Come down from that sugar high yet?  Yeah, I have some backups in reserve for later tonight ;)  But, really, I hope you had a wonderful Christmas!  My favorite part was sneaking over to grandma's house as a family just before bed to deliver daddy-made cedar reindeer in the dark.  Brandon made a buck and doe for both sets of grandparents, and it was so great to be able to really delight them with an unexpected gift this year!  And the kids were sooooo quiet as we crept across the lawn.  It was priceless!

I thought of you on Christmas morning, trying to catch a picture of my littles in their mama-made pj's, but no luck. Here's Liam this morning drawing while mom and dad caught up on our sleep.  I'll get one of the two of them eventually.  Happily, the pjs fit perfectly!  But, I'm not so sure about those kimono ties.   Aria has trouble keeping them from falling out.  I may just outfit hers with buttons eventually.

Here are some snapshots from our Christmas day:

Brandon very sweetly tried to surprise me with something not on my wish list, but when a box came from "Anna Maria Horner" for Brandon, well, I had a pretty good idea what might be inside. And I was not a bit disappointed on Christmas morning!

So here we are on Christmas day underneath our new jumbo Christmas-y quilt.  Yeah!  At 76" x 58" it's truly, really big enough for all!  I'm so glad I plunked down the cash for the flannel ta dot backing too.  Really makes it cuddly!

You can see here that I put together a really simple patchwork pattern with large cuts and lots of saturated colors.  I love how the Amy Butler wallflower prints contrast with those Kaffe Fassett stripes, and it's all pulled together with Meet the Gang by Marisa of Creative Thursday for Andover.

My original plan was to put some curves spliced through this quilt, but that plan changed for a number of reasons.... one being I wanted it done by Christmas and liked it this way quite well enough!

Even though I knew I wanted diamonds, I almost wimped out on the quilting remembering what trouble I'd had trying to make diamonds on Aria's voile and double gauze Fairytale Patchwork quilt. But, I gave it a go using a hera marker to mark all of my quilting lines before basting.  I was really, really, really pleased with how easy it was to quilt, even being so large.  No pins (I spray baste) and no need to stop and mark as I went = gleeful quilting, at last!

I showed my daddy on Christmas day, when they were over to celebrate, that I'd bound my Christmas-y quilt with newsprint fabric because it reminds me of how he'd wrap our presents in newspaper and we'd know those were the ones Dad bought all by himself just for us.  The binding is made with two Hometown by Sweetwater prints intermixed.  I think it lends a modern vibe to this funny mix of sweet characters, rich hues and bold prints. But the binding used up almost all of my Hometown!

So, yes, a Merry Christmas was certainly had in our snug little home.  Thank-you for your kind well-wishes!  I'm off to hunt down some leftover sweets. See you soon!