One Thing I Love Most About Christmas

One thing I love most about Christmas is getting together with friends and going to lunch at our special place... "Food For Thought" in Draper. Most always when we get together for these special luncheons there is some kind of gift sharing going on.  

With that in mind...

I decided to gather together a little of this and a little of that

to see what I could come up with that they might like
 and...

I ended up creating these...

a "Quilter's Christmas Tree"!

I found by adding a fat quarter in the bucket...

it helped to hold them right in place.

Oh... everyone had such wonderful little surprises

 up their sleeves as well... as you can see!

 Lori gave us each a darling red and white polka dot, tall hot chocolate glass filled with the cutest mini marshmallows, Swiss Miss hot chocolate, Dove chocolates and a candy cane with a lid and all! 

Not only that but...

 to top it off she made a quilted mug wrap for it so we wouldn't burn our fingers while sipping our cocoa. 

TOO CUTE!

Emily was new this time. She came bringing this adorable ninepatch pincushion. It was fun meeting her and learning of her pattern company...

Aunt Em's Quilts.

 I was very delighted to learn that she had a blog...

Em's Scrapbag.

It is always great to have another blogging buddy!

Who does this look like it could be from? If you guessed Nanette... you are right! When she is not busy at Freda's Hive she is thinking of wonderful unique gifts that she can put together and this is one... homemade marshmallows... mmmm... hot chocolate on a stick that you just stir in milk... and... she has that little something that she always adds... 

like the cute post it notes and a pen.

My friend Susann joined us for the first time too. It was fun to have her! She had made the cutest... vintagie

(is that even a word... no... but it sounds cute)

homemade gift tags that I have ever seen. I simply adore them and want like heck to use them... but if I do... I won't have them to look at... LOL! 

Do you know what I mean?

Kim surprised us this time with this darling flying geese bag to hold all of our small quilting goodies. This will sure come in handy when I head to my next retreat... for sure! Now if you look really close you can see that she also made a tiny metal name tag with beads... so that we wouldn't get them mixed up with the others should we all end up at the same retreat. Sweet! 


Well... I better scat! I have a ton to do in the next few days. How about you?