More awards and lovely gifts

Here are three new awards I received yesterday from my blogging friend Suzie, the Little Busy Bee:

These blogs are exceedingly charming. These kind bloggers aim to be friends. They are not interested in self-aggrandizement. Our hope is that when the ribbons of these prizes are cut, even more friendships are propagated. Please give more attention to these kind writers. When you pass the award along please include these guidelines. You are to choose eight friends to share this with.

It makes me feel warm inside to see that two of my friends in the virtual world have given me these awards within a few days. Thank you Suzie! Because I already gave further the Christmas Spirit award from Melanie in my previous post, I will not name any recipients this time. If your blog is in my right sidebar (it is a long one!) and you consider yourself a Christmas enthusiast, you can grab the awards and spread them to your friends in the blog world. The rules of the Christmas Spirit Award are here.

Suzie did not only give me the awards. Today I received a box full of gifts from her:

Chocolates, wine gum, and a star decoration with a touching poem in German. A sweet little teddybear softie came to sight. Opening the wrappings showed Lebkuchen gingerbread and other biscuits. Goodbye waistline! I was reading an Elle magazine in a waiting room on Monday, and they had good advice how to hide any problems with your figure, and what to do to make the problems disappear. Non-existing waistline was one of the problems one might have. I had to laugh, because I had every single one of the problems, and I could give up sewing, blogging, cleaning and cooking in order to have time for the suggested programs. The magazine was clearly not for my age group!!! I can solve the figure problems in no time by choosing long trousers with elastic waistband and a loose sweater. And I can have the chocolates! (And keep on sewing, blogging, cleaning and cooking.)

There was also this perfectly sewn, beautiful star. It is now hanging above a door where everybody can see it.

Suzie had also sewn me this lovely notebook cover, with a to do-list printed on the fabric! There is a standard size notebook inside, and when I have filled it with my notes I can buy a new one and use the cover again. Thank you dear Suzie for these inspiring gifts!

Finally I want to show you that I have not started a figure improvement program but spent my time in a useful way. Remember the little paper-pieced quilts from the other day? They ended up looking like this:

I'm so proud of my bindings nowadays! I found this tutorial by Stephanie through Eileen's blog, and ever since I have been sewing bindings easily without a problem, with nice corners and no bulk where the ends meet. It's worth trying!