Saturday's accomplishments

Well, I had planned to get a lot done yesterday. I was going to make a bunch of Christmas fabric postcards and start a Quilt of Valor (QOV). I bought some new embroidery designs and used one of those to make a grand total of one Christmas postcard. - this design is Stella from The Country Needle.

Of course, the one postcard required a trip to the LQS to get some thread, and while I was there I got the green background fabric, and some red as well. Then I found a bolt of red with stars and a bolt of blue with a small dark print on the sale rack, so bought the rest of the bolts for those (40% off if you finish the bolt) and got some Kona white to go with, so now I have a simple plan for my QOV. I surfed my saved patterns to find something relatively simple to piece for the QOV. I picked a mystery pattern I had saved that uses three fabrics - that will be today's project, I think.

I have also been in the mood to bake for the last couple of weeks. Yesterday, while blog surfing, I found a recipe at bake at 350 for toffee blondies. I made a batch of those, and a batch of cinnabon-clone cinnamon rolls.

Thanksgiving

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving yesterday with family. Everyone brought something for dinner, and we had WAY too much food. With about 10 of us there, we barely touched most of the side dishes. Turkey, mashed potatoes and gravy, dressing with onion and celery, dressing with cranberries and pecans, macaroni and cheese, sweet potato casserole, corn pudding, apple and cranberry compote, tomato soup salad, green bean casserole, yeast rolls and cranberry/orange muffins. Dessert was pumpkin pie, pecan pie, pound cake and rum cake. It was all delicious. Hosted by my wonderful sister-in-law Kathy.

I have been thinking this past month of all of the things for which I am grateful. I have a husband I love and who loves me. I have three healthy children. I have two adorable grandchildren. DH and I have secure jobs. We have funds enough to have a comfortable life and to be able to help our adult children when needed. We have family who are there when we need them. We have friends we enjoy. Even though there are concerns and troubles, we are blessed with a good life and support. I am grateful for all of these things.

Looking ahead to 2010

I'm thinking about quilting goals for next year already. Do I want to try to concentrate on completing UFOs? Do I want to focus on stashbusting? Is that really a goal for me? Do I want to set a number of yards to use? Should I at least try to use more than I buy? I know I don't want to do a "no buy" challenge - I like to get some new fabric now and again at least. I have been finding that I'll go into the LQS and come out without buying anything as often as not anymore. I will tend to buy at least something when I go to a quilt shop that isn't my usual store. Maybe since I see things that are different than what my local store carries.

Back to my original question:
I like to plan to work on UFOs. It makes me feel good to finish something that's in the stack. And I have so many things that just need quilting, or borders and quilting - they're almost done. I at least want to focus on those things. And I want to make sure that anything new I start gets finished.

Maybe my first goal should be to try to carve more hours out of every day.....hmmmm.