A Little More Summer

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

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

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

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!

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

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...

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?

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!

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"

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!

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...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.