In Between Holidays

We've been enjoying a relaxing and happy Thanksgiving break.  We had Thanksgiving dinner of homemade tamales, beans & rice, and apple and pumpkin pie with our friends Ray and Paula and their extended family.  In addition to Paula's wonderful mother, Pat, and her accomplished sister, Andrea, they have a niece and nephew at CU who Paul enjoys talking with, and we all had a pleasant visit.

On Friday Ben went to Boulder Canyon with his rock climbing partner, Dan, while I did some hiking around town with Dan's wife, our friend Lotus.  Later Ben made us his good risotto for dinner, with lobster he had flown in from Maine, a tasty holiday extravagance.

On Wednesday I finished the Thanksgiving table runner I was making, just in time to use it for the holiday.

The fun turkeys were the inspiration for the rest of the fabrics, a brown stripe to frame the turkeys, a white with Thanksgiving words and phrases, and a contrasting fabric using details of turkey feathers. I love choosing fabrics and these were particularly fun together.

I did some simple quilting which shows up nicely on the back.  

And I've had time the past few days to work on this neat Superman quilt.  I'm finishing it up for the Quilts for Kids program which my quilt guild in Longmont supports.   Someone else made the basic top with the gold, blue, and Superman fabric squares surrounded by a red border but that person didn't want to quilt and bind it so it was passed on to me.  

I thought it needed something more so I added the red Superman logos.  I found a free clipart image online, resized it to fit the block, traced it seven times onto a paper-backed fusible web, ironed the web onto red fabric, cut the seven logos out, and then sewed them to the gold blocks.   A bit time-consuming but worth it, I think.  

Now I'm machine quilting it with random straight lines that criss-cross to make angles.  I'm using a plastic ruler to make the lines straight.  Even though I don't have the technique down perfectly, using the ruler is a big help.  

I'm enjoying working on this quilt and am looking forward to giving it back to the guild at the December Christimas party and knowing it will be a bright and comfy blanket for a sick child. 

Last night Ben and I went downtown for happy hour and found Pearl Street mall all lit up for the holidays.  So pretty.  

It made me want to get our house decorated, especially since we won't be at home for a week over the holiday school break.   We're going to the Virgin Islands and will be snorkeling on Christmas!

I hope we get some lights up outside later today when my menfolk are free to help.  Meanwhile I'm doing some decorating inside, meaning that I'm making a mess opening up boxes and looking through holiday supplies.  The trouble with decorating for the holidays is that you have to work through some messes like this...

...before you get to some festive results like this!  

One reason we went downtown for happy hour was because there was a CU football game at 5:30 so we figured downtown would be less busy than usual.  It was a big game and CU won, making them Pac-12 South champions and earning them a place in the Pac-12  championship game.  I only know this from the local paper, since I don't follow football.  But last night about 10:00 we heard lots of festive celebrating from University Hill and downtown, both of which are within a half mile, and we figured that CU had won.

But my winning team is the CU Women's Basketball team which is on fire this year with a winning streak of 6-0.  I had season tickets the first year we got here and really enjoyed the games.  They lost often but their games were hard-fought and were good entertainment.  Last year I didn't get to any games and wasn't encouraged to by their consistant losses.   This year there's a new coach and she's off to a great start.   I got to a game yesterday and loved seeing them play, especially when they won again, 67-50.

It's hard to believe that Thursday will be December 1st and that in only 27 days it will be Christmas!