More Holiday Cheer & A Peek!

I hope everyone had as nice a Christmas as Mr. Squash and I did! Between packing to move, unpacking here, painting, arranging and working on getting things the way we wanted, we decided we were too pooped to get a tree, but we had each other and Miss Sophie and that was all we needed! Dinner was a small prime rib, Alice Water's Brussels Sprouts with Bacon and baked potatoes. We watched Juie and Julia after dinner and had a wonderful day!

The other day a package arrived from Ulla. This is how it looked on the doorstep! Mr. Squash said it must have fallen off the sleigh several times!

Fortunately, everything was there --- the only thing that went awry was Ulla's beautiful wrapping job. We repositioned one of the ribbons for the photo and quickly unwrapped the goodies! If you enlarge the photo you can see the wonderful Finnish card - we really love it!

Inside were so many thoughtful gifts - our enormous thanks to Ulla and Mr. K!!! Below you will see a package of Linden Tea...Mr. Squash had mentioned through one of my emails to Ulla that he thought a tree in a photo of hers was a Linden tree and that he had tasted Linden tea many years ago! We haven't seen it here, so Ulla sent him some! It's absolutely delicious! The long package next to the tea is a chocolate/gingerbread bar - wow - yum is all we can say! She also included her recipe for Finnish Gingerbread and a cookie cutter for it - I've already made up the dough - just waiting for it to chill for tomorrow's baking! Ulla also made a gorgeous thimble holder (with thimble included), scissor holder and scissors included, pin cushion and a fantastic needle older complete with various needle sizes!!!

And another package came from Nanette - a "random act of Christmas Cheer"! What a lovely thought, Nanette - thank you so much! There are numerous squares of some of her fantastic fabric finds - if you've been reading Nanette's blog, you know that she is has so many wonderful fabrics in her stash!! I already have an idea of what I will do with these!!

I finished painting my studio on Thursday - a light tan color which doesn't at all show in this photo. It took 2 coats and about 5 days in all, but it feels so much better in here with the blue walls covered! I managed to hang my favorite quilt, so I thought I would give you a sneek peak! I've had that oak quilt hangar for years but never been able to put it to use! After a "measuring mishap" I was happy to finally get it on the wall! On top of the 56 Drawer chest is Mary's little quilt she sent a while back, and Kaaren's painted lamp that I won from her earlier this year. Slowly but surely, the studio is taking shape!

We have SO much left to do, but are enjoying every minute! Tomorrow I'm going to finish painting the window trim in the kitchen and apply a test coat of paint to the walls. Figuring out the wall color for the kitchen has been a real dilemma, but I think I'm getting close! I'm also trying to get back to reading everyone's posts on a regular basis - I read them all Christmas Day and realized how much I missed keeping up!