A late TUSAL and a finish

Thanks for the well wishes, babies are still looking healthy though their mama is starting to tire out a bit. Welcome to third trimester I suppose but I did get knocked down to half my normal hours per week at work today so hopefully that will help. I'm not quite ready to leave work all together yet but I think the time is coming soon.

No decorating pics yet, we've hit a couple temporary snags- had to order our second crib for the little guys and some of the decals we wanted in Josh's room don't stick as well as I thought they would so we're looking at some alternate adhesives.

I can show you some stitching though. I actually have added to my ort jar so I can do a slightly late TUSAL check in...



All the tan/brown orts in the middle are from my recent finish of the last birth announcement I owe my family.



Finally finished and now I can stitch for me for awhile:). And I have- the dark orts on top are from Space Traveler which you can see the corner of in the ort pic. I will take a full pic as soon as I make some visible progress on it. For now I'm pretty happy to be stitching anything but brown.

That's about it for now. Going to try to get in a little stitching tonight before I start to fall asleep in my chair:)

Some framing and a bit of stitching too

Sorry to have been gone so long but most of the posts I didn't write would probably have read something like this- Still tired. Still trying not to vomit (morning/all day sickness was pretty vicious for awhile). Still didn't stitch anything.

Things are getting better now. The morning sickness has subsided and I've got some energy back along with the start of a good sized bump. Babies are doing great, right on target for size at just about 20 weeks along and starting kick up a storm in there. Oh, and we found out they are boys at the last ultrasound too so I'm officially a minority in this house:). Realized that I'm prone to swelling as the weather is warming up so am going to attempt to spend a good chunk of my summer in the AC and hopefully get some stitching done. I actually did get a few stitches in today...



That's the first few stitches on my last My Favorite Teddy birth announcement. I think I'm starting to get some stitching motivation back so hopefully more will follow soon. In other crafty related things, I got Josh's QS Pirate Dragon and the last birth announcement framed recently.





Outside of baby stuff, there's not a bunch else going on here at the moment. We're getting ready to do some room switching so Josh can have his new room and we can start getting ready for his brothers. I'll try and get back a little sooner next time and bring more pics.

WIPocalypse wrap up and some 2014 SAL plans

Another Christmas has come and gone and the little guy and I are taking an afternoon to recover at home before we get back to the normal work schedule so I thought I'd catch up on blogging and I owe a WIPocalypse post so here I am. It was a lovely Christmas by the way, lots of family and friends and presents and general happiness though not many pictures. Too much time enjoying the holiday I guess:) Anyway, my goal this year was pretty open, mostly to work on the WIPs and not increase their number. Oh and finish the Pirate Dragon which I did so that's one goal made. I did pretty well on the other one, didn't get around to as many WIPs as I'd have liked but I didn't make any more BAP starts either so that's good. For the most part I finished all the smalls I started too so I'm pretty happy with my stitching basket as we get ready to leave 2013 behind. Here's where I stand on WIPs (at least the ones that got a little love this year)...

















There was no progress made on Nativity, Polar Lights Sampler, QS Pegasus and Castle Bubble, Fish City, Watergarden, Garden of Wishes, or The Storyteller but I'm going to try hard to hit each one next year.

So outside of the WIP work there were some finishes too...















I will be signing up for the WIPocalypse SAL again in 2014 along with TUSAL, IHSW whenever I can, and I was contemplating the Turtle Trot as it seems fitting for the amount of BAPs I've got! As we're still in baby waiting mode (though we might have some exciting and probably unexpected by you news by Spring) I think I'm going to stick to working on the WIPs for the most part with some smalls thrown in here and there. I do have one, maybe two, planned starts for New Years and I'll show that off when I get it all kitted up as well as one more birth announcement so finishing #3 and stitching #4 will be my first priority in the new year then it's freedom for whatever so I'm going to try to dig out the neglected WIPs from last year. I do have my eye on some smalls as well, particularly some more of the LHN sheep virtues and one of everything from Country Cottage Needleworks (they're my new favorite) but especially that Frosty Forest series. We'll see how it goes, I try but somehow plans seem to go out the window around here after awhile.

Late TUSAL and a bit more stitching

I'm late but so was Daffycat so I don't feel too bad posting this now:). One last TUSAL for the year...



Here's one last look at my orts before I empty it out and start all over again in January. Lots of creams and browns on top from those Teddy birth announcements with a few blues, reds and greens from my recent Christmas stitching. And yes, my ort jar is posing with my stack of unsent Christmas cards. I'm planning on mailing them tomorrow. What is TUSAL? Glad you asked, head over to It's Daffycat to see what it's all about. Looks like Daffycat is going to host again in 2014 so signups for next year should be coming soon if you'd like to join in the fun!

Since I'm still not quite back to work I seem to have bunches of extra time so I actually have another finish to share too...



That's another LHN Little Sheep Virtue and it's Peace this time. Might as well get ahead on my gift stitching while I'm sitting around in my behind. I am continuing to fell better too btw, kind of in that looks way worse than it feels stage but I'm not quite ready for work yet.

Oh and one more pic to leave you with today. How about a bit of Josh art since we haven't had any of that for awhile?



Probably not the best lighting but that's about as good as it gets in our family room unless you happen to be sitting under my stitching lamp. As you can see we spent some time making paper snowflakes today. Josh recently discovered scissors and has quite the urge to cut up paper "but not hair, shirts or fingers" he reminded me before we started so we put his cutting to good use and did some decorating today. I feel for the poor daycare teachers, I can't even imagine trying to keep a bunch of wild pre-K kids with scissors in line!

That's about it for today. Looks like the little guy is busy with his Legos so maybe I can make a start on my third birth announcement, the one and only pink version I'll be doing at least for now.

Some stitching and a little unexpected time off

So once again I meant to be back a little sooner but this time I've got a really good excuse- a week ago Monday (yup, Thanksgiving week) I started having some nasty sharp abdominal pain on the upper right side and a few ER and doctor visits later I found myself on the operating table having my gallbladder out. It's all okay now, today is my second full day home after surgery and the drugs are keeping me comfortable enough as long as I sit still. Getting up and down is another story but I'm sure that will continue to improve as time goes on. The plan is to get back to work right before Christmas so I've definitely got some time to kill and I plan to spend a chunk of that stitching since I'll be sitting around anyway. My first goal is to finish off the Christmas ornaments I want to give as gifts this year. I'm not planning anything fancy but I bought six sleds and several of the Foxwood Crossing sled designs. I've already stitched two since the drug haze lifted Wednesday evening so here are the first two. My only change so far has been to use DMC 739 for the background instead of 729. The gold just seemed a little too dark and dated for the look I was going for. I'm pretty pleased with how the cream brightens things up. I may do the one on the right again with a dark gold border instead of the red. We'll see how much time I have.



In between the surgeon's consultation on Monday and the surgery Wednesday I had one day to run a bunch of errands and get everything done possible before being mostly parked in my recliner for a week or two so I made a quick run to House of Stitches and dropped these off for framing...





Those are the first two of four My Favorite Teddy birth announcements I have planned and I hope to present them to my cousin, the mom of these two brothers, at the little one's first birthday in mid-January. I stitched them on 32 count ivory Lugana with my own DMC conversion since the Vervaco kit I bought did not have DMC numbers attached to the thread card. I'm pretty happy with the results and hope the recipients are too as they are a surprise. I think any off time I have left after my ornaments will go to #3 which will be a pink one (yay!) so at least a little bit of a change up.

That's about it for now, more than enough excitement for me for awhile I think! Back to stitching and surfing the internet while catching up on my Netflix viewing. Be back next week with more pics! I've got some of Dragon Master to share too as soon as I can get someone to bend over and get it for me:)

Gone too long again

Sure didn't mean to be gone a month but life just keeps getting in the way. So what's been going on? Well, we had another short camping trip, my Mom had foot surgery and is still recovering though she's at least somewhat mobile again (two weeks of bed rest were not fun for her so we've been keeping her company a lot), there's been job stress and some general life stress too and just not enough hours in the day. Hoping that things are going to calm down as we get closer to the holidays but that's probably wishful thinking. I am going to try to make a little more time for blogging and reading though, I've missed both!

So I brought pictures of course. We had a pirate Halloween this year, Josh even made a pumpkin pirate...



And we did trick or treat with some of Josh's cousins. The kids had fun even though the rain forced us to trick or treat at the mall with the crowds.



I've been stitching too. I finished another of the LHN Little Sheep Virtues...



And the first of four birth announcements (except for the personalization, haven't decided in the lettering yet).



Number two is getting close to finished too, I'm hoping to get these first two to the framer before Christmas.



That about brings us back up to date. Josh and I are enjoying a rare quiet day at home today so I'm hoping to get some more stitching time and reading time in. I'm looking forward to seeing what everyone's been up to.

A late TUSAL and some stitching updates

Totally missed TUSAL last week but I come bearing all kinds of pics to make up for it today! First of all, I got a new ort jar!





We were out shopping a couple weeks ago and came upon a display of these Mason jar mugs at Bed Bath & Beyond. Seemed a perfect ort receptacle at the time and it has been so far. Check out everyone else's orts here. And yes, those are non-black orts up on top. Since I finished stitching A Spirited Mandala a few days ago I made a fair start on the first round of My Favorite Teddy birth announcement from Vervaco. I bought the kit online and have swapped the Aida out for 32 count ivory Lugana and converted the threads to DMC since there won't be enough for all four of the stitchings I'm planning. I like it so far and it feels like its going fast...



The fabric's a little yellower than in person but otherwise the colors are about right. Strangely, the other project I've been sneaking in is on the same fabric (found a use for some of that extra Lugana already!) and was photographed at the same time with better results...



That's the start of Jack-A-Rachnid by Tempting Tangles Designs from the new JCS Halloween issue (the one that came with subscription). Just couldn't get out of the spooky mood.

And speaking of spooky, I turned A Spirited Mandala into a finished object...







I used a combination of instructions found in tutorials here and here. I think it turned out pretty well for my first attempt. One change I made was to leave off the ribbon and bow and do a row of beads down the middle. I tried it a couple ways and liked this one best. Oh, and I also used four round beads stuck into the bottom with straight pins to make feet so it stands up a bit.

So other than all of that stitchy goodness we've been keeping pretty busy. We're at just a few more days until our camping trip so my dining room currently resembles a camping supply store but we're slowly getting it all organized. Hoping to try to get in a quick picture post while we're gone but I'll share some pics when we get back if not. Either way, everyone in the house is counting down the days for now.

One minor change to my 2014 plans- I will apparently not be attending the retreat I previously mentioned. I don't want to get involved in a big fight with the company but am a bit disappointed in how they handled things as it was not made clear up front the process used for "selecting" attendees and was made quite obvious that "first come, first served" wasn't it when I called to question my declined registration after receiving a seemingly positive original email followed by a second last week to say sorry but no. That's fine, my money will instead go toward attending Celebration next Spring where it clearly states everything on their site. Plus there's a decent chance I'll be able to meet up with some online stitchers as this seems to be a much bigger event.