Two Year Blogoversary Giveaway, Edited with Picture!

Today is the day, Happy Blogoversary to Belfonte Notes!



I have not yet taken a picture to share of what will be in the Giveaway, but I assure you, it will be wonderful things! When I do, I promise to edit this post with a picture, so you can have a visual, which I know helps!

Here is a picture taken today on my office floor...sorry, it isn't a great picture, but at least you will have somewhat of a visual to see for yourself and also to display on your blog, for others to see. It includes 3 charts from Carriage House Samplings, 3 charts from Plum Street Samplers, 1/4 yard and 2-1/8 yard cuts of linen (the two in the picture of the 1/8ths are 40 ct and the 1/4 yard is 30 ct). If you win and you would prefer different counts, just say the word, and I will switch them out to counts more of your liking. Also in the picture you can see some skeins of 3 different companies: Gentle Art Sampler Threads, Weeks Dye Works and Crescent Colours. Several skeins of each too. Oh and do you see that small box in the center? It is full of sweet little stitching treasures and things to embellish your smalls with, ribbon, buttons and more buttons, rickrack and other sweet surprises! Good Luck!

All you need to do to be entered into the 2nd Blogoversary of Belfonte Notes, is:

#1, be a follower of this blog. 


#2, comment in this thread, by no later then midnight daylight savings time on February 2, 2011. In your comment, share how long you have been online and what was your first experience that you remember, within a stitching community or yahoo group, or other avenue. Also be sure and have your email available to me, either here in the comments section or in your profile. 

#3, if you have a blog, please mention this giveaway, if you do not, please don't worry about it, you will still be eligible to enter.

Also would like to take the time to mention, I am in the midst of planning a special weekend stitching retreat to be in Terre Haute, Indiana the end of June. If you are interested in receiving email news and specifics of this special retreat event, please do email me at treeoflife50@frontier.com. If you have any questions, feel free to let me know what they are.


Thanks for all of your visits to Belfonte over the last two years! I very much appreciate your comments and look forward to many more happy years of posting!

Love, Jan

New Stash Keep-Her Sampler-Addison Rose/Belle Pepper

Hello to my dear blogging friends! Yes, it has been awhile, have been contemplating a new blog post for weeks now...good grief, am I slow or what? Also have been trying my best to keep up with your blogs, love seeing what you are all doing, but I am a day or two behind now, so hope to get caught up with that this weekend.Must be this age thing...brings on confusion, indecision,laziness, interruptions, every excuse known to man, one can use when they reach that 'senior citizen' title! Anyway, I am here now and without any more excuses...first of all I want to announce that I do have a second blogoversary coming up in a scant four days, so please be sure and come back on the 25th, when I will announce the giveaway, so that you can be sure to sign up! If you not yet a follower, I would love it if you would do that now, because this giveaway is truly just for my followers! You will have time to sign up later, but for the sake of something coming up to make you forget, you might as well get it out of the way, right?

Boy, I feel this is indeed going to be one of those rambling and I hope not boring posts! Please bear with me a bit longer.

I have so enjoyed seeing everyone's works this month, so many yummy designs that have oodles of progress to drool over! Wow, I am duly impressed by everything I have seen! I did decide at year end, that I would at the very least join the Up for a Challenge challenge, by listing and working on 15 (think I have a few more) wips, that I have vowed to work on this year and hoping to finish at least some of them! For me, it would be too hard to work on them one at a time, I am a very slow stitcher and the progress to be made in a day, is minimal for me at best. So I decided to pick two from my list, and work on them for the month (hoping to finish some of them, although I know that there are some baps that are going to take more then one 'swipe'!) and the two I chose for the month of January are CHS Her Sampler:

This is what I managed to get done further on this piece. Although I hope to work more on her this weekend, and possibly get her finished! And let me tell you, I know she isn't large, not at all, not even for me, but the mistakes and subsequent frogging periods I have with this little sweet ditty has about thrown me over the edge! So when I do get her done, you will likely 'hear' my happy dance! I am stitching Her Sampler on 32 ct R&R something or other with the recommended DMC threads. Fun stitch!

....and LHN's Belle Pepper: 

I am halfway pleased with my progress on this sweety of a design, made even sweeter, by my personalization. This will be to honor my youngest granddaughter, Addison Rose. I will also put the year she was born (2010) in the area for a date. I am using 32 ct Pearled Barley (I think, one of my memory lapses of late, seems to be remembering the names of fabrics I have used. I used to be so on target with it, what is up with that?), with the recommended Crescent Colours and Gentle Art fibers, with the exception of two..I changed out the Straw Bonnet to Oatmeal GAST, so it would show up more and also changed the Mulberry GAST to Lancaster Red Weeks, since it is one of my favorite reds.

The rest of the time, I have been stash and stitch dreaming...thinking about all of the lovely projects that I really, really want to finish...some of the larger ones I have started, like Time and Season Sampler by MB, Mary Allen Sampler and Seven Days of Creation by Plum Street Samplers. Then the list that is ever-growing...might as well think about putting it in my sidebar of the blog, right...Ann Raynor, Mary Ann Hutton, Marianne Wenn (destined to be a birthday start next month), Chilvers, Hannah Lancaster (I must be out of my mind!), Villages of Hawk Run, Adam & Eve Sampler by the City Stitcher, Country House Sampler by the Sampler Company, etc. And the list goes on, these are just the BAPS on my mind! LOL

During all of that dreaming, I have been doing a bit of reorganization of stash, and started thinking of how much I have always wanted an antique drysink. There was/is room for one in my family room. I have had for some time two large Longaberger baskets in my family room full of wips, etc. The rest of my stash is all upstairs, in a couple closets and bins. Crazy, I know, but I thought if I could find a nice dry sink, that has at least a couple of drawers, and a cabinet, then I could switch out the storage downstairs! Novel idea, don't you think...well...this is what I came home with the other day:

Yep, an antique dry sink, in really great pristine condition, drawers intact and working and beautiful walnut finish in great shape! I love it!!!!! And I can't wait to fill it!!! I have put off doing that until tomorrow...Saturday is my one day, that I do spend the day stitching, stash diving-organizing and I do it guilt-free!!! My new Stash Keep is waiting....

I appreciate you getting to this point reading my ramblings...things are going great here and I hope they are in your neck of the woods as well! Thanks so much for stopping by and taking the time to leave some sweet words for me to read, mean the world to me, they do!

Until my blogoversary in four days, stay warm and have some fun with those needles and projects!!!

Love, Jan

Pa rum pa pum pum..

Do you hear that little drummer boy in the distance?? A newborn King to see...pa rum pa pum pum. It is Christmas Eve and the celebration of His magnificent birth is on the horizon....

Our finest gifts we bring pa rum pa pum pum

To lay before the King, pa rum pa pum pum

So to honor Him, pa rum pa pum pum.

 

I heart Christmas~ the preparations, the decorating, the baking, the anticipation, the joy of celebrating my Savior's birth. Everything is coming along much as planned for me this year, all I needed to do by now is done, but my celebration won't end until midnight New Year's Day, as my youngest children and my grandbabies won't arrive until early on New Year's Eve. So our family Christmas won't be fully celebrated until New Year's Day...so that said, I still have a few presents to wrap and some baking and food preparation to do next week.

After I get done with this blog post (I couldn't NOT take the time to wish you all a BLESSED and Meaningful Christmas, my dear blogging friends), I will go and finish getting ready. I am going to my eldest daughter's house this afternoon, she is having a Christmas dinner for her family and I want to get an early start. Since we have some precipitation in the form of snow predicted pretty heavily, I want to get there before it gets bad. She lives about 45 minutes away from me. If things get bad later on this evening, she and her hubby have promised to bring me home. I am loved!

I have been stitching, but not as much as I would have liked! I had several ornaments to get finished, three of them; two for one granddaughter, since I had neglected to get her one made last year, and of course one for the new granddaughter! I haven't shared pics lately of the sweetums, so here is one taken recently, when my daughter Megan and I went up to their home for Baby Addison 'Bean' 's dedication at church. Allie Bug was upset about something, but I thought it was still a very dear picture of the three of them:

I didn't get very good pictures of my trees this year, but just let me say I am very pleased with them. I have the large one in the family room, one in the living room/dining room and last but certainly least the one in my bedroom, which has all of the handmade stitched ornaments on it. This is the tree that I have shared closeups of. I am hoping that Santa leaves me some extra funds to shop for a new camera this year!

Today I am thankful for my Savior's Birth, all that He is to me today and everyday!

See you in the New Year!! I am having a blogoversary in January, so be visiting for a special giveaway planned!

Merry, Merry Christmas Dear Blogging Friends!

Love, Jan

Dear Blogging Friends...

I pray that you all have a most wonderful and blessed Thanksgiving Day with family and friends!

I am thankful today for the good health and well-being of my parents! Such a joy and blessing to still have them here with us!

Blessings, Jan