Happy Holidays

Finished this Prairie Schooler ornament design this weekend.  Want to start a new tradition of making at least one cross stitched ornament each year.  Prairie Schooler has so many great santa designs too!

Ever since receiving these darling ornaments last year, I have wanted to decorate a kitchen tree. 

When I found the cookie cutters last summer thought they would look perfect on the kitchen tree.

Couldn't resist this unusual doily at an antique store recently, and I can never pass up an old army blanket at a good price!  Want to share our favorite holiday cookie recipe with you.

Orange Cookies

1 cup butter (softened)

3 1/2 cups flour

1 1/2 cups sugar

8 ounces sour cream

1 egg

1 T. orange peel

1/3 cup orange juice

1 t. baking powder

1/4 t. salt

Beat butter until fluffy.  Add half of the flour, and mix in sugar, sour cream, egg, orange peel, orange juice, baking powder and salt.  Stir in remaining flour.  Bake at 375 degrees on greased baking sheet.

Orange Icing

3 cups powdered sugar

2 T. butter

1 t. orange peel

3-4 T. orange juice

Mix all together and frost cookies with orange icing when cool.

Hope you are all having the merriest of holidays and have time to get a few stitches in! 





Signature Quilts

My mother-in-law received this signature quilt from her Mother when she got married in 1941.  The quilt contains embroidered signatures of her relatives, some of whom I have met.  Capitola and Clell Gray's signatures are there - they attended our wedding 30 years ago.  Wish I had gotten to know them better.  Adren Denny's signature is there - we purchased his house years ago, and our oldest daughter now lives there.  My husband's grandparents, William and Edna Green, have their signatures included and it was so fun to see my husband's surprised expression when he realized this.  The quilt is so precious to us and will be passed along to our daughters someday.

I recently participated in a signature block swap with 20 other online friends, and am looking forward to including their signed blocks in a quilt.  Lots of ideas for making the quilt are coming to mind, including adding the signature blocks to house blocks, star blocks or maybe a crazy quilt.  These blocks contain memories of happy times getting to know people who I may never meet from all over the world, and from several U.S. states.  Have you made a signature quilt and how did you decide to include the signatures?