more Christmas photos

 Christmas lights in London

 Boxing Day walk

 some were a little too tired to walk

stocking time

Christmas Day

Christmas morning breakfast

 

Uncle Ben did some good wrapping

primrose loved the tinkerbell pom poms that Maggie made for her feet

princess dresses were a hit...thankfully

little elf Gilby ready for church

Grandpa's decorations made by the twins

Christmas Eve

Christmas Eve photo's...making and decorating the gingerbread house.....

Maggie enjoying the Christmas carousel....  

supper time....

 Uncle Ben brought balloons that light up!

Happy Christmas and a Blessed New Year
to all my friends
With love

no snow for us this year, this was taken of my daughters a couple of years ago..they were going to sledge down the moat around the castle near our house :) 

love in action

Here are my Grandsons with Angel....a little girl of two that the family was taking care of yesterday. Angel is HIV+ but with her medication the virus is almost undetectable. Please pray for her healing. Also below is an article taken from their church website about a trip with my daughter Vashti to the shelter...her place of 'work'

Love in Action – Shelter Visit

15 October , 2012

On Thursday 18th October seventeen ladies from Hillside Church accompanied Vashti Downs on a visit to the homeless Shelter on Pickering Street, near Point Road in Durban. We took "love hampers" collected together by ladies who were not able to join us – gift bags with toiletries and chocolates – and spent time praying and connecting with the ladies and children. (The men in the Shelter were pretty jealous and wanted to know if we would bless and pray fro them too!) Tanya Tedder tells us how the visit impacted her:

"Amazingly I was not afraid at all! Beforehand I prayed that God would allow me to have a significant encounter with just one person and God responded by giving Melinda and myself a heart-to-heart connection with a whole family – a precious family of six people living in one tiny “room”. My heart broke for them. There was one very small bed and the three older children slept on the cold hard, concrete floor. Whilst we were there, I saw a number of cockroaches crawling up the wall, and apparently rats crawl over them while they sleep. And yet, they were a loving, close knit family: a husband and wife who were childhood sweethearts and have been married for 22 years. Due to circumstances, they found themselves jobless and homeless. They have been living in this particular shelter for about two years with their four children ranging from 3 months to 11 years. They pay a shocking R60 rand a night to stay there (that's R1800 a month for a dirty cubicle that is not even secure against theft). They are not allowed to be in the shelter during the day so they have to take the four children out and walk the streets begging for food and for enough money to pay for the next night's rent.

 For me, it was a life-changing encounter. As long as I live I will never forget this brave, loving family who despite the most difficult of circumstances had hope in their eyes. Emam is a Muslim man and he accepted our prayers with sincerity and humility. He has been searching for a job to be able to support his family and get them out of the shelter. We asked him what his dream job was, and he said he would love to get a job in welding. That is his passion and his skill. We are trusting that these prayers will be answered. They said that they had met a Christian man on the street the day before (a complete stranger) and that everything that Melinda and I had said or prayed for was exactly what this man had said. We believe that God wanted to remind this family that he loved them; that he had not forgotten about them; to give them hope. I will never forget seeing God’s love for this precious family and they will remain in my heart and in my prayers. I will definitely go back to the Shelter.  Vashti, I salute you. It was a privilege to be a part of your dream."

aagh....

If you ever, ever see me posting on here that I am about to make any item at all which may resemble a princess dress or anything made from this awful fabric....please stop me!!

princess dresses

At this moment in time I am very glad we don't have any more than two princesses in our family.....

princess dresses

So I am not going to talk about the Christmas craft fair apart from to say our stall was in a rubbish spot and we got hardly any passing trade :(

Now to this week....below is the beautiful fabric I have bought to make two princess dresses. Bearing in mind I don't have a specific pattern this could be a frustrating week or it could go smoothingly well...we will see.

have a lovely, blessed Sunday!

two angels & a shepherd

Frosty morning over Berkhamsted...so much colder than any year that we have been here. 

The children were angels and a shepherd at their church nativity the photo shows them all a little bedraggled, opening their advent calendars 

kitchen bundles

I have been getting items together for the Christmas Craft Fair that I will be doing with a friends on Saturday. I made some tea towels from a pair of vintage curtains, knitted some more cotton dishcloths and put tied them together with a wooden kitchen brush. they should make a nice little gift for someone and if I don't sell them I will find someone else to give them to :)

baby quilt

I have just finished this baby quilt. Its made from lovely soft cotton from Susie Watson Designs in Malborough. 

I have machine quilted the top two layers around each square, backed with fine calico and then tied quilted that layer with the top and wadding. It has a very snuggly feeling :)

I haven't finished anything that I am making this week so I have stolen some of my daughters photo's. The top three are taken by my daughter in Devon, their house is within walking distance from where these views were taken. The bottom two are of my beautiful grandsons. The top one is of Jesse on the left with his friend after a game of baseball and the bottom one of Joseph doing his school work. I don't get many photo's of the boys so am quick to share when I do :)

book lights

We bought the twins these little book lamps for their birthday...I have one on my kindle (without the princess)

This is what their mother found when she peeped in on them.

Clearly a good gift!

getting ready

So they went chopped down their Christmas tree then sorted through the decorations...I can only imagine the excitement

girls

I do have a couple of funny granddaughters. They love to dress up in fancy clothes. I'm not sure where they got these 'fur' coats from, probably a charity shop, but they clearly love them!

christmas stockings

In a couple of weeks I will be sharing a stall in a Christmas market with a friend. I thought I had better make a few items to sell. I have cut out some lovely red fabrics to make a fourth stocking but am now wilting a little...may go and make a cuppa....

vintage fabric quilt...finished

I have finished the vintage fabric quilt that I was asked to make for someone. To keep the cost down I used fabrics from my stash and a vintage sheet that I had for the back. All the quilting was done on the machine and the only hand stitching was one side of the binding. It has a pretty snuggly feel to it :)

 I find it hard to hang quilts and keep them flat at the same time...making the lines look wonky