Christmas Eve day....

As promised, above is a photo of my Friendship Sampler RR, which has "officially" come home after all the wonderful ladies in the group have stitched their heart on it. For those of you who aren't aware of the history of this...here is the short version:

Friendship Sampler by Carriage House Samplings
 (the photo from the insert in the pattern)

January 2009, a group of 18 women sign up for a "round-robin" which was organized by a wonderful woman named Sara, who collected the names/addresses, created a mailing list and sent out monthly emails to make sure that we were stitching and mailing. Each of us purchased the Friendship Sampler by Carriage House Samplings, fabric of our choice and stitched the first heart before sending it to the person next on the list...then stitching on a member's RR and sending it to the next woman on the mailing list, etc...until everyone received their RR back with hearts stitched by all the members of the round robin.

February 2009, the end of the month was the first mail date...after we stitched the first heart on our own we all packaged up our RR and sent it to the next person on the list. Each of us has some sort of special instructions regarding how we wanted ours to be stitched (some wanted only reds, others blue, several neutral colors or just a request to stitch as per the pattern). The first 4 months seem to go well, but by the summer time two of the RRs were missing at one of the member's houses and we never heard back from her again. One of those was mine. While the other member decided to withdraw from the RR in frustration, I decided to purchase more fabric and start all over (that is why mine was the last to make its way home!). After being re-introduced in the group again, my RR travelled pretty quickly for a while, but again during the summer of 2010 it lost a little momentum. Some of the members got busy with life, which caused some of the delay; and sometimes it was just that it took awhile to swim across the ocean.

Nevertheless...it is home...and it contains all the hearts, names and home state/countries of those women who stitched on it. Now, I just need to add the last remaining hearts to finish it up :)

Well, it is Christmas Eve...
What are your plans for this evening? What traditions do you have in your household?

When I was a little girl...my family would go to St. Louis, Missouri where my grandparents lived to spend Christmas - something that was a little unorthodox for a Jewish family. But my grandparents loved Christmas and passed on the spirit of Christmas to me and my sisters. Our tradition was to go out to dinner on Christmas Eve, was to drive to my great-grandmother's house (she was my grandmother's mother and also lived in St. Louis), where we would enjoy a buffet of all sorts of food - meatballs,cookies, brownies and rice krispie cookies (I am sure that there were other things on the food table, but those were the things that I remembered the most). After everyone was stuffed, my sisters and I would put on our Santa hats and pass out presents to all the adults...for this was the night of the Adult's Christmas, our Christmas was the next morning when Santa came. For a long time, I believed in Santa...and felt that since Adults stopped believing that they had to celebrate their own Christmas on the Eve and purchase things for eachother. The kids, on the other hand, believed in Santa and were treated to the magic of Christmas the next day (assuming that we were good).

When my boys were younger...our Christmas Eves were spent at home: DH, myself and the boys. After a nice, quiet meal the boys and I would sit down and work on their Christmas letters to Santa (a little late, but they were young at the time that this tradition started). Under the Christmas tree was bare, until the "day of", so in their young minds they still had time to draw and write their wishes.

Today...our Christmas Eve seems to have evolved into almost another day at home. However, given our crazy schedule this week, it will be a nice quiet day at home for the boys - a "sleep-in-late-stay-in-your-pajama-day"...they have had hockey activities all week up to today - this is the first day without. But while they get to sleep in, I will be going into *The Store* with DH as we continue to work with our wonderful employees creating fruit arrangements for delivery and pick up today. Over 175 were created yesterday and we do have more to do today. In the evening, though, I am planning to come back home and fire up the grill for cheeseburgers and Italian sausages...something that the boys requested to do this holiday break, but we haven't had the time to do. So, I thought that this would be the perfect evening to do such a meal. I am hoping, that while *The Store* is open tomorrow until noon, that since we have no deliveries taking place on Christmas Day that DH can come home early and enjoy a sit down meal with the family.

Well, whatever the tradition you have in your household - I hope that you have a wonderful evening filled with lots of love and laughter!

Take care and remember...

Live, Love, Laugh and Stitch often!

Lisa

The joy of brightening other lives, bearing each others' burdens, easing other's loads and supplanting empty hearts and lives with generous gifts becomes for us the magic of Christmas. ~W.C. Jones