Yeeaaah - my camera is working!

My grand daughter Hannah came to visit yesterday and I was able to take photos again!!!  The problem turned out to be a flat battery - not the AA batteries which I periodically replace, but a tiny disc controlling the date/time stamp! Bill finally found it, thank goodness.  I had been backwards and forwards through the manual umpteen times and had never found anything about this one............grrrr.  Now I guess I can take another 1000 orso photos before it has to be replaced again.

Hannah decided the tree needed even more stuff on it - I think it is grossly overdecorated, but the kids love it - that is wht matters.

Then it was on to icing the cake.  Hannah had lots of fun rolling out the marzipan and then the icing and measuring and helping me to put it all on the cake.  She doesn't like fruit cake, but she was happy to sample some of the left over icing.  She loves helping me in the kitchen, hope she continues to think cooking and cleaning up is good as she gets older.

After that, she wanted to have another go at the sampler she is making of the stitch variations on my Bernina.  She is getting more proficient with the foot pedal, so maybe she will be a bit more creative later.

These are a few Christmas decorations I have made - and I will have to come back to tell you the link to follow to make the birds.  I forgot to write it down and I can't look stuff up on the web while I am in the middle of a post - I know, I should learn, but somehow I haven't!

Aha, I have checked out Geninne's Art blog:  When you get there, scroll down to Tuesday 14 December for a wonderful tutorial on how to make them - much better than mine are.  The fabric stars are much paler than the picture makes them look.  I am not doing any more till I get some new glasse.  Hopefully that will solve lots of problems.  I really can't see to sew closeup stuff at present - my optometrist says my eyes are fighting each other when I try to look closely at things because I have an astigmatism in my right eye and need a prism in my lens.  I think in a roundabout way this is good news - he hadn't bothered with the prism for the last script as my left eye wasn't doing anything.  I suspect the lucentis injections are finally making some improvement in the vision of my left eye - isn't that a wonderful Christmas present!  Now I just need to get my new glasses back before Christmas, that will be even better.