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!

A Headless Santa and A Beautiful Home

Thanks so much to those of you who took a walk with me around Poulsbo!  I so appreciated it.  Today I'm going to show you a beautiful home as well as my progress on the PS Santa.  Yesterday the SBA and I traveled north of Seattle to visit his Brother and SIL.  We always have such a great time with them.  Well, my SIL is a wonderful decorator and I have never made it up to their home at Christmas.  I knew it would be amazing and I was not disappointed!  I told her it could definitely be in a magazine!!
 As for the Santa, well I started in the middle and worked down so he is coming along nicely but is still with out his head! Maybe tonight Santa.  Hope the week end has been wonderful for all of you and you enjoy the photos! Christmas is coming so fast!

 I do love the birds and flowers!

 He has a sack full of sunflowers, my kind of Santa!

Here is the entrance to this beautiful home. 

 A dining room hutch

There were many of these deep red poinsettias around the house in various places.

Every nook had  the Christmas spirit!

This marked the entrance to a warm inviting living room.

Even the gifts matched a lovely color scheme.  Plus they were real gifts, not just decorated boxes!

Thanks guys for a wonderful day!!

A Christmas Walk Around Poulsbo

You all  said so many nice things about the Christmas Garden.  I appreciate it so very much!! I'm having fun with the PS Santa.  However, I'm already planning the next big one.  I have gone through my sampler charts and right now it looks like it will be Mary Gibson.  I love the houses in that sampler.  I will have to get fabric and threads together. Today was a very nice day so we decided to go into town (Poulsbo) and take some photos.  We noticed on Sun. that many of the shops were all decked out for the season.  I hope you enjoy seeing our little town!

This is the view going into Poulsbo from our home.

 You can see this from a side street in town.

What season is this??!!

 Our favorite coffee shop.

 From the main street. The name is Front Street.

 This is a restaurant where summer dining is so nice outside.

 This shop belongs to an artist who is famous for her rain designs.

Just a little house on a side street.

 This is a common winter resident, the female bufflehead diving duck.(I think!)

This gull thought it was a bit cold.  It was all puffed up.

Hope you are all having a wonderful week!

A "Christmas Garden " finish

I 'm glad many of you enjoyed seeing Pike Place Market in it's Christmas finery.  If it had not been raining, there would have been more photos. I did make my deadline and finished CG on Fri. night!  Yesterday I washed it and got it ready for framing.  The SBA(super blog assistant-he loads the photos) is my framer.  So now I have to wait till he is in the mood.  He's actually a great help and will probably do it soon.  On another note, last night we went to see The Irish Rovers Christmas Concert.  It was great.  If you like Irish music and get a chance to see them, go for it! I have also included in this post my next project. I'm doing a PS Santa. I need a small project for a change.  I'm beginning to think about my next big project.  This year I want to do more reproduction or at least that type of samplers. I hope you all have had a terrific week-end!

 I just placed the frame over the piece.  Sometimes you get a better picture without the glass anyway.

I am so glad that I decided to stitch the alphabet.  I got the idea from another blog, "A Gentleman's Sampling" .  Then I googled the idea and found many people wanted to do the same thing.   Some even skipped that part altogether. The initials that you see belong to our parents.

I have fallen in love with the color GA Heirloom Gold.  Please notice this magnificent frame from Valley House Primitives.  It goes so well with the colors in this design! Due to our light, all the photos are a bit darker than they actually appear. We have had DAYS!!! of rain and dark!

Here is the next project.  See the Santa with the sunflower. If I stitch him on 32ct. he will fit into one of my faux finished 5x7 frames.

This time of year we all  here in the Pacific NW need a bit of sun and cheer. So this design seemed perfect.

I wish you all a wonderful week ahead!

Pike Place Market at Christmas

First, I want to thank all of you who made such nice comments about the mountains and water blog post I did.  I'm really glad we got out that day.  We've had rain ever since, no more beautiful views!! A short while ago , Beth at the blog "Garden Grumbles and Cross Stitch Fumbles" did a wonderful blog about Pike Place Market in Seattle.  This is almost a short add on to Beth's post.  My DD and I went to the city on Wed. We took the bus around the city.  Laurie lived in Seattle for awhile and knows the bus system very well.  We first went to her favorite book store(sorry I forgot to take photos).  It's an amazing children's book store.  Laurie collects old children's books.  After shopping there we decided to go to the Market for lunch and then catch the ferry home.  I was pleasantly surprised to see the Market decorated for Christmas.  I hope you enjoy seeing the festive pictures. We had a super day! By the way, I think I'll finish "the Christmas Garden" tonight!!!! One day ahead of my deadline!!

The brass pig is sort of a mascot to the market.  That is the only reason I can think of that they had these holiday pigs on top of the roof. (Our restaurant looked down on the Market)  Great for taking pictures. This was at the entrance to the Market,

 The famous sign.

 My favorite things at the market are the flower stands!

 

I didn't know they sold trees at the market! Definitely not a huge supply.

I hope you all have a wonderful week-end !  I am hoping to have a finished CG to show you tomorrow!

Snow on theMountains

Today's post is dedicated to the beautiful place we call home.  The SBA had an early appointment in town .  When he came home he said this is the day to take our mountain photos.  We have had a sunny spell but the mountains always seem to have a few too many clouds.  This morning they were beautiful.  While we got a week of rain, the mountains got their first covering of snow.What you see in these pictures, I can see on my way to a grocery store.  We feel lucky and so blessed to live in this beautiful place.

 The Olympic Mountains!

The incredible thing about this place is that you have the sea as well as the mountains. These gulls were busy eating dead salmon that had made their trip up stream from the sound.

 The heron is hungry too.

An inlet of Puget Sound

All these were taken within 15 minutes of our house.  Have a great week!