Ramblings of a Scattered Mind

WIPocalypse!

2012-01-09T21:08:00.002-04:00

Well, it's been several years since I've posted, or stitched for that matter but a friend of mine, Christine, posted on her blog that she was going to join WIPocalypse and after reading a bit more about it (here) I decided I wanted to join also. I'm hoping that it will give me back my stitching mojo, which has been sorely missing for a few years now.

So, I guess in lieu of doing a "progress" post for the first full moon of the year, I'm merely doing a small introduction post with a list of the WIPs I'll be working on, and maybe a few I'd like to start.

First of all, the two main ones I've had sitting around for forever and a day.

Fairy Moon - Mirabilia

This is the last picture I took of this WiP at 58.5 hours. It was taken nearly 4 years ago in April 2008! (see what I mean about getting my stitching mojo back?!)

EDIT:

Once I finished my post and dug out my stitching to get started I was pleasantly surprised. I had over 70 hours completed, but I'd just never taken a picture. I stitched for a few more hours last night and today and took this picture when I reached the 75 hour mark!

End Edit.

Summer Blooms.

This came from a magazine somewhere, I'm not sure which one. I LOVE the piece, but have the hardest time getting into it. I hate stitching it, but I know it'll be worth it when I'm finished.

Summer Blooms - 20 Hours - August 2007

What Summer Blooms will look like when it's finished! I only hope I make it there someday!

Dream Sampler by Dragon Dreams

Another one I'd like to add to my list is Dream Sampler by Dragon Dreams. I did this for my oldest daughter a few years ago and would like to do another for my younger. I've even gone so far as to buy the fabric and work the outline grid on it already. I just need to get my lazy butt in gear on this one. Here's the finished version of the last one I did.

There are others I'd love to add to the list, for example, I've already collected the patterns for Celtic Spring, Celtic Summer and Celtic Autumn by Lavender and Lace as well as the pattern for Romantic Stitcher by Passione Ricamo but I think the ones I have here with a few Christmas Ornaments from the Just Cross Stitch Christmas Ornament issues I've collected over the last few years should be sufficient for now. However, I reserve the right to change my mind at any given time. ;)

Happy Stitching

Christine

Wow!

2009-06-12T22:24:00.006-03:00

Well, It's been over a year since the last time I posted anything and almost a year and a half since I was posting regularly. I have no excuse. I'm lazy and I should be shot. Ok, that last one is taking things a bit far, but seriously I used to love reading blogs and posting to mine, but I can't even remember the last blog I read. Oh wait, I lie. I was looking at Christine's blog yesterday for the first time in forever after getting a notification on facebook from her. But other than that I can't remember the last time I checked one of my fave blogs....

Oh well, here's one post and here's hoping that I can get back into the swing of things with both reading and posting.

I won't go into long boring details of my life in the last year, because I'd end up writing too much, then I'd get bored and never finish the post. Instead I'll tell you about my year in point form. Too bad I don't have time or I'd do a powerpoint presentation and load it up..... heyyy..... that's an idea! No, No, Bad Christine. If I do this in point form I might actually finish it.

Olivia started kindergarten last September. She loved it for all of one day before she started asking if she could sleep for "just 5 more minutes". Though she does still love school, she just hates getting up.
I started working in mid September as a teller at the Bank in my town. (no names mentioned here) I've been there for 10 months and I don't hate it yet. I think that's a record for me. :)
I haven't stitched more than a few dozen stitches since I last posted an update on my stitching. I seem to have lost my stitching mojo.
I have been making more cakes lately and I'm really enjoying that.
We finally got Rachel potty trained after many many MANY months of false starts. She had no desire for the longest time and I'd have to force her to sit on the toilet, but she's finally good, though we still use pullups at bedtime. We're not completely done with diapers yet. Soon hopefully.
Rachel is finally old enough (3) to farm her out to the grandparents for sleepovers! (Can I get a 'Booyah' here? - Sorry, too much Kim Possible!) and she's had a few of them recently.
I've been to the funeral home twice for two different people in the last week, so it's been a fairly sad week overall.
My DH, Jason lost over 50 pounds in the past year. He even came in first place in a "biggest loser" weight loss competition at his work and ended up winning $500.00 in gift cards.
We used the $500.00 to go towards a big swingset/Jungle jym for the kids.
We had a bear in the yard a few weeks ago, now I'm scared to let the kids go out to play on their new swingset.
I, unfortunately, haven't lost 50 pounds. I haven't even lost 5 pounds. :(
I'm very excited that Torchwood will be airing in Britian starting next week and I'm looking forward to watching the new adventures of Captain Jack Harkness and his band of merry men, (god I'm such a geek. lol) even if it is only 5 episodes.
I think I actually cried when I found out David Tennant will be leaving Doctor Who. *sobs*
We got a new kitty at the Fredericton SPCA a few months ago. He's doing great. He has to be the most patient cat in the world to put up with my kids. He's a big Orange Long Haired tabby. The kids named him Fluffy, though Rachel couldn't remember that for a while and kept calling him Fuzzy instead.

I'm reaching at this point to think of anything else, so I think I'll end with a few pictures of some of the cakes I've done since I last posted some.

Olivia's "Totally Spooktacular" 5th Birthday Cake

October 2008

We had a dressup Halloween party for Olivia's 5th birthday since she's so close to Halloween and she decided she wanted a "Witch Barbie" cake. I ended up having to special order the Barbie off of Ebay because apparently Mattel only makes the Halloween Witch Barbie for "Target" each year at Halloween ... So, since there are no Target stores in Canada I paid WAY too much for the doll on Ebay.

Here is the second cake I made for Olivia's birthday. We rented the Bowling Alley and invited pretty much the entire class to the party and I didn't know for sure how many would show up so I made a second cake in case the first one wasn't enough for all the kids and parents who were there. I ended up taking 3/4 of it home. lol.

Rachel's "Somewhere Over The Rainbow" 3rd Birthday Cake

April 2009

This was Rachel's 3rd Birthday cake. She wanted a "Somewhere over the Rainbow" party. Do you know how freaking hard it is to do "Somewhere over the Rainbow" that has nothing to do with Wizard of Oz? HARD!

I managed to find items in rainbow colours instead of actual rainbow stuff for the most part. The rainbow on the cake is made of Royal Icing made several days in advance, the border is Smarties. (I had a huge bowl of pink and brown ones left over afterwards.) The rest of the cake is just blue buttercream icing and white buttercream icing.

But then look what the inside looks like!

This was pretty neat. Find the tutorial here.

I had taken the rainbow off the top of the cake when I was cutting it and I put it back on to take this picture of the inside. I didn't realize until later that day that it was on backwards with the broken side of the rainbow showing instead of the good side.

Johnny's "John Deere" 60th Birthday Cake

June 2009

My most recent cake was a John Deere cake for my Father-in-Law's 60th Birthday. This one is just plain Buttercream and a printed John Deere logo that I cut out and traced onto the white buttercream with a toothpick. I then filled it in with a #16 star tip and yellow and green buttercream icing I coloured myself. It came out pretty good except for the little wow in the front of the cake where it's not quite even.

Well, that's all for now. Hopefully this won't be the last you hear from me for another year.

(Side note: it's been over a year and I see Blogger still has the freaky formatting problems that drive me completely batty. I've already had to stop myself three times from throwing my mouse against the wall when trying to get the post looking right after I uploaded my pictures.)

Cakes and Cake Wrecks

2008-07-23T14:36:00.006-03:00

My aunt sent me a link today to what has to be one of the funniest sites I've seen in a while. Maybe it's so funny to me because I've been doing more cake decorating of late than I have been stitching. It's a blog dedicated to finding the worst of the worst in PROFESSIONAL cakes out there. This doesn't count cakes that Moms like me make for their kids, but ones that people actually PAY professional cake decorators for. OMG I can't believe what some people will try to charge people money for. it's AWFUL!

Anyway, if you want to check it out it's called Cake Wrecks and the address is http://cakewrecks.blogspot.com/

Speaking of cakes I realize that I haven't posted anything much since January when I put up a picture of Rickey's cake. So, I've missed putting up Rachel's 2nd birthday cake and the Bridal shower cake I did for my friend Bridget just the other day. So, here are a few pics.

First, here's Rachel's Mickey Mouse Clubhouse Birthday cake the morning of her birthday party before the kids got up. On top of the cake it says Happy 2nd Birthday Rachel in my in my "Oh-So-Awesome Icing Cursive"(TM).

The cake itself is a simple slab cake for the bottom layer. It's iced with plain buttercream icing tinted green, but I forgot that I had bought some green color spray so I wouldn't have to tint the icing. I decided to be smart and spray it over top of the original green anyway- since I had already bought the color spray and didn't want to waste it. *lol* (This will come back into play later in the story. )

The red dome for the clubhouse is made using half of the Wilton's Sports Ball Cake pan and covered in red marshmallow fondant. (known as MMF from now on)

The foot is shaped using yellow MMF and the hand is shaped using plain white MMF. The fingers were stuck on using toothpicks and laid flat to dry for several days. The black arm, leg and neck are made using a length of PVC pipe (bought at the local cake store(*1)) which was inserted into the hand/leg/head and then covered with black MMF for an inch or two below that point. I left enough PVC at the bottom for the head and hand that the PVC goes all the way down to the cake board for extra support.

The Head was made of three styrofoam balls (one 6" ball and two 4" balls) found in the floral section at Walmart and painted black. Here's a tip, don't try and use spray paint on styrofoam. It WILL melt the styrofoam. I found this out first hand two days before the party with no trips planned to go to Fredericton so I could get replacement foam balls. Luckily I always plan my kids parties for Sunday afternoons so that way everyone still has their Saturdays to do their normal running around, so I got my father in law to pick up a new 6" styrofoam ball (the last one in the store!!) and a small can of glossy black paint so I could paint a new one before the party on Sunday.

The fence is yellow MMF rolled out and then cut with a curved top using my pizza roller. The gate is just white with some yellow 'snakes'(*2) on top and then a little curve cut out of the top with my apple corer. Yes, I said apple corer... I also used it to cut the MMF circles that I used on Janice's birthday cake back in January.

I then tinted a small amount of MMF blue and made some windows using the blue fondant and a few black fondant 'snakes'. I also used the black to make the door frame and a small door knob.

*1 Note: I have no idea if there is a difference between PVC pipe you'd buy at the hardware store and the stuff sold for use in food, but just to be on the safe side I'd stick with stuff that you find marketed especially for food rather than take any chances.

*2 Snakes refer to when you used to play with Play-doh as a kid (or as an adult with your own kids) and would roll out the dough in your hands and make a long squiggly snake.

Here's a picture of the same cake at the party. Notice that it only says "Happy Birthday" instead of the original "Happy 2nd Birthday Rachel"??

Well I had forgotten that we had gone to the Disney Store the last time we were in Moncton and bought the small plastic Mickey Mouse Clubhouse figureines to put on top of the cake. Anyway when it came time to put them on there wasn't enough room for the figurines and the two candles, so I had to scrape the "2nd" and "Rachel" off the cake.

Now this wouldn't have been so bad, but remember my smart idea to use the green color spray on top of the grass? (even though I didn't need it) Well, the icing from the lettering dampened the color spray underneath it and when I took the lettering off, it took the extra green off as well, leaving the original green color of the icing underneath it. lol. I had to do a lot of frigging to get it looking half decent again. You can't really see anything wrong in this picture but in real life you could still see the lighter colour where the letters had been. Or, rather, I could still see it. I don't know if anyone else noticed it or if I only saw it because I knew it was there.

Oh, stop making fun of me... you know you do the same thing too!

In case you've never seen Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, here's a picture from the Disney Website that I scammed so I could make sure it looked fairly close. The only thing I left off was the blue slide on the side of the clubhouse.

Here's a more recent cake I did. It's a wedding shower cake I did for my friend Bridget just last weekend. It's done with white MMF and sage green icing (I used Wilton's Concentrated Paste in Juniper to dye it this colour) and a sage green ribbon I found at Walmart. The topping is just three roses I got at my local flower shop and arranged into a small glass votive holder that I then sunk into the top of the cake.

The cake was a 10" cake (3" deep) for the bottom layer and then 3 regular 8" cakes for the top layer. (It was Marble Cake per the bride's request)

Anyway, Hopefully I can get back into posting again, and it won't be nearly so long until my next post as it has been since my last one. (I don't actually count the "Dr Horrible's Sing-Along Blog" post as an actual post... It's just a "go here before it's too late and you can't see it for free anymore" kind of post.)

Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog

2008-07-18T12:42:00.004-03:00

A campy, fun musical about a villan, a superhero and a girl.

Written and directed by Joss Whedon (creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Firefly and other great shows) Go visit it. Like, NOW!! It's only available to see for free until July 20th, after that you'll have to pay to download it!

Click on the picture to visit the site or go directly to www.drhorrible.com

Happy Birthday (party) Rickey

2008-01-20T20:47:00.000-04:00

Today is my step-father's birthday. Well, not his birthday, that's not until Tuesday, but today WAS his birthday party. Mmmm... Turkey supper with all the fixins. Gotta love a FREE turkey supper.

Here was my contribution to the celebration. This "Maple Leafs" Birthday Cake!

Rickey is a HUGE Leafs fan, and has a rather large collection of Leafs memorabilia, most of which NEVER EVER gets used. The two coffee cups with the Leafs logos on them that we gave him for Christmas several years ago sit on a shelf in the kitchen. He won't use them. The Zippo lighter with the Leafs logo that my Mom got him for Christmas one year isn't even out of the package, and the rest is the same. So, when we walked in today with this cake he was pleasantly surprised, expecting just a plain Chocolate cake with chocolate icing. But he then proceeded to tell me that he loves it but "we can't eat it!" Lol. Well, too bad, there were four little kids running around that put a stop to THAT idea rather quickly.

Random Winter Pictures

2008-01-20T10:37:00.000-04:00

A shot of my backyard in mid afternoon with the moon above the trees.

Same location, just a closeup of the snow covered fence.

Olivia, Rachel and Jason out playing in the snow.

My kids and husband in their first snowfort.

"Pew Pew" - Olivia pretending to shoot at me from lazerbeams on her wrists.

(She's been watching Buzz Lightyear on Playhouse Disney lately)

Rachel eating snow. Don't worry it wasn't yellow. *heehee*

One Smart Dog!!

2008-01-17T18:51:00.000-04:00

An old, tired-looking dog wandered into the yard. I could tell from his collar and well-fed belly that he had a home. He followed me into the house, down the hall, and fell asleep in a corner. An hour later, he went to the door, and I let him out.

The next day he was back, resumed his position in the hall, and slept for an hour. This continued for several weeks.

Curious, I pinned a note to his collar: "Every afternoon your dog comes to my house for a nap."

The next day he arrived with a different note pinned to his collar: "He lives in a home with ten children -- he's trying to catch up on his sleep. Can I come with him tomorrow?"

Note: This is NOT my picture, it just came with the email joke, so I thought I'd include it here.

Visions of Dragons

2008-01-15T01:01:00.000-04:00

I Finally finished stitching my Dream Sampler from Dragon Dreams. I've got 45 hours total stitching time on it. I didn't end up frogging out the Watercolors in the fairy's skirt. It looked fine with half stitches of the MUCH thicker Watercolors fibres, rather than the Waterlilies that it called for. I did, however frog the backstitching around the fairy's wings (what a chore that was!) and the backstitch swirls beside the fairy's wings. (which is much harder to see with the finer thread)

This one is for Olivia. I do plan on stitching it again for Rachel once I find a fabric that I suits it.

When I get around to getting it framed I'll post another picture.

Oh, I forgot to mention that it's stitched on 32 ct Iris Garden Opalescent Lugana from Silkweaver.

Cake Cake and more Cake

2008-01-13T13:36:00.000-04:00

Well, I still havn't gotten any stitching done lately. My cousin and best friend, Janice is celebrating her 29th birthday on Wednesday, and was having a birthday party last night, so I decided to bake a cake for her.

Here is the cake I ended up making.

This was my first attempt at using rolled fondant, and I decided to try making Marshmallow Fondant. I loved it! It wasn't nearly as tricky to work with as I thought it would be. The only thing I'd do differently is I wouldn't make a square cake using fondant again. the corners were really very tricky. But the idea behind the cake was for it to look like two stacked presents, so I could get away with folding the corners on it, which I gratefully did.

I decided on these colours because it matches her bedroom, which she reedecorated just last spring.

Here is a quick picture of Olivia on Friday afternoon as we finished mixing up the cake mix and she was happily licking the spoon and beaters while the cake was baking.

Cat 3

2008-01-11T19:22:00.000-04:00

Picture is not mine. Just posting it for fun

I need to vent

2008-01-10T11:46:00.000-04:00

Today's post has nothing to do with stitching, although I am only a day away from finishing Dream Sampler -- I'll post a picture as soon as it's done. It also has nothing to do with the Christmas pictures that I promised to post the last time I wrote, though hopefully I'll get off my duff and actually post them soon. It also has nothing to do with what I've been up to lately, which usually involves listening to either the new "Ultimate Santana" CD or the new Colbie Callait CD "CoCo" (which is great by the way) and reading online fanfic. Todays post is me venting about the freaking NB Health Care System.

Every child in New Brunswick (and I'm assuming all of Canada as well) goes for a 3 1/2 year checkup with the public health nurses, they make sure her eyesight is fine, check her hearing and speech as well as some general things like recognition of shapes, colours, etc. Basically just looking to see if there's anything that you're child is signifigantly behind on before they get to school. Well, Olivia had her 3 1/2 year checkup in May of 2007. (8 months ago) A speech therapist from the Parle Moi/Talk With Me program here in NB was there and mentioned that she thought that Olivia needed to be referred to see a speech therapist for her "imprecision" in her speech. She said that it's not a big problem, but something that should be looked into before school started if possible.

"Great! No problem." I said. "When do we go?" So then she tells me that the waiting list to get into a speech therapist in the Fredericton/Oromocto region is 8-10 months because they are short of speech therapists at the moment. A few weeks later I received a letter from the Speech Language Pathology Outpatient Department that said basically the same thing. 8-10 months. Ok, I can deal with that. They're dealing with staff shortages, there's not much I can do about it so there's not much sense in complaining. Right? Or, at lest, complaining isn't going to get me in any faster so no sense in getting myself all agrivated and worked up over something that I have no control over and no chance of changing.

Anyway, my cousin Janice asked me a few weeks ago if I'd ever heard any more about it and I said no I hadn't. She suggested calling to find out how much longer the wait would be since it was soon approaching 8 months since I was referred, and I hadn't yet received call to schedule an appointment within the next little while.

So, this morning I called the Audiology dept (same dept as speech therapist) and asked what how far up on the list Olivia currently was since we had been on the list since May of last year. She advises me she'll find out and give me a call back later this morning. About an hour later I get a call back and she informs me that they are still short staffed and it'll be at LEAST another YEAR befor we can get in. I nearly lost it. I know it's not her fault personally, and that thought is the only thing that kept me from completely going off on her about it. I said, something along the line of "So she's going to be in SCHOOL before she can get into a therapist?" and she said that was right, but that if I wanted her to get the speech help she needs before school I'd have to see a private speech therapist at a cost of $70-$80 per HOUR.

And, you know what makes me the angriest of all? I asked the "Parle Moi/Talk With Me" speech therapist whether Olivia needed to see someone at least TWICE in the year prior to her 3 1/2 year screening and she told me that Olivia was fine and her speech was just developing and would be fine. But during our meeting after the screening she told me that a parent usually notices the problems early on and they (the speech therapists) usually take that into account. If she had actually listened to me when I asked her about it the first few times, Olivia may have been into see a therapist by now and I wouldn't be going through this.

Aaaarghhhh...

Welcome 2008

2008-01-01T16:57:00.000-04:00

Well, Happy New Year for those of you who still check my Blog periodically. I rarely post anymore and I blame it all on the addiction that is Fanfiction. I've been stuck on a site (Twisting the Hellmouth - A Buffy the Vampire Slayer Crossover Fanfic site) for several months now. I've been giving less attention to my husband and kids (to some extent), my housework and most of all my stitching. DH and DD's and my housework have been getting a little less attention than normal, but my stitching has been almost completely non existant since that site started sucking up all my free time.

Here's a Family Picture that we had done in early December by a local Fredericton Photographer. We got them done just barely in time to go out with our Christmas Cards.

I've decided to run down my "To Do List" that I posted at the end of last year and see which ones have been accomplished and which ones have not. I commented after each item on whether it was a success or not. Blue text means I was successful with that item for 2007 and red text means I wasn't successful.

2007 To Do List

Play with and read to my kids more - Yes, for a good part of the year until my Fanfic addiction took hold the last few months I was doing good with this.
Try to keep up with my housework (or at least a little more than usual) - HA, not likely.
Post on my blog at least once a week - This might have happened for the first month or so, but definitely a failure if we look at it long term.
Post more to the email lists I belong to (no more lurking!) - I think I did good with this one for a while as well, but I haven't even CHECKED my email on that account for at least 6 months! A Dismal failure on that one ;)
Comment more on other's blogs. - I always complain that no one (or rather very few people) comment on my blog, but I'm guilty of reading and running as well. But not anymore! - Again, I did well for a while but fell off the wagon early.
Try and stitch at least two nights per week (EVERY week) - Nope
Finish "Waiting" - YES YES YES!
Start "Summer Blooms" (It's the second picture in this post) - Yep
Finish "Summer Blooms" - Nope
Start "Fairy Moon" - Yep
Finish "Fairy Moon" (though not likely!) - Nope (though as you can see I wasn't really expecting to)
Stitch "Quilt" (a DMC freebie I picked up online. See the pic here) and make it into a needlebook - Yep, though I never did finish stitching around the outside edge after finishing the needlebook
Stitch and "finish" 3 new Christmas Ornaments for 2007 - HA. I never even got one finished. I stitched it and it sat there for a month waiting for me to put the beads on it. Never got to it yet.
"finish" 3rd Ornament from 2006 (Blackwork Noel) - Nope... damn I'm lazy when it comes to finishing.
Get started on a scrapbook for Rachel. - I got a few pages done, but never went further... though since I only said get "STARTED" on a scrapbook I guess this is a success *Woohoo*
Make a monthly "to do" list each month to help keep me on track. - teeheehee... Nope, I think I did this in January and maybe one other month... 2 out of 12 - a success? I think not.

Ok, I think we can all agree that there is substantially more red than blue on the list, which means I need to either a) be more realistic in my goals or b) get off my tush and actually work on the things I WANT to accomplish and not assume that they're just going to happen on their own.

That being said, here are a few things I want to accomplish in 2008.

General Goals

Spend more time playing with my kids and NOT sit on my butt in front of the computer while Olivia asks me to play with her. There's only so long when your kids actually WANT to be with you and be seen with you. I want to take advantage of those short years as much as possible.
Walk on the treadmill at least 3 times a week. I got a treadmill in the late spring and I need to use it more
Lose 20 lbs. (this kind of goes with #2)
Reconnect with some of my Fredericton friends that I've lost touch with over the past year and a half - Most of whom I only hear about second hand through my friend Bridget.
Write one multi-chapter Fanfic at TtH, instead of just lurking and reading all the wonderful (and in some cases - not so wonderful) stories.

Stitching Goals

Finish Olivia's Dream Sampler - I'm nearly done now as it is.
Finish Summer Blooms
Finish (or at least make substantial progress on) Fairy Moon
Start Mother's Tree (Lavender & Lace) (deciding on the fabric to stitch this on should be one task all on it's own)
Start a second Dream Sampler for Rachel (again, once I figure out which fabric to use)
Start Romantic Stitcher (Passione Ricamo)
Start my Peace Snowglobe
Finish my Peace Snowglobe
Start Fairy Celebration 2
Finish Fairy Celebration 2
Have one Ornament weekend each month where I try to stitch one ornament a month -- If I don't get 12 made, I'd settle for one "finished" ornament for each of us. (As well as finishing the ones that I didn't from previous years.)

Heh, talk about being unrealistic. lol

I'll try to remember to post again tomorrow and put up a couple of pics from the holidays. If I just save this as a draft and attempt to add to it later when I have time I may NEVER get this one posted. At least this way I've posted something!

39 Things

2007-11-29T08:02:00.000-04:00

(My favourite is #27!! Ain't it the truth sister!)

1. Never, under any circumstances, take a sleeping pill and a laxative on the same night.

2. Don't worry about what people think, they don't do it very often.

3. Going to church doesn't make you a Christian anymore than standing in a garage makes you a car.

4. Artificial intelligence is no match for natural stupidity.

5. If you must choose between two evils, pick the one you've never tried before.

6. My idea of housework is to sweep the room with a glance.

7. Not one shred of evidence supports the notion that life is serious.

8. It is easier to get forgiveness than permission.

9. For every action, there is an equal and opposite government program.

10. If you look like your passport picture, you probably need the trip.

11. Bills travel through the mail at twice the speed of cheques.

12. A conscience is what hurts when all of your other parts feel so good.

13. Eat well, stay fit, die anyway.

14. Men are from earth, Women are from earth... Deal with it.

15. No man has ever been shot while doing the dishes.

16. A balanced diet is a cookie in each hand.

17. Middle age is when broadness of the mind and narrowness of the waist change places.

18. Opportunities always look bigger going than coming.

19. Junk is something you've kept for years and throw away three weeks before you need it.

20. There is always one more imbecile than you counted on.

21. Experience is a wonderful thing. It enables you to recognize a mistake when you make it again.

22. By the time you can make ends meet, they move the ends.

23. Thou shalt not weigh more than thy fridge.

24. Someone who thinks logically provides a nice contrast to the real world.

25. It's not the jeans that make your bum look fat.

26. If you had to identify, in 1 word, the reason why the human race has not achieved, & never will achieve, its full potential, that word would be "meetings".

27. There is a very fine line between "hobby" and "mental illness".

28. People who want to share their religious views with you almost never want you to share yours with them.

29. You should not confuse your career with your life.

30. Nobody cares if you can't dance well. Just get up and dance.

31. Never lick a steak knife.

32. The most destructive force in the universe is gossip.

33. You will never find anybody who can give you a clear and compelling reason why we put the clocks back.

34. You should never say anything to a woman that even remotely suggests that you think she's pregnant unless you can see an actual baby emerging from her at that moment.

35. There comes a time when you should stop expecting other people to make a big deal about your birthday.. That time is age eleven.

36. The one thing that unites all human beings, regardless of age, gender, religion, economic status or ethnic background, is that, deep down inside, we ALL believe that we are above average drivers..

37. A person, who is nice to you, but rude to the waiter, is not a nice person.

38. Your friends love you anyway.

39. Never be afraid to try something new.

Finally!!!

2007-11-16T07:40:00.000-04:00

Halloween Pics

2007-11-15T10:57:00.000-04:00

The three of us Halloween morning getting ready for
a Halloween Party at our local drop in play group.
Rachel as a Turtle, Me as a Juliet (without my wig) and Olivia as Snow White

Rachel the Turtle (too bad I don't have any
pictures where you can see her little shell!)

Olivia with all her treats on Halloween Night after I put Rachel to bed.

Our Dora Jack-o-Lantern the night I carved it.

Our Dora Jack-o-Lantern the next morning
when Rachel punched her in the face!

Not much going on

2007-11-15T09:04:00.000-04:00

Life's been pretty tame in small town New Brunswick lately. I haven't done much other than watch the tube and play with the kids... oh, other than nearly break my big toe the other day.

For some of you who know, we've got a wood furnace and the other night (Sunday) I went downstairs to throw a few logs in the fire and managed to drop one on my big toe. I don't think it would have been nearly as bad if I had actually been holding it and dropped it, but instead it slipped from my grip before I even had it off the top of the wood pile. Our small wood room in the basement has 9ft ceilings and the wood is piled in three tiers over 7ft tall... (I have to get on my tiptoes to get the wood at the very top) So, a log around 18" long and probably 9" in diameter when whole (it was split in half) fell 7 ft and landed on my big toe... needless to say I couldn't walk well for the next couple of days. Yesterday was the first day that I was actually walking without pain most of the time, though it was also the first day my toe turned purple, and an awfully pretty shade it was!

I haven't been doing much stitching lately. I managed to finish the John Deere Tractor I was stitching for my FIL. It was supposed to have text at the bottom telling the year of the tractor, but I left them off because his old John Deere tractor looks very similar to the pattern, but is a different year. I considered putting something like "Nothing Runs like a Deere" or just "John Deere" at the bottom, but honestly... I doubt he'll mistake it for anything else, so I just left it as it is, very simple.

I started working on Christmas Ornies for this year. I know, I know...I'm cutting it kind of close, but I just don't get the urge to work on Christmas stuff until nearly Christmas. I'm starting with the one I'm doing for Jason and I. (I plan on doing 3 each year -- one for each girl and one for Jason and I) It's the Joy ornament by Sweetheart Tree that's in the 2006 JCS Ornament Issue. I should be done in a day or two (it's not very big) and I'll post a pic then.

Two Christmas presents arrived last week, We ordered a new computer desk for ourselves as a Christmas present for all of us. Right now we've just got a cheap "student" style desk. Everything is open and no drawers etc... not the best thing with a very grabby baby in the house, so we ordered this one from Staples and it arrived the next day. (Note to Future Shop. Please please PLEASE take some lessons on home delivery from Staples!!) It's got a hutch on the top to keep things up high and away from curious little hands. It also has doors in several places to store all our junk that looks so cluttered and messy sitting out in the open right now. I tell you it'll be so nice to be a little more organized than we are now. And it's so hard not to just set it up and be done with it now, but it IS a Christmas present so Jason's adamant that it stay in the box until Christmas Day.

The other present that arrived was one I ordered for myself from Ebay. I've wanted to stitch Mother's Tree for a while now, and found it on Ebay for only a few dollars (including shipping I think I paid around $6.00.) So I thought it would be a good present for the girls to give to me. I won't be stitching it until sometime in the spring. I want to get substantially further in my rotation before I take on another big project. I think I'd get too scattered with another big one right now -- Medium one, maybe... but not a biggun. Unfortunately, blogger won't let me upload a picture now, if you don't know the pattern and want to take a peek, here it is. And if you want to see a gorgeous one that I found online, check this post out! She doesn't post much, but I LOVE her version of this pattern. Strangely enough when I did the research on my family tree on Ancestry.com I found that we actually have the first two ancestors on her tree in common. Neat!

Last of all, I realized that I never posted any Halloween Pictures of the kids but blogger is not cooperating on the photo front, so I'll try to remember to do a seperate post later.

Fun Little Quiz

2007-11-14T09:21:00.000-04:00

Rules: Use the 1st letter of your name to answer each of the following...They MUST be real places, names, things...NOTHING made up! If you can't think of anything, skip it. Try to use different answers if the person in front of you had the same 1st initial.And remember - you CAN'T use your name for the boy/girl name question.

Your Name: Christine
Famous Artist/Band/Musician: Christina Aguilera
A song: Come Together (by the Beatles)
4 letter word: Cape
Color: Cyan
Gifts/present: Candle
Vehicle: Cadilac
Animal: Cat
TV Show: Cosby Show
Location: Cardiff (in Wales -- I purposely didn't use the very obvious choice of Canada *lol*)
Boy Name: Connor
Girl Name: Charlotte
Drink: Coke
Occupation: Chiropractor
Sport: Curling
Flower: Chrysanthemum
Celebrity: Courtney Cox-Arquette
Food: Caviar
Something found in a kitchen: Cabinets
Reason for Being Late: Car broke down
Cartoon Character: Cinderella

Happy 4th Birthday Olivia!

2007-10-24T15:19:00.000-03:00

I started this post on October 24th, but things have been pretty hectic lately and so here I am over a week later, finally getting around to putting up pictures from Olivia's Birthday, and in the next post some Halloween ones as well.

Here are a few pictures from Olivia's Strawberry Shortcake themed 4th birthday party.

"The Birthday Girl" Olivia

"Little Sister" Rachel

Getting ready to blow out the candles on her Strawberry Shortcake Hat cake.

(Yes, I made the hat myself *Tadaa*)

A close up of the cake before I put the candles on it.

The cake was made using a 9" round pan and half of Wilton's sports ball pan. I used regular icing from a jar and coloured it pink. The strawberries I made a few days ahead using Royal Icing (I got the recipe from the Wilton website) The red ribbon around the hat is just red fruit by the foot and the green ribbon is a real ribbon made into a bow.

Olivia and her party guests eating cake and ice cream.

Rachel eating cake and "i-beem". (that's what she calls Ice cream)

Rachel and Grammy (my mom) cuddling. I love this shot!

Olivia opening her presents.

A video of everyone singing Happy Birthday to Olivia.

Has it been that long? Oh My...

2007-10-10T20:29:00.000-03:00

It's been a while, and I haven't been doing much for stitching. I just haven't been in the mood for it lately. But now that the new TV season is back upon us I may get a bit more done while I sit my chubby little butt in front of the idiot box for hours on end.

I actually just realized how much I watch that damn thing. I always knew it was a lot, but just today I commented on another blog about which shows we watch and I now realize that I'm totally and completely addicted to TV! Here's our list of the shows we are watching this season.

Sunday nights we watch: Simpsons, Desperate Housewives, Dexter and Family Guy

Monday nights we watch: How I Met Your Mother, Journeyman, Stargate: Atlantis, Heroes, Chuck and Californication

Tuesday nights we watch: The Rick Mercer Report, Air Farce, Law & Order: SVU, House, The Tudors, Reaper and Pushing Daisies

Wednesday nights we watch: Back To You, Private Practice, Criminal Minds, Life(haven't seen this one yet, but it's taped) and The Bionic Woman.

Thursday nights we watch: CSI, Grey's Anatomy, Survivor and soon Lost

Friday nights we watch:Ghost Whisperer, Las Vegas, Torchwood, Moonlight

Phew... it makes me tired just typing it. Damn it that's a lot of shows to watch EVERY week. That reminds me... Private Practice is starting in 5 minutes so I should hurry this post up.

Even though I haven't been stitching much, I do have some progress pictures to show.

I realized that I never did post my latest progress on Fairy Moon, so here she is at 28 hours work on September 6, 2007

I've also been working on another project for Christmas. It's safe to show it here because it's for my Father in Law who doesn't own a computer. It's a John Deere pattern I took from one of the Cross Stitcher magazines I have upstairs. I don't remember when it was published, but I saw it one day when I was going through my pile o mags and knew it was perfect for him. He loves anything to do with John Deere. He's got an old OLD Deere tractor that he kept using up until last year when the costs for repairs became more than managable. So he went out and bought a new one. Anyhow, I saw this and decided to stitch it for his birthday (June!) but that never happened and I'm now attempting to stick with it long enough to finish it before Christmas. If I can stay with it and not switch to any other projects I just might do it.

In other, non-stitchy news I took Olivia today to get her hair cut at the hair dresser for the very first time. Many people who know me in person know the trouble I've been having with trying to convince Rachel that pulling out big chunks of Olivia's hair is not a suitable passtime.

Anyway, it finally got to be too much for me. Her long hair was too easy to latch on to and I found that if I put Olivia's hair in a ponytail Rachel got a hold of it once in a while, but not nearly as much... so I went one step further with this and decided to get it cut. It had gotten to the point where Olivia is getting bald spots on the top of her head where it's all getting pulled out. It's also looking very messy and unkempt because there was so much breakage further down on her hair. So, lo and behold here is her new look. Don't mind the blurry pictures. My flash is acting up on me and hasn't been working this evening.

In case any of you needed reminded what her hair looked like before here's a shot. Her hair was in a ponytail for the first picture. Jason took these before we left for Sandy's (my hairdresser) but he didn't take her elastic out right away. I reminded him to, but he never thought to take more than one shot of front or back with the hair down and the front shot is horrible. She's making one of the strangest faces I've ever seen. So I guess you guys get to see the before with her elastic in. After all, that is what she looked like most of the time.

I've got more to post about, but don't have time tonight. I guess that's what happens when you wait more than a month between posts...

Dream Sampler

2007-09-07T09:33:00.000-03:00

Well, another few weeks since my last post in blogland and really not all that much to say. I've got some more stitching done. I finished the next section on Dream Sampler, with the exception of the specialty stitches running between the lines of text that I STILL don't have the silk threads for.

I ordered (and paid for) them at my LNS June 2nd and I still don't have anything. I called a week and a half ago to check on it and was told that they'd be putting the order in "next week". I mean, god!!! If there was no plan to order it for over nearly three months, just let me know and I'll get them somewhere else!!! (Note: I just called them and the order should be at the store "any time now". I guess we'll see how long it takes. Because then they still have to send it to me. I'm not very happy with my experience ordering specialty threads... I waited two months for the first batch only to find out I ordered the wrong thing, then I order again from my LNS expecting a little better service and it's 3 months now...

Well, enough ranting for now, you guys don't need to hear it... Here's a progress picture of Dream Sampler at 26.5 hours. I went on two days past the "week" thing because I wanted to finish the section. I'm big on working in sections. I don't think the strict 10 hours/week rotation is working very well. I think I'll still use that as a general guideline, but I won't stick with it too hard if I need to finish a section.

The highlight of my freaking week last week was when I was sitting stitching and looked down at the bottom corner of my fabric and found THIS.

Olivia had decided that my fabric looked like it needed a trim! The cut is about an inch from the bottom at the highest spot and about 2.5 inches long. Luckily there is a bit of extra material at the top and bottom, but I was looking to frame it with a large mat... and this limits the size frame I can use by a bit. I may have to eliminate the mat altogether. I plan on trying to sew a piece of fabric on the back of the bottom corner so I can possibly still use the whole size when stretching and framing the piece. I don't know how the stretching will go if both pieces of fabric have different amounts of give to them, but all I can do is try.

A Little More Summer

2007-08-23T20:14:00.000-03:00

Summer Blooms that is...

I finally got back into stitching a bit and have finished another 10 hours on Summer blooms. I was going to try and do a full week stitching, but the main reason I haven't been stitching lately is that I can't get into it with this pattern. I LOVE the pattern, and it's super easy, mostly full stitches with a few quarter stitches on the flowers, but I just can't get into it like I can with the others... Anyway, once I got to the 10 hour mark I gladly put it down to pick up Dream Sampler again. I had only one evening done on that when I got a call from my local library to let me know that my wait was finally over and the new Harry Potter had arrived with my number on it. (Woohoo!!) So, I started reading that last night. I should be done The Deathly Hallows in another day or so, but another book I'd ordered in at the library has arrived as well, with a third one on the way... so It looks like even though I finally got my groove back, my stitching may still be sporadic until I finish these three books. But luckily I'm a fast reader and it shouldn't take me longer than a week to polish off these three. (that's if I'm taking my time *lol*)

Anyway, here's the most recent picture of Summer Blooms at 20 hours work, taken on Aug 20 2007. I love it, and I can't wait until it's finished. (in more ways than one)

Click on the "Summer Blooms" tag at the bottom to see the previous posts about this pattern.

I've been stitching! Woohoo

2007-08-19T23:04:00.000-03:00

Yes, it's true... I've actually gotten a minute amount of stitching done in the past few days. Not enough to warrant a progress picture, but at least it's something. Mind you, I think it's probably just my way of avoiding doing housework. I always find something more interesting to do when that comes my way.

Since I have no pictures to upload of my progress I thought I'd add another "cat picture". A few months ago I said that once in a while I'd upload one of many funny cat pictures I received via email. I promptly forgot all about this. So, for the record. Here is picture number 2.

A new look

2007-08-18T21:41:00.000-03:00

I was sitting in front of the computer today and started playing with making a titlebar for my page... well that half hour job turned into an entire evening picking and plucking away at my page. Colours, fonts, widgets, etc etc etc...

Anyhow, here's what I came up with... hope you like it.

It's been a while

2007-08-18T08:21:00.000-03:00

Today’s SBQ was suggested by Jennifer and is:

How did you get started stitching? Was there a person that inspired you?

Well, my first foray into the world of stitching was when I was 12 or 13 years old. I picked up one of those 99 cent cross stitch patterns and stitched it as a Christmas present for Mom. She recently found it and gave it back to me all these years later. Here's a picture I snapped of it this morning, nestled into the vase of Gladiolius that I picked from my garden yesterday. Nothing fancy, but for a 13 year old I was quite proud of my work.

I recently picked up a pattern around the same size at a yard sale, intending to keep it for when Olivia gets a bit older. When my Uncle Stephen and his girlfriend Ellie were home from BC for a visit a few weeks ago, Ellie expressed an interest in learning to Cross stitch. So, I explained the basics to her and passed on my little pattern to her to give it a shot. Hopefully we've got another addict in the making! *lol*

Anyway, back to the story of how I started stitching.

Well, I never stitched anything else that I can remember for several years, even though Mom had picked up a magazine or two for me. (I still have my very first issue of "The Cross Stitcher" that she got me with a large unicorn pattern on the cover! -- I was a unicorn freak at the time.)

It wasn't until I was working at NB Power in 1999 that I caught the stitching bug again. Several of the women that I worked with were all stitchers, and wonderful stitchers at that -- and they inspired me to start stitching. Here's a picture of the first project I stitched. A 5x7 Dimensions kit I picked up at the local craft store. I never did finish it. I ran out of several colours in the kit and put it away for a while until I could get my hands on more of the same colours, then after stitching a few other projects I realized how bad it looks. The stitches are all going in different directions, and really messy. So, I made the decision that this would be a UFO forever. I'll never pick it back up again. I may someday decide to stitch it again from scratch , but I'll never finish this one.

I only did a few small projects in the next few years, and last year when I had Rachel I had signed up to some Yahoo groups and they inspired me to pick the needle back up again after a rest of a few years.

So, I guess my friends at NB Power, and my online friends were the people who inspired me to start (or re-start) stitching.

Mmmmmm.... Sweets!

2007-08-16T20:00:00.000-03:00

Well, guess what I did last night. I made my very first ever Apple Pie. I used a "just add water" pie crust mix and a bunch of August Whites (or Yellow Transparents as Jason calls them) that he picked from the huge apple tree in his dad's back yard. What to call them is actually a bit of a bone of contention between us. *lol* You know that our marriage has to be just horrible if that's normally our worst fight. *grin*

Anyway, I threw it all together with a mound of sliced apples, a cup of sugar and a sprinkle of cinnamon and nutmeg (more than a sprinkle, actually... a fair amount), then after baking for half an hour at 400 I took it out and spread some melted butter on top, then sprinkled it with sugar and put the pie back in for another half an hour. Mmmmmm.... Yummy.

The mini-pie I made for Olivia didn't turn out quite as well. It looks great in the picture, but the bottom crust wasn't quite cooked. I found several recipes that called from anywhere from 20 minutes to 45 minutes cooking. I left it in for 35, but apparently it's not quite enough. I plan on trying to make a few more either later tonight or tomorrow. I told Olivia she could help me make some mini apple pies tomorrow if she was good.

This is what I was sitting down with when I was about to start my post this evening. Jason also got a huge bunch of blueberries at his dad's place and decided to make blueberry muffins today. They are amazing muffins. In case you're interested the recipe can be found here. Definitely worth it.

I still haven't been doing much of anything for stitching lately. I've been spending much of my extra time reading. I've been ordering in some of the Anita Blake - Vampire Hunter books (by Laurell K Hamilton) at my local library. I've only got 4 books left in the series so I guess I'll be reading a bit more for the next while. I get two books in at a time since I'm a fast reader (I usually read both books in 2-3 days) so I usually end up waiting for quite a while for the next ones to come in.

Anyway, I should take off. Big Brother just started and I don't want to miss anything! God, I'm such an addict!

Look what we got today

2007-08-11T14:04:00.000-03:00

Here's a pic of Olivia in the Children's parade today. Jason thought he was doing me a favour today by getting up with the kids and letting me sleep. Normally I'd agree with him, but when I woke up at 9:45 today and remembered that the Children's Parade started at 10:00, it wasn't such a good thing. Anyway, I had the fastest shower that I think I've ever had, and did Olivia's hair in a couple of super quick ponytails and ran out the door with her and her scooter. We were going to decorate it a bit better this morning, but didn't have time to throw more than a few balloons on it.

We got there at 10:10 and had missed the judging of the Children's parade. Luckily the organizer took pity on Olivia and let her drive her scooter around in front of everyone even though she missed the rest of it...

I think the thing that soothed her the most about not getting a trophy was the other thing we got today at the Farmers Market. His name is Orange Sherbert according to Olivia and we brought him home this morning.

Apparently he's settling in quite well. (please ignore the dirt on the floor. I'd make an excuse, but it probably wouldn't be true... I'll admit it, I'm not quite as good a housekeeper as I like to pretend. lol)

It's a bird, it's a plane...

2007-08-10T09:12:00.000-03:00

No! It's Super Olivia!

There is a Children's Bicycle parade this Saturday and Olivia decided she wanted to be a super hero riding her scooter, so I went searching on the web for ideas and found a cute little cape pattern here. If you use a felt or something like that it can be a completely no-sew project, which is normally the kind of thing I go for since I'm not great with the sewing machine. But unfortunately I couldn't find pink felt (only blues, reds blacks and whites) so I ended up getting some pink flannel instead. I had to sew the edges to make sure it didn't fray, but even with my limited skills it only took about 10 minutes at the sewing machine to do this one for Olivia and another little one for Rachel that matches. (Can I get a collective "Awwwww")

I found a bunch of downloads on this site for the mask she's wearing, wrist bands and belt buckles all in matching superhero looks. There were some pink ones on there so I printed them out and then glued them on a white sheet of foam, then cut them out the next day and let Olivia decorate them with glitter glue. She's not wearing the belt and wrist bands yet, but you get the idea.

I took a few pictures and told Olivia to "pose". She gets down on one knee like this and then says "Mommy, is this posing?" I laughed and told her it was a perfect Superhero pose and snaapped a few pictures. What a cutie.

Last night Olivia had a sleepover at a friend's house for the very first time. She's had a friend over one time and she's had a sleep over at her Nannie's house, but never at another friend her own age before. It was nice to put Rachel down to bed and not have to fight with Olivia for an hour or more to go to sleep. It reminds me what it was like only having one child again. I hardly remember what I did with all my free time. lol.

No stitching progress to report. I'm still in my stitching slump. Hopefully I'll get back into it after this weekend. I'll be busy most of the weekend with stuff at the Fair. We're taking Olivia and Rachel out to the rides tomorrow and I'll be working the Figure Skating booth tonight and tomorrow night selling tickets on a Diamond Ring. Here, take a look. This is the picture of the ring that I downloaded from the Crescent website. They donated the ring for our fundraising efforts! Thank you Crescent Gold & Diamonds!!!

Has it been 3 weeks?

2007-08-06T10:40:00.000-03:00

Wow, where has the time gone. I knew it had been a while since I posted last, but I didn't realize that it had been so long. I've been on bit of a stitching lull. I haven't added more than a few dozen stitches to anything since I posted last, but I have managed to get one of my long completed cross stitch projects finished into my very first "no-sew Cube". (See the directions here)

I've had the project stitched and done for quite a while now, but I had to find some fabric for it. Needless to say, finding snow-y fabric in the middle of summer has been quite a challenge... I looked everywhere I could think of, but one day when I was walking through Walmart, I noticed a bunch of Christmassy looking fabrics on the end of the row and darted in for a quicker look. I found this very cute (and perfectly matching) blue snowflake fabric. Perfect. Seems that the Christmas fabrics came in earlier than usual and had just been put out the day before. What luck. The colours and pattern are a perfect match for this pattern.

I should mention that the pattern is called "Snow Ice Cream" and is by San-Man Originals. I didn't stitch it using the called for fibres. It called for a lot of overdyed fibres, which I didn't have... so I just kept pulling out different threads from my DMC boxes until I found some that I thought would work well.

All the swirls and snowflakes were all supposed to be stitched with an overdyed thread that went from blue to purple, so what I did there was stitch a few stitches using two strands of blue, then a few stitches with 1 blue and 1 purple, and then at the end I'd use two strands of purple... It worked very well.

In other news, Olivia has started getting an allowance as of this week. We have little "chore charts" that I picked up at Staples a few months ago where you can list what different chores she has to do each week to get her allowance. Of course being 3 years old we don't expect a whole lot of her yet. She has to Brush her teeth in the morning and in the evening, She has to help make her bed and help pick up her toys in her bedroom, and she has to help pick up her toys in the livingroom/kitchen. Then there's a spot to put an extra star if she's "Extra good" for mommy. If she refuses to do one of her "regular" chores (usually this is the brushing her teeth in the morning... she just won't do it no matter what I threaten her with) then she gets an X for that chore for that day. If she doesn't do something, but I didn't ask her to do it,(for example, her room isn't messy and there aren't any toys to clean up) then she doesn't get a star or an X.

At the end of the week we sit down and count all her stars and all her X's and if she has more stars than X's she gets her allowance. If she has more X's than stars, then nothing. The first week she refused to do most of the stuff on the list and at the end of the week I had to explain to her that because she didn't listen to Mommy when I asked her to do these things she wouldn't be getting an allowance. I think remembering that has helped her this week. She did much better and got a whole dollar for her troubles. She asked me to give her the allowance in nickels and dimes. (She wanted pennies originally, but I had already cleaned out my penny bank and gave it to her earlier in the week.)

Well, that's about it for today. We're headed off to see a parade this afternoon to kick off the summer festival here in our town this week. It's pretty boring for the adults, but Olivia is so excited. She's got it all planned out. She'll be in the Wagon with Rachel and she wants to bring a bag to carry all the candy that gets thrown to the kids. She doesn't want to miss out on a piece of it. lol. I'll post some pictures tomorrow if I remember.

Guess what we did yesterday!

2007-07-15T11:19:00.000-03:00

We bought a new minivan! Woohoo!!! I've been asking for one for a while now.

We got a 2003 Dodge Grand Caravan. It's Light Blue in colour and is loaded up with all the bells and whistles. It's got the integrated DVD player in it so Olivia can watch a movie when we go somewhere long. We can still listen to the radio or CDs on the regular car stereo while she watches "Snow White" and listens to it on the Wireless headphones!!... cause you know, there's only so many times a person can hear the "Hi ho Hi ho" song without going completely mental. ;)

One of the things we really wanted was the quad seating as opposed to the bench for the middle row, so the kids can have their own space. It'll be really nice when they get older and are fighting all the time, but even at this age Rachel loves to reach over and pull out handfulls of Olivia's hair when she's not looking. Having them slightly separate will definitely make for a quieter ride.

Here are a few pictures of our new Grand Caravan. The pics are from the dealer website, we don't have it yet. Jason's going to pick it up on Thursday. They need a day or so to get all the paperwork finished, and I'm going to be in Fredericton on Wednesday for an appointment, so he'll be travelling to Quispamsis on Thursday to get everything finalized.

Yaaaayyyy!!

Fairy Moon and a "big girl bed"

2007-07-10T13:01:00.000-03:00

Well, I guess it's been just over a week since I posted last. I've been busy working on Fairy Moon pretty steady. I've done 17.5 hours on her in the last week and the progress looks great so far. I've included a picture of her progress so far. The missing "spaces" in the stitching is where the beads will go. I've never done so much beading before, so it seems a little intimidating, but I know it won't be as bad as I'm expecting it to be.

I've finished my week's rotation on her as of last night and already I can't wait to start stitching her again. I really didn't want to put her down. I'll be back working on Summer Blooms tonight. So far the rotation thing is working well. I haven't switched projects yet that I wasn't dreading leaving the one was currently working on, but then, once I start the new one, I absolutely love working on it too. It definitely keeps me fresh and is exactly what I was hoping would happen.

In non-stitchy news, Olivia got her new "big girl" bed yesterday. We've been talking about it for a while now. She's been trained at night for a while now. She's had a grand total of 3 accidents over the last two months, during the night. Those are pretty good odds. But, just in case, we also bought a plastic sheet for her matress... we're not ones for taking chances. :)

Here's a picture of Olivia seeing her "big girl bed" for the first time yesterday. We set it up while she was at Bible Camp for the morning. She was so excited. I wish I had thought to bring the camera up when she FIRST saw it, the video would have been great, but I forgot it and ended up going downstairs a few minutes later to capture the momentus occasion. *grin* BTW, the reason she has no shirt is because they were playing outside at the end of Bible camp and Olivia came home covered in dirt and mud... I made her strip down before she got in her bed... I didn't feel like washing the sheets again so soon. lol.

WIP and a HD!

2007-06-30T11:57:00.000-03:00

Just a quick post to put up a pic of my most recent work on Dream Sampler at 12.5 hours, before I finished my "week" and switched projects". I haven't ripped out the stitching done with the watercolours yet. They only had one of the waterlilies in stock at "Because You Count" when I went up last week so I'm waiting to get them in the mail before I rip out the old stuff. That way it still looks done in the meantime.

I love love LOVE working on this one. It seems to be going so fast. I didn't want to put it down, but I've just started my first rotation and didn't want to fall off so quickly. :)

Dani, I knew that you stitched some of Jennifer's models for her, and I saw her Thank you to you on the back of the pattern. Also, I was curious if the pattern "Dani the Stitching Dragon" was made for you. I always assumed that it was but never thought to ask. And, no I don't think the watercolors would have worked for the specialty stitches. The rhodes hearts that I already did would have looked like a big blob if I would have used the watercolors instead of the waterlilies.

BTW, can I just say: Oh my god! I just ADORE stitching with silks. This was my first time, I was a silk virgin... but no more. And I've discovered something that I love almost as much as Pepsi... Well, no... not really... a bit of an exageration on my part. There's not much other than my family that I love more than Pepsi... But you get the idea!! :)

Here's a picture of my HD for today. It's a pic of a quick little freebie from Sweetheart Tree that I stitched up after I finished my rotation on Dream Sampler. I got it free from an ebay seller when I ordered some patterns from her not too long ago.

It's stitched on 28 ct Lugana. I think the colour is called Pewter, but I'm not certain. I think I might like to stitch it again using darker colours. I'm thinking overdyed silks... mmmm, Silks!!

I'd like to use dark green variants for the leaves and instead of light pink for the "Welcome" maybe a thread that changes from dark berry/raspberry to purples. I think I'm going to stitch some rhodes hearts using the same "berry" colour in place of the pink heart shaped beads. I'll find some similar "berry colour" petite seed beeds for it too to finish it all off.

I don't know if you can see it, but in the center of the diamonds there was a specialty stitch. (don't ask me which one, I can't remember the name right off) Anyway, it was done in Ecru, and you can barely make it out. Even when you look at it close up, it's almost identical in colour to the fabric.

Anyway, I'm off for today. I need to give Jason a hand building a Picnic table for a minute then I need to go get the baby up for lunch. Ahhh, my life. :)

One more thing...

2007-06-28T21:51:00.000-03:00

I know, I know, I don't post anything in like forever, and then I try to make up for it with three in one day?! But I can't believe I forgot to post a special Congratulatory message to my little cousin Kayla for becoming a recent High School Graduate!!

Congrats Kayla! We love you!!

Kayla at 2 years old.

Kayla, at 17 years old when she got her grad pics taken.

Like I promised

2007-06-28T20:59:00.000-03:00

The other day I promised I'd upload a few of the pictures I took of the girls when we went to the zoo the other day in Moncton. Well, as usual, I forgot all about it until right now. So, without further ado, here we go.

Here's Olivia with the stuffed Moose in the lobby at the Zoo. She was having so much fun, she didn't want to leave him, but others were waiting to take pics of their kids with the moose too. I wanted to get a quick pic with both her and Rachel, but there were SO many waiting that I didn't want to hold the show up any longer.

Rachel posing for a picture in her stroller.

Olivia with a Fallow Deer eating from her hand. Always a favourite!

Olivia and Rachel in a nice little rest area. Whenever there's anyone else around Olivia is always looking at them, she'll never look at the camera.

Olivia with a mouth full of goldfish crackers smiling for the camera with a huge lion in the background.

Tiger Olivia!

Tiger Rachel!

"Wait! I think I can crawl through this thing..."

A friend brought her double stroller for her two kids and since her oldest wanted to walk, Olivia decided she wanted a ride.

Olivia hugging Mallory.

Here's Olivia and Mallory in the double stroller and Rachel in our stroller. If Olivia weren't so tall I'd consider getting one of these for us, but as it is I doubt we'd get more than a few months out of it before she outgrew it.

SBQ: The Choices We Make

2007-06-28T15:34:00.000-03:00

SBQ for June 22, 2007 was suggested by Kathryn and is:

When you start a new work do you look for something small, do you look for
another huge project or do you consider your UFOs?

When I start a new project it usualy depends on which one is "calling to me" the most at that particular time. Usually though I'll know far enough in advance that I'm planning to take on another project and have two or three picked out that are my top picks, then when I'm ready to start I'll usually pick from those two or three. Sometimes I'll do one on a whim, but since I do so few projects compared to some of the stitching bloggers I read, I tend to be a bit pickier. If I do do start something on a whim it tends to be pretty small.

Because of my pickiness I have very few UFOs. I know most of my projects (even medium ones) take me quite a bit longer than other stitchers so I only do ones that I really love. I won't pick one to stitch that's just so-so. I guess that's one of the good sides of being a slow stitcher, I don't have tons of finished stuff that I'm not crazy about any more. I've also been pretty good at not taking on another big project until I finish my current one. Mind you I've not done very many big projects to date, so that part of it might change.

I just recently started my first rotation and started two medium projects and am about to start a large one, all at the same time. This is the first time I've started so many projects so close together, I'm hoping that the "starting" bug hasn't bitten me too hard, because I'm sure that could be a bad habbit to have when you finish as slowly as I do. ;)

The original post on the "Incoherant Scribblings" blog can be found here.

It's been a while

2007-06-25T09:56:00.000-03:00

since I last posted. May 31st to be exact. Almost a month ago since I last blogged. God I'm pathetic. lol. It' snot like my life has been so full of amazing goings on that I don't have the time to sit at the computer and write a short post... I'm just a bit lazy and I'm a LOT of a procrastinator. I tend to put things off till later, and then never get around to them. I think I have about 4 or 5 months worth of SBQs to catch up on... and I keep saying next week, next week... now I've got so many piled up in my inbox that it's just such a daunting task to get around to them all.

I have a little bit of "Doctor Who" fever again now that season 3 is starting to air... (or season 29, depending on who you talk to) I really like his new companion Freema Agyeman as "Martha". I wasn't sure if I was going to take a shine to her or not because, it's hard when you're replacing a popular character... (Billie Piper as Rose) People always have some expectations on what the new character will be like. I had the same bit of anticipation when David Tennant replaced Christopher Eccleston at the end of season 1, but I absolutely LOVE LOVE LOVE David in the roll. I adored Chris also, and they both are wonderful as the Doctor even though they both play him very different. They're both very likable and fun and funny. Of course, the funny part is a huge testament to the writers of the show, but they just have the certain way of delivering lines that is just perfect. I think the thing I like best is they're both quite "cheeky" in the roll. I think it's perfect for the character... Mind you, this was my first experience with the Doctor. I never watch any of the original series, so I didn't really have any preconcieved ideas on how the Doctor should act. Anyway, enough about Doctor Who for now... that's for tonight when the new episode airs on CBC *grin* Now it's time for a bit of a stitchy update.

I guess I'll first mention a little bit about the rotation I'm doing. I've decided that sometimes 10 hours just isn't enough. There are some times I can get 10 hours in 2-3 days if I'm having a really good go, so I decided to do a "10 hours or a week" rotation, which ever takes longer to get to... Basically if I am stitching a lot and get done my 10 hours in a few days then I'll keep stitching till I've stitched on it for a week, but if I'm having a time where I'm not doing much stitching, then I don't switch projects until I've got at least 10 hours done... that way I am always guaranteed to get the 10 hours in.

So, the first one I started this with was Summer Blooms by Marie Barber. Here's what it looks like when I put it down after the 10 hours to start Dream Sampler. When I pick it back up I'll fill in the little spots (they're just white stitches, so it'll look a lot like the empty places do now, and then backstitch the flowers before moving on to the lower areas.

After I finished this I moved on to FINALLY start Dream Sampler. I'm stitching it on 32ct Opalescant Lugana from Silkweaver in Iris Garden. There's a bit of a story here. After I got it I placed an order for the specialty fibres that it calls for from an online store. You may remember that post, it wasn't all that long ago. Anyhow I finally got the order, with a few extra GAST freebies thrown in for good measure. (Thank you Despina! BTW , GAST stands for Gentle Arts Sampler Threads for those of you not into that kind of thing.) When I opened the package up I saw the threads and was boggled. How am I supposed to stitch with such a HUGE piece of thread!! I had ordered the Caron Watercolors instead of the Caron Waterlillies. I mistakenly thought that even though the watercolors were cotton and the waterlilies were silk, they would be approximately the same size anyway. I guess I was expecting the watercolors to be the same size as a standard DMC/Anchor/Whatever cotton thread. Well, they're not. They've only got3 srands per thread and the thread is probably twice the size of a regular one. You can see them in the picture just above. The watercolors are the ones on the bobbins and the waterlilies is the one still in the twist.

At first I never clued in and I did start stitching with them, I was having a really hard time with the stitches. The thread was so big and full, and the holes were so small (32 count, you know) Everything was puckering and pulling strangely. It just didn't look nice. If you click on the pic to the left you can see a little better. The swirls are done in the watercolors, the overdyed portion of her skirt are the watercolors and the backstitch around her wings are the watercolors. Funny thing. The skirt is actually done with HALF stitches. The thread was so thick that I couldn't fit whole stitches in there, it was just too crowded, so I did half stitches instead and it didn't turn out half bad. If it weren't for the backstitching part then I might have kept going with it, but I find the backstitching just looks horrible.

Anyway, I was in Moncton this Saturday to take the kids to the Zoo with some of the kids and parents from the local drop in play group, and after leaving the zoo I took a quick trip down to "Because You Count" to ask about the waterlilies. I had never worked with, or even seen silks before and really wasn't sure how much of a difference they were in size. Well... you can see in the first picture that the skein of thread is about the same size as DMC threads, but there's 12, count 'em 12 strands per thread, not 6!! So they're even smaller than regular floss. So, I had to throw down the money and get them. Can you believe $8.40 per skein of silk thread!! That's almost criminal. I can't believe how expensive they are. I mean, I know that going to a brick and mortar store, it tends to cost a little more because of the higher overhead, and that I consider worth it, but still... By the time I got all 3 threads and paid tax, it was over $28!! for 3 threads!!! I had wanted to look around and get a bit more at first, but the only other thing I ended up picking up were some Piecemaker needles. Everyone I talk to and read blogs from seems to be completely nuts about these needles. So I took the plunge and picked up a few. They weren't too expensive. $3.30 for 6 needles. The cheapo Anchor ones I usually buy at Walmart are around $1.50 for 4, so a bit more money, but not horrible.

Well, it's too late to make a long story short, but the punch line is that I'm now waiting for the store to get two of the three threads in that I bought -- only one was in stock. They're going to mail them to me as soon as they arrive -- at no extra cost since I already paid for them, but I'm still waiting!! Oh well, I'll survive. It's not like I don't have other things to stitch. Besides, I now have to pull out all that backstitching and half stitches that I stitched with the watercolors... All hail to the frog queen, coming for a visit. Hopefully it's a short one.

In other news I had myself a yard sale last weekend and made around $250, then I badgered my dh until he got me a treadmill -- which the $250 is going towards. Apparently I've got high blood pressure. I have since I had Rachel, but my doctor told me "oh don't worry about it, it'll go down in a while." Well, apparently it didn't. So, now I'm trying to lose weight and exercise more to see if that will help enough that I don't need meds. That's why the tread mill. I'm a bit of a bugaphobe, if that's really a word, and I'm also terrified of dogs, so walking in a rural area with dogs in every 2nd or third yard during the summer when you live with the woods all around you doesn't work all that well for me... The good thing is that I know myself pretty well in this respect and I know I could tell the doctor that I'd walk each and every day faithfully, but it just wouldn't happen. Luckily Jason knows this about me too, which is why he didn't fight me too much on the treadmill issue.

Well, that's probably a long enough post for now. I'll try and remember to post a few zoo pictures tomorrow.

Dude

2007-05-31T14:45:00.000-03:00

I got an email last month with a ton of cute pics of cats with funny captions. I had decided to post them one at a time to my blog, but as usual, I forgot about it.

Anyway, I know I already posted twice today, but if I don't do it now, I'll never remember. So without further notice here's the first of the cat pictures.

Please note that I didn't take ANY of these pictures or add any of the captions. I just received them in my inbox via the power of the internet.

Spaghetti Face

2007-05-31T13:58:00.000-03:00

I made spaghetti for supper last night and this was what Rachel looked like afterwards. You just gotta love those great Spaghetti faces that babies get.

What a cutie.

Summer Blooms

2007-05-31T13:17:00.000-03:00

I finally got started on my Summer Blooms cross stitch last night. It's been one of my top "next starts" for a few years now but I've just never gotten around to it. I've had the material cut and ready for 6 months or so, but I was always working on Waiting and wanted to finish it before starting something bigish.

Well, I had planned on starting Dream Sampler from Dragon Dreams but I ordered the specialty threads from an Online Needlework Store (ONS) over two weeks ago and they haven't even SHIPPED it yet. I've emailed her a few times asking for an update and am always told "any day now".

I know that she's waiting for her shipment from the manufacturer to come in, so I know that technically it's not her fault, but there really should be some better communication on her part. And, if she didn't have the item in stock and didn't know when to expect it, she REALLY shouldn't have had it for sale on her site.

She emailed me a few days after I ordered to let me know that she was waiting for a few of the items to come in and I emailed back asking if I could expect them in "a few days or a few weeks?" and she told that they would be in that Monday. I should have seen that was a lie right then since the Monday she was talking about was Victoria Day. (Yes, the store is in Canada). We went to Moncton that weekend for a day without the kids and I had planned on picking them up at the LNS in Moncton if it were going to be a while for her to get them in, but decided against it since her order was coming just a few days later. Unfortunately I learned my lesson the hard way. All I can say is I will NEVER be ordering from Daisy Stitches again!

Anyway, now that I've finished my rant, I'll continue with my original point. Since I couldn't start Dream Sampler, I decided to start on Summer Blooms in the meantime. Neither one is a large project. Summer blooms is 204 x 90 stitches, so not too bad since most of the area is empty. The bottom 2/3 of the cross stitch is fairly sparse, being a topiary and all.

I've got about 2.5 hours on it now. I'll post a picture when I get a little further along.

Rachel's Birthday Pictures

2007-05-28T13:02:00.000-03:00

I just realized when I was going through my old posts that I never had a post with the pictures from Rachel's First Birthday party (and my 30th *shhh*) So, even though it's a little late, here they are.

Here are a few pictures of Birthday Girl #1

Here we are opening up some of Rachel's many presents. She was so excited!

Here is Birthday Girl #2 (me) with Olivia and the present she gave me. (One of the Willow Tree figurines I collect -- this one is "Mommy and Big Sister" according to Olivia. I've already got "Mommy and Baby" and "Mommy and Daddy Dancing". Strange, I can't remember the actual names of them, only the names that Olivia gave them.

Here's Rachel helping clean up after the presents were opened.

Here's a picture of Rachel's first birthday cake. (With her little "smash cake" on the right.) I finished making it late the night before. I made the decorations from Royal Icing the week before.

And here are several pictures of Rachel eating her little cake.

Movie Meme

2007-05-28T09:05:00.000-03:00

Shamelessly stolen from Christine who shamelessly stole it from Suz.

Name your all-time top five favorite movies.-
The Shawshank Redemption
The Princess Bride
Labyrinth -- I mean, how can you not love a movie with David Bowie in long hair and tights
The Phantom of the Opera (2004)
The Lord of the Rings (trilogy) -- does that count as one movie or three?

Honourable mentions:
Dirty Dancing
Pretty Woman -- a feelgood movie about a hooker and her john... lovely.
The Rocky Horror Picture Show
Oh Brother Where Art Thou?

What’s your favorite movie line? "Hello, My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father, preparet to die!" spoken by Mandy Patinkin in The Princess Bride.

Who’s your favorite movie character? I'm not sure, but if I have to pick one I'd say Dr. Frank N. Furter (wonderfully protrayed by Tim Currey) in Rocky Horror, or Captain Jack Sparrow (a very sexy Johnny Depp) from the Pirates of the Carribean movies... you gotta love men who can pull of wearing more eye makeup than most women! lol

What movie do you love that most people hate? I'd probably have to say Rocky Horror. It's definitely one of those Love it or Hate it movies...

What movie do you hate that most people love? Fargo... I just never got the point. Never even finished watching it. I couldn't get past the accents.

What was the last movie you saw? As in theatre movie? I saw Georgia Rule in the Theatre last week. A pretty good movie.

What’s your least favorite movie ever? I dunno. I guess it isn't important enough for one to stick in my mind.

What one movie have you seen that you would never ever watch again? I'd say Fargo, but I didn't actually see the whole movie. One I saw not too long ago, was Friends with Money. (with Jennifer Aniston) It definitely wasn't my cup of tea.

What was the last DVD you saw? I can't answer that on the grounds that I might incriminate myself. grin

What was the first DVD you remember buying? I don't remember what the first one we got was. I remember buying the DVD player in 1999. There was only one place in Fredericton that you could rent DVDs. (Blockbuster etc didn't rent them yet.) We paid over $400 for the dvd player, and it was one of the lower-middle end ones that the store sold. We just replaced it a few months ago.

What actor/actress would you like to look like? Oh, any of em... But right now, in honour of the new Pirates of the Carribean, I'd probably say Kiera Knightly. Just not quite so thin.

What classic movie have you never seen? Lots... I don't watch a lot of older movies. In fact I just saw "It's a Wonderful Life" last year at Christmas for the first time...

What song would you choose to be the theme song to the movie of your life story? Dream on by Aerosmith

What’s your favorite movie genre? Fantasy or Romantic Comedy. It depends on my mood.

Who’s your favorite actor/actress? I don't think I have a favourite. I love lots of them, but to say an actual favourite... none.

What actor/actress do you refuse to see their movies? I always said I couldn't stand Uma Thurman. For a long time I wouldn't watch her stuff. but I saw My Super Ex Girlfriend recently and it wasn't too bad... I might have to change my mind.

What genre would you choose not to watch? Horror. I dont sleep well for weeks after watching a scary movie. Especially when Jason's working night shift and I'm home alone. I see shadows moving and hear noises every 30 seconds. I LOVE the movies themselves, but it's not worth the hell of not sleeping for weeks. That doesn't count standard slasher flicks or general thriller movies... but a movie with actual monsters (that counts aliens) in it... no way. I still have images in my head after watching "28 Days Later" of that zombie coming through the window when the guys lights the candle at night...

What’s your favorite theater concession combo? Popcorn, popcorn and more popcorn... soaked in butter.

Front row, Back row, Side Seats, Aisle or center? We like to sit close to the back at the Aisle. Jason's a fairly big guy and it's so annoying sitting in the middle with people squished all around you, so he sits on the end and has room to stretch his legs and never has to share an arm rest. (except with me) We also sit fairly close to the back but not right at the back or you don't get the same effect from the surround sound speakers. (since they are usually right over your head if you're in the back row)

I'm Finished Waiting!!

2007-05-23T15:48:00.000-03:00

Just a quick post. I've finally finished "Waiting"!
She was done last night around midnight. Now all I have to do is get her stretched and framed when I have a few extra dollars for this.

I skipped stitching the blackwork border around the picture because I didn't leave enough room. Even with what's there it'll be a stretch (pun not intended) to get this piece stretched and framed properly. I've only got about 2 inches at the top and bottom right now, so if I had stitched the border as the pattern shows I would have only had about an inch left.

Anyway, enough talking. Here she is!

Waiting by Linda Jary

Stitched in DMC 28ct cream(?) Linen

Started sometime in 2005 - REstarted at 20 hours July 14, 2006

Finished - May 22, 2007

Happy Mothers Day

2007-05-13T12:08:00.000-03:00

A great big "Happy Mother's Day" to all of you Moms, Grandmas and Moms-to-be!

I know several...

2007-04-26T20:35:00.000-03:00

Life and Wildlife

2007-04-17T20:19:00.000-03:00

My blogging has been woefully absent of late, but blame it on the life altering internet revolution called Facebook, or as some call it "Crackbook" becasue it's (apparently) as addicting as crack.

I wouldn't know about the crack part, but Facebook is damn addicting I will admit that. Most of my internet browsing time has been taken up with searching around Facebook randomly. Checking out who is friends with who etc etc. But I was reminded today about my lack of posting on the blog when I was talking to my Aunt C on the phone. She reminded me that I haven't posted since April 6th, so I thought I'd better get my chubby little butt in gear and do a post.

I'm sick... again. We're all sick in fact. Everyone except Jason. Lucky bugger has dodged the flu/cold every time it hit our house this winter. Mind you it might be because he's the only one in the house who had a flu shot, but I gloss over that fact when I'm complaining about always being sick this winter. lol Hey, I'm a woman it's my perogerative. :)

Rachel's (and my) birthday party is coming up Sunday and Olivia has a Dance rehearsal and recital on Friday and Saturday respectively, so it's going to be a damn busy weekend. Not like this week leading up to it will be any less stressful. I'm making hand made Royal Icing decorations for Rachel's cake as well as the cake itself, and possibly some cookies too. We'll be cleaning and decorating for a first birthday, and to top it all off we've decided to paint the kitchen this week. As if we don't have enough else to do. lol. All this while Mommy and the two kidlets are sick! Not a fun time, let me tell you.

Yesterday I saw something I've never seen before. I've seen pictures, but never in person. Living quite close by our house is an Albino deer! They were in our backyard yesterday morning and I got a few shots through the window, but they mostly sucked because I've only got a 3x zoom on my camera and it was just far enough away in the woods that I couldn't focus very well on it. There was the Albino and 3 or 4 other "normal" deer wandering around looking for food.

At first I just assumed that they were just wandering by because we've never really seen a lot of deer in our area before. I mean I live with the woods all around me, so I know there's probably a few in there, but I just assumed because (not far) behind our house are a bunch of old clear cut coal mines, that the deer had gone to "greener pastures" so to speak. But today, just around dusk, Jason came to me and said that all the deer, including the Albino, were back. They were standing in our front yard looking for food when he opened the door to put out a garbage bag and they all took off running. I opened the living room blinds and one of the other deer was still there eating the little bit of our lawn stayed green(ish) over the winter. So off I ran to get my trusty (sucky) camera. I went to the side door, where I could easily see him and opened the window on the door to get a better shot. I set up my tripod and turned off the flash and got a couple of pretty good shots. Not professional by any means, but not bad.

Here they are:

The top two pictures are yesterday morning. You can see a white blur with some brown spots on it, That my friends is an Albino deer! and just to the right of it is another deer behind the tree.

The next four pictures are tonight out my side window. When I came to the window, he/she stood and stared right at me for a few minutes before (s)he went back to business. There's a few pictures of him/her grazing away in our front yard not 50 feet from our car. Then the last picture is one of it darting off into the bushes when an especially loud transport truck drove by our house. Hopefully they come back and I can get a few good pictures of the Albino to show.

My Celebrity Look-alikes

2007-04-06T15:43:00.001-03:00

My cool celebrity look-alike collage from MyHeritage.com. Get one for yourself.

9 years and a few days

2007-03-31T11:38:00.000-03:00

On Tuesday, it was 9 years since my grandmother passed away.

I've been thinking about her a lot the past few weeks. Knowing that the anniversary of her death was coming up soon, I planned on doing a post on my blog all about her on that day. But, as usual, I forgot about it on Tuesday. I was checking my Aunt's blog today (I haven't checked ANY blogs in about 2 weeks.) and saw her post and it reminded me that I missed the day.

(Here are Grammy and Grampy shortly before they got married)

I miss my Gram terribly. When I was young we were very close. Mom had me when she was quite young, (16) so my grandparents helped out with me a lot. I spent a lot of time with both of them, but as I got older and became a teenager I spent less and less time with my grandparents. I mean, what 16 year old wants to go sit and talk with her grandmother instead of going to a party. lol.

(Here they are on their wedding day)

Like many typical teens I never really listened much when she used to talk about what things were like when she was younger.

I wish I had spent more time listening to her. I miss her voice.

I miss her laugh. She had such a great laugh.

(Gram and Grampy having a good time. I'm not sure when this was taken.)

She raised 5 children

and had 9 grandchildren.

She was such a vibrant woman. And she was so very beautiful.

(l-r: My Great Grandmother Eva, My Grandmother Alma, My Mother Cathy and me I'm guessing sometime in the summer of 1978)

In her later years, she couldn't tell her stories any more. She had some form of dementia. We think it was Alzheimers Disease but we're not 100% sure. She'd start telling some story about a friend or family member, or even herself, and halfway through would have no idea what the ending was. She just couldn't remember. She used to get so frustrated. She knew what she wanted to say, but she just couldn't seem to get it out.

(5 Generations of women - Top row: My mother Cathy and Grandmother Alma, Middle row: My Great Great Grandmother Alma and My Great Grandmother Eva, Bottom center: ME!!)

One day, shortly before she passed away I was visiting with her and she kept making these frustrated noises and patting my arm, but she didn't say anything. I asked her what was wrong and she looked at me and said "I know I love you." She didn't know my name and couldn't remember who I was, but she knew the one thing that mattered. That she loved me and that I was important to her.

(Grampy and Grammy at my Aunt and Uncle's wedding in 1991 I think)

I wish she could have been at my wedding. I wish she could meet my kids. I wish I could talk to her for just one more day. I wish, I wish, I wish... But wishing doesn't really help now, does it? All I can do is remember her as best I can and make sure my kids know about her and love her too.

I Miss you and Love you Gram.

Alma Mary Caissie

May 19 1937 - March 27 1998

100 Hours Waiting

2007-03-29T12:49:00.000-03:00

Well, I made it to the magical 100 hour mark on Waiting, but I'm still nowhere close to finished. Well, I guess close is a ?? word here. I'm much closer than I was 10, 20, 30 hours ago, but I've still got a ways to go. I'm guessing 30 or 40 more hours, stitching at my pace. I've barely touched her the past few months, only getting an hour or so here and there, so god knows when I'll get her finished.

Janice has been watching me work away on her (she's my cousin for those who don't know who I'm talking about.) and decided she wanted to stitch her as well. (Enabling points for me!) But I think she's actually got just as much-- if not more-- done than I do. I know she's waiting until last to work on the drapes. I advised her to do that, because I found even though I was getting a lot of stitching done, I didn't see much progress since the picture didn't seem to shape up very fast. Anyway, when she's done I'll get her to email me a pic and I'll post it here too. She stitched it on bright white evenweave (the pattern calls for white) instead of the almost mushroom coloured linen that I used. It makes a big difference in the look of the project. I didn't think it would make that much of a difference, since they're both light coloured fabrics, but it does.

Anyway, here's my 100 hour picture, and here's hoping that I can actually get her finished soon. I've got several more big ones that I want to start, especially Fairy Moon, since I've now got the fabric for her.

Fabulous Fabrics!

2007-03-22T13:29:00.000-03:00

They're Here! They're Here!! THEY'RE FINALLY HERE!!!

Envy me! My fabrics have finally arrived from Silkweaver. Aren't they gorgeous. I've already got plans for a few of them.

Far left: 25" x 25" Enchantment 32ct Belfast Linen

Top row (l - r): Daffodil 28ct Opalescent Lugana, Blue Diamonds 28ct Opalescent Cashel Linen, Iris Garden 32 ct Opalescent Lugana

Bottom row (l-r): Sand 32ct Lugana, Blue Fusion 32ct Lugana, Meadow Mist 32ct Belfast Linen

All cuts (except the Enchantment) are 13" x 18"

I originally won 10 pieces, but I emailed and asked if I could exchange some of the winnings for one large piece (the Enchantment) to stitch Fairy Moon on.

No Fabrics yet.

2007-03-22T09:05:00.000-03:00

It's been a pretty slow few days. No stitching going on, no Scrapbooking either. Just a whole lotta couch potatoing. Is that even a word? Well, it is now!

We did get to Fredericton on Monday. We had to go to the bank to sign the papers to increase our mortgate. We're going to consolidate our line of credit and visa directly into our mortgate. We figured it out and we'll be paying $17 per month LESS than our current payments, and right now we're only paying our interest on our line of credit. Yes, it's going to take us 25 years to pay everything off, but at this rate (paying interest only) we're NEVER going to get rid of our line of credit.

You'd think when you go in to consolidate all your debts, they'd tell you "Your loan will be paid off next week when the paperwork comes through.". But no, they tell you instead, "You'll get the money deposited directly into your account next week." They don't care if you pay off the debts or not. In fact, I'm pretty sure they hope you go crazy and spend it all... that way you're still stuck paying on a line of credit for the rest of your life.

Jason was going to hit her up for "no fees for a year" if we signed back on with them, but forgot. I told him to call back and ask about it, but he wouldn't. He figures now that we've already signed, there's no way they'll give anything else. I figure as long as you've got a mortgage with a bank, you shouldn't have to pay a cent in monthly user fees with them. It's awful, as much as we pay each month in interest alone, and they're still trying to nickel and dime you to death.

Of course a trip to Fredericton wouldn't be complete without a stop at Walmart. But we went to the new one on the North Side instead of the one at the mall. Holy smokes, what a big improvement the new walmart is over the old one. Everything looks so much more inviting. I heard mention of the "colour change" in the paper and honestly didn't know what to expect, but I guess unlike the fast food colour schemes, Walmart is trying to get the shopper to stay longer, because the longer you stay, the more you spend. The only thing I didn't like about the new Walmart is the horribly small craft section... But I guess they figured with a Michaels coming this spring, it was a waste of time to use a lot of space on crafts... However their fabric selection is almost abysmal.

Speaking of Walmart, here's a funny tshirt design i found at the T Shirt Hell website. (Warning this site is not for the faint of heart, some designs are pretty adult oriented)

Snowflake Extraordinaire!

2007-03-18T18:26:00.000-03:00

Well, the ice show is over and done with for another year. Thank goodness. The girls all did great. I didn't get to see as much as I would have liked to because we ended up standing by the entrance much of the time. I spent most of that bouncing Rachel around or carrying Olivia so she could see the skaters.

Olivia did wonderful as a snowflake. I've got a few pictures to show everyone and a video that is currently uploading to photobucket and hopefully will be done before I finish with my post.

Here are some of the pictures from today.

Here's a few of Olivia and a few of her friends getting into their costumes before the show.

Aren't they adorable little snowflakes!

Here she is all dressed and ready to go!

These ones are pretty far away. I think Olivia was the one down crawling. (near the middle)

Here's a picture of a few of the boys, they're dressed up as the snowmen.

A lot of people around here put their boys in figure skating for a year or two before they start them in hockey. At this age, they're not actually learning any figure skating stuff, but just learning to skate. And they want them to already know how to skate once they start Hockey, so we've got 3 boys in the preschool agegroup and I think another 4 or 5 in the older ones. (around 8 or 9 years old)

Olivia was crawling around the ice and she went over by the boards.

She's waiting there for her Nannie to drop a flower for her.

Olivia posing with her flowers and teddy bear she got after she was done.

Another shot of the same.

Here's the video.

Olivia is the one who skates by (around 30 seconds into the video) and then runs into the boards! She's also the one (around 1:20 into the video I think) who is crawling around on the ice.

Puppies, puppies and more puppies!

2007-03-18T12:03:00.000-03:00

Well, it's almost spring and that means for many it's either Car trading or Moving "season", but for me spring brings around a different kind of urge. It's puppy season!

No, I'm not hunting puppies. I'm hunting FOR puppies... Ever since our Maggie got hit by a car 5 years ago, I've been asking for another puppy almost every spring. Don't get me wrong -- I ask other times too, but spring time just tends to bring out the worst in me when it comes to wanting a puppy. In the winter I can talk myself out of it, because who really wants to have a new puppy to wait outside with in the middle of the night in a snow storm? But, once the weather starts warming up and the birdies start re-appearing, I start looking at breeders web sites and at the Snookums Pets site. Jason usually tries and tries to distract me from my mission and usually manages to talk some sense into me before too long but this time I just don't know...

I've recently found this puppy at Snookums Pets and desperately want him. He's a Sheltie-Poodle cross. I had been looking at Shelties for quite a long time. They're very intelligent, easy to train and not very big. Perfect as far as I'm concerned. So, once I saw this little guy I nearly went nuts. The main thing that's stopping me right now is the cost. I know what dogs cost now a days, but I still can't get over it. A MIXED breed dog and they're selling it for $399! Plus Tax, Plus delivery. Yes, delivery. Snookums delivers in a climate controlled van once a week anywhere in Atlantic Canada for only $39. So, I figured it out, once we add tax and the delivery fee, (and possibly tax on the delivery fee) that's $500. For a mixed breed dog!! Crazy.

The other thing that's really stopping me is the fact that you can't meet the dog first if you're having him delivered. When we got Maggie, we went to the pet store in Fredericton and asked about what dogs he had. He said he had one really good one in right now, and one that he didn't really recommend. I asked why he didn't recommend her and he said "Because she doesn't make up with people. She's very timid. Not a very good pet" Well, I wanted to meet her anyway, she was just too cute not to. He brought her out and she ran up to both Jason and I and started kissing us and jumping on us. She was so excited to meet us. I fell in love with her right then and there and we took her. She made up with both of us right away and was an excellent pet. The store owner wasn't wrong though, she WAS very shy and timid around others -- Mostly men, but with us she was wonderful.

This puppy is gorgeous, but he might not be right for our family and unless we meet him first, we'll really never know. I mentioned taking a day trip over to Charlottetown to visit the store in person but that's not really reasonable. By the time we paid Gas and the Bridge fees to go to PEI and back, plus stopped for lunch we're talking quite a bit more than delivery. Plus we don't have room in our car for two kids in car seats and a puppy crate. So, I guess we'd have to rent a van for the day. That costs even more. I don't know... maybe he will manage to talk me out of it again after all.

Impatiently Waiting

2007-03-17T13:19:00.000-03:00

I'm (Im)patiently waiting for my fabrics to arrive from Silkweaver. After nearly mauling my mail carrier for the last month and a half wondering when my free fabrics were going to be here, I got an email on Tuesday telling me that they'd been shipped. I can't complain too much about the speed though. I emailed Tracey at Silkweaver and asked if I could trade a few of my 10 smaller free pieces for one large piece that I need to finally start stitching Fairy Celebration. (see the bottom of this post) She had no problem with that and said that she was crazy busy right now but as soon as she got the piece dyed she'd ship them out to me. Since the piece I was looking for was a custom size piece and she had to cut and then dye it for me, it wouldn't be one she normally had in her stash.

I'm hoping that US/Canada Post don't take too long with the delivery. Hopefully they'll be here early in the week, because I could go completely nuts knowing that they should be here any day but not knowing when. The worst part is Canada Post recently assessed our mailbox as being too dangerous where it is and moved us to a community mailbox. We now get our mail about 1km down the road, which is nice when it comes to shoveling out our mailbox in the winter time, but it also means that I can't just run down to the mailbox while the baby's sleeping. I've actually got to get the kids up, dressed and ready for outside, then head over to the mailbox-- only to find that there's a flyer for the Beltone hearing test that comes to town once a month.
Needless to say, I don't make it to the mailbox every day now that it's moved.

Speaking of "Waiting", I realized that I never posted the 90 hour picture I took back in January. lol. It's been a while since I've done much stitching on it. Here's the most recent picture, taken January 31, 2007 at 90 hours work. The window and outside the window are completely done. I'm now working on the dreaded bieges in her dress again, though I haven't been working on her much, so no more pictures yet.

Tomorrow is Olivia's Ice show and she's going to be a snowflake with the other preschoolers. (the boys are snowmen) The costume is finally finished as of last night. I spent the evening hot glueing stars and sequens in the shape of snowflakes onto her costume. Then I velcroed a large snowflake on the back that one of the other mothers cut out and spraypainted silver.
The whole thing is very cute. I'll post some pictures tomorrow after the show is done.

Tonight however I'll be spending the evening decorating trees. The theme for the ice show is A Walk in the Park - Four Seasons, and we need 4 trees-- one for each season. We cut down four small birch trees in the woods behind my house and put them in buckets half filled with cement. Of course the winter tree is easy, I spreay painted some white on it to look like snow/frost and it's ready. Easy Peasy. But the other three are quite a bit more work.

I'm currently working on the summer tree. I'm using green painters tape to tape bunched up squares of green tissue paper to the branches. I've only got about forty minutes on it so far because I can't work on it when the kids are up. I'll most likely be spending all evening and half the night tonight working on it. Janice is coming over right now to pick up the spring and fall trees. They only need about half the amount of "leaves" on the trees because they would either be just starting to grow in the spring, or already half gone in the fall. Hopefully we'll get them done without losing too much sleep. It would have been a lot easier if Jason didn't have to work, then I could spend the whole day downstairs working on it, but unfortunately he does, and I couldn't get anyone to come watch the kids for a few hours, so I'm stuck doing it tonight instead.

Here's a picture so far. I got about 40 minutes work on it when Rachel was napping earlier. Olivia was a bit of a pest getting into everything down there while I was working, but we managed for a bit. Hopefully I have enough green tissue paper to finish it. Janice stopped and checked at one of the local stores to see if there was any more, but there wasn't. She picked up some green crepe paper streamers instead. I can attach these the same way, I think, but it might still look quite a bit different. Instead, I might try mixing the streamers in with the tissue paper so it looks more naturally mixed in, instead of on half one shade of green and the other half another shade. I dunno, we'll see how it looks tomorrow.

Edit: It's 11:15 pm and we just finished the tree. I wanted to log on and add a picture of the finished result. For some reason in the picture the tape holding the apples on (green painters tape) reflects the flash a lot more than the tissue paper or crepe paper streamers and it looks like it's quite a bit brighter. (It's almost glowing on the tops of the apples.) But IRL you don't even see it. It matches almost exactly the colour green of the papers. It looks pretty good.

Looking at it again in the picture, I think I might tie up that rogue branch on the left side and make it a bit more uniform looking. Then again life's not always about uniformity is it?
Damn, I get all profound and stuff at a quarter after 11 at night don't I?

Alright, I'm pooped. Off to bed for me! Later everyone.

Scrappy Stuff!

2007-03-15T15:22:00.000-03:00

I haven't been doing much stitching lately, but this week I've gotten bit by the Scrappy bug again. I've done two layouts for my own scrapbook and done a mini album for my friend Bridget who who is taking a trip across the pond to England sometime this month.

Here are some pictures of what I've done this week.

Above is the front cover of Bridget's album and below is a qiuck shot of the pages from the album. I still haven't added any embellishments to them. I plan on adding some ribbon, eyelets and things like that. I've also got a few cute things hiding somewhere that I might dig out, but just haven't gotten around to yet.

Normally I wouldn't post pictures of a gift before it's received but I'm almost positive that Bridget doesn't read my blog. (In fact, the last time I mentioned it to her, she didn't even know I had one! *lol*)

Here's one of Olivia I did up in about half an hour the other day. I've always wanted to try using one of the 10x13 pictures I get from the portrait studio in a layout. I had to trim about 1.5" off the height and I trimmed about an inch off the left side to help center the picture better in the area that was available. I've also always wanted to do a "shabby chic" layout. With all the distressing that goes with it. So I used 3 different colours of ink pad and just rubbed them all over the papers I was using, then put the picture in and put a small piece of vellum over the green border to soften the distressing, attaching them with some terracotta orange conchoes that I had in my stash. I then added a metal heart and a pre made tag that matched pretty well.

I had a large area of empty vellum showing between the heart and tag and didn't quite know what to put in there, so I asked my cousin Janice what she thought. I then realized that I had some red checked ribbon in one of my drawers and "aged" that a bit with some barn red and green inks and tied a bow in the appropriate place. Then today when I was doing the layout below I saw the vellum quote and knew it was perfect to go with the picture in this layout, so I added it to a scrap of paper I had that matched pretty well, and mounted it just above the ribbon. It's not my favourite layout of all time or anything like that, but I like it. And all in all it went together pretty quickly.

The quote says: "Every child is a different kind of flower, and all together, they make this world a beautiful garden."

This one I did today. I've been meaning to do some pages of Rachel and thought I'd start with this page. I had the 5x7 picture stuck to the fridge for the past 10 months and thought it was time to use it. I wanted it to somewhat "match" the title page I did for Olivia's scrapbook all those years ago. The picture was very similar (see Olivia's below) and I wanted a similar feel with the picture tilted etc. Obviously it's not the "same" but similar is all I really wanted, so I'm VERY happy with it.

I used the last of some of my favourite papers I've EVER had. I bought several pieces of these papers at a scrapbooking store in Fredericton a few years ago and I've done a two page layout for Olivia as well as this layout and an altered can I made. The striped paper doesn't go with it, but luckily it matched well enough to finish the layout. I didn't have a big enough piece left out of any of my papers to finish this page without it.

I then hand wrote her information on some vellum and added it and then added two quick embellishments I got at Michaels and a quote (also on vellum) that says "You were made perfectly to be loved- and surely I have loved you, in the idea of you, my whole life long. Elizabeth Barrett Browning " I LOVE that quote.

I'm extremely happy with this layout. It went very quickly and turned out exactly as I was hoping.

Here's the original layout I did for Olivia's scrapbook around 3 years ago. In fact, I think it might be my very first page ever! You can see how much better my layouts have become over the years.

On this one I just used a single sheet of background paper. I didn't really know about paper piecing a background quite yet. Then I added some Mulberry paper I had run through the printer to print some information on it. (including all her birth info) Then I added a few stickers and a stork embellishment I bought especially for this page. (I think I paid around $8 for the stork!! -- shhh... don't tell Jason! grin)

The sticker quote says: "Little girls are prescious gifts wrapped in love serene. Their dresses tied with sashes, futures tied with dreams ~ unknown"

Little Rachel Sleepyhead

2007-03-11T20:43:00.000-03:00

I was puttering around in the kitchen around 7:00 tonight and Rachel was sitting happily in her high chair eating a little snack of grated cheese and some warmed up veggies when I noticed that she was being rather quiet. I snuck over and found her sound asleep!

Here's the picture

Here's the video
(Click on this picture to watch the video - will open a new window)

Open Letter to Proctor & Gamble

2007-03-08T09:10:00.000-04:00

Dear Mr. Thatcher,

I have been a loyal user of your Always maxi pads for over 20 years and I appreciate many of their features. Why, without the LeakGuard Core(tm) or Dri-Weave(tm) absorbency, I'd probably never go horseback riding or salsa dancing, and I'd certainly steer clear of running up and down the beach in tight, white shorts. But my favourite feature has to be your revolutionary Flexi-Wings. Kudos on being the only company smart enough to realize how crucial it is that maxi pads be aerodynamic. I can't tell you how safe and secure I feel each month knowing there's a little F-16 in mypants.

Have you ever had a menstrual period, Mr. Thatcher? Ever suffered from "the curse"? I'm guessing you haven't. Well, my "time of the month" is starting right now. As I type, I can already feel hormonal forces violently surging through my body. Just a few minutes from now, my body will adjust and I'll be transformed into what my husband likes to call "an inbred hillbilly with knife skills." Isn't the human body amazing?

As Brand Manager in the Feminine-hygiene Division, you've no doubt seen quite a bit of research on what exactly happens during your customers' monthly visits from "Aunt Flo". Therefore, you must know about the bloating, puffiness, and cramping we endure, and about our intense mood swings, crying jags, and out-of-control behaviour. You surely realize it's a tough time for most women.

In fact, only last week, my friend Jennifer fought theviolent urge to shove her boyfriend's testicles into a George Foreman Grill just because he told her he thought Grey's Anatomy was written by drunken chimps. Crazy! The point is, sir, you of all people must realize that America is just crawling with homicidal maniacs in Capri pants... Which brings me to the reason for my letter. Last month, while in the throes of cramping so painful I wanted to reach inside my body and yank out my uterus, I opened an Always maxi-pad, and there,printed on the adhesive backing, were these words:"Have a Happy Period." Are you *?#!@* kidding me?

What I mean is, does any part of your tiny middle-manager brain really think happiness - actual smiling, laughing happiness is possible during a menstrual period? Did anything mentioned above sound the least bit pleasurable? Well, did it, James? FYI, unless you're some kind of sick S&M freak girl, there will never be anything "happy" about a day inwhich you have to jack yourself up on Motrin and Kahlua and lock yourself in your house just so you don't march down to the local Walgreen's armed with a hunting rifle and a sketchy plan to end your life in a blaze of glory.

For the love of God, pull your head out, man! If you just have to slap a moronic message on a maxi pad,wouldn't it make more sense to say something that's actually pertinent, like "Put Down the Hammer" or"Vehicular Manslaughter Is Wrong", or are you just picking on us?

Sir, please inform your Accounting Department that,effective immediately, there will be an $8 drop in monthly profits, for have chosen to take my maxi-pad business elsewhere. And though I will certainly miss your Flex-Wings, I will not for one minute miss your brand of condescending bull*?#!@*. And that's a promise I will keep...
Always.

Best,
Wendi Aarons
Austin, TX

HER FIRST PAY CHECK

2007-03-07T14:29:00.000-04:00

Here's a truly heartwarming story about the bond formed between alittle 5-year-old girl and some construction workers that makes youbelieve we CAN make a difference when we give a child the giftof our time.

A young family moved into a house next door to a vacant lot. One daya construction crew turned up to start building a house on the emptylot. The young family's 5-year-old daughter naturally took an interest inall the activity going on next door and spent much of each day observing theworkers.

Eventually the construction crew, all of them gems-in-the-rough,more or less adopted her as a kind of project mascot. They chatted with her,let her sit with them while they had coffee and lunch breaks, and gave herlittle jobs to do here and there to make her feel important.

At the end of the first week they even presented her with a payenvelope containing a couple of dollars. The little girl took this home toher mother who said all the appropriate words of admiration and suggestedthat they take the two dollar "pay" she had received to the bank thenext day to start a savings account.

When they got to the bank, the teller was equally impressed and asked thelittle girl how she had come by her very own pay check at such a young age.The little girl proudly replied, "I worked last week with the crew buildingthe house next door to us.

"My goodness gracious," said the teller, "and will you be working on thehouse again this week, too?"

The little girl replied, "I will if those assholes at Home Depot everdeliver the fucking sheet rock..."

Stories like this just bring a tear to your eyes.

To Do in March

2007-03-01T23:59:00.000-04:00

Well, it's March and I'm just making my first monthly "to do" list. Better late than never. Maybe this will help me stick to my

March List
1. Stitch and finish 2 small gifts (XS)
2. Sew pants for Olivia's figure skating recital (for all 7 preschool girls in her group)
3. Make two quick quilts for Rachel and Olivia
4. Make progress on "Waiting" (XS)
5. Start "Summer Bloom" (XS)
6. Finish "Quilt" (XS) and finish into a needlebook
7. Clean and organize my craft room (especially my Scrapbooking supplies)
8. Once craft room is usable, start Rachel's Scrapbook... (Remember: take it one page at a time!)

Rachel with a cheerio stuck to her chin!

161 out of 238

2007-03-01T23:38:00.000-04:00

The following is taken from Teresa Wentzler's blog.

“It’s been said that allegedly if you’ve seen over 85 movies you have no life. Mark the ones you’ve seen. There are 238 films on this list. Copy this list, go to your own blog, paste it in and put x’s by the ones that you have seen. Add them up, change the header adding your number, and post it.”

(X) Rocky Horror Picture Show
(X) Grease
(X) Pirates of the Caribbean
(X) Pirates of the Caribbean 2: Dead Man’s Chest
( ) Boondock Saints
(X) Fight Club
( ) Starsky and Hutch
(X) Neverending Story
(X) Blazing Saddles
(X) Airplane
(X) The Princess Bride
(X) AnchorMan
(X) Napoleon Dynamite
(X) Labyrinth
(X) Saw
( ) Saw II
( ) White Noise
(X) White Oleander
(X) Anger Management
(X) 50 First Dates
(X) The Princess Diaries
(X) The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement
(X) Scream
(X) Scream 2
(X) Scream 3

21 out of 25 so far... bet you can see where THIS is going. lol.

(X) Scary Movie
(X) Scary Movie 2
(X) Scary Movie 3
(X) Scary Movie 4
(X) American Pie
(X) American Pie 2
(X) American Wedding
( ) American Pie Band Camp
(X) Harry Potter 1
(X) Harry Potter 2
(X) Harry Potter 3
(X) Harry Potter 4
(X) Resident Evil 1
( ) Resident Evil 2
(X) The Wedding Singer
(X) Little Black Book
(X) The Village
(X) Lilo & Stitch
(X) Finding Nemo
(X) Finding Neverland
(X) Signs
(X) The Grinch
( ) Texas Chainsaw Massacre
( ) Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning
(X) White Chicks

42 out of 50

(X) Butterfly Effect
(X) 13 Going on 30
(X) I, Robot
(X) Robots
(X) Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story
(X) Universal Soldier
(X) Lemony Snicket: A Series Of Unfortunate Events
(X) Along Came Polly
(X) Deep Impact
(X) KingPin
(X) Never Been Kissed
(X) Meet The Parents
(X) Meet the Fockers
( ) Eight Crazy Nights
( ) Joe Dirt
( ) King Kong
(X) A Cinderella Story
(X) The Terminal
( ) The Lizzie McGuire Movie
( ) Passport to Paris
(X) Dumb & Dumber
(X) Dumber & Dumberer
(X) Final Destination
( ) Final Destination 2
( ) Final Destination 3

60 out of 75

( ) Halloween
( ) The Ring
( ) The Ring 2
( ) Surviving Christmas
(X) Flubber
(X) Harold & Kumar Go To White Castle
(X) Practical Magic
( ) Chicago
( ) Ghost Ship
( ) From Hell
(X) Hellboy
(X) Secret Window
( ) I Am Sam
(X) The Whole Nine Yards
(X) The Whole Ten Yards
( ) The Day After Tomorrow
(X) Child’s Play
( ) Seed of Chucky
( ) Bride of Chucky
(X) Ten Things I Hate About You
(X) Just Married
(X) Gothika
(X) Nightmare on Elm Street
( ) Sixteen Candles
(X) Remember the Titans

73 out of 100... I'm almost there!!

(X) Coach Carter
( ) The Grudge
( ) The Grudge 2
(X) The Mask
( ) Son Of The Mask
(X) Bad Boys
(X) Bad Boys 2
( ) Joy Ride
(X) Lucky Number Sleven
(X) Ocean’s Eleven
(X) Ocean’s Twelve
(X) Bourne Identity
(X) Bourne Supremecy
( ) Lone Star
(X) Bedazzled
( ) Predator I
( ) Predator II
( ) The Fog
(X) Ice Age
(X) Ice Age 2: The Meltdown
(X) Curious George
(X) Independence Day
(X) Cujo
( ) A Bronx Tale
( ) Darkness Falls

88 out of 125. I'm 3 past the magic number and I've still got over 100 movies left to check! It's official ladies and gents, I have no life. Not that I ever doubted that in the slightest. lol

( ) Christine
(X) E.T.
( ) Children of the Corn
(X) My Bosses Daughter
(X) Maid in Manhattan
( ) War of the Worlds
(X) Rush Hour
(X) Rush Hour 2
( ) Best Bet
(X) How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days
(X) She’s All That
(X) Calendar Girls
( ) Sideways
(X) Mars Attacks
(X) Event Horizon
(X) Ever After
(X) Wizard of Oz
(X) Forrest Gump
( ) Big Trouble in Little China
(X) The Terminator
(X) The Terminator 2
(X) The Terminator 3
(X) X-Men
(X) X-2
(X) X3

107 out of 150

(X) Spider-Man
(X) Spider-Man 2
(X) Sky High
( ) Jeepers Creepers
( ) Jeepers Creepers 2
(X) Catch Me If You Can
(X) The Little Mermaid
(X) Freaky Friday
(X) Reign of Fire
(X) The Skulls
(X) Cruel Intentions
(X) Cruel Intentions 2
(X) The Hot Chick
(X) Shrek
(X) Shrek 2
(X) Swimfan
( ) Miracle on 34th street
(X) Old School
(X) The Notebook
(X) K-Pax
(X) Krippendorf’s Tribe
(X) A Walk to Remember
( ) Ice Castles
( ) Boogeyman
(X) The 40-year-old Virgin

127 out of 175

(X) Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring
(X) Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
(X) Lord of the Rings: Return Of the King
(X) Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark
(X) Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
(X) Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
( ) Base-ketball
( ) Hostel
( ) Waiting for Guffman
( ) House of 1000 Corpses
( ) Devils Rejects
(X) Elf
(X) Highlander
( ) Mothman Prophecies
(X) American History X
( ) Three
( ) The Jacket
( ) Kung Fu Hustle
( ) Shaolin Soccer
( ) Night Watch
(X) Monsters Inc.
(X) Titanic
(X) Monty Python and the Holy Grail
( ) Shaun Of the Dead
( ) Willard (Where's "Ben on this list?")

139 out of 200

( ) High Tension
(X) Club Dread
( ) Hulk
( ) Dawn Of the Dead
(X) Hook
(X) Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
(X) 28 days later
( ) Orgazmo
( ) Phantasm
(X) Waterworld
(X) Kill Bill Vol. 1
(X) Kill Bill Vol. 2
(X) Mortal Kombat
(X) Wolf Creek
(X) Kingdom of Heaven
( ) The Hills Have Eyes
( ) I Spit on Your Grave
(X) Star Wars Ep. I The Phantom Menace
(X) Star Wars Ep. II Attack of the Clones
(X) Star Wars Ep. III Revenge of the Sith
(X) Star Wars Ep. IV A New Hope
(X) Star Wars Ep. V The Empire Strikes Back
(X) Star Wars Ep. VI Return of the Jedi
( ) Ewoks: Caravan Of Courage
( ) Ewoks: The Battle For Endor

155 out of 225

( ) The Last House on the Left
( ) Re-Animator
( ) Army of Darkness
(X) The Matrix
(X) The Matrix: Reloaded
(X) The Matrix: Revolutions
( ) Animatrix
( ) Evil Dead
( ) Evil Dead 2
( ) Team America: World Police
(X) Red Dragon
(X) Silence of the Lambs
(X) Hannibal

Grand total: 161 out of 238. I REALLY don't have a life... plus every one that I read on this list brings one or two more movies to mind that aren't on it...

100th Meridian... err.. I mean Post!

2007-02-15T09:22:00.000-04:00

I can't believe I made it to 100 posts without flaking completely on my blogging. I don't blog as much as I used to, or as much as I had hoped after my "New Years" list, but I'm still going somewhat.

Rachel is now zipping around the house on all fours, so we've had to move into the super clean mode when it comes to our floors. She's steady picking up any little thing she finds and shoving it into her mouth. Having to sweep several times a day really sucks, but I guess it's just one of those things that comes with having a mobile baby around.

I haven't been stitching a lot lately. I had a touch of the flu a while back and spent a few days recouperating, we also spent a day in F'ton and ended up a Leons picking out a new Dining room set. We spent a day, along with Jason's Dad, last weekend moving everything around the house. I was just going to take a few pictures to post, but I just looked around and realized how much popcorn is on the floor right now! (Rachel is sleeping and Olivia is having a little snack -- most of which is scattered around the floor.) So, maybe this evening I'll get a picture taken and I can hopefully post it tomorrow.

Woohoo and a little more Woohoo!

2007-02-07T23:37:00.000-04:00

Big news for me yesterday.

Last night I had the presence of mind to check my bulk mail folder in my Hotmail account. Good thing I did, there was a very important email sitting in there. I got an email confirming that I won 2nd place for the Medium category in Silkweaver Fabric's Annual "Stitcher's Showcase".

It was for the free pattern "Fairy Celebration" by Passione Ricamo that I stitched late last year. I finished stitching the design on New Years Eve at around 10:30 and promptly took a picture and submitted it to Silkweaver for the contest. The contest ended at midnight on that same night. Am I ever glad I didn't flake on finishing that one. I had thought about not stitching that night and then submitting it the next year since it wouldn't have been finished in time. But if I had, I might never have won a prize!

I'll be getting 10 pieces of 13"x18" hand dyed fabric from www.silkweaver.com to add to my currently dismal fabric stash. (But it won't be dismal for long now!)

This is more than $100 in value since each piece (depending on the type of fabric) could range from $10 to $15 US, plus shipping costs! So the prize value is somewhere between $100 and $150 US! WooHoo!! I'm so excited right now. I got another email today confirming that they'll be shipping my fabric out on Monday!

Here's a picture of my winning entry. Now I just need to find a stunning way to finish it. I'm thinking of doing a wall hanging, but I need to find the right fabric to use for this.

And here's a link to the Medium Finalists on the Silkweaver site. If you want to check out all the entries and finalists in each category you can go directly to the main page for the contest here.

Well, that's my news for today. Hope your day is as great as mine was.

Need to catch up on a few more pictures

2007-01-27T17:30:00.000-04:00

I had to post a few pictures to try and get caught up to the recent ones. These are all from sometime in December.

Here's the Christmas picture of the girls we sent out with our Christmas Cards.
Cute, ain't they!

Some pictures of Rachel in December. The last one is her crawling backwards. She couldn't go forward yet.

Here are a few of Olivia playing on her unicorn the same day.

Here are two of Olivia in Mid December with curlers in her hair. How cute is she!

A bit more Waiting

2007-01-27T16:55:00.000-04:00

I just realized that I never posted a pic of my 70 hour progress of Waiting. I've now finished over 80 hours and so I have two pictures to post of this one today. I also have another small finish to show off. I saw a picture on an egroup I belong to where someone (Sorry, I can't remember who) posted a pic of a design she came up with. It said "Never trust a skinny cook" and had a small teddy bear with a chef's hat on. I fell in love with the phrase and decided to come up with my own version of this. I "thiefed" a few elements from some other patterns I had, so they're not all mine, but the overall design is.

Here are some pictures...

Waiting at 70 hours. Arm, Back and Scarf completed.

Waiting at 80 Hours - Other arm, Hair and 2/3 of the windowpanes completed. (My god that hair had a LOT of quarter stitches!)

Never trust a SKINNY Cook. (My new motto)

Princess Bride Olivia

2007-01-19T14:54:00.000-04:00

These pictures were taken in late December. Olivia wanted to play dress up and she wanted to be a Princess Bride. So, I got out my headpiece and veil from my wedding day and let her run around the house for an hour or so, then I got the bright idea that to dig out an old flower girl dress a friend had given us as a play dress. It was, perfectly enough, white. It is now known as Olivia's wedding dress. Here are some pictures from that day. (the first one is another day before we found the dress, when she only had the veil and flowers)

Smile for the camera!

My pretty little Bride

Showing off her "ring"

Another "ring" shot. She asked me to take a picture of JUST the ring.

This is what we got.

A happy little bride!

Fishing for Pickles

2007-01-19T14:35:00.000-04:00

I saw when looking at my "pictures to blog" folder on my computer that I have 35 pictures from December and January that I haven't posted yet. I won't post them all today, but here's a few of them.
So, for your watching enjoyment I now present: "Olivia Fishing for Pickles"

Here she is, the hunter searching for her prey.

She can't get anything quite yet so she settles for a taste of the juice.

"Fishing" some more

Finally, she gets one!

Ahhh, the sweet taste of victory.

Apparently my little girl only eats half of the pickle. The rest is the "stem" as far as she's concerned. lol

Waiting, Cravings and the Weather

2007-01-06T10:55:00.000-04:00

It seems like everyone everywhere is posting about the strange weather lately, but we're seeing a lot of strange goings on here in Atlantic Canada especially. I mean, hell, it's January 6th and they're calling for a high of 11 degrees and a low of 1 degree Celcius (That's a high of 52 and a low of 34 degrees F for any American friends reading this.) The regional norms are between -15 and -4 degrees C (between 5 and 25 degrees F) This is CRAZY. We're having a pretty torrential downpour right now and for the past few days it's felt like early spring here! This has got to be one of the mildest winters on record for the area. I actually saw on TV the other day that 10 of the warmest years (worldwide) have occured since 1994 (12 years)... so 10 of the past 12 years have been the warmest years EVER recorded! It really makes you think about the whole Global Warming issue, doesn't it?

Rachel is getting ready to pop a few more teeth. Her two top incisors are starting to push through. You can see her gums are getting whiter as the teeth are getting closer to the surface. It should be any day now and my little one is going to move from 2 to 4 teeth. She's getting so big now, I'm almost getting depressed thinking about it. With Olivia it didn't seem as bad because I always knew I wanted another baby. But now that we have 2, we're pretty much sure we're done having kids. (not 100%, but about 99% sure) And, now that we're pretty sure of this, every new milestone is not only exciting, but saddening becasue this is my LAST baby! This is the last time I'll see one of my babies getting their teeth, learning to crawl, learning to talk etc etc etc. I know there are some (if not many) of you who know exactly what I'm talking about.

I had the chance to get my tubes tied when I went in for surgery on my Ovarian Cysts, but I didn't want to commit to something like that. I'd rather wait a while and go back for another surgery (or send Jason for surgery *lol*) once we're 100% sure we're done... but not until then.

Something weird happend to me yesterday. I was in Rachel's room getting her up after her nap and all of a sudden, out of the blue, I got hit with a VERY STRONG craving for a cigarette! Funny thing is, I quit smoking in June 1997 so it's been almost 10 years! I backslid a few times, afterwards but never for long, mostly just party smoking (I know you understand that Aunt "C"! That and "New Brunswick Smoking" *lol*) and I haven't even had a drag off of a cig in at LEAST 5 years, I'm not sure exactly how long it's been since I had a drag, but I know I've never had one since I've been living in this house. (5 years in May) It just seems weird to hit all of a sudden out of the blue like that. Honestly, it's something I never really expected to have to wrorry about anymore. Not after this long. Strange.

Well, now that I'm done with Christmas ornies and Fairy Celebration, I can finally get back to stitching on Waiting. It's been sitting for quite a long time (sometime in October was the last time I stitched on her) and I finally got my next 10 hours done with. I'm now at 60 hours as of the other night when I took the pictures. In reality I'm at about 64 hours now, but I don't have any pictures for that far yet. I'll have some more at 70. I've finished the lady's arm and have started on the blue scarf on her dress. She's coming along pretty well, hopefully I can stick with her for a while now and get quite a lot done. It shouldn't be too hard now that I'm done all of the "boring" stitching on the drapes. Here's a picture of my progress so far. Click on the picture to see a larger version.

2006 / 2007

2006-12-31T23:31:00.000-04:00

Well, the year is at an end. It's about half an hour until we ring in 2007 with a bang and I'm sitting here blogging about it on my computer. lol. What an exciting life I have. The kids are asleep and Jason's watching the 'tube' And me, Well I'm here bragging about having one last final finish in 2006. Yes, you heard right. I finally finished Fairy Celebration!! Woohoo. The only finish this year that didn't involve an ornament. (and only 2 of those!) Needless to say I'm not one of those "power stitchers" out there that stitch an L&L or Mirabilia pattern from start to finish in 2 short months or anything like that. But damn it, when I do get one finished I brag about it to everyone I know. lol

Here's a picture of my newest masterpiece. I plan on finishing it as a wall hanging. I just need to find the perfect material for it. I don't want to get something too busy or it might take away from the amazing fabric it's stitched on. I'd like to get a simple fabric, maybe a single blue or purple with some sparkles in it. When I get that part done I'll post another picture of it then. I should have a little time to look for fabric when I go to town on the 18th.

I've got a doctor's appointment in Fredericton that morning and since my mom is laid off for the winter, I asked her if she'd watch the kids for the day (Thanks Mom!!) to give Jason and I a chance to get out without them. I know, we just got out in December for the day without them, but that was a busy day Christmas Shopping, not much time to just browse around and take our time. We barely stopped the whole time we were away. Still nice to get away from the kids for a few hours, but it's not the same.

Now, on to the part of the post that everyone seems to be posting about the past few days. New Years Resolutions... You know, I hate that term. I REALLY hate it. Everyone breaks their resolution. When people are talking about New Years Resolutions you automatically think Weight Loss, Quit Smoking, Learn Something New, yadda yadda yadda. Nothing new here folks. I gave up making new years resolutions several years ago. Instead, this year I'm making a 2007 To Do list. It's got more on it then a typical resolution, but it's more specific, attainable goals. Not the generalizations that a lot of people usually go with.

So, that being said, here is my 2007 To Do list. Much of which involves stitching. (heh, imagine that.)

Play with and read to my kids more
Try to keep up with my housework (or at least a little more than usual)
Post on my blog at least once a week
Post more to the email lists I belong to (no more lurking!)
Comment more on other's blogs. - I always complain that no one (or rather very few people) comment on my blog, but I'm guilty of reading and running as well. But not anymore!
Try and stitch at least two nights per week (EVERY week)
Finish "Waiting"
Start "Summer Blooms" (It's the second picture in this post)
Finish "Summer Blooms"
Start "Fairy Moon"
Finish "Fairy Moon" (though not likely!)
Stitch "Quilt" (a DMC freebie I picked up online. See the pic here) and make it into a needlebook
Stitch and "finish" 3 new Christmas Ornaments for 2007
"finish" 3rd Ornament from 2006 (Blackwork Noel)
Get started on a scrapbook for Rachel.
Make a monthly "to do" list each month to help keep me on track.

So, there it is... I'm done my list and most of them seem pretty attainable. And lookie here there's still 4 minutes to go until midnight. Well, I should go spend the next few minutes with Jason.

(Edit: Well, now that I look back I see one or two generalizations there... play with and read to my kids more? Yeah, it's a good one, but not a very "time specific" - "completable" goal. It's more of a generalization... yeah, you know that thing I was just complaining about... oh well.)

I hope that 2006 treated you well and that you have a wonderful 2007!

Happy Holidays and all that jazz

2006-12-29T09:51:00.000-04:00

I came on to post and realized that I never posted an update about Wanda. I guess with all the hustle and bustle of Christmas, once the operation was over and done with I never thought to put it up on here.

Well, everything went wonderfully. The surgeon told Tina (Wanda's daughter) that these were the best set of Donor lungs he's EVER seen and she was able to breathe on her own almost immediately after the surgery. She was kept on the ventilator for a few days because the pain meds she was on were so strong, she slept too deep and occasionally "forgot" to breathe, but once they stepped her down a bit she was fine to come off the ventilator.

She's still in the hospital, but mainly becuase she's waiting for her anti-rejection drugs to arrive. Apparently when you're a NB Transplant patient, you have to wait for the drugs to come from NB. Ontario pays for all the transplant meds for it's citizens, but if you're an NB citizen you only get the anti-rejection drugs paid for... and they have to come from an NB Pharmacy... Not a big surprise there... NB is horrible for their medical coverage, but I assumed that anything paid for by one province would be the same in all the others... I guess I was wrong on that count.

Tina is doing a wonderful job of keeping everyone updated on Wanda's CarePage. It's a free site where a patient signs up and anyone who wants to keep up on their progress can sign up (for free) and subscribe to their updates. If anyone is interested in keeping tabs on her progress and doesn't already have the link, the page is http://www.carepages.com/. You need to sign up and then put her patient name in. (wandanorthrup)

Here's a picture of the Ornaments I (**finally**) finished for Olivia & Rachel this Christmas. This was my very first attempt at "finishing" anything other than to frame it. It's definitely a learning experience. Most of which is trial and error. I've made a few errors, now I know what not to do next time. I still haven't done "Our" ornament (mine and Jason's) I stitched the back piece last night and plan on finishing it before the new year. It never made it on the Christmas tree this year, but at least it'll be finished in 2006 and ready to put on the tree next year. I think I might try to get a few ornaments stitched up soon for next year. Hopefully that means that I don't have to try and do it all at the last minute next year. Not likely, but hopefully *lol*

Christmas went well here. We had a mountain of stuff in the living room under the tree. So much that we sat there looking at it wondering where it all came from. I mean, I know WE didn't buy that much. Santa brought Olivia a Dora the Explorer scooter and some Magnetic letters (for the fridge). He brought Rachel a play center with a "tent" to crawl inside of and a baby doll that squeaks when you squeeze it.

Here are a few "before" and "after" pictures...Before the kids got up and after the carnage! lol

Rachel had so much fun for her very first Christmas! She opened quite a few of her own presents, but when she did, we spent most of our time trying to keep the paper out of her mouth. She had quite an obsession with eating the wrapping paper. Olivia had a good time, because she not only got to open her presents, but about half of Rachel's too.

The girls got a big wagon from my FIL. One of the ones that have the fold up seats and cup holders. It'll come in very handy next summer when we go somewhere. Right now Rachel is a bit too young to spend much time in there, But by this summer it'll be perfect to haul both of them around. It's fun for them and will make my travelling life so much easier. They got a ton of toys and clothes and books. My mom got Rachel her own solid oak rocking chair. She got Olivia one her second Christmas and she saw the exact same one at a store recently and decided that Rachel needed her own as well. We've got Rachel's put away right now, since she's too young to use it now and we don't have enough room downstairs to keep things out that have no chance of getting used. Olivia also got her very own Race Track! She loves it. You "wind" the cars up and put them on the track and they go around and chase each other. It's meant for younger kids, no guns to control the speed, no track that has to be put together every time -- it just folds up when you're done-- and nothing hard they have to do. Another big hit with Olivia was the Care Bears they both got from Rob, Angie and Tyler. Olivia sleeps with hers every night now, and most nights tries to take Rachel's too!

We got so much this year. My FIL got me a Water dispenser that has both hot and cold water and a new pair of Jeans. Now I don't have to heat bottles, I just use the already pre-heated water! My MIL got me a new shirt and got both Jason and I a good shredder. My Mom and her bf got us a $50 GC to the Future Shop and a rain check for a bread maker. Of course, Canadian Tire never has anything in stock when it's on sale, so we're getting it as soon as it's back in. My DH got me lots of stitching stuff. I got a new scroll frame, floss I needed for a project I want to start, a new pattern for my stash -- Fairy Moon by Mirabilia, as well as a few small odds n ends. He also got me a new blouse and some new PJs (both which need to be exchanged).

Jason got a Table saw from his Dad -- which prooves his pet theory that if you think you want something, just borrow it enough and the person you borrow it from will get the hint... He's had his Dad's table saw in our basement for probably 6 months now. lol. His mom and her bf got him a 2gig card for his mp3 player, and the shredder I mentioned above was for both of us. I got him a biscuit jointer, a 4x8 sheet of Pegboard for his workbench and a bunch of the "pegs" to hang the tools on, a case for his mp3 player, a Map book from the girls, and a bunch of other stuff that I can't remember right now. For those who don't know what a biscuit jointer is, basically it's a tool to join pieces of wood together, especially when building furniture.

I've spent the last few days trying to decide what I'm going to do with my new pattern. I need to figure out which fabric to order. This is the reason I LOVE the "Fabric Choices" page I've linked to here, and in my sidebar. You can try out almost all the designs from some of the most popular designers out there (Miribilia, Lavender and Lace, Passione Ricamo, and Teresa Wentzler) and with many of the different specialty fabrics available from some of the biggest names in Hand Dyed Fabrics (Silkweaver, Sugar Maple Fabrics to name just a few) and using the magic of Photoshop, the patterns have a transparent background, so you can get an idea what the pattern would look like on each individual fabric! Like I said, GREAT SITE. You can also load your own fabric or picture scan to check it out. Anyway, after hours of looking through fabrics from many designers and weighing price and colours I think I've decided to go with Silkweaver's "Enchantment" Linnen. Here's an idea of what this should look like using this fabric. Of course the fabric doesn't look exactly the same every time, but hopefully it'll be close enough, because this is the look I fell in love with.

What do you think?

Well, that's enough for today. I should get a LITTLE bit of housework done before Jason gets up. I started the post at 9:51am and now it's 12:03pm, so I think I've spent long enough on here. lol. Mind you, that's including many breaks to play with the kids and do all the normal "Mommy" stuff. I've probably only been on here half an hour or so in total, it just seems like a lot more.

Waiting for news

2006-12-14T12:07:00.000-04:00

Wanda, a good family friend has been in Ontario for several months now waiting for a lung transplant. She was told several months ago that she only had about 18 months to live if she didn't get the transplant. Well, Jason called this morning from work and informed me that last night when she was talking on the phone to her son (one of Jason's best friends --like a brother) her beeper went off for her transplant. Apparently the opperation was supposed to get underway sometime in the middle of the night and she would be in surgery until sometime this afternoon.

I was so excited when Jason called me this morning to tell me what was going on. All I could think of was what a wonderful Christmas gift someone gave to her.

Organ donation is something that everyone should think long and hard about. No one can make the decision for you, but really... what do you need the organs for once you're gone? Just think that the person who might get your organs could be someone's mother or father, someone's wife or husband, someone's sister or brother. You'd not only be changing that person's life forever, but the lives of their friends and families as well.

I've downloaded the Organ donation card from the gov't of New Brunswick website.
Click on the small picture to see it full size and please please please print it and seriously consider filling it out. Also please talk to your friends and family about your choices. They're the ones who ultimately make the decisions and if they don't know what you want, they may not do anything about it.

If you live outside of NB, please contact your local government office to find out where you can get a card of your own.

Now, I'm off to wait and see how her surgery went. *crosses my fingers, toes and anything else that I can cross* We love you Wanda!!

Letter to Santa

2006-12-14T11:53:00.000-04:00

Olivia wrote a letter to Santa yesterday. I know we're cutting it close, but I think we can send it out now and still have a little time to get a response... Jason was going to check it out today to see if it's too late, and if not he was going to mail it today.

Here's a scan of her letter to Santa (written by me of course) and the pictures she drew for Santa. I asked her what she wanted to say and she didn't know... So I had to prompt her... do you want to ask (insert question here) and every second or third question she'd nod and say yeah and I'd write that question. It will be so cute when she can write her own letter.

The picture to the right are pictures of Santa's Reindeer flying in the sky. At least, that's what Olivia told me they are. I'll have to take her word for it. *lol*

Below is the back of the reindeer picture and it's a picture of her hands. I traced the first one and she did the rest by herself. She was so excited to trace her hands by herself.

A visit with Santa

2006-12-13T17:43:00.000-04:00

Rachel and Olivia on Santa's lap at the Regent Mall in Fredericton yesterday.

What tarot card are you?

2006-12-11T12:51:00.000-04:00

You are The Wheel of Fortune

Good fortune and happiness but sometimes a species of
intoxication with success

The Wheel of Fortune is all about big things, luck, change, fortune. Almost always good fortune. You are lucky in all things that you do and happy with the things that come to you. Be careful that success does not go to your head however. Sometimes luck can change.

What Tarot Card are You?
Take the Test to Find Out.

New ornament front stitched...

2006-12-11T12:08:00.000-04:00

I've finished stitching the ornament front for the final (3rd)ornament I'm making this year. It's GloryBee's freebie "Blackwork Noel" (If you visit it, notice that there's a dropdown near the bottom of the page to see the other freebies GloryBee has available.) It was a really quick stitch, being made up entirely of backstitches and all, and was done in just one evening.

I changed the orientation of the ornament slightly. It was meant to be square as opposed to diamond shaped. I just turned it 45 degrees and then I had to change where the letters fit. I stitched the letters over 1 instead of over two as was called for. I wanted a more delicate looking letter, and the size they were originally were too big to fit right once I changed the way the ornament was turned. It also called for all the blackwork, or redwork I guess, to be stitched with two threads, but I used one instead. I like the fine line look better. the picture to the right is a picture of what the original is supposed to look like when stitched. (Picture was taken from the GloryBee site)

I plan on stitching a second one for the back of the ornament, but instead of NOEL for the letters, I plan on plotting out my own letters. A "C" and a "J" for Christine and Jason , then "0" and "6" for the year on the bottom, I should get that finished tonight and then hopefully I'll get all three ornaments finished this week... lol... Then, once I get those done I can finally get Fairy Celebration finished. I've only got about 2 or 3 evenings worth of stitching left to finish it off, but I wanted to get the Ornaments done before Christmas.

Cost of Raising a Child...

2006-12-10T12:17:00.000-04:00

I saw this on Christine's Blog today and had to steal it. I'm not sure who actually wrote it, she got it in an email from a friend. If you know who the author is please let me know. Thanks

***************

The government recently calculated the cost of raising a child from birth to 18 and came up with $160,140 for a middle income family. Talk about sticker shock! That doesn't even touch college tuition.

But $160,140 isn't so bad if you break it down. It translates into:
* $8,896.66 a year,
* $741.38 a month, or
* $171.08 a week.
* That's a mere $24.24 a day!
* Just over a dollar an hour.

Still, you might think the best financial advice is don't have children if you want to be "rich." Actually, it is just the opposite.

What do you get for your $160,140?

* Naming rights. First, middle, and last!
* Glimpses of God every day.
* Giggles under the covers every night.
* More love than your heart can hold.
* Butterfly kisses and Velcro hugs.
* Endless wonder over rocks, ants, clouds, and warm cookies.
* A hand to hold, usually covered with jelly or chocolate.
* A partner for blowing bubbles, flying kites
* Someone to laugh yourself silly with, no matter what the boss said or how your stocks performed that day.

For $160,140, you never have to grow up. You get to:
* finger-paint,
* carve pumpkins,
* play hide-and-seek,
* catch lightning bugs, and
* never stop believing in Santa Claus.

You have an excuse to:
* keep reading the Adventures of Piglet and Pooh,
* watching Saturday morning cartoons,
* going to Disney movies, and
* wishing on stars.

You get to:
* frame rainbows, hearts, and flowers under refrigerator magnets,
* collect spray painted noodle wreaths for Christmas,
* hand prints set in clay on Mother's Day, and
* cards with backward letters for Father's Day.

For $160,140, there is no greater bang for your buck.

You get to be a hero just for:
* retrieving a Frisbee off the garage roof,
* taking the training wheels off a bike,
* removing a splinter,
* filling a wading pool,
* coaxing a wad of gum out of bangs, and
* coaching a baseball team that never wins but always gets treated to ice cream regardless.

You get a front row seat to history to witness the:
* first step,
* first word,
* first bra,
* first date, and
* first time behind the wheel.

You get to be immortal. You get another branch added to your family tree, and if you're lucky, a long list of limbs in your obituary called grandchildren and great grandchildren.

You get an education in psychology, nursing, criminal justice, communications, and human sexuality that no college can match.

In the eyes of a child, you rank right up there under God. You have all the power to heal a boo-boo, scare away the monsters under the bed, patch a broken heart, police a slumber party, ground them forever, and love them without limits. So, one day they will, like you, love without counting the cost. That is quite a deal for the price!!!!!!!

Love & enjoy your children & grandchildren!!!!!!!

Rachel's Ornament and other things

2006-12-09T09:44:00.000-04:00

I haven't had a lot to say lately, so I haven't been posting much... just a few jokes for the past few days. Life's been fairly slow lately. I haven't even been stitching. I've been a bit tired in the evening and have been spending it laying on the couch in front of the boob tube. I know, I know... if I were stitching I'd be sitting in the same place... It's not like it's a physically draining thing, but I just find that if I'm concentrating, it's still more tiring than just laying there "vegging".

One day last week I fell asleep in front of the TV around 9:30. I got up a few hours later and went straight to bed and slept right through... I think I just needed to catch up a little. I'm normally a night owl and am usually up till midnight or later (sometimes MUCH later) almost every night, then up around 8 with the kids. Olivia hasn't napped since a few months before Rachel was born, so I don't get a chance to catch up during the day like I used to... I guess I just needed a week or so of earlier bed times to catch me up a bit.

I did manage to get Rachel's Ornament finished -- the stitching and beading at least, I still haven't gotten either one "finished" in that it actually makes a real ornament. Right now it's still just a small piece of Aida with some floss and beads on it. I need to get my butt in gear... maybe tonight since there's nothing on TV. lol. I say that like it might actually happen... I've been saying that for a week now and I'm still in the same boat! Here's a picture

I haven't been in much of a Christmassy mood lately. Not a total "Bah Humbug" kind of mood or anything like that. I'm still semi-excited... but I just can't get into that really excited Christmassy mood that usually hits once we get this close to present day *grin*

I got some news from my Mom the other day. My Great-Grandmother is not well. According to mom the doctors have given her anywhere from hours to weeks to live. Her body is just shutting down. Sometimes I feel sad and other times I feel like I should feel more.

There's a bit of a back story to this... For those that don't know me in person, or have just never heard about this. My Grandmother, her only daughter, had Alzheimers Disease and passed away in March of 1998. Several months before Gram died, Grampy asked Nannie (my Great-grandmother) to come home and stay with them. They pretty much knew Gram wasn't doing well and thought it would be good for her to have her mother around. Nannie said no. She wasn't going to move home to New Brunswick. (She lives in Ontario and has for as long as I can remember.) Then a few months after Gram died, I heard through the grapevine (the family) that Nannie had OFFERED to move to Saint John (here in NB) to look after her ex-boyfriend's son because he wasn't well... (BTW, don't let her hear you calling him her BF though... According to her, he was just her "boarder". For 40 years! *wink*) Anyway, after I heard about her offer to move back to NB to take care of Joe's son, I got mad. VERY mad. She can do that for her "boarder's" son, but not her ONLY child!?! I've been hanging onto this anger for a lot of years and I know that even though she's not going to last much longer I'm still having a very hard time letting it go.

FOR ALL THE PARENTS OF THE WORLD

2006-12-09T09:26:00.000-04:00

I'm not a religious person, but this is just too cute...

After creating heaven and earth, God created Adam and Eve.
And the first thing He said was: "Don't".

"Don't what?" Adam replied.

"Don't eat the forbidden fruit." God said.

"Forbidden fruit? We got forbidden fruit? Hey, Eve...we got forbidden fruit!"

"No way!"

"Yes way!"

"Don't eat that fruit!" said God.

"Why?"

"Because I am your Father and I said so!" said God, wondering why he hadn't stopped after making the elephants.

A few minutes later God saw his kids having an apple break and was angry.
"Didn't I tell you not to eat the fruit?" the First Parent asked.

"Uh huh, " Adam replied.

"Then why did you?"

"I dunno" Eve answered.

"She started it!" Adam said.

"Did not!"

"Did too!"

"DID NOT!!"

Having had it with the two of them, God's punishment was that Adam and Eve should have children of their own. Thus, the pattern was set and it has never changed. So take heart and do not be discouraged!If God had trouble handling His kids, what makes you think it should be a piece of cake for you?

Christmas Cookie Recipe

2006-12-08T20:49:00.000-04:00

1 cup of water
1 tsp baking soda
1 cup of sugar
1 tsp salt
1 cup of brown sugar
lemon juice
4 large eggs
1 cup nuts
2 cups of dried fruit
1 bottle Crown Royal

- Sample the Crown Royal to check quality.

- Take a large bowl, check the Crown Royal again, to be sure it is of the highest quality, pour one level cup and drink.

- Turn on the electric mixer...Beat one cup of butter in a large fluffy bowl.

- Add one teaspoon of sugar...Beat again.

- At this point it's best to make sure the Crown Royal is still OK, try another cup. just in case.

- Turn off the mixer thingy.

- Break 2 eggs and add to the bowl and chuck in the cup of dried fruit.

- Pick the frigging fruit off floor...

- Mix on the turner.

- If the fried druit gets stuck in the beaterers just pry it loose with a dewscriver.

- Sample the Crown Royal to check for tonsisticity.

- Next, sift two cups of salt, or something.... who giveshz a sheet.

- Check the Crown Royal.

- Now sift the lemon juice and strain your nuts

- Add one table.

- Add a spoon of sugar, or so mefink.... whatever you can find.

- Greash the oven.

- Turn the cake tin 360 degrees and try not to fall over.

- Don't forget to beat off the turner.

- Finally, throw the bowl through the window.

- Finish the bottle of Crown Royal.

- Make sure to put the stove in the dishwasher.

Cherry Mistmas!

Christmas Carols for Psychological Disorders

2006-12-08T13:22:00.000-04:00

Schizophrenia: "Do You Hear What I Hear?"

Multiple personality disorder: "We Three Queens Disoriented Are"

Dementia: "I Think I'll Be Home for Christmas"

Narcissistic: "Hark the Herald Angels Sing About Me"

Manic: "Deck the Halls and Walls and House and Lawn and Streets and Stores and Office and Town and Cars and Busses and Trucks and Trees and Fire Hydrants"

Paranoid: "Santa Claus Is Coming to Get Me"

Personality disorder: "You Better Watch Out, I'm Gonna Cry, I'm Gonna Pout, Maybe I'll Tell You"

Obsessive-compulsive disorder: "Jingle Bell, Jingle Bell, Jingle Bell Rock, Jingle Bell, Jingle Bell, Jingle Bell Rock, Jingle Bell, Jingle Bell, Jingle Bell Rock." (Better start again.)

Passive-aggressive personality: "On the First Day of Christmas My True Love Gave to Me (and Then Took It All Away)"

Borderline personality disorder: "Thoughts of Roasting on an Open Fire"

Attention deficit disorder: "Silent night, Holy oooh look at the Froggy. Can I have a chocolate? Why is France so far away?"

If Santa answered his mail honestly... (not for kids!)

2006-12-08T13:16:00.000-04:00

I got this from my uncle today. Funny, but definitely not for children!

********************

Dear Santa
I wood like a cool toy space ranjur fer Xmas. Iv ben a gud boy all yeer
yer Frend, BiLLy

Dear Billy,
Nice spelling. You're on your way to a career in lawn care. How about I send you a friggin' book so you can learn to read and write? I'm giving your older brother the space ranger. At least HE can spell!
Santa

********************

Dear Santa,
I have been a good girl all year, and the only thing I ask for is peace and joy in the world for everybody!
Love, Sarah

Dear Sarah,
Your parents smoked pot when they had you, didn't they?
Santa

********************

Dear Santa,
I don't know if you can do this, but for Christmas, I'd like for my mommy and daddy to get back together. Please see what you can do?
Love, Teddy

Dear Teddy,
Look, your dad's banging the babysitter like a screen door in a hurricane. Do you think he's gonna give that up to come back to your frigid mom, who rides his ass constantly? It's time to give up that dream. Let me get you some nice Legos instead.
Santa

********************

Dear Santa,
I want a new bike, a Playstation, a train, some G.I. Joes, a dog, a drum kit, a pony and a tuba.
Love, Francis

Dear Francis,
Who names their kid "Francis" nowadays? I bet you're gay, I'll set you up with a Barbie.
Santa

********************

Dear Santa,
I left milk and cookies for you under the tree, and I left carrots for your reindeer outside the back door.
Love, Susan

Dear Susan,
Milk gives me the runs and carrots make the deer fart in my face when riding in the sleigh. You want to do me a favor? Leave me a bottle of scotch.
Santa

********************

Dear Santa,
What do you do the other 364 days of the year? Are you busy making toys?
Your friend, Thomas

Dear Thomas,
All the toys are made in China. I have a condo in Miami, where I spend most of my time making low-budget porno films. I unwind by drinking myself silly and squeezing the asses of cocktail waitresses while losing money at the craps table. Hey, you wanted to know.
Santa

********************

Dear Santa,
Do you see us when we're sleeping, do you really know when we're awake, like in the song?
Love, Jessica

Dear Jessica,
Are you really that gullible or are you just a Blonde? Good luck in whatever you do. I'm skipping your house.
Santa

********************

Dear Santa,
I really really want a puppy this year. Please please please PLEASE PLEASE could I have one?
Timmy

Timmy,
That whiney begging shit may work with your folks, but that crap doesn't work with me. You're getting a sweater again.
Santa

********************

Dearest Santa,
We don't have a chimney in our house, how do you get into our home?
Love, Marky

Mark,
first, stop calling yourself "Marky", that's why you're getting your ass whipped at school. Second, you don't live in a house, you live in a low-rent apartment complex. Third, I get inside your pad just like the boogeyman does, through your bedroom window.
Sweet Dreams, Santa

********************

To knot or not (SBQ) and other stuff

2006-11-30T11:33:00.000-04:00

This week's SBQ asks:
How do you secure your thread when you begin a new one? Specifically, do you or have you ever used a waste knot?

I do use a waste knot form time to time, usually when I feel I'm running low on floss and want to conserve every millimeter of floss for stitching. For a while I used it all the time because I hated trying to "catch" the tail in my stitching. But now I usually just run my needle under some existing stitches nearby when starting a new thread.

The only time I leave a tail and then stitch over it to catch it is when I'm starting a brand new project, or starting in an area where there isn't much stitching already done to run the needle under.

Now, onto the rest of the post. Sorry I haven't been on much lately but the past few days has seen a household full of "sickies" here chez moi. All 4 of us have caught a rather nasty strain of the cold. This is our second go-round in the past few weeks, so I've been spending any extra time that I'm not looking after the kidlets recouperating. Unfortunately that means not much stitching going on either. I've spent much of my time sleeping lately. *grin* Luckily Jason doesn't mind looking after the little ones. I seem to have gotten the worst of it this time around. Last time I only had a stuffy nose for about a day and a half, but I think I more than made up for it this time. It almost feels like half cold/half flu. I've got the cough and stuffy/runny nose of a cold, and the aches and pains and fatigue that go with the flu.

I finally got a little bit of stitching done last night. I started the lettering for the back of the two ornaments on Monday night and last night I finally got Rachel's Ornament finished. I still have to work on the beading tonight so I won't be posting a progress picture until the that is done. After that I'll try and get them finished into ornaments. This is my first time "finishing" a project, so it should be interesting. I found a little tutorial on how to make the braid that goes around the ornament out of floss. I was planning on buying standart white braid to use, but now I think I might try making my own out of the pink and purple shades of floss that I used to stitch the mittens and scarves. I think it would be cute to have all 4 shades in there. Of course that means I'll have to pick up more floss too because I have very little left of most of those colours.

I'm so excited about Saturday. We're going shopping in Moncton. Now this thought usually brings dreadful thoughts of a packed Walmart and trying to find a parking space at the mall without having to walk 10 minutes to get to the front doors dragging screaming kids behind you all the while.

But what is so exciting this time is that Jason and I are going SOLO! Yes, that's right Jason's mom is watching Olivia and Mom is watching Rachel. We've got the whole day to shop without having to stop every 5 minutes for pee breaks, or bottle breaks, or dirty diaper breaks...

We can actually go to lunch somewhere that doesn't give out toys with their meals.

I can actually stop at a craft store and poke around for a minute without worrying whether or not the baby is in the car with Jason screaming her face off the whole time. (something that has actually happened once or twice)

I'm so excited thinking about it that I'm almost ready to get up and dance around the room...

(I know, I know... What's stopping me, right? It is good cardio after all.)

Olivia's Sparkling Snowman

2006-11-25T09:28:00.000-04:00

I finished stitching another "small" last night. It's the Christmas Onrnament that I mentioned in my last post -- or rather, it WILL be a Christmas ornament once I finish it. I plan on stitching Olivia's name and age along with the year on a back piece before finishing it into an ornament for her. Maybe something like:

Stitched by Mommy
for Olivia
3 Years Old
2006

We'll see how it turns out. I need to go through my books and magazines to find a lettering that I like. I know I have a couple of them that are cute, I'm just not sure how many I have that are small enough for this. The stitched area is only 48w x 58h (including all the beading) so it's a fairly small area for lettering.

Speaking of beading, this is the first projet I've ever used beads on. I've had a few packs of Mill Hill beads a few years ago but never used them. (I bought them for Scrapbooking) So when this pattern called for 4mm ribbon french knots, which I desperately hate doing, I decided to put some beads on in their place. It's cute. It almost l0oks like sparkling snowflakes falling, whereas before the knots were green ribbon... not very "snow like".

I changed up the colours for the pattern quite a lot. The scarf and hat were supposed to in shades of blue and the mits and ear muffs were in green. Also, the ecru stitching around the edges of the snowman were supposed to be in DMC silver metallic, but I started stitching and ripped it out completely a few minutes later. I HATE HATE HATE working with that stuff... I've never worked with the Krienik metallics though, are they any easier to work with than the DMC? I hope so because I love the metallic look, but refuse to use it unless I absolutely have to. Besides, I thought the ecru was more authentic looking. I still get the "sparkle" from the beads, so I'm quite happy with it.

Small Happy Dance and SBQ catch up.

2006-11-24T15:55:00.000-04:00

I finished a quickie project last night. It took about two days (stitching at my pace -- slow) to finish this towel up. The design is from Better Homes and Gardens Cross Stitch Christmas Magazine (I'm not sure which year offhand, I've got 3 or 4 of them) It's the perfect size for a hand towel.

I stitched it with the intention of giving it to Olivia's Dance Teacher at their last class before Christmas, but now I'm not so sure. I think it's very cute, and don't know if I'm going to give it away or not. *lol* I finish so few projects that when I do get one done I don't want to give it away. Maybe once I get a few more finishes under my belt I might be better at parting with them.

I haven't gotten around to answering very many of the SBQ (Stitching Blogger's Question) lately so I've decided to play a bit of Catch-up for at least the last few weeks.

SBQ for November 16

Do you stitch Christmas ornaments? If so, how many do you stitch each year and for whom? If not, why not?

I'm actually currently working on my very first Christmas Ornaments. I never stitched them before because we always had a very "coordinated" tree. It is always decorated in Red, White and Silver, and I never saw a lot of patterns that matched this theme that I liked, so I always stayed away from them since the ones I liked didn't "match" our tree.

But since Olivia was born we've slowly been collecting more and more "non-themed" and kid-friendly ornaments, and this year Olivia saw a cute snowman ornament I had in one of my magazines and said she wanted me to stitch it for her. There are two there, so I decided to stitch one for each of the girls and to find one to stitch for Jason and I as well. I've decided I'm going to try and make it an annual thing. Make three ornament every year. One for each girl and one for us every year. And when the girls leave home, they've already got their start on a Christmas Ornament stash for their own Christmas Tree.

SBQ for November 8

How many different brands of “complete” embroidery floss sets do you own? How do you keep track of it? (i.e., spread sheet program, index cards, palm pilot, etc.)

I don't own ANY complete sets of floss. I use mainly DMC, but I buy floss as I need it. I'll pick up one or two that I don't have every time I get a chance, which until recently wasn't often since I can't buy DMC floss in Fredericton anymore (only Anchor -- at Walmart) and I rarely get to Saint John or Moncton. So hopefully someday soon I'll end up with close to a complete collection of DMC. That would be nice.

Or rather I should say I don't THINK you can get DMC in F'ton anymore... the two places I used to get my floss and Cross stitch patterns in F'ton have both closed down. Trimmings was a small-ish craft store with TONS of stuff for Cross-stitch, Beading, Sewing and Quilting plus some stuff for other crafts, but those seemed to be the main focus. They closed down, oh, probably two years ago now, and Lewiscraft in the Mall closed down probably around 6 months ago and there aren't any LNS that I know of at all in Fredericton.

A small home based shop opened up in my town a month or so ago and they carry DMC floss, but not the complete collection of colours, and their distributer doesn't carry a lot of the big names in patterns like L&L and Miribilia etc etc. Their distributer only carries "kits" and I hate buying kits, especially now that I've discovered stitching on higher count fabrics. (Linnen and Lugana, pref 28 count) I desperately hate stitching on 14 count Aida fabric, and that's usually what kits include for fabric.

SBQ for November 1

How did you decide on the title of your stitching blog? Was it random, or does it have a special meaning to you or about you?

Well, until earlier today my blog was just called "Christine's Little World" I guess reading this SBQ a few weeks ago kind of got me thinking about how uninspired that sounds. *grin* So, I've been mulling it around in the back of my head and finally came up with the name Ramblings of a Scattered Mind, which pretty much sums up everything going on in this blog. There is no unifying "theme" to my posts. They mainly seem to focus around my stitching and my family... for this month, but knowing me I'll completely switch gears in another month or so and will be posting about something completely different... So it seems to fit...

However that being said, the title has absolutely NOTHING to do with stitching. I don't have enough ambition to keep one blog going steady, let alone two. In other words, my life isn't interesting enough that if I don't put my stitching stuff on my main blog I'd have nothing to say. *lol*

I think that's enough for now... hopefully I can keep up with doing this on a weekly, or at least bi-weekly basis so I don't have to type this much all at once again.

Getting There (Fairy Celebration)

2006-11-24T15:48:00.000-04:00

I decided not to take a picture of my progress at 15 hours because I was so close to finishing the fairy portion. So instead I'm posting a pic I took at 17 hours after I finished Ariana and her wand completely. This was taken a few days ago, but I guess an update is better late than never.

I'm nearly done the border now and once it's done, I'll begin working on the script around the border. The border is going fairly quickly since it's only one stitch wide (with the exception of the embelishments at the corners) The script however will take a bit longer because I changed it somewhat.

The original pattern calls for the words "Fairy Live Here" but I changed it to say "Faeries Live Here". It needed to be plural to make sense, so I plotted it out by taking the letters from elsewhere in the script and copying them to make sure it looks close enough to her original. There was only one letter that wasn't in the original pattern, the "s". I had to try and plot one out that fits. IMHO it looks pretty good, but then again it's only on paper so far. Hopefully it'll look ok with the rest of the letters.

It's also taking a bit longer to finish since I've been working on a few smaller cross stitches for the past few days. I put this one away while I did that because I wanted to make sure I had them done for Christmas, so they take a bit higher priority.

I've got a post with pics of a towel I stitched for Christmas coming up in a few minutes. I would have put them all in one post, but I had the other almost finished when I realized that I never published this post, just saved it as a draft. I came back to finish and post this one first.

My beautiful girls

2006-11-17T08:04:00.000-04:00

Here are a few of the pictures I took yesterday of Olivia and Rachel in their Christmas Dresses. Aren't they gorgeous! The photo session didn't last long because of a pre-nap meltdown from Rachel and an "everyday" meltdown by both Olivia and me, but I got a few good pics that might be ok to tuck into the Christmas cards.

I borrowed some black faux velvet from Kerri, and draped it over the couch. The girls are sitting on the floor with their backs to the couch. I turned it around so it faced the window, then I turned on my stitching lamp so it was facing them. It supposedly has a "natural light" light bulb. Personally, I think it's much more blue tinted than natural light is, but it's not nearly as yellow as a normal bulb and does look quite a bit closer to natural light than anything else I have in the house. Unfortunately I forgot to turn off my flash and I still ended up with a bunch of pictures that had a bad glare on their skin and I had to fix the red eye in nearly every picture I took...

I think I might try it again later, but with either the white or the navy velvet that I borrowed from her as well. Hopefully this time I remember to turn off my flash.

I had this one cropped in nice and close to a vertical picture, but for

some reason Blogger won't let me upload it. Baaaaad Blogger!

This is the one Janice thinks I should use for the Christmas Pic.

I'm not quite sure which one it'll end up being though.

This one isn't in the running for the Christmas picture since

Rachel isn't in it, but I just wanted to post it because it's such

a nice picture of Olivia.

Need your Help

2006-11-15T21:07:00.000-04:00

Hey everyone, I need a bit of help finding a product I saw on the web, but I'm not sure where to buy it at... Anyone know where I can find this mirror at??

Fairy Celebration Update... finally!

2006-11-15T14:44:00.000-04:00

Ok, I'll admit it, in addition to ignoring my blogging obligations I've also been ignoring my stitching lately.

I put it off for a few days because I had other projects on the go, and once I finished them I just never seemed to pick it back up. It's been nearly a month since I last posted a progress pic and I've only completed a measley 5 hours on my Fairy Celebration X-stitch... but at least I now have another picture to show... and hopefully will have another in just a few more day.

Fairy Celebration or "Ariana" as I call her at 10 hours work

I call her Ariana after the fairy collection that Partylite carries in their "home party" catalogues. I used to be a Partylite consultant back in the 1999/2000 timeframe and absolutely fell in love with the original Ariana piece (see pic below) but just never got around to picking it up. The Cross Stitch fairy reminds me of her for some reason... Here's a few pics I found on Ebay of the Ariana piece I always wanted. Maybe I should tell Jason. There's always someone looking for ideas for Christmas presents... maybe this would be a good one.

More pics missed from October

2006-11-13T09:55:00.000-04:00

I've decided to post a few more pictures that I should have posted in October. (and two from even earlier than that. I wasn't sure if I had posted them before or not and I was too lazy to check *lol*)

April 26: This was taken on Rachel's first day home from the hospital.

August 26: We went out for the day and Rachel needed a little nap. I thought this picture was so cute with her cuddling the cow. We call her "Bessie". (The cow, not Rachel *lol*)

October 1: Olivia has been facinated with making funny faces lately.

October 1: Here's another funny face.

October: Here is a picture of the painting we had done for my grandfather's 75th birthday. It's a painting done of his house by a local artist. Click on the picture to see a larger version and see if you can find the cardinal. (She puts one in every painting she does.)

Here's the original picture (taken last year by my uncle) that the artist worked from for the painting. Isn't she an great artist. BTW, she didn't paint the roof colour wrong. She thought it was grey as it looks like in the picture, but she took a drive out to his house to double check on something and found that it's acutally green.

October 6: Olivia taking a rest on the lawn while playing outside.

October 6: We had my uncle come over and take some pictures hoping to get a good family picture we could put on some Christmas cards. I love this picture, but it wasn't quite focused and it's a bit too blury for printing. Most of the others didn't turn out because, well, any of you with kids know how hard it is to get two of them looking in the same direction at the same time. *lol*

October 7: Olivia bowling for the first time. My cousin had her daughter Josie's birthday party at the local bowling alley. Olivia had a blast!

October 8: Rachel grinning from ear to ear. Get a look at those two pearly whites!

October 11: Roasting marshmallows on a campfire in our back yard. Strangely enough after one marshmallow Olivia didn't want to eat any more. She liked roasting them, but didn't want to eat them... Strange... if I didn't know better I'd wonder if she were really mine. *lol*

October 19: No story behind this picture. I just love her expression.

October 23: Rachel was 6 months old this day and we started feeding her solids.

October 24: Olivia's 3rd birthday and she started figure skating today. She LOVES it!

October 31: It's Halloween and here are Mommy and her girls all dressed up at a Halloween Party that morning.

October 31: Candy Day. As you can tell Olivia is pretty wired. This was our last stop at Nannies house before we went home for the night.

Long time no see...

2006-11-12T10:45:00.000-04:00

I know, I know. I've been a baaaad girl lately. I haven't been keeping up with my blogging at all. My last post was about Olivia's birthday and that was 2 1/2 weeks ago.

I've also realized that I haven't been posting as many pictures of the kids as I had intended either, so most of this post will be back pictures of the kids, then if I have time I'll post a bit more... The pictures always take the longest because It takes so long to upload them to blogger.

Here's a few from November.

November 1: Rachel eating her first vegetable. PEAS!!

November 1: After the peas were done. Messy girl!

November 2: Olivia cuddling up on the couch, smiling for the camera.

November 2: Rachel having some "tummy time"

November 5: Here's a picture of Olivia writing a letter to Santa. (Yes it's that time of year already!!) She has decided to ask him for a Scooter for Christmas this year.

November 7: Here's Olivia helping to feed Rachel her baby cereal.

November 7: And here's Rachel after she was done. *lol*

November 12: This final picture was taken this morning. I was getting her cereal ready and I looked over and saw her sucking on her bib. Apparently I wasn't quick enough with her breakfast and she decided to try eating something else. *grin*

Happy Birthday Olivia!

2006-10-25T08:46:00.000-03:00

This really should have been Monday's post, considering it was her birthday, but I got distracted. We were actually quite busy all afternoon and evening.

My little girl is 3 years old. I can't believe how fast the time has gone. She's turning into a such a girl. I still think of her as a baby most days, but it's just not true any more, and it makes me want to cry.

We had her birthday party on Sunday with several kids around the same age attending. Before, we've always had family parties with only one or two friends her age attending, but this year only the grandparents were invited for family, the rest were her friends and their mothers. Including Olivia there were 8 children at the party (not counting the two babies that didn't really participate, Rachel and another baby just 2 months old.)

Here are a few pictures from the day, including the Max cake that I made.(from the Nick Jr. cartoon Max & Ruby) I've included the picture I worked from so those of you who don't know what Max is supposed to look like can see that too. ( Just realized as I uploaded this picture that I forgot to add max's Whiskers to the cake. I realize that's probably what was bothering me all this time about how it looked.)

Here's Olivia waiting for me to relight her candle so she can blow it out. As soon as I reached the table as we were singing Happy Birthday, Jenna jumped up and blew out her candle before I even had the cake on the table. *lol* I had to relight so Olivia could blow it out.

Here's a picture of Rachel and Grammy.

More pictures to come later. Real life calls...

Fairy Celebration first update

2006-10-20T09:40:00.000-03:00

I've got 5 hours completed on Fairy Celebration and I thought I might start updating at 5 hour increments instead of 10. I stitch fairly slow most days, so, for me posting 5 hours of work would be about the same number of days as posting 10 hours for most other people.

Anyway, here's my 5 hour picture.

SBQ - Which Way

2006-10-19T10:58:00.000-03:00

Today's SBQ (Stitcher's Blog Question) is

Q. Which way do you stitch, i.e. do you stitch /// followed by \\\ ontop, or the other way around \\\ followed by ///? Are you left- orright-handed and do you think that this affects the way that you stitch?

A. I stitch /// on the bottom and \\\ on the top. I'm right handed, but I'm not sure if this really makes a difference in how I stitch or not. I think it has more to do with always working left to right, (like reading) and then back again. This just naturally follows doing /// when going to the right and \\\ when going back to the left.

Here's a link to the original site: http://blondelibrarian.net/stitching/archives/2006/10/which-way/

Decorating fun!

2006-10-17T17:35:00.000-03:00

This afternoon Jason decided he wanted a carot cake with cream cheese frosting, so, like any good husband, he made it himself *grin* (Pssst....Don't let him see this or he'll never do anything like that again. *lol* )

When he went outside to play with Olivia I decided to try and get it frosted before the baby decided to stop being quiet. I got the base coat on and then went out and called Olivia in and asked her if she wanted to help me decorate the cake. Of course the answer was a huge "YES"!

She picked the colour blue for the decorating and I got started putting the coloured frosting in the piping bag. Most of the work you see is her work. I took over a few times when she got distracted licking the frosting from her fingers, but here is what we ended up with.

Doesn't that look yummy. lol

Mommy Brain

2006-10-17T12:33:00.000-03:00

Mommy Brain

If you’ve left the crayons to melt in the car,

And forgotten just where the car keys are,

There’s a perfectly good way to explain:

You see, you’ve come down with “Mommy Brain”.

When you’re not sure where the past eight hours went,

Or whether the phone bill check’s been sent,

If you’ve left the laundry drying in the rain,

It’s just — you guessed it — Mommy Brain.

If you find yourself chatting for hours on end

About diaper prices with your cyber friends,

You’ve just caught a particularly virulent strain

Of that affliction known as Mommy Brain.

If you’ve left your bags at the grocery store,

Or completely forgot what you went there for,

If you called the cat by your baby’s name,

You can bet that Mommy Brain’s to blame.

If you know the words to “Goodnight Moon” by heart,

If you study your sleeping babe like a work of art,

If you’re always surprised by how time is flying,

And the thought of that first birthday starts you crying...

It’s unavoidable girls, and I feel your pain.

For I, too, suffer from --- Mommy Brain.

And yet, my Mommy Heart is sure:

I hope they never find a cure!

Fairy Celebration

2006-10-11T18:09:00.000-03:00

I've got a new project I'll be starting in the next few days. It's a free pattern from Passione Ricamo. You can go directly to the free pattern area here.

The pattern is called Fairy Celebration and it was designed for Fairy Day (June 24) this year. Isn't it gorgeous! I absolutely LOVE it!! It was stitched on 28 ct "Castle View" Lugana fabric from Silkweaver.

I'm currently just waiting for my fabric to arrive so I can start it. I ordered my very first piece of Silkweaver fabric for this project. It's also a 28 ct Lugana, but it's called Starquest. It's not exactly the same as the fabric used in the sample, but has a bit of purple in with the blue. Just my style. (click on the fabric swatch to go to the Silkweaver site. It will open a new window.)

Waiting at 51 hours. The drapes are finished!!!

2006-10-10T14:30:00.000-03:00

I know it's been a while since I've posted an update on my "Waiting" cross-stitch, but I took a break from stitching for a few weeks. I do that quite often in fact. That's the main reason I take so long to actually finish anything. My Mr. Bear X-stitch took me somewhere in the vicinity of 4 years to complete. Often I'll leave off stitching for several months at a time.

But anyway, enough about that. Here's my progress picture. I took it at 51 hours instead of 50 hours. I was so close to finishing the drapes that I didn't want to stop long enough to take the picture because I was scared that I'd get lazy and not pick it back up again. *lol* So, the drapes are finally finished and I FINALLY get to move on to more interesting areas to stitch! Woohoo!!

Notice the colour of the fabric and floss. I recently got a cheap lamp for my Cross stitch area that I put a "true light" lightbulb in. If you look back at the old posts with pictures of this project you can see the difference the light makes in the colours. I never realized how much difference it made until I saw the pictures side by side.

(Click on the "Waiting" label at the bottom of this post to see all the posts about this project.)

3 new projects finished!

2006-10-09T12:29:00.000-03:00

Last night I did a few sewing projects I've had in mind for a few weeks now. Well, only one that I actually had in mind, the others were just because I had extra material left. :)

The original project was the small bag. It was originally intended to hold Olivia's dance shoes for her dance class, but I made it a bit larger so it could be used as an overnight bag when she goes on a sleepover. I also decided to make a small pillowcase with the leftovers. (I bought lots of material in case I messed it up too badly to fix. *lol* I'm not much of a sewer, I prefer Cross-stitching instead!) The pillow is actually only half the size of a regular one. I had an old pillow that's had lots of use and was about as thin as a piece of paper. *lol* So I folded it in half to make it an ok thickness and made the case to fit around that. It's her new "sleepover" pillow and it matches her bag. She was so excited this morning when she got up and saw them. Here's a quick peek.

I also ended up making one more project before bed. My Aunt Care and my cousins Ocean and Jesse were visiting from PEI this weekend for my grandfather's 75th birthday party and Ocean asked me to make her a little bag for her iPod, so I used some of the leftovers to make a tiny version of Olivia's bag. Isn't it cute!!!

Who said anything about SLEEP??

2006-10-06T10:33:00.000-03:00

Olivia had her very first sleepover on Tuesday night. My cousin Janice's husband Joey is home for 2 weeks after living in a work camp in Alberta for several months now, so I told Janice that if they wanted a night alone I'd be willing to take one of the kids for the night. The obvious answer was a resounding YES and we decided it would be Jenna since she and Olivia are the same age and it would be the first "sleepover" for both of them.

I should say that I know what sleepovers are usually like, having been on many during my pre-teen and teenage years, but I figured that a sleepover for (nearly) 3 year olds would end much earlier than a sleepover for a pre-teen. Boy was I wrong!! It was after 11:00 before those girlies went to sleep!. I must have gone up at least 2 dozen times between 8 and 11, and finally at the end of it I said the magic words. "NO MORE TALKING, or I'm going to SPANK you." Of course Olivia just looked at me and grinned. She either didn't believe me or didn't care (lol) but Jenna's eyes got big and she just looked at me like she wasn't really sure if I'd follow through or not.

After that I heard Olivia try to start a conversation a few times via the baby monitor that we still keep in her room, but after Olivia started talking Jenna would say "SHHHH... I can't talk to you!!!" It was so cute... They stopped making noise and fell asleep sometime within the next 15 minutes after that happened.

Here are a few picutres from that night.

Jenna and Olivia playing on the air matress before "bed time"

Olivia and Jenna smiling for the camera.

Playing hide and seek in their sleeping bags.
Above, Jenna is hiding. Below Olivia is.

First Tooth!

2006-10-06T10:19:00.000-03:00

Because I've been so long since posting before the last one, I had a few things I wanted to post about, but I just didn't have time to post them all the other day. So I'll try to get two posts in today so I can get "caught up" so to speak.

Rachel finally got her first tooth! (and now her second)
We went to the Care 'n' Share (a drop in playgroup here in town) a week ago last Wednesday (that's Sept 27th for those of you counting) and one of the other Moms noticed that she was almost ready to pop her first tooth. I watched it closely, and the next day (Thursday the 28th) it broke through!! I was happy and sad all at once. I was excited for the milestone that we passed, but at the same time I know that Rachel is most likely our last baby and that was the last time I'd see that beautiful 'gummy' smile that babies have before they get teeth.

I remember I was so depressed when Olivia got her first tooth because I was convinced that there was no way that her smile would be as cute once there were teeth in there. I was wrong, but I was still quite sad about it.

Here's a picture of Rachel with her first tooth. You can't see it very clearly becuase it's still pretty small in there, but it's a little line of white on her bottom gum near the center. I don't have any pictures with both bottom teeth yet. I'll have to take one soon. Maybe later on today and I can post it this weekend...

Dance Class

2006-10-04T08:31:00.000-03:00

Olivia started dance class last week. The class she's taking is for 3-5 year olds (She's going to be 3 this month!) and they do a half hour of tap dance each Monday evening.

The first night she just ran in circles the whole time, yelling "Daddy, Daddy, I'm Dancing!!"

Boy did she have fun!!!

Here are a few pictures:

Here are a bunch of the girls in Dance class. Olivia is the one standing up, not paying attention to the teacher. *lol* That's my girl!

Here's Olivia wandering around while she was supposed to be dancing... We didn't get her tap shoes until the next day, there were none in town and we had to get a family friend to pick them up when she made a trip to Halifax the next day.

Here's Olivia posing for the camera after we got home that night. What a cutie pie!

Little Faeries

2006-09-17T11:42:00.000-03:00

I recently stumbled on a number of "Fairy Photography Sites". And no, these aren't a bunch of whackos saying they're photographing "real" fairies. They're photography sites that use photoshop etc to retouch the photos to look like fairies, but realistic looking ones, not cartoonish looking...

I was telling my cousin Janice about this the other day and saying that one site had a thing where you could send in your own picture and she'd photoshop it for $150 (australian) to look like a fairy... Mind you, she's GOOD. They're awesome pics and if I had the money I'd definitely send a few pics of the kids in to get them done... We were talking about not having any good pics that would work for this and she was going through her stash of digital photos on her pc to proove this point when I saw it. A PERFECT picture of her daughter Josie at the beach. We also found a few really nice ones of her younger daughter Jenna that would work as well...

I got her to send them to me and I played around for a few days using Paint Shop Pro. (Since I don't currently have, nor do I know how to use, Photoshop) Here are the results. Whaddya think?

I'm not crazy about the wings I used for Jenna. They're tilted wrong for her stance, but they're the best ones I can find for her. I tried the ones I used for Josie on Jenna too, but they seem even worse to me than the ones I have on her...

Here are a few of the Fairy Photography sites that I found for those of you who are interested:

*Fairy Photography by Margaret Dean http://www.fairyphotographs.com/ -- Amazing artist. She's the one I was talking about above. This is her commercial site.

*Fairy Portraits by Margaret Dean http://www.fairyportraits.com.au/index.htm -- This is the site where you can see about sending in your pic to be photoshopped. Has before and after pictures

*Tales of Faerie by Collette http://www.talesoffaerie.com/ -- Good site, she's located in Ontario

*Stonefence Photography http://stonefencephotography.com/ -- Not bad pics, but Instead of the general thumbnails that you click on to see a bigger image, there's a thing that is supposed to look like a book with pages turning, each page is a different picture. And unfortunately the pages of the "book" are the wrong size for the pics... so they all looked stretched and a bit distorted...

*J. Corsentino's Time of the Faeries http://www.timeofthefaeries.com/ - Good site. Lots of great pics.

Hope you Enjoy as much as I do...

What a wonderful world

2006-09-13T13:02:00.000-03:00

I've discovered a wonderful new program the other day thanks to my cousin Janice. It's called PhotoStory and it's by Microsoft. I downloaded it for free at www.microsoft.com/photostory , but make sure you have a legal version of windows before trying this. You have to let Microsoft confirm your version is legal before they'll let you download this.

Anyway, it's basically like a stripped down version of Powerpoint in that you put pictures, music and transitions for your pics in the presentation. You can't do all the fancy stuff that you can with PowerPoint, but since it's meant more for photographs instead of office presentations it works just fine... and for a free program it's GREAT!

The first one has a bunch of pictures of Olivia and Rachel done to What a Wonderful World by Louie Armstrong. They're done in chronological order, so it's kind of showing Olivia growing from baby to big sister, and HER new baby Rachel!

The second is just of Olivia and though some of the pictures are repeated, some are new.The song with this one is Sweet Child o' Mine by Sheryl Crow. Although some purists don't like her version of the song, I think it fits kids pictures MUCH better than the Guns 'n' Roses original version.

Click on the images below (it'll open a new window) to see their PhotoStories!

Olivia and Rachel's Story(What a Wonderful World - Louie Armstrong)

Olivia's Story(Sweet Child o Mine - Sheryl Crow)