Tutorial Tuesday - How to Make a Reverse Applique Heart Christmas Tree Ornament

It's Tutorial Tuesday and today we are making a heart homemade Christmas tree ornament - or handmade Valentine's Day decoration - using fabric and reverse applique. Don't worry, it's easier than it sounds!

For this project you will need:

• Two pieces of main fabric measuring 6” x 6”.
• A piece of fabric measure 6” x 6” for the inset heart
• One piece of fusible interfacing, 6” x 6”
• 12” long ribbon for hanging 
• Polyester fiberfill stuffing
• Small pointed scissors like these embroidery scissors
• Marking pencil
• Pinking shears
• Pins or Clover Wonder Clips
• Iron
• Sewing machine
• Matching thread
• Rotary cutter
• Cutting ruler
• Cutting mat
• Heart templates downloaded free from here

Looking for more Valentine's Day ideas? Check out these projects!

Looking for something else? 

Check out some of my other Valentine's Day sewing and crafting projects!

Disclosure: Deb's Days is a participant in affiliate advertising programs designed to provide a means for me to earn fees by linking to affiliated sites. This means that, at no additional cost to you, I will earn a small commission if you click through and make a purchase. Your purchase helps support my work in bringing you new sewing and crafting content.

The step-by-step how to video instructions for the fabric heart ornament sewing project can be found here:

A Day of Discovery

Today was a day of discovery. We started out the morning as planned by hanging out at our own little private beach at our motel in Key Largo.

We sat there watching pelicans and gulls. Even saw this little guy right in the water near the blue walkway that headed to the dock.

Then we went to breakfast at Mrs. Mac's Kitchen a few miles down the road. We were too late for breakfast (it ended at 11 am) so we had lunch instead. (I should tell you - their fresh catch of the day was dolphin. Don't worry, we did NOT order it.)

Pretty cool looking place inside. License plates on the walls and lamps made out of license plates, too. See Idaho up there?

What's that stuck in the lattice on the ceiling? Well, it's money of course!

They had the best homemade key lime pie we've ever tasted.

We then headed to CVS in Islamorada to get hubby's prescription. They had to order it so we'll be back tomorrow to pick it up. I certainly hope this guy isn't in the parking lot again!

To kill time before check in at our new lodging location, we went to Library Beach Park. Although with this warning we decided not to stay too long.

So we headed a little bit early to our new place. What a view, right? This is out our front window.

It's a unique place we're staying in. Sometimes you just have to break away from those standard hotels and branch out. And that's what we did. I'll give you a tour tomorrow.

What a great day of new things!

Another NASCAR Race & National Park

How can your day not turn out great when you take a few steps out of your hotel room and see this?

I walked out onto the dock and took a photo of the property.

Shh. Don't tell hubby he's in the picture.

I'm not sure it's technically a hotel. It's just one building with what looks to be four units.

Our unit is on the ground floor in the back. This side faces the water.

We would have loved to stay on the little beach all day, but there was no lollygagging for us. We were on to another National Park today. Everglades National Park. Not nearly as pretty as yesterday's, but there was wildlife. No alligators, though.

Then following yesterday's schedule, back to another NASCAR race.

So how did we become people who watched NASCAR?

On a Sunday in 2011 I was living at my daughter's. Two months out from shoulder surgery, I was still in my sling and could only use one arm. My daughter was at work and I was doing what I usually did when I was at her place. I was sitting where I slept - in the recliner - and flipping through the local channels since she had no cable.

I came across the Daytona 500. I rarely ever watched car races, but knowing I was heading home the following week and would need something to talk to my husband about when I returned, I chose the car race. I sat there and watched that race. And enjoyed it. (Granted, I was on pain pills at the time.) Right before I started this blog in March I was able to move back home. Told my hubby about enjoying the race. He suggested we start watching those NASCAR races. So we did. Our weekends from March - November began to revolve around race time on TV. For the first few weeks I always picked who I thought would win the day's race based on who had the prettiest car. (I still do it that way.) Wouldn't you know it, for several weeks in a row I was always right.

Fast forward to 2018 (and I was in a sling this week because of my shoulder again - dang!) and we made it to two races in two days. Championship Weekend is a biggie. It's the end of the racing season and the day they crown a new champion.

We can mark that one off our list. I think we both agree we'd much rather be in our recliners with our feet up in the comfort of our own home rather than be in a crowd of thousands.

Did you know this is how they get one of their camera views before the race? I didn't.

One thing to note for future reference: If you go from a 14 day transatlantic cruise to a NASCAR race on the same day, prepare yourself for a culture shock. Not the same clientele for sure!

Tomorrow we're relaxing at our private beach before check out, heading off to try and fill a prescription, find a laundromat, and relax and enjoy another new and somewhat different kind of lodging in the Florida Keys.

Crown Princess Disembarkation Day

I don't know how it is humanly possible to experience such joy and sadness in the same moment. Knowing the Universe takes care of us helps, though.

Sometimes when we disembark a ship we arrange for wheelchair assistance for hubby. With my shoulder and his latest couple falls, with the ship returning after being out of the US for so long (which means immigration will be backed up with long lines), we decided to meet in the wheelchair disembarkation area this morning. Of course, not unexpectedly, things were running behind. As we were sitting there we saw a familiar face. At the same moment we both shouted, "Sydney!". Hugs and greetings and photos taken. And the same disbelief. Sydney, a crew member we knew from the Grand, was on this ship. For the entire cruise. 14 whole days and we never saw him, never knew he was there. He's the Vines guy now! (And a wheelchair disembarkation guy.) We were oh-so-excited to see him. And oh-so-sad we went the entire cruise without seeing him even once. Breaks my heart a bit.

But then as we waited longer for a wheelchair, hubby and I both shouted, "Shannon!". Another round of hugs and greetings and photos taken. And again the same disbelief. Shannon, a crew member we knew very well from the Royal, was on this ship. For the entire cruise. 14 whole days and we never saw him, never knew he was there. He worked in Crooners the entire cruise. (And was a wheelchair disembarkation guy.) We again were oh-so-excited to see him and oh-so-sad we went the entire cruise without seeing him even once. We had just been talking about him last month when we were in Nassau on the Caribbean Princess. Last time we were in Nassau was with the Royal Princess and we went to the beach with Shannon and a couple other crew members. (Today I even showed him that I still had the picture on my phone - and promised I wouldn't show that particular photo to other passengers!) Missing Shannon this cruise really broke my heart. We finished off with more hugs and a hard-to-say goodbye as he headed out to take a passenger onshore in a wheelchair.

And we continued to wait for our luggage tag color to be called. When it was, and a wheelchair guy showed up at the exact same time, guess who was hubby's wheelchair pusher? It was Shannon! Super excited, we were. Thank you, Universe, for giving us a bit more time with someone we hold so dear.

So happy. So sad. But at least we got to see them both. Then we saw Vickie and Bernie as we were headed out the door. Thank you again, Universe. It wasn't even 10 in the morning yet!

After all that excitement, we got our taxi to the car rental and headed to our first stop of the day, Biscayne National Park. We are working our way through the National Parks and when we arrived at this one we were surprised how far out away from things it was, but also surprised it was free. It was so beautiful. We wandered the paths, watched fish jumping and fisherman fishing, rocked on the porch, got our National Park stamps, and sat a spell on the bench overlooking the water.

Seems like we should be sipping sweet tea with a view like this.

 That could have been enough for the day. But we had another stop.

When we knew we wouldn't be able to fly home today (Pre-Thanksgiving airfare was ridiculously high) we knew we would not only do some National Park visiting but go to something that just happened to be scheduled the same weekend the ship arrived.

NASCAR Championship Weekend. Tomorrow I'll share more of the story about how we wound up watching NASCAR on TV years back, but today we saw our first-ever race in person today.

It was an afternoon race and we were so tired by the time it started.

It was covered by NBC Sports.

We finally decided to call it quits as the sun was going down. The Universe must have had us in mind again. As we were leaving the racetrack, we got a call from the front desk checking to see when we'd be there. You see, they close the front desk at 7 pm. I did not know that until the call.

If we had stayed the entire race we:
A. Wouldn't have heard the phone ring.
B. Wouldn't have made it to Key Largo before 7.
C. Would have lost our room.
D. All of the above.

The correct answer is D. Again, thank you Universe!

While we arrived after dark to a hotel that was extremely difficult to find, our room is a pretty one. We entered through a sliding glass door to see this:

We have a little patio (it's pitch dark out here so I'm not sure exactly what it looks like) and if I look closely I see maybe some sand around the corner. Looking at the pictures in the book that was in our room, we may have quite a nice view out back once the sun comes up tomorrow. Can't wait to check it out.

Oh, yeah, and another NASCAR race. Tomorrow should be exciting.