Blessings

While we were in Jackson Hole Wyoming, we celebrated my birthday at a yummy Mexican restaurant called The Merry Piglets. Although being on vacation was celebration enough :)

Sometimes I wonder why I am so blessed. Sure I've had my share of trials and grief, but somehow the blessings always seem to outweigh them over time. God is good all the time!

Just look at the lovely gifts I received from my sister-in-law, Joy! Wow! The skeleton keys and tomato pincushion are both great additions to my collections. She bought the little vintage sack on vacation and stamped "blessings" on it for me. And that sweet heart is made of vintage feedsack. I was admiring a feed sack on her dry sink, another vacation purchase. When low and behold, guess what was in my birthday gift?! My very own feedsack!

Isn't it great? Even the patches are patched! I really admire living in a culture when things were patched again and again rather than throwing it into the garbage and buying something new... The intentions are to use it for future projects, but it will be awfully hard to cut something up when someone worked so hard to keep it together! Joy and I were teased quite a bit by our husbands and sons who couldn't quite see the beauty that we saw, but she and I share the same vision of treasures :)

This is another very special treasure - my Mother-in-law's pincushion from when she was a little girl. Isn't it sweet?! I'll treasure it always!

And look at this amazing treasure! A papercutting by the awe-inspiring talent of Beth Twist of Heartstring Primitives. I absolutely love her papercuttings, they have such a wonderful antique feel perfectly set off by vintage frames. And her cross stitch designs are awfully special as well :)

My husband and sons spoiled me as well - a new audio book. It's been downloaded to my ipod and will be perfect for listening to while I stitch on my commute to work...

And a piece of jewelry that I've been drooling over for some time:

I love it's simplicity and I love skeleton keys. I think of all that it can represent - key to my heart, key to my faith and a reminder of all the "keys" that I have made for TDIPT this year...

I hope that each of you have blessings that outweigh your trials and grief, too.

Blessings, Patti