Merry Christmas, Dear Friends!

Wishing you all a love-filled Christmas Day!

Quilter's Christmas Party

 SewCalGal is hosting a virtual Christmas Party. Fun!!  She has many prizes to giveaway from some very generous donors. Most importantly she is raising funds for Operation Homefront for military families in need of assistance. 

SewCalGal has requested that quilters share some of their holiday traditions. One tradition for my husband, sons and me has been the making of our bean soup mix. The first year that we were married, we discovered a recipe for a mixed dry bean soup mix in a monthly magazine. We purchased beans at our local grocery store,  packaged them in ziplock bags, reproduced the recipe and gave them to family and friends for Christmas gifts. Each year, dear hubby worked on the recipe to improve it. 

This year, we purchased 60 pounds of dried beans at one of our local international markets. We've discovered dried beans that we didn't know existed.  A soup pot is no longer large enough to hold all the beans. We now use an ice chest. This will make approximately 60 packages of our soup mix. Some years

we had to form an "assembly line" to package the beans and recipes. Lots of great memories for our family and lots of good hot bean soup for our family and friends.

Visit SewCalGal's blog to find the list of other quilters sharing their holiday traditions, buy raffle tickets or golden tickets to benefit Operation Homefront and Celebrate the Holiday Season!!!

Blog Hop Party with Give-Aways

The Quilter's Gallery  is celebrating it's 5th birthday!  Hard to believe! Michele Foster provides quilters a wonderful website with loads of information, free blocks, contests, giveaways.......   The party begins Monday, December 10th  (birthday number 5) and goes until Saturday, December 15th. Many bloggers are participating in this fun birthday celebration. It's a PARTY!!!!

Won't you join in the party? How? By visiting the participating blogs listed on the Quilter's Gallery blog and entering to win the many giveaways.  My giveaway is a colorful fat quarter tote (made from 2 fat quarters).

 I always thought this tote would work great for a small knitting projects, stitchery  or Lunch even! I'm sure a couple of other items will find their way into the bag for a  surprise. Love surprises!

 To enter the giveaway, share with me the title of your favorite Christmas book and/or novel. I have two novels that I like to reread during the holiday season. Winter Solstice by Rosamunde Pilcher

and Shepherd's Abiding by Jan Karon

Choosing a favorite children's book is almost impossible. The Night Before Christmas in all it's versions definitely is in the top 10 :) 

Happy Birthday, Quilter's Blog!!!!  Have a fun blog hop!

Traveling Stash Box #2 Giveaway - Winner

Congratulations to Helen who blogs at Time for Mimi ! The Traveling Stash Box # 2 is headed her way.

I just love the Traveling Stash!  This is the third one that I've been lucky enough to win. There's something about the whole "trash to treasure" concept that appeals to me. This is Traveling Stash Box # 2 that I won from SewCalGal

The box includes fabric....

notions, thread, patches, pins....

charms from Hawaiian Shirts (I was so tempted to take these, but don't have a project in mind, so I left them in the box

patterns....

books...

Here are the items that stayed in my sewing room....

 the Little Apples charm pack, 2 Prairie Paisley fat quarters and the Hoffman sushi roll. The items that I added to the stash box from my Stash are

half yard pieces of three "dotty" fabrics, a charm pack of Jo Morton fabrics from Little Quilts Quilt Shop and some batik charms from an online fabric swap from years ago.

Here are the rule to enter the giveaway for the Traveling Stash box:
Traveling Stash Rules:

1.  Be an active blogger. Post about receiving the box on your blog in a timely manner. Post the giveaway for the box soon after receiving it.
2.  There's a note in the box that logs where it's been. Please add your info and place the note back in the box.
3.  There's a list of Rules and Guidelines in the box. Please read and follow these and return the list to the box.
4.  You may take anything you like from the box. Just replace every item with comparable quilt shop quality items equal to the amount taken.
5.  Ship the box to the next person in a reasonable amount of time.
6.  Due to the amount of postage shipping is only within the USA.

It is very important that those that enter understand that this is a Traveling Stash that they can keep what is in the box that they want, but they must fill up the box with other items that would be of interest to a fellow quilter and be of high quality.  And, they must host a giveaway on their box and ultimately pay to ship the box to the respective winner. Fortunately, the box being shipped uses a large Flat Rate box so you can pack heavy items in it, or light items, and the cost is the same.  (copied from Insights from SewCalGal's blog)



To enter to win this box all you have to do is leave a comment. I'm looking for new ideas to add to my family's Christmas stocking this year. Tell me what items Santa leaves in the Stockings at your house. Good luck! Winner will be drawn on Friday evening, December Dec. 7th!