Lizzie's Christmas dress

I've finally completed Lizzie's Christmas dress, although 'completed' might not be the exact word. The pattern also included an underskirt, and I had some red fabric sewn up and hemmed ready to go. But I had a last minute change of plans, for a few reasons. Firstly, it looked so lovely as it was when I tried it on Lizzie. Secondly, I'm anticipating a hot muggy day and the less layers of fabric, the better. And lastly, I must admit the thought of gathering another skirt if I didn't really need to wasn't that appealing.

Lizzie loves it and Louisa has been eying it of enviously and asking when she can have a dress like that! Please excuse her messy hair, she'd not long before woken up from a nap!

I'm also including here a sneak peak of our photos we had done for various Chrissie presents. I only picked them up a few minutes ago, so I'll go through the CD and pick out my favourites to share at a later time. We went with Moods Photography based in Woody Point.

6 more sleeps!

I'm starting to get excited about Christmas. One of my favourite things about Christmas is Christmas music. For at least part of the year, radio stations, stores, etc play music with melody and beautiful arrangements (Can you tell I'm not a fan of much modern music?). I was going through some of my favourite Christmas albums to put together a CD for my family to listen to in my car when they're up (they'll be driving my car around for the duration of their stay).

I'll start with an artist who feels like an old friend to me. He's always been on my CD/tape player for as long as I can remember, and I love this Christmas album of James Taylor's. My favourite tracks are Who Comes This Night and Some Children See Him, as they're not done to death the way a lot of Christmas songs are.

Next up, Michael Buble does that Christmas crooner thing really well and the absolute best track is Grown-Up Christmas Wish - quite often makes me teary when I hear it.

Josh Groban has a universal appeal. The oldies love him as well (even my father). The track I love on that album is Angels We Have Heard On High, I simply love hearing that song at Christmas time. His version of I'll Be Home For Christmas is pretty popular too.

We're fans of Sarah McLachlan in this house, and so her version of O Little Town of Bethlehem is on high rotation at the moment, as is the rest of her Wintersong album

I also can't not include come country music (quite the closet country fan, I admit). I love Vince Gill's Do You Hear What I Hear? - just ignore the mullet on the album cover.

For something different Trans Siberian Orchestra does a kind of 'rock/almost heavy metal' take on Christmas. I love their Joy/Angels We Have Heard on High track.

Okay, so that's completely nothing to do with sewing at all, but something to listen to while sewing, I guess.

December the 12th!

Today was an exciting day. Finally us EB sewing gals got to open our Christmas swap. I was lucky to get this bundle of goodies from Jacqui! Very thoughtful and useful gifts! Thanks Jacqui!!The felt Christmas decorations look wonderful on our tree:

The other excitemnt for the day was Louisa's kindy concert- a nativity play in which Louisa played a very lovely angel This was followed by a selection of Christmas songs (the highlights being Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer, and Six White Boomers) and a feast!