Another Valentine Cat Doll

My last cat doll for this Valentine's Day:

I just finished this up this morning.  I have to run for groceries and then I'll pull backing fabrics for my cat dolls and get them ready to sew up.  I don't think I can get them stuffed until I get to JoAnn's tomorrow for polyester fiberfill. 

Stitching Valentines

The week between Christmas and New Year's is always busy for me.  My cousin has some time off of work so I get enjoy an extra day with her.  Scott and I like to go our antique malls where I always find a few little goodies to use on my crazy quilts for the upcoming year.  Then there's my annual trip to the big Super JoAnn's on New Years Eve.  We have a small JoAnn's here in McHenry but the Queen Mother of JoAnn's stores is in Algonquin.  Lot's of traffic between here and there so I always ask Scott to take me there for a nice shopping spree on New Year's Eve.  Talk about living the high life huh?  LOL!!!!

On New Years Day, I do my end of year paperwork and then mom and dad come over.  We order Chinese and mom and I sit and make our plans for our Etsy products for the upcoming 6 months.

I'm still stitching up Valentines.  I love Valentine's Day and I love making things for Valentine's Day.  Here's one of my projects that I finished up this past week:

I'll probably spend all day on Wednesday sewing my Valentine's together.  Then I'll have to stuff them all and get them ready to list at Etsy next weekend.  Not sure I can get everything done by next weekend but I'm willing to give it the old collage try!

In other news, Lesson One of my Color And Composition Classes will be released first thing Tuesday morning, January 1st.  Be sure to stop by here that morning if you're planning on taking my classes.  I'll post a direct link over to Magcloud where you can order either the digital version or a hard copy.

I guess that's my news for today everyone.  Hope you all had a nice Christmas and hope you're having a great weekend!

Merry Christmas To All!

Just wanted to take a moment to wish each of my sweet blog readers, a very Merry Christmas! 

If by any chance you eat too much Chocolate, just tell yourself it's a food group!  That's what I do!!!  LOL!

Christmas Cat Tales

I didn't get much stitching done since yesterday so I thought I'd share another one of my cat tales with you!

I've posted photos of my Hoosier cabinet before but I never shared the story of how my cats have always loved to get inside of it:

This was the first piece of antique furniture that Scott and I bought after we bought our house.  This poor Hoosier was covered in about 6 coats of paint!  It took us 3 months to strip all the old paint off of it and restore it to it's original condition.

Everything is original except for one hinge.  One was missing so we had to buy a reproduction.  It has the bread drawer, the flour bin/sifter, the original porcelain top and the working tambour door.  The only thing missing is the original bread board.

If you've never seen one of these wonderful old kitchen cabinets, you wouldn't believe how much storage space there is in one of them!  I store my crocheted doilies and decorative towels in the drawers and in the big cabinet underneath, I keep my vintage tablecloths and tablerunners.

My cats have always loved this cabinet.  My little Simba used to sit by that big door and fiddle with the latch until he got it open!  I still miss seeing him sitting there.  My Garfield used to love to crawl inside too.  He always made a mess.  He pushed everything out to make room for his big orange butt!  Still miss him too.

Nightmare doesn't bother to pull anything out.  He just crawls in, pushes things around a little bit and makes himself right at home:

If you've never had a cat, they can be quite amusing!

While I had the camera out, I took a few more photos to share with you, just for fun.  You may have noticed the towels on my Hoosier cabinet:

These are towels are vintage, probably from the 1950's.  I bought them at an antique mall a few years back for $10.00.  I'm assuming they were a set of 2 towels available as a kit.  There are little rhinestones in the stars and there's metallic gold thread in the words.

I saw a very similar set with angels at a flea market not long ago but the seller wanted $40.00 for the set.  I know my prices for vintage linens and refused to pay that much for them.  But the style was identical to these so they were probably by the same manufacturer.

These stitching on these towels is absolute perfection:

Next on the tour of my dining room, is my vintage Christmas tablecloth on my kitchen table which you really can't see but it's another one of our antique refinishes:

I paid $40.00 for this oak table complete with 2 leaves (sp?) which make it into a nice big oval table and with 4 lion's feet on the bottom:

My mother hates the lions feet!  She said that in the old days, everything had lions feet on it.  I love the lions feet!

Anyway, that's my dining room:

The runner down the middle was made by mom as were the doilies.  The candle holders are vintage.  Found the set at an antique shop for $5.00.  I love bargains and I love the thrill of the hunt!  Oh and my pressed back chairs are all vintage too and unmatched which I love!  We paid between $15 and $20 for each of them.  Which goes to show, that nice things don't have to cost a lot of money.

Well, I hope you enjoyed my cat tale and my dining room tour!
 

Newtown, Connecticut

Mom, Kathi and I would like say that our thoughts and prayers are with the Newtown, Connecticut community today.