Happy Halloween!

We're all ready for the Trick 'r Treaters here at Teacup Lane!

The other day I was visiting a blog where the blogger mentioned finding a vintage pumpkin candle just like the one I have above. 

I never thought about this one being vintage.

I've had it a long time but can't remember when or where I bought it. 

Probably back in the 70s or 80s.  

I baked about five dozen chocolate chip cookies yesterday and popped them into the freezer for Christmas.  

Of course, we HAD to treat ourselves to a warm cookie and a cold glass of milk!

My Christmas cookie baking is finished! 

 It's so nice to have that project behind me.  

While making the sugar cookies last weekend I put on a Christmas playlist on my iPhone!  

I love listening to Christmas music.

  

Today I'm sewing on my Pumpkin Patch table topper mat.  

I hope to get all of the appliqués cut out and glued down.  

Maybe even start the satin stitching.

It's another dark day here so my photos are a little fuzzy.  

I've been crocheting mostly in the evenings on my hexagon lap throw in red, white and turquoise yarn.  

I'm not happy with attaching these hexagons together.  

The "look,"I mean.  

But I've tried sewing them together in the back loops (not!) and finally settled on single crocheting each round.   

Oh, well...hopefully once it's all together with a nice edging maybe I will be more pleased. 

Happy Halloween!

Orange and More Orange Decor

Let's bring out more ORANGE...

Real orangey Fall leaves....

Or not so real orangey leaves in my Thanksgiving Turkey fabric border...

Ty mini Beanie Babies with touches of orange...

Halloween plates with lots of orange...

I was tickled when I found these cute mugs at our grocery store this morning.  

Both mugs match the black cat and pumpkin wall plate above!

A Happy Halloween felt letter sign in orange, green and purple...

Our ghost use to hang on our front door with magnets but we don't have a steel front door anymore!

And I updated my home-made chalk board sign in orange and green!

It's looking more like Halloween at Teacup Lane!

My funny for the day:

And lastly I can't forget...the greatest pumpkin of all...

and the brightest ORANGE...

Mickey Mouse Pumpkin!!!

Fall Days

It is a beautiful sunny FALL Sunday here in southeastern Pennsylvania. 

Our trees are just starting to change. 

My flowers are still blooming.  

Although I heard we will have freezing temperatures here by next week. 

I've been in my sewing room adding strips of fabric trim to my Thanksgiving Turkey embroidery design.  

I like this combination of green trim, orange trim and a lovely fall leaves pattern trim.  

Monday we are taking our travel van to the RV dealership to have the refrigerator fixed.  

The refrigerator works off either electricity, gas (propane) or 12 volts (battery).  

The gas mode isn't working right.  

It's about a two hour drive north of us to the RV Dealership and we will have to leave the RV there.

  

The good news is we tried out our insect fabric screens that I made for two windows on our travel van while at the York Train Meet last week and they worked great.  

We had fun at the York Train Meet - we camped out over night right next to the main exhibit halls.

When we were tired from looking at the exhibits we took breaks in our travel van.  

Both my Hubby and my brothers had Lionel model "O" trains growing up. 

 In fact, my Hubby stills has his.  

We're in the process of finally putting together a sturdy, well built model train table in our unfinished area of our basement.  

Our make-shift wobbly ping pong table that Hubby used for many years is gone {{finally!}}.  

This train table is made from a kit.  

Hubby put up the painted background blue screen and more ceiling lights.  

The next step is buying the wood for the top. 

Someday we will have a lovely model train setup. 

Isn't this a cute miniature vintage Borden's milk truck we bought at the train meet.   

It brings back lots of childhood memories of home milk deliveries. 

We hope to have our van's refrigerator fixed before our trip to Walt Disney World this Fall. 

Have a lovely Sunday and thanks for visiting my little world! 

Framed & Up

I finished it!

And to help me out Hubby  trimmed a large piece of board for me to place on my old Singer sewing cabinet.  

It's my new ironing station in my sewing room.  So much bigger and better for pressing than the teeny, tiny ironing board I was using here.  

 I love it!   

Right now I have towels down on it's surface but I intend to wrap it with batting and fabric.  

To fill in around the embroidered Halloween Skeleton design, I  used three different fabrics sewing them down as flanges and thus making a colorful border.  

Squaring it up as best as I can....

First flange is a green fabric, followed by the dark orange one and then I couldn't resist throwing in the purple and light orangy flowered fabric on the outer edge.  

It's hanging in the foyer now.

   

I just realized the embroidered Halloween Skeleton looks a lot like Ms. Skeleton out in our front yard!

Sad but true laugh of the day:

Holiday Embroidery Designs & Halloween Decor

I found the cutest holiday machine embroidery design package by Anita Goodesign entitled "Holiday Tea Towels".

The first one I embroidered was the Halloween Skeleton design above.  

My plan is to frame the design and switch out a new design for each holiday.  

This isn't the greatest photo showing the 12 designs but almost every holiday is presented including Mother's and Father's Day.

I stitched up the Thanksgiving Turkey design and the other evening I finished The Christmas Tree design.  

The picture frame I'm using isn't quite the correct size and shape - but it will have to do.

I'm going to add a fabric-pieced border around each design to add interest and balance the design better in the frame.  

We've been busy here the last couple days.  

Hubby has built some shelving and a loft area over a work table (he built the work table years ago) in our shed.   

This is the perfect time of the year to be out there working in these cooler temperatures.   

We were so pleased because we used materials we had on hand so it didn't cost a thing for this project.

I'll include some photos later after we have a chance to clean and re-organize the shelves.  

We put two strands of orange Halloween lights outside along with Mr.  Pumpkin Head and Ms. Skeleton.   

I looped a crocheted headband around our girlie skeleton's skull.  

Now I have to find the scarf I croched last year for her.  

It looks pretty spooky at night!

We attached the skeleton to a iron flower hanger.

How about you?  

Do you decorate for Halloween?

My Birthday Cupcakes Banner

My embroidered cupcake!

I love the fabric patterns and colors I chose for this month's "Party with Patrick" project.  

My fabrics and Patrick Lose's "Birthday Cupcakes" Design of the month.

It's a small wall banner with a birthday cupcake celebration design. 

Piecing together the squares.

It's suppose to include a child's birthday age in felt numerals (number one through nine)...either sewed  directly on for that special birthday or removable in order to change for each child's birthday celebration.  

Ha! Got to watch those tiny pieces or they get sewn in where they don't go!

I chose to leave it plain without the birthday year since we don't have children or grandchildren.  

Adding my touch with another two inch border.

For now we'll use it for Hubby and me.  

Maybe later I will pass it along to our grandnieces.  

Ready to embroidery...what delicious color threads should I use?

Of course I had to embellish it with my own touches. 

Squared off and ready to add binding.

I added a delicious two inch additional border in a dark pink printed fabric to give it more POP and make it a little larger in size. 

It is appliqued in satin and blanket stitches of purple, turquoise and yellow embroidery threads and straight-lined quilted in white polyester thread. 

All finished!

 I machine-stitched the binding down.

What can I say...too lazy to hand sew it. 

My label.

I added a label on the back so I won't forget when I made it.  

So delicious...I could eat that cupcakes!

It is soooo cute!

Love red, turquoise and white yarn together.

Remember the hexagons I'm crocheting?  

I decided to limit my colors to red, a darker turquoise and white (all from my stash).  

The pattern combinations are endless.  

Who knows what pattern arrangement I will end up with...that's the fun of creating!

Have a lovely weekend!

Halloween Quilted Candle Mat

I attended another monthly Embroidery Club on Saturday.  

We were instructed to download a free "in the hoop" design from the Jamone Canada website before coming to class.  

Letting the machine do "its thing".

Unfortunately it was a disappointing session for me.  

There were four of us who downloaded the design onto our flash drives but were unable to stitch the design on our machines during class.  

So Hubby and I dragged my machine and stuff home again (I didn't even stay for the full session).  

Look closely in the middle you can see the quilt lines stitched in a square.

Once home we tried downloading the design again and after two tries we were finally successful.  

So I stitched up the design at home yesterday.

I was running out of Halloween fabric and pieced together these patterns and colors from my stash.

The outline satin stitch is a burnt orange color.  

All finished.

I hope to get better at cutting it out so the batting doesn't show.

Just in case you can't tell what this thing is....it's a little quilted and embroidered Halloween Candle Mat.  

Everything was done "in the hoop".  

This was my first "in the hoop" project.  

It's nice because the embroidery "in the hoop" design includes all the steps - basting stitches, appliqués and embroidery.

  

All the embroidery classes are good exercise for me. 

Just like crocheting...it takes practice and more practice.

  

I'm slowly putting out my Halloween decorations.

  I'm not going to show the back of the candle mat.  

It's an even more Halloween themed fabric with printed orange pumpkins but the satin stitching would have looked better if I had matched the bobbin thread instead of using white thread. 

Duh... 

Have you played Candy Crush?  

It's very addictive!

I'm stuck on Level 37 and Hubby is on Level 79 or 80!

Bet you can't guess who is better at the game!