Christmas!

The bathrooms are clean, the vacuuming is done, the guest room prepared, and now it's just cooking and lots of good conversation!  My daughter and her husband will be arriving soon.

The gift bags are all made again this year:

and that's about all the sewing that's been done around here for the past few days.  But I love those bags.  Not only do they save paper, but it's so easy to wrap those strangely shaped presents for grandchildren, and I don't need boxes for clothing.  Just stopped in to our local quilt shop, Needles, to stock up on their Christmas fabric sale for next year's bags, although some of them do come back.  

And this year we even have a low-carbon footprint Christmas tree since Tom and I cut one we planted over ten years ago.  Unfortunately, it was about as far away from the house as we could get so we had to drag it downhill, across the creek, and then drag it up hill again with the help of a sled and a little snow.

It couldn't have grown any bigger.

So Merry Christmas to you all!  It's time to celebrate!

Going paperless

These are some of the packages that will be under our tree this Christmas.  For the past three years I have been making bags for Christmas gifts, instead of using yet more trees and producing yet more waste during the season.  The first year I just got a couple done, the next year a few more, and this year I may make enough for just about all the presents.  It's a reason to use up some of my stash and Christmas fabrics are a great buy, if you stock up after Christmas or during July sales.  I will see how many bags return this year, but my youngest daughter, who is very creative on the sewing machine, caught the bug and made some last year as well.  We will see if she does it again this year with a nine-month old to keep happy. 

If you look closely, you may notice that there are no decorations on the tree yet, only lights.  But the bags are made.  I'm kind of liking this minimalist look of the tree . . . .