Polar Vortex--or just plain cold?

I woke up early this morning--about 4 am--and got up a half hour later. Temperature was -4F.  Brrrrr!  I know what I said last week about people complaining about temps in the teens and 20s, but now there's reason to complain about the cold.  Time to layer up, folks, and bring out all the quilts.

I had OT at 8 am today--making very slow progress with this darn thumb!--and it was all I could do to keep from taking a nap before lunch.  I love to nap, but they don't agree with me, and when I actually do nap, I'm up for hours in the night before I can get back to sleep.  And that's not good. So I kept my eyes open and began working on this:

Yes, I actually got the tree out of it's box and set up. Lights are on as are the ornaments.  Mr. Clem came by to make his inspection when the tree was nearly finished, and he approves of it.  Whew!  I was sooo worried!  The first thing he inspected was under the tree and in the back, making sure there's a good hiding place in there for him. Then he discovered a low-hanging glass dove that looked amusing, so he had to try a few swats before he gave up and walked away. Mr. Clem has never tried to climb the tree or otherwise destroy my Christmas decorations, and for that I'm thankful.  As you can probably tell by the glare in the room, the sun is streaming through the South facing living room windows.  It looks very pretty with the sun and a clear blue sky, but that means that outside,  it's colder than a well digger's butt, if you know what I mean.

Yesterday afternoon, I managed to make 4 of these placemat tops as I'd promised I'd do for Jo's Secret Santa.  I'd hoped to get them sandwiched today, but that's not happening. Tomorrow will be fine.  

After I got up in the wee hours of the morning, I started making up this Santa ornament. I'm just using scraps of red fabrics for my sample Santa and from that I'll figure out how much of one red I need to do the entire thing from only one fabric.  I got the log cabin block all made up but didn't have time to move on to making the sandwich.  Again, tomorrow will do.

And for last night's Hand Work group, I quickly copied the embroidery parts of this cute little throw pillow and got the top strip stitched, but didn't have time to begin the bottom strip.  And I don't have any of the piecing done.  I'll tackle that tomorrow too.  

I just hope I get a good night's sleep tonight since I have so much on my list of things to do "tomorrow!"  As always, wish me luck.