Christmas is coming...

I looked at the quilt I made for the grand prize for my book contest and it got me thinking. I go all out for these books promoting and marketing like mad. And this year the book is coming out at Christmas. And yes, a few people will be getting a copy as a present.

But then I kept thinking. I do beautiful homemade crafts for these books and yet, members of my family still don't have quilts made by me. One of the reasons I wanted to learn to quilt was to make every member of my extended family (husband, children, parents, siblings, neices and nephews) a quilt. Although many of my family members have quilts made by me and a couple have more than one I am far from my goal.

So I decided that this year will be different. (Ha! how many times have you heard THAT?).

With that in mind - I shall be profiling my gift making and giving this year. I am determined to make as much as I can and the gifts will be meaningful, fun and useful all at once. I'll start with the children - the neices and nephews. I have four grand-nieces, ranging in age from 2 to 7. I have 7 nieces ranging in age from 5 to 24. I have 8 nephews ranging in age from 3 to 24. I have 6 brothers and 2 sisters. I have 5 sisters-in-law.

Two of the nieces I know very well, having spent quality time with them at various points in their lives. I'll start with them simply because they will be easy. Katie is 14 and Brittany is 12.

Yesterday I went out and bought colored stock paper and today I will buy matching envelopes. Katie loves horses, so I'm making her some horse stationary which will then be put inside a patchwork fabric envelope. I made the cards today. I found a lovely picture of an appaloosa horse in a free clip art forum and made that the front of the card. I did a logo on the back of the card with my name in it. When I finish the patchwork envelope, I'll take pictures to post here.

Brittany will be getting a variation of the same thing - Brit is a girlie-girl, she likes lace and dressing up and flowers and pink and blue. It'll be fun coming up with something pretty for her - lots of choices. Once I make hers, I'll post photos.

I just finished this quilted wallhanging this evening. It is 24" X 24".

When my book HOME FOR CHRISTMAS is published in early November, you may enter a contest to win this quilt!

I'll post details here and on my website when the time comes.

Online Author Day...

You are cordially invited to attend

The Belfry Collective 1st Author Day
Sponsored by the authors on

Tuesday, October 11, 2005, 6 am – 8 pm EST

At their Yahoo Group site: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/The_Belfry_Collective_Author_Days/

On the schedule are selected excerpts, contests

with prizes, tidbits on writing, information on how

you might obtain our books, plus other surprises.

We hope to see you there!

An advance schedule should be available at the Yahoo

site’s main page about a week before the Author Day,

so that you may attend at your leisure.

For further updates and information, please visit

the Collective’s blog:
http://thebelfrycollective.com/blog/

or our home page at

http://thebelfrycollective.com/.


To obtain an invitation ON OCTOBER 11th:
The_Belfry_Collective_Author_Days-subscribe@yahoogroups.com

The “doors” will open wide at 6 am EST on Tuesday, October 11th.
NO PRE-APPROVAL OR PRIOR ADMITTANCE – THANKS!

Quilting...

I made a quilt for my friend Grace's soon-to-be-born baby. She is going with a jungle theme so I found this lovely little print and whipped up a whole cloth quilt. The back is a soft blue that matches the blue between the squares.

In other news, I'm in the midst of my revisions. I finished the first round this evening and will be emailing the whole document back to my editor in a few minutes. I ended up adding some 20 pages to the manuscript due to both the revisions and adding another chapter.