Into the dawn of a New Year

I always grow thoughtful at this time of year.

Who among us doesn't ?

A time to reflect.

Pray for mercy,

peace  ~

and good health for all we know and love.

Dream of days filled with happy stitching.

Holidays to come.

Friends and family all around.

Music and laughter.

Less suffering and sorrow in this weary world.

And most of all,

being thankful for all of God's goodness to us.

A blessed 2013 to you all.



Love and stitches,

Anita xxxx

This beauteous season

It's been the most wonderful time.

Apart from the fact I had not a minute to stitch before the festive season began.

Next week though,

I'm off on a whole weeks leave and I will stitch more Christmas lovelies!


On Christmas Eve,

Santa arrived early,

bringing these.

From my dear friend Isobel, who has the most wonderful patterns, thread keepers and Etsy shop.

These are the hand painted thread keepers I bought from her store

Aren't they so pretty? They are hand painted. Such talent!

These are my favourite photos from Christmas

I hope you are all well and have had a blessed Christmas time with your loved ones.

Here's to plenty of stitching time in twenty thirteen !

Love and stitches,

Anita xxxx

At morning, wrapped in frost

We woke this morning to another beautiful,

frosty Sunday morning.

Yesterday we had a lovely day out to our new ( £6 million to build)

Titanic centre with my son and his girlfriend.

We had lovely nibbles before we left and

I gave them this as a Christmas present

They were thrilled and couldn't notice any of the million mistakes I'd made lol.

I'm loving these frosty, silent days.

However yesterday my heart was aching because of the  tragic events at the school in Connecticut.

It beggars belief that a young man can take guns

( which unbelievably were registered to his mom!)

Kill her,

and then go on to kill teachers and little ones.

One of those,

Charlotte Bacon, was the grand-daughter of a missionary family from Overseas Missionary Fellowship,

( with whom I've been involved with for many years.)

So close to Christmas,

all those little gifts that won't be opened on Christmas Day.

It's hard to make sense of it all.

I have to continue holding on to my hope as a Christian however,

that God never intended for us to live in a fallen, broken world.

And that at this time of year,

the coming of Jesus reminds me that He came to make things right again.

I hope you are well dear friends

and as I am, in the words of President Obama...

hugging my kids a little tighter.

Love and stitches

Anita xxx

Stitching with stars

It's the season of love and hope 

I love clementines and they always taste lovelier at Christmas

I always have a candle of hope at my window

My messy Christmas baking

My grandma's old scales

Nigella!

Darling hubby preparing my cake tin in the middle of all the chaos :)

A blurry shot because the light was low :)

Hello dear friends.

I was * hoping * to have some pictures of my finished and framed pieces for you to see, 

but my framer ain't done yet!

This is such a busy time of year, I haven't had time to lift a needle!

I've been baking up a storm in my kitchen, Christmas cakes  

( is there any nicer smell than a Christmas cake baking ? .. )

Oh and making cranberry sauce.

Nigella, thank you for all your wonderful books. I'd be lost without you.

I love these days.

Spices filling the air,

Carols and mittens and the promise of a few days off soon.

I treated myself to some beautiful thread keepers,

from my new favourite fellow stitcher  Isabelle 

I'll post some shots when they arrive :))

Oh, the title of my  blog has changed, AGAIN !

I found that my previous one was very common on the Google search engine.

And I like to be unique!

Hope you like it.

I hope you are all well dear friends.

Kisses and stitches,

Anita 

The first snow

Well, not exactly.

However,

I live in hope.

Part of me wishes for the snow of twenty ten,

but our city is not prepared for a snowfall like that.

We had a water crisis and the head of our water board lost his job~

because he handled the situation so poorly.


I vowed that year I would never  again take for granted

water and lovely hot showers.

And I haven't.

Stitching wise I started a design by Zaza Pique.

Then my material started to fray and I had to bin it, grr.

Bless Amazon, I was able to buy fray away there,

it's a glue that dries transparent and does exactly what it says on the bottle.

Stops your material from fraying.

I'm not savvy enough with sewing to use a machine ( I have a wee one in a drawer somewhere :)

and I'm too lazy to sew around the edge by hand lol.

WAIT!

I have been to the framers to have three pieces framed.

Viv , my framer is going off to the Christmas market in Prague on Monday,

so won't start them until she gets home.

Sheesh.

Some people. :)

Pictures when she gets those babies done.

Can you believe December is here already?

I'm loving the frost filled mornings.

The leaves that look like they have been dusted with sparkling lace.

Hot Chocolate.

Carols.

Twinkle lights.

And the fact that Jesus loved us enough,

to come as a little baby for us.

I hope you are all well dears,

and enjoying these lovely days.

Love and stitches,

Anita xxx

Sleigh bells ring

Ta da!

Sleigh bells is FINISHED!

Now to move on to working on another piece that

is definitely not on linen.

I loved the feeling of working on Linen but honestly there were so many mistakes

I felt such a failure!

So, a picture of a very imperfect piece of sewing is coming your way

after the trip to the framers.

Can you believe that Christmas is almost here?

I can't!

This year has flown past so quickly .

My next project is this one and you can see the finished work here at

All the beautiful things . It's a lovely blog by Loreta that I think you will enjoy.

I'm doing the picture of the little girl holding the paper chain that says * Joyeaux Noel*.

The pattern is from a French designer that I love , Zaza Pique

you can find her beautiful patterns here.

Hope you are well dears

and not too stressed at the thought of Christmas just around the corner

Love and stitches

Anita 

All in a November day

Aren't these Autumn days so lovely? 

The trees spilling their leaves onto the waiting earth.

Weddings. 

Movings. 

Life.

This is my best friend. Isn't she lovely ?

A few weeks ago I went down to our beautiful city Cathedral (St Anne's )

 and took some shots of a family wedding my best friend  was  attending. 

Aren't her girls so pretty?

It's been an emotional week.

My youngest son moved into a beautiful new apartment with my darling American daughter :)

As we were saying goodbye I had a flash back to the day I brought him home from the hospital.

How quickly the years slip by!

People keep saying think of the lower electric bills and food bills

but  a mothers heart doesn't really think that way, does it? 

So today I'm having a mommy day.

Sewing and relaxing and staying in my jammies as long as I dare.

Here's how * Sleigh bells ring* is coming along.

There are more mistakes than I care to point out.

Life is like that. 

Full of mistakes, imperfections~ but I guess that's what makes it so unique! 

I hope you are all enjoying everything that life brings.

All in  a November day.

Love and stitches always,

Anita 

Isn't this lovely?

And aren't these the prettiest mittens? 

I loved the word mittens from an early age. 

To my five year old heart the word envoked feelings of security and warmth and love.

All because of a teacher who instilled in me a love of words from that tender age.

I've been busy, my youngest son is flying the nest next Saturday.

We are living in a sea of cardboard boxes.

I try every night to get a little sewing  done, even if the light is poor.

It makes me happy and relaxed!

I hope you are all enjoying a lovely weekend.

I'll post more pictures of * sleigh bells ring * soon.

Love and stitches, 

Anita xxx

Sleigh bells ring, are you listening?

I was born warm.

Ok, not really ...

but I am warm ALL the time.

It's my age, my chubbiness.

Working in a hospital to me ~

is akin to  sitting in an oven on a summer's day

while  someone blow drys my hair.

Is it any wonder then that I love snowy weather?

When my son's girlfriend came to live with us almost two years ago,

she brought the snow.

It was the heaviest snowfall the UK had seen in quite a few years.

This made me happy.

She makes me happy.

This shot was taken two years at our five star hotel in  Belfast,

the Merchant.

We had gone for afternoon tea  

and had the loveliest of days.

What was I saying?

Oh yes.

Snow.

I'm enjoying stitching this

Working on linen is quite the challenge.

I love the words.

Sleigh bells ring! 

It reminds of that wonderful snowy Christmas.

That  a certain little snow bunny 

came from the sunshine state to be with us.

These days have been busy.

But packed with love and laughter.

A lovely friend bought me these because she know I love to sew, sew, sew.

And knit, when time allows.

Aren't they such cuties?

I'm off now to get a few stitches sewn before dinner.

Here's a little something for Y'all.

Kisses and stitches ( still got to change that title :)

Anita xxx

All the little fairies

At last!

The chickens are finished :)

Time for a new project!

I finished this tonight ( Thanks Zaza :)

I'm so excited to get started on something Christmassey 

I've decided to overlook Hallowe'en completely.

I'm so so nervous about sewing on linen and evenweave

 I get an anxiety attack every time I think of it.

( Not really, just kidding. :)

However I am nervous 

as I've spent my hard earned dosh on three pieces of material 

that I have no idea what to do with!

* Sighs*

I wish a cross stitch fairy would come and teach me.

Oh and of course I need a French speaking cross stitch fairy too, 

as my French cross stitch magazines 

 arrived in the post today.

I hope you are well, dears, 

and loving every little stitch you make.

Have a wonderful weekend! 

Kisses and stitches,

Anita xxx

All the pretty days

Where do all the pretty days go?

The time whizzes by, 

taking care of my family, 

cooking and clearing,

loving the colours of fall,

and of course; stitching when I can.

Today was one of those days,

we met my eldest son in town for

fabulous pumpkin spiced lattes

( Thank you Starbucks for bringing them to the UK :)

and then a  little Christmas shopping as Andrew is heading to the

States later in the year.

Isn't he handsome? All 6'3 of him :)

This is where we sat in the sun having our coffee 

My darling husband, I think he is gorgeous too :)

This is our favourite Deli in our city centre 

Now home to 

( hopefully )

finish this 

and enjoy the rest of all the pretty days

When Christmas comes

                                       



                                           
                                          Don't you love it when things arrive in the post?

                                        I was squeaking with happiness when these lovely

                                                             things arrived today.

The threads for the lovely Zaza Picque design

The magazine that *almost*cost me £30 :)

Little house Needleworks charts and threads

These threads have the prettiest names!

And finally, my first finish of Twenty twelve!

Ta da! 

I give you ... * drum roll please*

New York Sampler 

I'm such an inexperienced stitcher but I so pleased

 with the final outcome!

Now if only the weekend was here. 

I want to bake pumpkin cookies 

and fill the house with all the scents of Autumn, 

and of course spend as much time stitching as possible ...

May the weekend come quickly for you too !

Stitches and kisses, 

Anita xxx