2013 - Reconnect to My Stitchery, Week Fifty

Lazy again this week. At least as regards stitchery. (OK, I admit it, I'm in another stitching slump and motivation isn't my strong point this time of year) 

There was a lot of time decorating trees... Two with hand-stitched ornaments: 

and one with multi-colored glass (and faux glass) balls):

Husband was also busy decorating outside, once his back order of industrial grade LED lights arrived... The front yard, with one artificial and one real (the closest to the house) tree:

and the dock in the back garden, from top:

to bottom:

And of course, as you can make out from the above photos, we had our first "major" snow of the season (7 inches, give or take --- the most in three years of winters!). It isn't much in the scale of things nationwide but it was enough to cause the quilt guild to cancel their Christmas brunch on Saturday (and that means I have a nicely gift-wrapped biscornu pin cushion with no where to go!  But it also meant I had more time to stitch, supposedly)

I did put in a little beading on my Bead Journal Project December butterfly:

Of course, I started running low on the red (this running low on one color is beginning to be a nasty habit --- next beading pieces are going to have to be smaller and use less beads!) so I had to improvise with buttons and gold beads...

I also started on the quilt guild challenge for January 2014, called "Green Thumb". It came with a requirement to use a specific floral shape, a four-patch, black-and-white somewhere, string (see the red cording --- I'm couching it around the floral piece), a button (not shown here) and any other embellishemnt. It was a coward's way out to go with black, white and red, but I am limited in my stash to only a few black fabrics and one came with built-in red polka dots; I came up with this:

It looks awfully plain, now that I see it on the photo, but I hope it will get a little more blinged out as I proceed... 

Not quite what I had in my mind originally but there is no point in getting truly different when this will be a first time for me and I'm a total novice at this kind of challenge.  We shall see if this even gets finished before the January meeting when it is due.

If all goes well, I'll get my gifts for our Girls' Night Out exchange wrapped today (the exchange, weather permitting, is tomorrow night) and a card made for husband's birthday (ALSO tomorrow). No idea what the Christmas plans are yeat --- husband and brother-in-law are always last minute on that --- so there may also be an emergency trip into town for dinner supplies. A busy week ahead, I fear!