Thankful Thursday – Merry Christmas!

Hi everyone! It’s Millie & Walter here. Today we are thankful for all our friends from near and far who send us cards each year.

Thanks for all our cards!

That picture was taken a few days ago so here is a picture of our cards as of today.

Christmas Card collection as of Christmas Eve

We printed out all our e-cards too so they could hang with our paper cards. This year as usual we beat our pawrents in the card count.

The current card count is:

Millie & Walter

13 Snail Mail cards

14 e-cards

Total Card Count – 27

Mom & Dad

12 cards

Two of our pawrents cards came from pet stores and one even had coupons inside. The coupons are probably okay since they will no doubt be used to buy us treats and toys. There might even be more cards coming since our postal service has been pretty slow this year and if so we will do an update.

If you weren’t part of the card exchange and didn’t receive a card from us here is our holiday card to all our readers.

Front

Back

We’re joining the Thankful Thursday blog hop and the Howliday Card blog hop and wish all our readers a Merry Christmas (if you celebrate) and a Happy New Year. We sure hope 2021 will finish better than this year has.

We are joining Brian for the Thankful Thursday Blog Hop!

Holiday Card Blog Hop

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A New Holiday Decoration

Hi everyone! It’s Cindy here. I wanted to show you a new Christmas decoration I made.

Christmas Dachshund Quilt

I started this in a class during the 2019 Genesee Valley QuiltFest. The class was taught by Cynthia England and it helps to demonstrate her “picture piecing” technique. This pattern is called “Santa Pooch” and you can buy the pattern and fabric pack from her.

Close up of Head

The finishing instructions call for you to embroider the eye on the dog and it has you outline the white parts of the Santa hat to help them stand out. Charlie and I thought the outlining fell a little flat so I purchased some fluffy fleece from JoAnn Fabrics and added it to the hat instead.

Detail of Head with Fleece

Adding the fleece was quite fiddly but I managed to get it attached and I love how it turned out. I also added the little bell to his scarf which was part of the kit. I did most of the quilting using my embroidery machine.

Close up of the quilting

I used two embroideries from Embroidery Online by OESD. The straight border is called “Snow Quilt Border” and the corner is “Snow Quilt Corner”. Since the corner embroidery was a triangle shape and I needed it to have square edges to match the straight border, I used my embroidery software to extract a bit from the straight border to square them up. I also extracted one of the snow flakes and used that randomly in the white background. You can click on the above image to see the details. I also stitched in the ditch around the dog and the gift boxes with invisible thread.

Christmas Dachshund hanging above the fireplace

The fabric pack that came with the pattern had a different border fabric that I wasn’t crazy for so I found this perfect purple fabric to use instead. I love how it turned out and it makes a lovely addition to our holiday decorations.

 

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Nature Friday – Wet & Wild Webster Park Sunset

Hi everyone! It’s Cindy here. This past Tuesday the weather looked good to catch a nice sunset on Lake Ontario at Webster Park so Charlie and I headed up there to take a look. Since December 1st the parking lot closest to the shore has been closed but there is room at the top of the driveway for a couple of cars to park there. So far we’ve been lucky to be able to park there and this time, for the first time since we could remember, there was nobody else in this area of the park. Usually there are always a few fishermen but thanks to the high waves and cold temps (it was about 30°F with a stiff wind) they stayed away! (Don’t forget to click on the pictures to see a bigger view)

The waves were crashing against the break wall

I’ve been waiting for a day just like this to try to capture the waves as they crash into the break wall. I set my camera on a tripod with my camera about 2 feet above the ground so it would be about eye level with the waves.

A large wave crests close to the wall.

In order to freeze the water in the air I set my aperture at f6.4, and my ISO at 1600 to achieve a shutter speed between 1/800th to 1/1000th of a second. Since you can’t really anticipate the exact moment when the perfect wave crash will occur I also set my camera to take high speed burst pictures (15 frames per second). In the 20 or so minutes I was taking pictures I managed to shoot about 700 pictures!

The sunset was the perfect background for the crashing waves

Here is a little video of the wave action that day.

If you can’t see the video you can go here to view it.

Charlie captured this picture of the pier while I was shooting the crashing waves

I hope you enjoyed a different view of Lake Ontario at Webster Park this week.

Join the Nature Friday Blog Hop

We are joining the LLB Gang for their Nature Friday Blog Hop. You should pop over to their blog to see all the other posts.

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Wordy Wednesday – Spreading Cheer

Hi everyone! It’s Millie & Walter here. We heard that today is Christmas Card day. Now we like to wait until closer to Christmas to share ours with all of you but we do want to show you our display.

I don’t have to look at the camera if there aren’t treats!

Millie was the first to show up when Mom wanted to take some pictures but she always does her best to avoid looking at the camera.

I always pose nice for mom.

Don’t worry if you have sent your card and don’t see it yet. We took these pictures a couple of days ago and have received more since.

Are we almost done posing?
I don’t know but I hope we get a cookie for all this effort.

We can’t wait to see those ribbons behind us fill up with all kinds of cards from our friends all over the world. We would also love to see our friends help make a long time Blogville member who hasn’t been able to blog for a while get lots of cards too.

Do you remember Maizie & Shasta?

The Ladiez of Beaglebratz Manor haven’t been able to blog for a while since their mom’s eyesight has not been well enough to manage it. A couple of years ago Kim and her pups moved in with her sister to make life easier.

Maizie, Mom Kim and Shasta

In addition to her failing eyesight Mom Kim was diagnosed with cancer in late August. When our mom was preparing her Christmas card list this year she contacted Kim’s sister, who always posts for her on Facebook, to ask what her address was so we could send them a card. Her sister also said she would love it if we would share her address so we could help make Kim and her girl’s Christmas just a little brighter. If you would like to send them a card here is the address:

Kim Brooks, Shasta & Maizie
1738 SW Stone Crest Dr.
Topeka, KS 66615

If you would prefer to send an email card you can send it to us and we will deliver it to Kim’s sister. Just leave a comment letting us know you have an e-card to deliver and make sure your email address is included in your profile. Our mom will contact you via email to request your e-card for Kim and the girls and then send it along to them.

Let’s all help make Christmas shine for these great friends of Blogville.

We’re joining Comedy Plus for their Wordless Wednesday blog hop.

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