Happy New Year!

Rusty sharing Christmas Lights (Bonnie Hunter Mystery Quilt)

Happy New Year from our house to yours!  

Many blessings in 2013 for all!

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!