One of the Christmas gifts we gave Anna was two pairs of socks from Treasures by Tammy.

Let me tell you – Tammy does amazing work. This is not the first time I’ve had Tammy make Anna some socks. They hold up well after repeated washings, and the lace is so delicate and pretty. Just don’t dry them on super high heat during a long dryer cycle or you can shrink the lace edging. Just ask me how I know. . .

When Tammy found out I was planning to blog about the socks, she offered a coupon code for my readers. Use FRUIT10 at checkout for a 10% discount. Isn’t she the best?

I just love Tammy’s work. It is such high quality. She packages everything so neatly, with fiber content and washing instructions on the package.

Tammy didn’t ask me to write about her shop. I asked her if she would mind me blogging about the socks. They’re so cute that I would love to be able to get Anna enough to wear a pair every day.

Go take a look at Tammy’s shop Treasures by Tammy. Buy some of her socks for a little girl you know. They’re wonderful!

Lately I’ve blogged about my sewing projects, so I thought I’d share some pictures of the finished projects.

The boys loved their new John Deere pajama pants. Caleb’s fit him, but weren’t nearly as long as I expected them to be. He’s grown more in height than I realized.

Trying to show off some of their new toys in the picture too :O)

Anna’s pajamas were a ton of fun to make. The nightgown is from the indietutes peasant blouse tutorial here. I lengthened the sleeves and gathered them, and lengthened the hem and flared it (a fairly wide a-line shape). The bloomers are from a regular pant pattern, and gathered at the ankles. I measured her inseam several times but still managed to make them too long. We have to roll them up at the waist right now but at least they’ll fit for a while.

Here’s a better picture of the pajamas. I appliqued a little heart on the bottom too. Of all the pajamas I’ve made the kids, these are by far my favorite.

The boys absolutely loved their quilts. To quilt them, I just stitched in the ditch along each row. I was able to get a walking foot locally, and that made things SO MUCH easier.

Caleb’s quilt

Samuel’s quilt

Our view out the sliding door this morning

Yesterday it started snowing – the first white Christmas we’ve had here in decades. We’re thrilled. You should have heard the shouts of excitement last night when we discovered it was snowing.

Actually, it was pretty funny. We had gone to Grandma’s house for the day (a family tradition on Thanksgiving and Christmas) and left early because we wanted to beat the storm home. It rained the whole way. Most of the drive is interstate, and we saw at least a dozen snowplows on the way home. It was the most either of us had ever seen in one stretch of road here before.

It got dark shortly after we got home. About an hour later, the phone rang. Stephen’s mom was calling from Grandma’s house, wanting to know if we had snow here yet. I told her no. Then I looked out the window and we had a half inch already. Oops.

They don’t treat our roads much here, so we’re home from church this morning. Then I just got a text from our pastor’s wife saying services had been moved back to 2pm for those who wanted to try to make it. It feels strange to be home, that’s for sure!

On the other hand. . .the kids have had a TON of fun playing out in the snow.

Anna acts like she’d like to go out and play in it, but we don’t have anything for her to wear in the snow. Thankfully she doesn’t seem to mind watching from inside too much though.

My children are the most beautiful children in the world. I am so blessed.

We made Christmas cookies last night. Samuel kept telling me over and over again, “Thank you for letting us make cookies. I had SO much fun!”

The boys got a bit sugar sprinkle happy. I didn’t mind until I looked at Caleb and saw that he had the entire bottle of blue sugar in his mouth. Good thing I noticed it after we finished and not while we were still decorating the cookies!

Even Anna had fun pushing the cutters into the dough.

We won’t be giving any of these cookies away as gifts – there was too much finger licking and dough snatching and thumb sucking going on – but we really enjoy them. I like that particular cookie recipe because it uses basic ingredients, isn’t too sweet, and you can use cookie cutters with it. Ok, that, and I have yet to find a regular sugar cookie recipe I really like, but that’s beside the point.

We had a lot of fun last night and made a huge mess. But the best part was that Stephen washed the dishes afterward so I could work on the boys’ quilts. What a wonderful husband I have!

Last night was great!

This week we have a ton of baking planned. A lot of it is for gifts, but some of it is favorite holiday foods – like cinnamon rolls on Christmas morning, Christmas cookies, and more yummy baked goods.

I made 7 loaves of sourdough bread over the weekend, hoping to have some to give as gifts. I made a batch of regular white sourdough, and an experimental batch of 100% whole wheat sourdough. When I baked it, the white bread was too close to the back of the oven and burned the top of all three loaves. Then the bottoms of two of my wheat loaves stayed in the pans. . .reminding me of exactly why I don’t like to use my glass pans to bake bread in (I can never remember how long to wait to try to get the bread out so it won’t break into a hundred pieces). On the other hand, since the wheat loaves stuck, I was able to try some of it. It turned out better than I expected. :O) It made really good French toast for breakfast this morning!

Here’s our menu for the week:

Sunday: potato soup

Monday: cream cheese ranch chicken and brown rice

Tuesday: goulash

Wednesday: chicken velvet soup

Thursday: chicken Alfredo and penne

Friday: pizza night

Saturday: not entirely sure here. Cinnamon rolls for breakfast, unless the kids say they want monkey bread instead. Roast is on the menu for later. We have plans to go to Grandma’s for Christmas dinner (I’m bringing rolls and apple salad), but aside from that I’m not sure. I’m looking forward to seeing some out-of-town family that day!!

The meals without veggies listed we’ll just decide then which veggie to eat from the freezer.

Breakfasts are eggs, scones, oatmeal, biscuits, grits, smoothies, and pancakes.

Lunches are sandwiches, wraps, macaroni and cheese, tuna salad, leftovers, etc.

Snacks are cheese, baby carrots, nuts, fresh fruit, smoothies, etc.

You can read more menu plans over at Orgjunkie.com.

A friend asked me not long ago how the boys’ quilts are coming along. I just laughed. At that point not much was done. I had been busy practicing for the choir concert and had set the quilts aside.

Since Monday I’ve had a lot more time to work on them. This is what Samuel’s quilt top looks like:

Here is Caleb’s. I finished the top Thursday night.

In pictures, I think I like Samuel’s better – the greens and blues seem a little more cohesive than the blues, greens, and red in Caleb’s quilt. But up close, I like the star theme in Caleb’s quilt better.

So now I’m just wondering how long it will take to actually quilt. I’m going to stitch in the ditch instead of trying any random stippling. . . and I just realized I never picked up a walking foot. Oops. Guess we’ll see how well my regular foot works.

Last night I was able to get them layered with the batting and backing and pinned. So there is progress. I’m really hoping the machine quilting will work well.

So that leaves me 2 quilts to quilt and bind, and 7 sets of pajama bottoms to finish before Christmas. Next year I’m starting earlier. I tried to start early this year but then got busier than I anticipated. Maybe next year I’ll remember that. :O)

Today is Free Shipping Day! I blogged about it a few days ago but today is the day.

All orders placed today get free shipping. In stock items (in my store they’re marked Ready to Ship) will ship out tomorrow and will arrive by Christmas! Anything customized will still go out free and I will do my best to get them out asap.

You will need to use the coupon code FreeShipping at checkout to get the free shipping, but hurry. The code is only valid today!

Want to see what I’ve been working on lately? Click on any of the images to take you to that product’s page. . .

These rings aren’t marked ready to ship – but I have everything to make them and they will ship out right away too!

Happy shopping!

At several people’s recommendation, I ordered some samples of Rockin’ Green detergent. The lavender mint scent smells fantastic! So far, it seems to be working well. It also looks like we didn’t rinse enough after washing before – we were doing one extra rinse but it sounds like we needed to do another.

The diapers just went in again for another run through. I took them out of the washer this morning to dry them, only to discover gel beads from a disposable diaper in them. I really hate it when a disposable diaper goes through the wash.

The boys helped me rinse the diapers out in the tub, then I wrung them out and put them back in the washer with a tiny bit more Rockin’ Green. Then I did two more rinse cycles after that. What a lot of work for this load – I believe once I’m done they will have been through 5 or 6 times at least. They should be good and clean by now though!

. . .But my kids like to play in them too!