Looking Ahead

Christmas has come and gone for another year, much to Frankie’s chagrin.  No sooner had he gotten used to all the ‘new’ Christmas-y things that invaded ‘his’ space when it was time to pack them away.  *wink*

Although it wasn’t in the forecast, we had a beautiful white Christmas.  It snowed almost all day on Friday, the 23rd and the entire day on Christmas Eve.  Here is what it looked like out our back door just after daybreak on Christmas morning.

How many times have you said to yourself that you wish it would snow on Christmas Eve and be gone a few days later?  I guess we have to be careful what we wish for, huh?

And here is the same view this morning…only five days later… at around the same time of day.

We’ve had amazingly mild temperatures for the past three or four days with lots of rain and high winds and in the blink of an eye, the snow vanished. 

The grass has remained green because we haven’t had many nights to speak of where the temperature has dipped to below freezing.

Even Mac prefers the outdoors without snow because there are more places for him to sniff and explore.

This morning while Mr. Painted Quilt was at the gym, I decided to put Christmas to bed for 2011.

The antique poinsettia quilt on our bed has been replaced with this Lemoyne Star , pieced by me and quilted by my friend Nancy who is in China for the next two years because of her husband’s job.  Miss you, Nancy!

Nancy did all the free motion quilting in my favorite motif…feathers!  The photos really do not do justice to the quilting.

And it’s ‘Frankie-approved!”

In our other house, I always referred to our guest bedroom as ‘Emily’s room”. 

Do we have a daughter named Emily?

No.

Then why Emily?

It’s a name that I’ve always loved and over the years, it just kind of evolved into a girl-child’s room.  After a few changes and additions, our Nova Scotia home is also ready for Emily…or anyone else for that matter…to pay us a visit.

When I unpacked more boxes a few weeks ago, familiar treasures from Emily’s room in Ontario began to reappear.

With a few nails here and a little folding there, the transformation started to take place.

Of course I had to put my Raggedy & Friends quilt on the bed, along with Miss Ann herself.

And here she is just settling down in her new digs to read a few chapters of her favorite book…

while surrounded by familiar things that were packed away for what seemed like a lifetime.

Home at last!

For those of you who might be new to my blog or are visiting for the first time, the Raggedy & Friends quilt was a free BOM that I designed and released about a year and a half ago.  The PDF files are still available to download on the right sidebar of my blog just by clicking on the individual links.

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And I really have to show you these neat labels that I ordered and received only a few days ago.  They are made from 100% natural cotton twill and the quality is wonderful.

They come in a roll as shown below and are very reasonably priced.

I started to compose this post around 10 a.m. and am just finishing it now. 

In the interim, our mail was delivered to our roadside box and I decided to run out to check if any of my orders had arrived.  No orders but a card was left indicating that there was a parcel waiting for me to be picked up at the post office.

I whined  asked Mr. PQ if he would drive me to the post office in town and I was thrilled to bits when I found out that the parcel was the one that Mary had posted on December 7th that we both thought had been lost in the mail.  The timing couldn’t have been better.

I am writing these next words with tears rolling down my cheeks…not because of what I am about to say…but because the wording on the plaque that Mary sent says it all.

The source to my cancer has been determined and treatments will commence on the 23 of this month.