And a very Merry Christmas to you.

"And the angel said unto them, fear not: for, behold, I bring you tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, which is Christ the Lord." {Luke 2:10-11}

His name is JESUS.

We hope you all are blessed with the loveliest Christmas Day ever! We'll be stepping out for awhile to be part of a very special event. (Of which we'll plan on posting pictures.) So, it's time for us to say goodbye till the New Year. Orders placed anytime after today will be shipped out the week of January 4th.

With love and joy from our home to yours~

Kristie, Apphia, Achaia, Abigail, and Abiah

Tuesday night….

…seemed like a good night to roast hot dogs in our fireplace. Once adding some baked beans and yummy homemade chip dip we had ourselves a meal.

Hope your Tuesday night was as good as ours!

xoxo the Long ladies & family

Making a list!

1. Use the code MERRY2011 at mariemadelinestudio.com to receive free shipping on orders over $25! (US orders only…Offer ends January 1st, 2012)

2. A slew of new goodies up in the sale room! Including all of the lovelies we talked about a couple of weeks ago.

3. New fabrics– with more expected any day! Including Lark, Sugar Hill, & Sugar Hill flannels! Has anyone tried the FreeSpirit flannels yet? It's an absolute must. These flannels are the yummiest, softest, sweetest, cuddliest, bestest ever. (See how much we like them??)

4. We have some other neat-o stuff we can't wait to share, but sadly, we're thinking that we will have to hold off until the New Year. We are firmly agreed on the fact that there just isn't enough time in one day.

xxx the Long ladies

per request: The official M&M cookie recipe!

We had a request for our M&M cookie recipe — here it is! Please give it a try… they are deliciously, mouth-wateringly yummy. Of course, we always double this recipe. That way there's plenty of dough to eat, and a fair amount to cook too!

M&M Cookies

1 cup brown sugar

1 cup white sugar

1 cup shortening – we use butter

2 eggs

3 – 3 1/4 cups flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon salt

3/4 cup M&Ms – we'll tell the truth. We never measure our M&Ms, and probably put in quite a bit more than it calls for!

1 1/2 teaspoon vanilla

Cream sugars and shortening together. Add eggs and vanilla. Mix in flour, baking soda, and salt. Drop on cookie sheet.* Bake at 375 degrees for 8-10 minutes. Make sure not to overbake!

*By the way, these cookies really spread out when you're baking them, so if you don't want monster M&M cookies the size of your face, we'd recommend making the dough balls quite small… about the size of a golf ball.

Happy eating!

xo the Long ladies

A day (or two) to bake.

It just wouldn't be right to not take some time off from the normal day-to-day happenings and bake for Christmas.

Of course, that meant making some puppy chow, icebox oatmeal cookies, traditional sugar cookies, peanut butter balls, peanut & chocolate clusters, fondant, peanut butter fudge, and M&M cookies. Yes, that's quite a bit. My hands still smell like vanilla.

Would you believe we forgot to get sprinkles when we went to the store?? Our bad. It was quite sad, as we always like to use green & red sprinkles, plus red hots. We made up for it by scrouging around in the cabinet for green sprinkles left over from last year. Oh, and a few sugar cookies boast multi-colored sprinkles left over from our ice cream sundae desserts.

And, naturally, while we cooked we ate cookie dough before it was baked, sipped coke, and listened to some of our favorite Christmas songs from years past, along with a new one or two.

xoxo us

moccasin love

Who likes moccasins?? We admit that not every single one of us are moccasin wearers, but the ones of us that do wear them LOVE them. I (Achaia here) wasn't a moccasin girl until we went to Silver Dollar City in September with some lovely friends. SDC boasts these fantastic little "kiosks" all around the theme park, where different folks are selling their goods. There may be a lady who braids rugs, another who hand paints on parasols, a man who does woodcarving, another couple who makes sorghum the old-fashioned way. Well, there was a moccasin maker too. He does such a fabulous job! So good a job that Apphia passed up a flooded mine ride to go pick some out for herself. Well, the rest of us girls couldn't just leave it at that, could we? So, before we left we made another stop at the moccasin man's little shop, and came out with another pair. Those middle ones are mine (and Abs can wear them when she wants). The pretty pink and two-tone pairs are Apphia's. I love the fringy sides and the ties on mine. I don't think I'll ever be able to pull off the fabulous slip on ones like Apphia & Abigail do, but I love wearing the ones I have.

Abigail and I were in charge of holding the fabric up behind the moccasins while Abiah was snapping the pictures. I would show you an out-take shot of us being normal, but we just happened to be acting too much like ourselves — making faces and in our pjs. Yes, we come up with brainstorms all hours of the day.

xxx

What our day consisted of….

Beautiful friends with helping hands + Mexican food & sugar soda pop + Joplin quilts + needle & thread + lots of laughs & chatting + pizza to round the day off just right. A very happy Monday.

xx us

a handmade Christmas

These days, with Christmas only days away, there are so many things we all want to do for each other… buy for someone, bake for someone, sew for someone. As can be guessed, sewing has always played a big part in our Christmas gift giving. We have fond memories of the matching flannel pajama + quilts sets lovingly made by Mom, blankets (for us and baby dolls), outfits (always). For some reason the pj, quilt sets are extra well-remembered. They made such an impression — everyone had their own special floral flannel. They all went together, yet none of them matched. And, Mom remembers sweetly the life-size (well, it was life-size then) doll with blonde yarn hair and the cozy alligator sleeping bags (seen above – Mom's on the left, Aunt Karrie on the right), complete with white ric rac teeth, felt eyes, and lined in red perfect-for-the-inside-of-an-alligator's-mouth flannel.

Sadly, we can't make as many handmade Christmas gifts as we'd like, but stitching up love for someone else is still close to our hearts. We love to see others make something special for someone that's special to them. There's nothing like it.

So, we wanted to come up with a few ideas to give all of you. Ways to make some of our how-tos stretch even farther— right into Christmas.

1. Braid a rug (Round, long, small, large. Anyway— they're pretty.)

2. Make a messenger bag (They can be perfectly "specialized" with different fabrics.)

3. Bake cinnamon rolls (These look so cute in round foil pans with ribbon wrapped around them.)

4. Make a set of coasters (C'mon. Everybody loves pretty coasters.)

5. Sew up a Christmas-y skirt (Pretty perfection.)

6. You could always do some handstitching to brighten up a shirt. (It would even look good matching the Christmas skirt!)

7. Give a batch of yummy hot chocolate mix (So good and simple as pie!)

8. Make pillowcases (Everybody uses them, right?)

9. Try extra-fun pillowcases (If plain ones don't suit your fancy.)

10. Stitch up a pretty fabric flower (They look lovely in groups of three too!)

Of course, if none of these seem quite right, we'll forever recommend an alligator sleeping bag. We can all say that, since every single one of us has slept in one at some time. There's nothing like them.

Happy sewing and lots of love from our cozy home~

xoxo us