birthdays

We had a birthday this weekend ... our little man turned 6 and asked if he could have a birthday party ... well of course he could. He hasn't had a party before(other than a family tea) so we arranged a Halloween theme party in our garden. 

little man in undersized transformer costume!

 We filled the garden with pumkins and gourds (the greengrocer almost dropped off her high till stool when I asked for 20 of them! along with a dozen butternut
squash), DH turned the garage into a spiders den and we borrowed straw bales from the local farm. I decorated the fence with my party bunting, the trees with paper pumpkin bunting, dangly witches, scarecrows and placed witches brooms here and there. We had lots of outside games including vegetable skittles and a parsnip shy (like a coconut shy but with parship targets and potatoe missiles!), made a huge bath of gooey jelly bath with creepy crawlers inside (plastic), apple bobbing, did pumpkin carving and biscuit decorating. 20 kids, a carry bag with hotdogs and chips, a treasure hunt to find a bunch of brooms that would break the wicked spell cast by a naughty witch to hide the birthday boys cake and 2 hours of mayhem and madness BUT we all went home tired but very happy! and to complete the picture homemade quilted party bags of course ! Witch and cauldron, spider and cat and bat are patterns are by Candace West from Ellen Munnich quiltrecipes site, ghost, pumpkin and flying witch are ones I digitised myself.

filled party bags

Last week I also got a complimentary copy of Fons and Porters Love of Quilting Dec issue. They contacted me back in the summer to include a picture of the Mini Job I quilted last year (a quilted version of an original artwork by artist Tony Smith). I was very happy with the article although they do have me down as a computerised quilting system designer --- wish I were that clever .... no,  I just design a few patterns for them very now and again!