BIRTHDAY & BRACELET

My birthday was this past Friday.  It is hard for me to believe I am now 52 years old!  Time sure has flown!  It seems like I should still be in my 20's.  hahaha  I can wish, can't I?!
My husband bought me a beautiful cake and he and two of my children sang Happy Birthday to me.  My daughter, Tara, had not gotten off work and we had to go ahead and have cake as my husband had to go to work.  After the kids are grown it just seems to never work out to get everyone together at a certain time.
Here is a picture of the cake and then one of me blowing out the candles.

Here is a picture of my husband and me:

Here is a picture of me and two of my kids.  Left to right is Keith, Me, and Amber.

My son, and his two friends sang Happy Birthday to me later that night.  Of course, Keith is on the left, his friend, Daniel, is on the right and his friend, Phillip, is the one playing the guitar.  I walked into the house from putting clothes into the washer and they were waiting there and started singing.  I was so surprised!  It was so sweet!

Here is a Romanian Lace Bracelet I made.  I think it turned out pretty good.  I love the thread I used.  It is called Autumn Apple Pie.

Butterfly & Purse

I finally finished my Romanian Lace Butterfly.  I think it turned out pretty good for only my second piece of Romanian Lace.

Here is a little coin purse I crocheted and a small Romanian lace flower I made and put on it.

Close-up of the flower.

CHRISTMAS & NEW NEEDLEWORK

I just realized that I have not put any Christmas pictures on here.  Of course we did not take many pictures at all this year.  Just a few at the nursing home when we went to visit my Daddy.

Here is a picture of me and my kids.  I was trying to get my son, Keith to smile and so we all look silly.

Starting on the left is my daughter Amber, my daughter Tara is in front of her, me and then my son Keith. 

Keith had decided that he wanted to shave all his hair off.  Here it has grown back just a very little!  That boy!

Here is a picture of the kids with my Daddy.

I am sure you see the whiskers on Amber's face.  I am not going to comment on that at the moment.

Here is a picture of my Daddy & me.

Here is a picture of my husband Clark and our daughter Tara.

Christmas night I decided to read my book before going to sleep.  Tara's cat, Lily, decided she wanted to sleep on top of me.  She is the funniest cat!  So here she is sleeping on me and me trying to read!

My Daddy is such a hoot!  Bless him.  As I have mentioned before he is very OCD.  He has to have everything just so so and in it's proper place.  He has these napkins that he keeps on his table that goes over his bed.  People are always bumping into them and knocking them crocked or sometimes off the table and this drives him insane.  I don't blame him, it would make me crazy too.  So he decided that I needed to make him a box to put them in and put something on the bottom so it will not slide.  I finally got the box made yesterday.  I just used some cardboard.  My son told me I should put a picture on the top of it.  I found a copy of my wedding photo of me and my Daddy and put that on top.  My Daddy loved it!  He was so excited to have that box.  He put his napkins in it right away.  And he loved the picture on top. 
Here is a couple pictures of his box.

I have been working on some Romanian Lace.   I have seen lots of this lace on Sunshine's Creations blog and on flickr.  I learned how to do the cording for the Romanian Lace from Sunshine.  I have done lots of searches on the web for Romanian Lace and looked at how lots of people do it.  I think I finally have it.  I bought an old issue of Piecework Magazine with a Romanian Lace Butterfly in it and am presently working on that.  I just love it!  The butterfly was done in size 20 thread and in ecru color.  I am doing it in size 10 thread and in a variegated pink, yellow, blue, and turquoise color thread.  
here are a couple of pictures of it.  I still have a lot of work to do on it.

Before I started the butterfly I did this little ornament to get some practice on Romanian Lace. 

It is lots of fun doing Romanian Lace.  I have also been looking at other kinds of lace out there to make.  I would like to try other kinds of needle lace.  I don't think I will ever want to do bobbin lace.  It is so beautiful, but all those bobbins scare me.  I don't think I would be able to keep them all straight!

I hope everyone had a great Christmas and New Years Holiday.  My favorite part was being off for a couple extra days from work.