Christmas Crafting Notebook

Happy Sunday to everyone.  Well some of you know that I have returned to work full time and I do like it but it has been a rough week.  I am training as I go because there does not seem to be time to do it any other way...lol  So it wll take me a little bit to juggle work and play but I feel not to long, I hope! 

I deceided to join Judith on her quest and many others to start making my Christmas early this year.  Judith I thank you for doing this as I hope it will help me along without trying to crame everything in at the last moment.   If you would like to tag along just click on the little windo on the right hand side and go see what it is all about.  Here is the journal cover I made for my list, enjoy.

A horrible experience and warning to please be careful

It is with very raw feelings at this moment in time that I feel I have to post this message so hopefully others out there will be careful.
I went to the store last evening and got to the register to pay for my item and my bank card would not be accepted as a debit or credit.  So I just told the clerk to hold the items and I will go get the cash and be back just knowing that this was impossible I had just checked our account  in the morning and knew there was way more than enough in there to cover this purchase.  As I drove to the bank I called my husband to ask him if he made a large cash withdraw/purchase  that I did not know about, even though I knew that this was unlikely since we never do anything like that without discussing it first.  Of course he said he did not and to just go get the cash out and he would call the bank and just check it out.  In about 4 minutes he called me back and said to come straight home.  All the time I am thinking well what the hey is going on, I know we had to pay our house payment yet but other than that we just paid our other bills  on Thursday and there was enough in there to make our house payment and for the next few weeks to live on.  Little did we know that at 5: 28 pm someone had totally cleaned our account out.  We were and are devastated that someone out there thinks that they can just do this and get away with it.  Yes the bank has started a fraudulent claim and my card has been frozen but this does not help the situation at the moment because the fraud department is not open until Tuesday and the lady said that this will take 5 to 10 business working days to investigate and they do cover us for any nsf fees that occur and that we will get the money back pending the investigation.  At first we were just dumb struck and very sad and now I am just so mad I cannot even think straight.  Who prays on someone else's hard earned money to live their life????  What kind of person causes this kind of hardship on someone else????  I can think of some pretty awful names for this person but will stick with a coward, a thief, a person with no morals and certainly not a christian.
I am sorry that this is such a  negative post but we are just devastated and if my experience can help anyone else by making you all really check out your bank accounts then it is worth the post.  This has truly been a horrible experience and an eye opener for both my husband and myself.  All we know at this time is that it was somewhere in LaCinche, Province of Quebec and will no be able to get anything else until he bank opens on Tuesday.  So please take care everyone and yes it truly does happen.

My quilted Jacket

Morning all!  Well it is finally finished....I started this quilted jacket about a year ago and never finished it.   It was a sweatshirt first and so I opened it up and  I used 2" strips then quilted it all down and this is the result.   Since I have been trying to get my house back together, since my son and his family have moved into their own home, I found all of these unfinished projects and decided that I was going to finish them.  Well in truth there are quite a few of them so the ones I want to finish I will and the others I won't and I will donate to charity.  I even forgot that I started some of these.  To give you an idea of how topsy- turvey things have been you will never believe what I did.  I had a gift that I needed to mail out back in April and here I thought I had but I didn't it was packed in with the stuff my son was taking to his house.  I hope she will understand and not think to bad of me..but I will email her today and get it right out...enjoy

Pincushion

At our local guild we have a prize drawn every month and I won last month so that means I make the gift and bring it in for this month.  I decided to make a pincushion using  a short stem blue dessert glass I had and this is how it turned out.  Judy won it and really liked it.  I did not know this but she collects pincushions so I think it went to a good home..

Beautiful Hand Dyes

Morning everyone!  As some of you already know I have returned to work.  It was necessary and I will leave a note on whether I really like it for a future post.....lol  So now I have to pick and choose a little more carefully about what I can do since time is a factor.  I did manage to get the hand dye class still done and these are some beautiful colors that I got out of it.  I just love hand dyed fabric...and now I just need to break in and use them...have a wonderful day....

Chicks arrived today

Many of you know that my son and his family lived with us almost since we came back from our 2 year run in the Carolina's. Well in the past few weeks they did get their own home and now they live on a mountain with 5 acres....So of course if you know my son that means the more room the more animals......lol Well he ordered 30 Bantams and they came in yesterday. Oh they are so cute but boy were they noisy. I had to chick sit yesterday until he could leave work and get them to his house. So of course I sanpped a few photos and here they are.... Enjoy and have a wonderful day....

Challenge Reveal

I belong to a group of about 20 women called "Challenging Ourselves" We are all about learning new techniques, putting thoughts into displays of art and just going outside our box.  Our very first challenge was called "hidden treasures" which in my mind could have been so many things.
What I chose was "words".  Because to me whenever I learned  something or read a book or anything words are involved.    Whenever you read a book it is really a hidden treasure because you have some idea of what the book is about but not in detail until you start reading the words.  So this is what I choose to do.
What I learned is how to basket weave my fabric, print on fabric, all the stitches my sewing machine has, how to thread paint (somewhat) and how to paint on fabric.  I think for such a small quilt, it is 18 x 26, I got the message acrossed.  I enjoyed doing this and am looking forward to our next challenge which will be "the four elements"  hmmmm sounds interesting.
Please check out our blog to see all the wonderful reveals and how such a few words was interpreted into many different pieces of art. http://challengingourselvesfabricarts.blogspot.com/