Slow stitching , fast cleaning!

This week has been rush rush rush with no time for getting the machine out. First I was working every day which was a little annoying as I'm supposed to be part time. There was also meetings to attend in the evening which seriously affected my stitching time. Finally having celebrated my birthday it was time to get the house all clean as a new pin ready for Christmas. Over the weekend I've been vacuuming, polishing, putting things back to their proper place and in between times I've iced and decorated my Christmas cake and made a gingerbread house.  

I was given a kit to make the gingerbread house. The instructions for the gingerbread itself and for using the templates to cut the pieces before baking were fine and all worked well. There was some gingerbread leftover which I cooked and it was very tasty with my tea this afternoon. The problems started when I put the pieces together. I don't like really hard gingerbread so I baked it for the minimum time but of course this made it slightly more difficult to put together. I also had the icing too thick when I tried to make icicles. I could have added a little more water but I didn't have any more icing sugar so decided not to risk it. As a first attempt ever I'm happy with the messy result.

Of course it's not a patch on the gingerbread house we saw at Anglesey Abbey last weekend.

I put the Christmas tree up this afternoon and also got the nativity set up. Earlier in the weekend Richard had put together this little Lego Christmas train. It is so cute.

Although there hasn't been any machine stitching this week I have been working on the christmas tree cross stitch piece. The last time I showed this it looked like this.

It hasn't grown a huge amount but it now looks like this.

The blue sky really does go on and on. Later on I have some stars to add to the sky but I'll leave that until everything else is done. I will continue working on this over the Christmas period but it won't be finished this year. The little donkey is going to be very cute when I finish the stitching on him.

I'm linking this post with Kathy at Kathy's Quilts for Slow Sunday Stitching. Why not pop over and see what everyone has been stitching. 

Lyndsey