Christmas Spiders

Every year we three sisters make Christmas ornaments for the whole family. This year we met on Halloween weekend in Rockford and make spiders. Spiders for Christmas ? Check out the Legend of the Christmas Spider. How appropriate that on Halloween we were making spiders :-) I arrived in Rockford before the other two and while strolling through the mall found some little spider earrings at 50% off so had to buy us each a pair. So when we had our family Christmas gathering we all wore our spider earrings.

Any way - here is a photo of the spiders.
My sister made the little books with a very condensed version of the legend to go with the spiders.
The spiders are made of wire and beads - something different for us. The kit was designed to have 6 legs on the spider. My sister realize that after making 2 so we added to the ones already made and did the rest with 8 legs. Fortunately there was plenty of everything in the kits so we were able to make all 40 with 8 legs in red and green for Christmas.

Cross stitch houses

This is a house that I cross stitched for the Stitcher's Challenge at Quilts for Seniors.
There are 6 themes and each stitcher will stitch one square in each theme before the end of June.
If desired, the stitcher may stitch 2 squares for one of the themes and omit another one.

I chose to do 2 house squares and will not do one of the other themes. Both the house charts are from a kit that we used in 1994 for our family ornaments. I had a hard time deciding which 2 houses to stitch.




This is the other square. I know a lot of the older men have been volunteer firemen in their youth (or at least a lot of them that I know) and thought they would like a firehouse.

Family Get-together

Today is our family Christmas gathering. This is for my siblings, their children and grand-children - and tag-alongs like DD19's boyfriend. I am one of 7 children (6 are living).

A tradition that started in 1977 is to make ornaments for everyone in the family and any 'guests' that celebrate with us. This year we made ceramic stars, stamped with the City of David Stampin' Up stamp using Staz-on ink. Here is a picture of the whole group or 40. Potentially 39 of the 40 recipients could be here today.

Here is a closer shot showing all the colors. We had blue, green, orange, sepia and blazing red (which was more hot pink when we used it on the ornaments.

I chose to not hang them on the mantel or tree since we have marble tiles in that area and one little slip would mean a broken ornament. This was one of the easiest projects we have done. Our previous ornaments can be viewed at Webshots. The three sisters are 'in charge' of this and usually do the work. Several years other family members have helped out with their individual talents. Everyone looks forward to this little 'surprise' when we gather together.

My sisters and I made this over a "Sisters' Weekend" in Chicago. Here are my sisters working hard. One is stamping the ornaments and the other is inspecting them to make sure there are not smudges or blurry spots. Some of the ornaments had little dimples in the glaze which made the stamping a little more challenging.

This shows the ornaments drying before we packed them away.



These were by far one of the simplest ornament projects. This only took a couple hours so we had plenty of time to play games and watch movies.

Some years we spend the whole 12 months stitching in order to complete the ornaments in time. The only 'easier' years were when someone else took a turn. We already have plans for the next 2 years and both will be something we can do on a "Sisters' Weekend" (But I can't post anything here as some family members might read it and that would spoil the surprise)

Ornaments for Charity

I am a moderator for the Yahoo group CSFC (Cross-stitching for Charity). We do counted fross stitch items for many charities. One of our recent projects was stitching ornaments for The Busy Needle cross stitch shop's Diabetes Tree. They set up a tree in their shop to display donated ornaments and all money from the sale of the ornaments goes to local groups to help purchase diabetic supplies.
We sent over 45 ornaments. Some of the CSFC members finished the ornaments themselves while others sent me the cross-stitch square and I finished the ornament. I put music buttons in some of them.

These are the ones I stitched. I used a couple Frosty the Snowmen buttons, Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer, Joy to the World and Jingle Bells music buttons.

You can see more ornaments and all ofour projects at CSFC Webshots