February Book Club -- New Book Format

We were all too busy after the holidays to make it to our January Book Club meeting -- that happens every so often.  So our February date will be for our January book selection -- Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald.
It's our classic novel selection for this six month period.  I just love F. Scott Fitzgerald.  In fact, The Great Gatsby is one of my favorite books ever.  I have a new toy for reading books -- the Ipad!  It was a wonderful Christmas gift. 

I really love the Apple jacket for it.  I feel like it's protected.  Here is the book:

My page is bookmarked.

I am very new to this world of reading.  I've bought some books at Amazon, IGoogle books and figured out how to get on the waiting list for ebooks at our local library and downloaded that software.  I still love the feel of a book in my hand but this option if for portability.

January Craft Night

Our January craft night was at my house and it was my project.  I found this darling Valentine project in my Simply Handmade magazine.  There were some trials and tribulations associated with the project.  I went to Joann's to buy the frames and other materials.  You needed a frame, mat, crackle paint medium, white paint, scrapbook papers, glue (Tacky Glue is my favorite), scalloped scissors (we could find every other style so adapted) and some embellishments.  First problem was that all the frames were on sale except the frames I picked!  Then they ended up with a different finish on the wood and the paint wouldn't stick.  So we were off to Target to buy new frames that worked out fine (and were less expensive).  Our next challenge was rolling all these strips of paper and making them uniform sizes.  We did our best.  These are our finished projects.

This was my mom's and we think it looks the best.  The frame is 8 X 10" with a 5 X 7" mat opening.

This is mine, not sure it looks like a heart.  I think I could remove a couple of spirals to clean it up.

The last one is my sister's.  It sure looks pretty.  These were harder and trickier than we thought they would be.  My mom called the next day and said hers looked better the day after!

Amazing Pastel on Paper

This was a very special Christmas gift.  My daughter's high school friend is an artist and started a small business using her amazing talents.  My daughter took her a photograph and a pastel portrait was made from it.  The picture is from when our daughters were about two and three.  They were playing dress up with my nightgowns. 

I just love it!  You can see the tops of our nativity scene on the bottom.  We are redecorating our living room and this will be hung in a very special place.  It was the best gift ever!

This is a quilt I made during our now annual Lake Tahoe retreat.  It's called Stepping Stones and was a quick and easy pattern.  It's been in my stash since early 2009, looking for a good home.  Well, it found one.  One of our retreat group's daughters will run a children's summer camp in Uganda this June or July.  She is a senior in college and this is a graduation project.  She has to do all the fundraising for the camp costs.  So I sent her this quilt to use as a raffle item.  I am so impressed with her efforts and she is a remarkable young woman.  I think this beautiful quilt found the perfect purpose.  I wish her the best of luck!  We also made her another quilt at December's retreat and it's at the longarm quilter right now.

Beautiful Ballerinas

This was finished just in time to be wrapped for Christmas.  It was started in 2004 when my daughter was still in ballet 15-20 hours a week.  She was a beautiful dancer but high school became more demanding and she had to give up ballet.  This is a small wall hanging, paper pieced, and a much bigger project than anticipated.

Here are some close ups of the dancers.

This ballerina was missing a finger when I finished her so she had to have some repair work done.  Some of these pieces were TINY!

The ribbons on the costume waistbands was saved from the ribbons (hundreds of them I'm sure) I sewed on her pointe shoes.  I think the piece is darling and making it brought back many fabulous memories.