Our adventures in Coss Land: Popping In

To catch my breath! I can't believe how busy I've been the past few weeks! Most of it seems like a blur, it's gone by so fast. Let me try to catch up....

I had a nice visit with my BFF. Time seemed to fly by. We didn't get to do nearly as much as I had planned. Maybe next time. We did go on a quick tour of Fredericksburg and spent one day in Washington. Since we went on a work day, we parked in Springfield and took the metro in. That's always one of Joshua's favorite things to do. And chew gum. Big big wads of it.

When we went to the White House we got to see them building the platform for the Presidential Inauguration. I have to wonder how much that costs. You would think they could use an existing structure for that.

On Sunday evening I went on the Fredericksburg Candlelight Tour with another friend of mine. She goes every year and asked me to go with her. I'm so glad I went, we had the best time! I was on a natural high the rest of the night from walking through those houses. Not only did I love walking through those gorgeous historic homes, I LOVED LOVED LOVED hearing the stories the guides had to tell. Some of those houses were there before the Civil War and many contained Civil War items that were found on the land. Not only that, a lot of the houses had the original flooring. One that really intrigued me had bullet holes in the floor. Another had a piece of the original roof that had Civil War bullets in it. Pictures weren't allowed on the inside of the homes but I did snap some outside pics of a few of my favorite ones. This first house wasn't on tour but I took a pic anyway because it beautiful. These houses are in downtown Fredericksburg right down the street from the needlework shop and all of those other little shops I like to go to. These houses might not seem that large from looking at the front but they're all quite huge. The Rappahannock River sits right behind them. You can see George Washington's boyhood home from the back of these houses. They said that light green house is almost 15,000 SQ. Ft.!

I especially loved this house! It's a historic home called The Sentry Box and you can read a little bit about it here.

I'll definately be making this a yearly event, I had such a good time!

I've spent the first few days of this week finishing up Christmas shopping, filling out Christmas cards, and getting Christmas packages ready to be mailed. I'm planning to find time this week to cook/bake up some Christmas yummies.

I went to my stitching guild's little Christmas party yesterday and had a really good time. I found a new free chart online a few days ago and kitted it up for everyone with the fabric, thread, and needle. The chart only called for 3 colors of DMC and I already had the fabric so putting them together was a piece of cake and everyone loved them. Most of them stitch on aida you see, so I put linen in there in hopes that they'd at least try it...lol.

I did the finishing on 3 ornaments I stitched for my friends at HE for Christmas and will be packing them up and delivering them tomorrow. The piece is called Candy Cane Heart from the Sweetheart Tree. It calls for a sterling silver candy cane charm but I was so not down with paying $10 x 3 for a candy cane charm. Instead I used Mill Hill heart glass treasures....1 red and 2 white. I think they turned out really pretty. I did wish though after they were finished that I would have made the cording red instead of green.