‘Enchanted’ Descanso Gardens

We spent Monday evening at Descanso Garden’s ‘Enchanted’. 

It was pretty much a spur of the moment thing - Sunday we said “how about…” and Monday we were there. 

We talked Donovan into going by reminding him they had light up swords for sale… 

and then he had absolutely no interest in them, 

choosing instead a snow leopard (that he named Cracker) and a blue penguin (named Icy to go with his snow owl, “Snowy”.)

My favorite things were the intricate, fascinating HYBYCOZO sculptures. 

So beautiful.

Second favorite was the stained glass houses, especially the water tower.

Who plans a water tower in an art installation?? So fun.

Photo by Donovan 

I thought Enchanted was going to be the Christmas version of ‘Carved’ (which was Awesome! Here) 

but it was more of a light show, with no holiday theme. 

Very pretty - but a bit of a let down after the artistry and excitement of Carved.

 Still a great way to spend an evening with family.

Donovan’s invisible…

…or maybe not

Part of the glass house installation 

They were making their own ‘fog’ - very spooky!

Hundreds of laser dots, constantly dancing, moving from ground to treetop. Pretty sure this was Donovan’s favorite.

Looking back at the glass houses

Christmas Countdown

 Other Christmas stuff has been happening while I spent 9 days playing with fabric. 

Our aging collection of inflatables is up. We lose about one a year to wear and tear or wind and rain. 

But that just gives hubby an excuse to go shopping for more, which he enjoys. Gotta keep the local hardware shops in business!

Donovan put the ornaments on our tree this year. 

We held a few in reserve so the grandgirls (all 4 of them!!!) can hang a few when they arrive on 12/22. 

Did I mention everyone will be here for Christmas this year? We are very excited. 

Flashback

Back in my 20’s (just a couple of years ago 🙄) I loved doing macrame, 

making a bunch of plant hangers, wallhangings and even a hammock (seriously).

So when Mary suggested the two of us taking a macrame workshop at a local shop, I was all in.

So much fun! 

We were there for a couple of hours 

and finished two cute little gnome ornaments each. 

Now I need to find the same supplies so we can have gnome craft day while everyone is here for Christmas. 

And yes, there may be more workshops in my future…

Day 9, Done For Now

Today was day 9, block 9 of the Winter Wonderland FPP-along. Teena and I went rogue again (so did Karen!) picking something we liked better (and was theoretically easier) than the “planned” block. 

It’s wonky but I still like it

I say theoretically because Teena will be working on hers again tomorrow and Ms. Stubborn (that’s meeeeee) finished up after well over 5 hours of sewing, ripping, stitching, taping, and ripping AGAIN.

It’s not that the pattern is difficult - I’d call it intermediate beginner only because you need to match up a few seams - it’s that if you make a mistake you have (not good) choices - decide you meant to do that (designer’s choice); rip allllll the way back to where you goofed (each green section is half the entire pattern - no seaming little sections together here!); throw it out, reprint the paper piece and start over. 

And we did make a variety of mistakes. I fixed all the little ones I found but my biggest goof was in the very. first. piece. of a long green section, attaching a white rather than green fabric. And when did I spot it? As I was trying to figure out why the very last piece wasn’t fitting where it belonged. Designer’s choice it is - I meant to do that. 🙄 

Note to self: the original WW patterns are 8.5” unfinished, 8” finished. Today’s was 8” unfinished, 7.5” finished. Either enlarge them .5” (1.06%) or add bigger borders. 

A Good Day

 Lunch with a friend,

then a little fabric shopping…

Black sparkle is sashing for the FPP Christmas quilt

Ok, a lot of fabric shopping. Three stores, 11 fabrics, 19.5 yards. In my defense: A) I was looking for a specific fabric to finish a project (didn’t find it ☹️); and B) I have a plan for all of this - a star quilt for me (the 2 left-most brown fabrics), 

A star quilt either like this…

or like this…

a gift (the pastel half-yard lower left) and the rest is for the Christmas FPP-along that Teena and I are doing next year. Did I need a full yard of all those greens for the FPP? Probably not. But what if I run out mid project?!??!? Can’t chance it. 😂

Penultimate, Day 8

We were a bit nervous about this block, which the designer rated as ‘intermediate‘, but it turned out to be fine. 

Sparkly Cardinal

A little color coding (lots of color changes on every pattern piece), some careful pin placement at the tricky bits (mainly around the head), and we Teena was done in 3 hours. 

Color coding saves my sanity

Mine took another half hour since I had to redo one piece FOUR TIMES before I got it right. Sheesh. 

Teena’s blue jay 

We’re taking tomorrow off for Real Life, getting together again on Wednesday to work on the last block. We probably won’t do the last Winter Wonderland pattern (I may do it later), we’ve tentatively picked a Christmas wreath FPP as our final(ish) block before we start up again in January.

This has been fun!

Winter Wonder, Day 7

When I put together all my blocks so far, I kept thinking ‘where's the red??’ I was trying to use other colors so the bright Christmas red wouldn’t be overwhelming and instead… it almost disappeared!

Fixing that today and tomorrow (if tomorrow’s project is the cardinal, like the three of us are betting it is.)

Teena’s block. Love that swirl fabric!

Yesterday’s glittery green made me think of this bright red fabric I just added to the stash. The white background I used on all the other blocks was terrible against the silver, so it looks like the last 3 blocks* will use this pretty holly green background. 

Test sample success

Three blocks makes a pattern, right? Like I planned it rather than it being an oopsie? Hoping it’s as pretty IRL as I’m picturing in my head. 

We think this is tomorrow’s block… 50% chance we’re right!

This was another fun, easy pattern. Teena and I both finished in just over two hours - it would have been sooner but after sewing one section we both changed our mind on colors and had to start over. Worth it!

 Not my work, but I’d love to do another star using stripes like this

* Not the ‘last’ blocks! Teena and I are enjoying this project so much we’re continuing it into the new year. Planning to do a new Christmas-y FPP block every couple of weeks so we’ll both have a big, new quilt for the 2026 holiday.