Beloved quilts and trees and snow

Our good friend Pascha put on a Gala celebration/fundraiser for the Beloved Quilts project last Sunday evening. For the past year or so she's spearheaded a project to make 100 quilts for homeless people, each with the word "Beloved" on it. I think it's such a beautiful and powerful idea. I've been able to participate in a few of the "sew-ins" this year, which have been really fun and rewarding. As a side bonus it's been a great refresher in sewing and an introduction to quilt making. Below is one of the quilts I worked on (I put together the center square, and then later others added the borders and finished it).

It was fun to see everyone dressed up. Here is Pascha at the gala, describing how she was inspired to create this project. You can check out her website to find out about other cool stuff she does (http://www.paschagriffiths.com/).

And now we are pleased to present our quite wide and welcoming Christmas tree! It might not look as large in the picture, but it seriously fills up at least half of our dining room. We've been scrambling to find additional ornaments, since it's so big! I love real Christmas trees.

Here's our front hallway mantel with decorations- Matt's mom gave us the PEACE ornaments. She also gave us an elegant silver wreath hanger for our front door, with our last name on it. We've hung an evergreen wreath on it, and it fills the entryway with a beautiful smell.

Snow! We got our first big storm of the winter on Thursday night. Not sure exactly how many inches, but I think at least 6-8. It was quite lovely and powdery, though apparently caused much driving havoc around the city. This is from the next morning.