Finish and Retreat

It's ok to be home, but last weekend's retreat with 7 of my friends in the mountains outside of Glenwood Springs, CO was the best!!! It was so hard to make myself get in the car and come home on Tuesday. Here are a few of the views from right around the place that we stayed.

Yes, that's snow on the peaks in the background! But as the weekend went on and the sun came out with warmer temperatures, it quickly melted. And as you can tell from the tree in the foreground, the aspen trees hadn't quite started changing - at least at that point.

This was taken a couple of days later, the weather had turned so beautiful. Sunny, mostly warm and little bits of color popping out on some of the trees.

We even saw 3 baby squirrels in a tree not far off the deck who seemed to be venturing out for the first time! I had such a hard time getting a shot of all 3 of them together, but here is one at least!

I also had a finish the last time I posted but couldn't post it as the birthday girl hadn't seen it yet. But part of the retreat was celebrating her birthday, so here is the finished piece.

There is a pocket on the back of the pillow, just the right size for a pair of scissors or a package of needles or whatever else the birthday girl would like to use it for!

I now have 2 more birthdays to make presents for - thankfully I have at least 5 weeks to do them (YIKES)!!! I must say, I love making things for my friends. But it does make it a little tough to keep up my rotation and finish the last 3 of my pieces that my goal is to finish by the end of the year. On top of all that, I joined Niina in the Crazy January Challenge 2012 - I'll provide the link next week and give you an idea of some of the things I want to work on next year. (Shhhhhh, it's our little secret that I haven't finished all 15 of this year's challenge pieces!)

Until next week, please hug family and friends, be good to yourselves and make time for stitching whenever you can!

Debby