Last Minute...

Today we will be trying to finish up our shopping.  It's so last minute!  We do this every year though and it's a pain, but what can you do?  I still haven't wrapped a single present either.  It's kind of a tradition to wait until Christmas Eve, we put the kids to bed and we wrap while we watch a movie.  We have Fright Night, so that will probably be this years movie.  It has Colin Farrell, David Tennant and Anton Yelchin so it better be good.  But, I am pretty easy to please when it comes to Vampire movies so I am sure I will like it!

I finished up my handmade gifts, I didn't end up doing some of what I had planned though.  I took a local custom job and I worked on that one day.  It was pretty simple, just putting a 2" hem in the top and bottom of a 13 yard length of felt for a local contractor.  I happened to be waiting behind him in line at the fabric cut counter at Joann last week when he was asking the cutting lady if she knew anyone local who could do it.  I gave him my card and got a simple custom job!  It was a lot up getting up and down to fiddle with the length of the fabric, it was a bit unwieldy, but I managed to get it done in just a couple hours.  So, back to my handmade gifts...I ended up making 3 tote bags and a rice filled heating pad.  I didn't get the pillow cases done, but with the kids home, it made doing it on the sly a little hard!  I will probably just make them next week.

I worked on this all day yesterday and I have it almost all put away!

I ended up with just this left in the house.  The bottom 2 tubs have my cotton fabric that I am going to  use for quilts in 2012 and the top tub has boxes of tools and hand stitching supplies and my notebooks, etc..  The bottom basket has my boxes of thread, tags and misc bobbins and stuff.  The top basket is full of the stuff I keep right by my machine all the time.  The pink box on the floor has some interfacing and stuff that's listed in my Etsy store.  The round basket is just full of misc. stuff that I can't decide where to put and the wire basket has my sewing and quilting books.

I put 4 HUGE (Like 60 - 80 gallon) tubs and 4 smaller (40 gallon) tubs in the garage.  All my decorator weight fabric and misc cotton and all my other supplies are in them.  I labeled them all so I can find things easily if I need them.  I have my machine packed into its rolling case for now and I just have to decide where to put this stuff when I am not using it!  I threw away 2 trash bags of decorator weight scraps and I have a big tub plus a full shopping bag full of scraps that I am dropping off to a friend today!

I am gearing up for 2012 and working on my sewing goals for the year.  I will tell you this, I had goals for 2011 and I didn't complete most of them!  Most of that is due to the fact that I was so busy with custom work that I didn't have time to sew for myself.  2012 is going to be the year of sewing for fun!  The girls (Heather, Amanda, Lisa, Nikki) and I are going to be working on some fun stuff.  Heather scoped out the books for us and we decided on this one, The Civil War Diary Quilt.  I think it's going to be a good learning experience for me to work on this kind of project.  I want to work on this through out the year and I also want to work on blocks for a quilt like this one.   It's called a Japanese + and x quilt.  I am pretty excited to get to work on it too!

Well, I have TONS to do today and a family Christmas party tonight so I better run.

Merry Christmas Eve Eve!!