Merry Christmas form the Beautiful Doors of Huntsville

I hope this finds all of you having a wonderful holiday and a very Merry Christmas to those of you who celebrate this day! We are in Huntsville with our family.  If you have followed this blog you know how much I love older homes.  Huntsville is full of beautiful old homes! Yesterday was just beautiful , warm and sunny so the SBA and I went for a walk and took pictures of the doors and homes.  I hope you will enjoy!

I want this house! It was built in 1823.  Do you think I can move it to Seattle????!!!!

And this is even much more valuable than any house could ever be!!!!!! Merry Christmas!

Christmas Cross Stitch

Thanks so much to those of you who looked at my last post on my Christmas decorating. The SBA(super blog assistant-he loads the photos) and I bought a camera for our Christmas gift to each other.  Blogging has made me so much more interested in taking pictures.  Do any of you feel the same?  Anyway, I was practicing with the new camera and decided to show you all the Christmas cross stitch that I have up in the house.  I'm not gong to identify each one.  If you have questions, let me know and I will try to find any information you might need about a particular design.

 This ornament is very special.  Last summer I gave Chris ,over at the blog Tot Hill Farm Stitches, a chart.  I received this adorable ornament in the mail a few days ago as a thanks.  Chris, I love it!!! It is happily hanging on my tree. The rest of the photos will be just a cross stitch tour.

Lastly, this is what we woke up to this morning.  Our first snow.   We will be leaving to head South soon. I will blog when I can but want to take this opportunity to wish, those of you who celebrate Christmas, a very Merry one.  And may the rest of you have a wonderful winter holiday break.

Some Holiday Decorating

Thank you so much for the nice comments about my PS Santa.  I have noticed that you pick out a pattern you like, but when it is stitched up it is always so much prettier than the photo.  Santa is like that.  He is now sitting on an end table looking very handsome!  If you read the article I posted yesterday, you will notice that it is gone.  I learned that it was a hoax.  I still agree with much of what the article said but don't want to continue a hoax on Morgan Freeman. We, as a nation ,are  still so sad.  I debated whether or not to do a happy post.  Last year my New Year's resolution was to live out two ideas which are the same.  One being, "This is the day the Lord has made, let us rejoice and be glad in it" or the Hallmark version " The Magic of Ordinary Days. " So I hope you will enjoy this post.  It shows my Christmas decorating and stitching in the kitchen and dining room."

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I love these antique "fairy lights". In Victorian times they were hung on Christmas trees.

I showed these jars at Halloween, now they are ready for Christmas. Green pasta, Christmas tree pasta, red berries ,and green lentils.

More holiday pasta, wasabi peas(they look like snow covered green berries), red beans and candy canes.

This old wooden bowl has been in my family for at least 3 generations.

My Woolpets are all ready!(Thank you Laurie and Kevin)

I stitched this while we were moving out here.  The linen is so big you could do it in the car quite easily.

An oop Prairie Schooler .

Several years ago my daughter knitted this for us.

Holly from my BIL's home.

One of my favorite antiques.

This china is called ,"Winter's Eve"  I like it because you can enjoy it all winter.

An onion  lantern with a cork whale oil burner from about 1830.

Santa sits in a very old high chair with the original red paint.

The little patriotic tree.  We started this tree when our Son joined the military.

I hope all of you will have a holiday season blessed with family and good friends.

A Finished Santa and the Garden

Thanks so much to all of you that made such nice comments about my SIL's Christmas decorating.  I know that she looked at the blog and really appreciated your comments. There are a few give-aways I want to mention.  Both Barbara at "To Stitch or Not to Stitch" and Terri at "Dixie Sampler" have great give-aways going on.  Speaking of winning, I won a wonderful little kit from Mary Ann at "Just Stitching".  Thank you so much Mary Ann!   I finished the PS Santa last night.  He  turned out great.  I will be putting him in one of my frames as soon as we get him stretched.  I am now experimenting with 40 count.  What do think about that count?  For those of you who have stitched on it, is it hard on your eyes?  I usually stitch on 32 count.  Maybe 36 count would be a good compromise.  I'd love to hear your opinions.  I'm just doing a small design to see how it feels.  I want to stitch Mary Gibson  but she will be very big on the 32 count.  We had a break in our ever present rain so I shot a few photos in the yard.  I hope you enjoy them .  I know you are all busy, I hope you find time this week-end to relax and enjoy the beauty of the season!

 PS Santa from  The Santa Collection III 1996.

Here is the kit from Mary Ann.

I love that little tree.  I think this kit is going to make a small ornament.

A view of the decorated house.  You see very few wreaths on windows out here.

There are also very few candles in windows.  I love that look.  Guess it's my Mid-West roots!

Doesn't this rose know it is December??

I love the look of the contorted filbert.  Those little green things are its flowers.(I think)

The flowers of the Garrya, an evergreen shrub.

I love the bark on our paperbark maple.

Mid winter fire-this is especially beautiful in the snow!

Welcome to the garden. St. Francis is watching over everything.  My Dad always had a St. Francis in his yard.  This is in his honor.

Wishing you an early Merry Christmas with my red and green pyracantha.

Have a great week-end!