Cross Stitch Tuesday Dutch Beauty

I'm loving working on this cross stitch piece again and have almost finished the first row. It was a bit daunting to start with as it's such a large piece and worked on linen but I'm really enjoying it now that I'm using glasses with an increased magnification which is making it much easier working on the linen fabric.
I've found that I'm getting more of my own UFOs worked on now that I'm just concentrating on one for quilting and one for cross stitching.
I must get busy with the Stars quilt again as I am well over 3/4 of the way done with piecing the stars together.
I've also been baking for Christmas and have made 2 batches of lemon slice, as we have plenty of lemons on the tree, as well as apricot balls, rum balls and hedgehog ( a chocolate slice). I also met up with my sister and sister-in-law to plan the meal for Christmas dinner as we all contribute to providing the food to make it easier on the host family. It will be the usual fun and noisy event as there will be 34 adults and 3 children, all talking and laughing.
I feel very blessed to have wonderful family and friends to celebrate Christmas with and make new family memories. The young adults have been in the habit of playing charades in teams, with much laughter and I'm guessing this year will see the tradition continue.
I feel that I've been neglecting my blog at bit for the past few weeks but plan to remedy that with some postings about my favourite blogs and websites so you may like to check back tomorrow to see who I'm recommending. I'm hoping that this may give you all some new blogs to read over the holidays as well as allowing us to share those blogs which interest and inspire me. I'd also love you to make your own recommendations too and I'm going to try to post more often again now that life seems to be settling down here again.
See you tomorrow.
Hugs, Jan Mac