Whoo! It's finally OVER!

So!

All that lead-up and here it is, almost New Years. And shock of shockers! Christmas Eve dinner (our usual family get-together) was postponed due to a snowstorm. Here! In the Lower Mainland! And to think, my sister and I have been wishing and hoping every year since I can remember for snow on Christmas Eve. This year, Mother Nature must have decided to give us all the prayed for snow that was owed to us. We've since had two days of rain and the over 2 feet of snow we received STILL isn't gone! I'm flabbergasted!

Definitely not tongue tied, though. Hah.

This is our garage and the tiny walkway we cleared (I say "we", but I didn't actually lift a shovel). Rapidly getting covered over with snow.


My poor little car!



Don't get me wrong! It was beautiful and loverly and it snowed enough to cover the ATV tracks in our front yard (which is a good thing) and there's nothing cuter than a 90 lb dog bounding through the snow. Except for a Chihuahua trying to pee with only one foot on the ground....


Icicles!!! These were about 3 feet long!


The Christmas Eve dinner was last night. I'm still tired. I can still taste eggnog...oh wait. That's because I'm drinking an eggnog & Kahlua right now. Mmmm. Eggy goodness with liquor.



Santa was very, very good to me this year. My family spoiled me rotten and I love them wholeheartedly for it. My man got me a portable compressor!! It's a Ridgid and very awesome, just like him. I'm hoping to teach myself to make simple country furniture. He also got me a guitar stand. He couldn't help himself, since he knew for a fact I probably wouldn't buy myself one. Even after all the times I've knocked it over. He also gave me a lump of coal. Jerk. :o)

My sis got me a slow cooker, which I've been lusting after for ages, and I also got the SOFTEST, fuzziest white robe from my mum, among other stuff. I can't stop petting it when I wear it. There's just too much to list! Even my cousin got into the act and bought us a bottle of wine. Geez! I can't believe that she's old enough to buy wine. SIGH. How time flies.

Or as my Oma loved to say: "Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana."

She rocked. RIP Oma.

Here's my cuz with her bf. Teenagers. SIGH



Well, the present I was most excited about wasn't even for me. It was FROM me, and my partner, and my sis and HER partner, to our mum. Now, my mum LOVES the colour blue. And so she painted her bedroom walls a very lovely pale blue. Which is damn difficult to match, if I say so myself. She has a cream colored vintage bedframe & matching dressers, and cream carpet. So she decided several years ago she wanted darker colored bedding to keep the look from being too light. Sounds smart, right? Yeah, but she wanted COBALT BLUE bedding. Which doesn't exist. Try and find something that's not a country quilted coverlet. She's not down with country style. There's Navy, and Denim, and Pale Blue, and Sky Blue...but no Cobalt. We've looked high and low and never found just the right color.

Then along came Ikea's Christmas fabric. In Cobalt Blue with a lovely scroll-y leaf pattern. Like the piece on the bottom of this stack, here:


I bought up a bunch and sewed up a duvet cover for her. Thankfully, Christmas dinner was postponed, or else I never would have gotten it finished! Here's a pic of it partially finished. This is just the top, without the white border or backing. It's laid out on my bed...the dog wondered what the heck I was doing. She does that a lot.



Here we are, spreading it out for all to see, just after she opened it.



Anyways, she sent me a text photo of her bed all made up today, and when I talked to her she loved it lots and couldn't wait to snuggle in. Which was the most important thing :o) Oh, and we gave her a set of 600 thread count Egyptian cotton sheets, too. That might be why she was so happy.

So the making of the duvet wasn't really THAT expensive. It only cost oh....about 5 days, (partly because we had a power outage one night), several stabbed and bleeding fingers, and a sore knee from the sewing machine knee pedal (yeah, it's really old).

Oh, and a pot and the lino in our kitchen. I almost forgot. I left a boiling pot on the stove on high for an hour and a half, whilst sewing. Do you know what happens when you do that?? I do now.




The bottom of the pot melts. Really. I picked it up and swung it over to the sink, and molten metal sloughed off the bottom all over the lino in our rented house. Then in the commotion of turning on the tap I managed to step on some hot metal and burned my foot. I ended up having to pour cold water on the floor to prevent a fire before I could rip off my sock. Strangely enough, my OTHER sock had big burn holes, and that foot was totally fine. Weird. Looks like I'll have to replace the linoleum. At least the burn wasn't bad. And the kitchen is very small. And I didn't like the lino, anyways. So there.



Whew! Only how many shopping days left before next Christmas???