Christmas Wrapping Paper Gone Missing!

My sister is going to drop off our Christmas packages to our family up north. She is leaving in an hour! No sweat... I have all the gift cards, money and candy ready. 

All I have to do is wrap it up...

So I walk to the bin that stores all our gift wrapping paper and notice that I am all out of Christmas wrapping! 

Oh no... I am just a tad panicking now... the clock is ticking!

But fabric stash to the rescue! I remembered that I had some Santa Claus fabric somewhere... that should work... nope, not enough for three gift bags... but I do find some mottled red fabric as well! So I cut out some Santas and appliquéd them on one of the side pieces of each bag... sewed up the side and made the string tunnel... found some green ribbon to made the draw string... and voila: 

Three easy gift wrapping bags!

All in all 30 minutes. Not too bad and they look nice. But I didn't finish the seams on the inside. It doesn't really matter anyway since my nephew and two nieces don't really care about the wrapping but what's inside :-)

Take care,

Me

P.S. I have to put a reminder on my to-do list to purchase some wrapping paper!

Sewing Machine Problems... Again!

Last night I was winding some thread on bobbins when I heard a click noise. I checked and found this:

Looks all innocent, right? Well, it's not! I checked and noticed that the bobbin thread guide came off the sewing machine. See, it belongs right in to that hole...

How did that happen? No idea...

We called a Pfaff sewing machine "Asbhy Sewing Machine Company" store in the States and the repair guide told us what to do. How awesome is that! Unfortunately we didn't have such tiny screw drivers. So we decided that I would take it to the local Pfaff dealer "Jocher Pfaff Naehzentrum" here in Garmisch. 

I called... they were so rude on the phone. They said I should take it back to where I bought it from! I told him that it really was a simple thing to fix and if he at least could take a look at it. The answer was no! He had 30 machines to fix between now and Christmas...! 

So Martin talked to a friend who had the right tools and fixed it himself. 

It took 5 minutes! Yep... 5 minutes! He took three screws out, put the guide back in, closed it back up and I am back in business!

I am such a lucky girl who has a husband who puts up with me and on top of it fixes my baby!

Thank You! Thank You! Thank You!

I love you,

Karin

Yumm!

This is what I had for breakfast:

1 Blueberry Tea & 2 Christmas cookies 

Absolutely delicious!

Pasha made them... yup, she did!

We had some problems with the initial recipe (from a book that I had high hopes for... I will tell you later about it!) but Google came to the rescue... and voila!

Hope you have a tasty morning too!

Take care,

Me

Another Christmas Present on its way!

I just finished another Christmas present. This one is for my aunt and uncle. We have just visited them during the long Thanksgiving weekend. We had such a blast that time flew by faster than any of us wanted it to.

Here is my dad (on the left) with my uncle (on the right). 

They are both so similar! They have the same hobbies (photography and computers) and have the same sense of humour... :-)

My aunt admired some of my quilts. So I decided that a quilt would be the perfect present to them. I chose the Diamonds at Large pattern from Pam Lintott's Layer Cake, Jelly Roll & Charm Quilts book. 

The top went together in one afternoon. It took another to sandwich and quilt it, and of course another one in front of the TV to put on the binding. I had a couple of blocks left over because I made a cutting mistake. So I made a quick pillow out of it. 

It is an 18" square. Very fast, very easy and it used all of my fabric... love that!!!

So now it is in the mail. I hope they'll love it as much as I enjoyed making it! :-)

Take care,

Me

Decorating the Christmas Tree

As a kid my family would decorate the tree on Christmas eve. However now that I have a family of my own we decorate the tree already around the first of December. We really  enjoy looking at the sparkling tree each night :-)

 

One of the most treasured traditions we have are the "12 Days of Christmas" ornaments.

 

We sing the song as we put them up. Martin even jumps when it comes to the "lords are leaping" part! You would think that we know the song by heart by now. But around the 8th day of Christmas we have to look for the ornaments to help us out!

 

 

Another tradition is that Pasha gets to put the Angel on the tree.

 

We have lots of handmade ornaments on our tree! It makes us so happy to recount each and every memory! They remind us of people that we had the pleasure of knowing, people and pets who have passed on and are very much missed or places we've been...

 

Decorating the Christmas tree makes us go crazy! :-)

 

And yes, Pasha insists on the yearly photo with Jake in front of the tree. I swear I didn't force her to do it!!! LOL

 

Is your Christmas tree up yet?

 

Take care,

Me

Counting down til Christmas

One of the Christmas traditions that I absolutely love is the advent calendar. I loved getting my piece of chocolate each morning as a child. Now that I am a parent it's the selection of treats and activities that I put in the calendar. The anticipation of seeing Pasha opening her treat bag each daykills me! 

 

I make my own advent calendar. I used to hang them up on a string underneath Pasha's high bed. But a few years ago I bought a long board from our local home improvement store. I painted it white and used a golden marker to write "Advent Calendar". Cup hooks (which are evenly spaced across the board) allow me to hang my treats.

 

I use a variety of things to fill the calendar: chocolates, novelty pens, fun socks, lip balm, nail polish, money (€ and $), Itunes songs as well as activities like baking cookies, going to a special Christmas market, Christmas present shopping, going to the movies and more...

 

 

Up until last year I used white paper bags to hold the treats. This year I was determined to change that. I stopped by Ikea to pick up some fabric and sewed up 24 simple bags. Scrapbooking paper cut to size are used for the numbers. Simple yet really beautiful!

 

 

I also made an advent calendar for my sister! Yes, adults love an advent calendar as well!!! They don't have to be filled with chocolates.... I picked up 24 different sorts of tea bags and wrapped them up. Martin found the stick on one of his walk with Jake.

 

Do you count down the days?

 

Take care,

Me

Christmas Movies

Yup, I decided to pay $2.50 a month to keep going. I am just having way too much fun on here to quit :-)

My family loves movies. We have an entire binder full of Christmas movies. We pull it out the day after Thanksgiving and pop one in when ever we have some time together. Some of our favorites are Love Actually,  The Christmas Card, It's a wonderful Life, The Holiday and of course Charlie Brown's Christmas... 

We are always on the look-out for more, so do you have a favorite Christmas movie?

Take Care,

Me

Problems and Decisions

I haven't posted in a while. Not because I didn't want to or didn't have time... Nope, it was because Blogger told me that I ran out of storage space for  my photos. And now I have to make a choice:

 

1. Blog without Pictures

 

2. Pay $2.50 a month for an additional 10GB photo storage                       

 

or

 

3. Stop blogging

 

I have been wrestling with this decision for a couple of weeks now. I have so much to show you but can't because of this photo thing. How much does it mean to me? Enough to pay $30 a year for the storage? I spend more money on useless things every month! So why am I having such a hard time with this? I don't know!

 

Is there a way around it? I was trying to link up my flickr account. But either I am too stupid to do it right or it doesn't work like I thought it should!

 

I love looking back to see what I have created... but it bothers me that I am probably going to end up paying for something that I thought was free! Maybe that's the problem why I can't make up my mind.... Oh, I don't know!

 

Decisions, Decisions, Decisions...

 

Take care,

Me

 

P.S. I really hate blogging without pictures. Reminds me of really boring school textbooks! :-(