Happy Chinese New Year ---- drawstring bags and cookies

Happy Chinese New Year to all ! Today is the first day of our Chinese New Year celebration .

I am so lucky because I have nine days Chinese New Year holidays started from 26^th of last month. Besides being busy with my work , I was busy preparing for this festival in the past few weeks too. Spring cleaning, baking , sewing and………., phew ! I am glad all were done and now I am enjoying my New Year celebration.

Of all the traditional Chinese festivals, the Chinese New Year is the most important and grant celebration for the Chinese. It is the time for family reunions, and for visiting friends and relatives. This festival stressed the importance of family ties.

Yesterday we attended a Chinese New year's Eve dinner gathering in my brother's house . Even though my parents had passed away more than twenty years, members of my family would still gather at the old house where we grown up . Every year, we sisters and brothers together with our families gather there for the important family meal on the evening of the New year's Eve. It was among the most important family occasions of the year.

This year I was able to make some drawstring bags as little gifts for girls.

I used patchwork style cotton fabric for making these bags. The inner lining fabric is satin. Since all the bags are made from the same fabric, so I did some embroidery work to make sure each girl would be able to identify her own bag. You know, so many of them gathering together in our old house, playing, talking and giggling around, their belongings will definitely misplace and mix up.

Red packet with money is put inside each of the bags and given to my lovely nieces yesterday . They were happy to get their bags respectively.

For your information, red packets are actually small red envelopes, printed with greeting and best wishes wording. During Chinese New Year, red packets will be given to children, unmarried adults or elders with money inside them.

For this celebration, I managed to bake more than 40 tubs of cookies .These cookies are prepared for our relatives. I only have time to make five different types, i.e. pineapple nastar rolls, cashew nut cookies, chocolate almond cookies, butter cookies and semperit butter fingers. Besides sewing, I actually enjoy cooking and baking too. How I wish I could have more time to bake more variety of cookies .

Well. I have to stop here because my hubby is waiting for me. We are going to visit his uncle who stay nearby.

Thanks for stopping by. I hope you have a happy and enjoyable week !