The Sixteenth & Seventeenth Days of December

I've moved from buying and sending to making.  Making is labor intensive and I tend to lose track of time.  I didn't just make this Gingerbread House.  I made it years and years ago.  I think I bought the wooden kit for the house on one of my last visits to Georgia to visit my long time friend who decided she didn't want me as a friend any more.  So this little doll house brings back memories.

And this little dollhouse needed so much "shopping" & "making" over the years to get to this happy place.  The Necco wafer roof shingles are cut from sheets of foam in all those candy colors. One by one.  There have been a number of "trees" beside the front porch entrance.  These tall cookie towers were found at Big Lots and I may have even "whooped" in excitement as I scooped them into my basket.

The gumdrops are fake and another wonderful find over the years of house construction.  These houses take time.  You have to set the "making" aside each year when Christmas is over and hope that  the next season's decor in the hobby and seasonal section of stores will help you fill gaps.  And sometimes wait several years to find the "right" thing.

And then adults tell their children to grab "candy" and pull it off the house when I was foolish enough to display it in public.  So, it's just here at home.  Safe. But it would be so much more fun to have people see it.  Now you can!

I am also making an appliquéd, pieced and quilted small gift my daughter asked me to make for her good friend.  I was apprehensive.  But yesterday I drafted it all on freezer paper, measured and cut strips for the background and added a bias cut vine.  Today five leaves.  Layered and ready to quilt by hand.  Then turn the edges to finish.

I wanted to show it here but the picture won't load.

Football today.  Snow tomorrow.  UPS delivered something to a fellow blogger and it is now happily "in use" after waiting 30 something years for the right guy.  Love it when things work out.