Happy 4th Birthday Olivia!

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...

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

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

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.