a finished Christmas project -- and more cookies

completed yesterday

the fabric book of "paper dolls" that I did for my mother for Christmas

I admit, this may seem like a strange present, but she collects paper dolls and has many, many totally uncut books full

so it gets harder and harder to find an actual PAPER book that she doesn't already have

hence the fabric one -- I know she doesn't have this one

the panel with the paper dolls printed on it didn't have anything I could use for a cover, so I did this patchwork (using the same fabrics I had used to back the pages plus a couple other ones) and did the embroidery of what they are from the printed strip along the selvage

I hope she'll like these

and stage one of the cookie decorating is done

these are the ones I frosted with white icing -- ducks and bunnies
these are the green ones -- frogs and turtles
and these are the brown ones -- squirrels, owls and bears

today I'll be mixing up colors to do the detail piping -- pink (bunny eyes and noses); yellow (duck beaks, owl and frog eyes) and black (detail and eyes on everything else)

all of these will be used to decorate the cake for the baby shower

last night between answering the door for the trick-or-treaters I worked on a couple of other projects that I can't show you right now -- and even though we had more kids last night than we've had in three years combined (nothing like warm weather to bring them out!), I did get quite a bit done on those

the Monday laundry is running as I type this, and as soon as that is done I'll be off to run some errands and then back to work on cookies and those other projects