

Never.

Ahem.

Pardon me while I go find my mug of mulled cider...wherever it is I left it....and curl up to watch some Christmas specials...

Thanksgiving Fun | Sewing

Hello all!  I hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving!  Ours was filled with too much good food, and way too many delicious desserts.  It's always so hard to pick which dessert to have, because it's so easy to go overboard with all the sweets!!

Thanksgiving in our family is also time for other celebrations - my mom and sister's birthdays fall around  Thanksgiving all the time, and now my brother-in-law's, too!  So, every year, we not only have too much food, we have birthdays to celebrate :-)

For my sister this year, I decided to make her a table runner for her new dining room table.  Like me, she has some decorations for all the holidays, but nothing for her dining room.  So, since handmade is always better, I decided to make her something pretty for her table.

I picked a very fall-like pattern for the runner, with simple accent fabric for panels on the end, and a brown solid for the underside.  She could actually use this for all of the fall season if she wanted, since it's not really Thanksgiving specific.

For this pic, I laid it out on my dining room table when it was finished to see how it would look.  Cutie, right?!  

Here, I folded it over so you can see the underside and the accent panels on the ends.   The binding I made myself from the accent fabric, which pulls everything together.  I think it turned out better than buying pre-made binding, but I'm sure it would look just as lovely had I chosen a plain color binding to match the fabric.

In case any of you would like to try your hand at one of these awesome handmade runners, the tutorial I used is from Sew4Home, and can be found here.  I eliminated the tassels they have on each corner, mostly because I just couldn't be bothered with them.

That's all I have for today!  Will you be making anything special for friends or family this holiday? 

Much love ~~