Spoilt By SSCS Partner!!

Happy Boxing Day everyone! :0) Did you have an enjoyable time with your family? My folks are visiting and we spent the day with my Beloved Geek Boy's extended family ... you know ... a small gathering of 25! :0) So it was a noisy, busy day of musical chairs as someone would pinch yours if you got up to get a drink ... and dodging water bombs that the kids (and brother-in-law!!) were tossing around. Not to mention FOOD!! Cold meats, salads, summer fruit, pavlova, trifle, cheesecake, as well as the traditional plumb pud and custard. We all waddled around for the afternoon in between dozing in food-comas in the closest, unoccupied chair you could find. A pretty typical Aussie Christmas, really! :0)

This year we didn't do a lot of giftie exchanging ... GB's family decided we'd all make a donation to mission work instead. However ... there was one pretty special giftie under my Christmas tree this year ... my main SSCS giftie - WOO! HOO! This year, my swap partner was Dagmar from southern Germany and can I tell you ... she SPOILT me! :0) It was so very obvious that Dagmar took the time to visit my blog in the months after she was given my name as her partner ... she worked out what my favourite colours were, she realised that I love bears ... and that we'd recently moved so needed pretty things to decorate our new house! :0) How very lovely to know she took such care to spoil me ... Thank you Dagmar!!

Now ... when I opened my main giftie on Christmas Day, I was blown away ... would you like to see why??

... A GORGEOUS pieced wall hanging in my favourite colour, GREEN, featuring a tree-climbing bear. And if you look a little closer ...

... you can see that this lovely, lazy bear has been pieced ... I'm guessing paper-pieced! WOW!! There are some teeny, tiny pieces there ... the ears and nose are each made up of about 8 individual pieces of fabric. This is something I could never make for myself, so I just LOVE, LOVE, LOVE it!! THANK YOU DAGMAR!!! I truly feel very blessed and SPOILT!!

And a HUGE thank you to our Swap Mama, too, the lovely Chookyblue, for her work in organising SSCS once again. Chooky has been a VERY busy gal this year and I know she's faced some tough decisions thanks to extended drought which also quadrupled her workload day to day, so Chooky, your efforts are even more appreciated, as organising a bunch of bloggers world-wide is no easy thing. WELL DONE!

My send-to partner this year was Nancy and I think she liked the gifties I sent her, too ...

... I had a lovely time playing with my little stash of Lynette Anderson's "Scandinavian Christmas" fabrics and as well as the ornament of the stocking in the top right corner, I sent Nancy a T-towel apron, a bauble bag to store special Christmas ornaments which features a free stitchery from Gail Pan from a couple of years ago and some cute little strip-pieced mini-Christmas stocking ornaments. In her post, Nancy said she has made a lot of aprons for other people, but this is the first time someone has made one for her, so that was fun. The apron was inspired by a tutorial my blogging buddy Kerryanne shared over at her blog Shabby Art Boutique. It's made from half a t-towel, which makes it great to wipe hands on when cooking ... I may have to make one for myself! :0) In fact ... I've made three this Christmas for gifties ... I'll share some pics next post.

But right now ... I'm off to grab a piece of watermelon to nibble and slurp while I watch the Boxing Day Cricket test ... Aaaaaaaahhh!! Christmas in Australia! :0) Wherever you are in the world, however you've celebrated this special time of year, I hope there's been time for you to rest, enjoy time with family and friends and catch your breath. If you're still travelling, please take care. Til next time ...

BEAR HUGS!
CHEERS!
KRIS