Christmas Eve with my family - it makes me so happy :)

Finally I have my family together for a nice length of time over the festive season, Jemma worked up until the 18th and Craig and I drove in to collect her on Sunday morning.   
With Christmas orders for my Etsy shop winding down I have not been as busy sewing for past few days.  I do enjoy running my shop, especially creating new things and seeing them off to new homes all over the world. The micro pets and the bookmarks and even one of the cake bunting toppers sold.  Trying to come up with new things to list can be quite hit and miss, but I decided that as quite of few of my animals end up on the top of birthday cakes I should do something a little more special with a combination of the flags and an animal of choice.  

As you can see above, the cake wasn't exactly the best style for display purposes, but it was the cake Amber chose for her Birthday -  just a simple Angel food cake from the bakery. I am going to source some fabric for a special request order for some wedding cake bunting this week in bright fruity colours, that will be fun to work on.
A new animal in my shop is this tiny wool felt lion.

Amber turned 17 on Dec 1st and celebrated a few days later with four of her best friends staying for a sleepover.  Her gift from us was a 50mm camera lens for her Canon T1I 500D, which is exactly what she wanted, although it didn't look much to us, she was thrilled.  She took a vast amount of fun pics of her friends and they all had a great time.
A fierce hurricane blew in a couple of weeks ago and left us, along with many others without power, telephone or internet for a almost two days.  Some families were out for 4 days!  The loud destructive winds blew down hundreds of trees in the valley and caused extensive damage to buildings in the area.  Our neighbours barn is now a heap of rubble. Craig and I had to 'babysit' the sump pump in the basement to prevent flooding, keeping the generator going every hour. It reminded me of the many sleepless nights when Jemma was a baby!!  

This tree fell right across our own road just a few yards away!  
Well I shall bid you all a goodnight now as it gets dark and I have just turned on the Christmas tree lights.  Wishing you all a wonderfully happy and healthy Christmas.