Update and Birthday

Since I posted in the middle of the week about my grandson Kai's birthday, I figured I'd start with that. He had his birthday party at the zoo. It was so hot I just couldn't go walking too much so I only have a few pictures of a couple of animals. But I have a few of the kids playing and a fabulous shot of a peacock that decided to come visit.
So please excuse me, this post is going to be heavy on pics for a change.

Literally a foot away from me.

Kai just before he chased the peacock away for the 2nd time.

There are 3 river otters inside that log. It was too hot even for them to come out to play.

Can't believe we got all of the kids to sit for about 30 seconds.

 

My hubby had baked a cake earlier in the day, so we turned it into a birthday cake, since we missed the cupcakes at the zoo.

The Birthday boy, Kai

Big brother Sky.

Kai and Skylor playing with the swords I bought them.

I did spend part of the week stitching on my Sea Otters. I love this cute design. I should have it completed when it comes around on the RNG next. First, where I left off, then where I ended up today.

Maybe I should have done the eyes and ears backstitching, he looks a bit odd without them defined.

Again, I have not "spun" the RNG to find out what's up this week, so I guess I'll surprise you with my next post. So until next time, I hope you have a wonderful weekend and week ahead!

I Feel Like I'm Cheating...

It's odd, but I feel like I have been cheating on my 2012 challenge pieces. I have not touched one of them for weeks! I have a reason, but it still feels like I'm being disloyal. I know it's ridiculous, but....

Here's where I got on A Star is Born. The little mama is still holding on, I don't think she's going to make it to her due date, but if she doesn't I can finish this fairly fast.

I'll finish the last of the stars this week and get started working on the backstitching. I can't wait to see her face when I give it to her.

I worked on the Train of Dreams SAL last weekend and haven't looked at it all week so I didn't make a huge amount of progress, but I can definitely see how even just a little bit of progress can keep me motivated. I may not keep updating each week, but I will keep taking pics and will update at least once a month. I like having both pics together to compare on this one.

Had date night with my hubby last night and tonight I'm taking my daughter out for a belated birthday dinner. Tomorrow hubby and I are going to a Scorpions concert. He plays in a Scorpions tribute band so he'll really enjoy it. I just hope it doesn't rain since the concert is outside and we have lawn seats.

I hope to have more pics for my next post. So until then, Happy Stitching!!

Not such a great week, but progress.

This week has been hectic and frustrating and a couple of other things and I'm glad it's over. My daughter turned 25 on Tuesday. I really was looking forward to taking her our to dinner at her favorite restaurant and had it all planned out, but wouldn't you know it, the money I had set aside for dinner got taken out to pay the car insurance! I mean, what? I need insurance on my car? Oy! The timing just couldn't have been worse. So I couldn't take her out for dinner on her birthday, but I will take her out next week, this time to her other favorite restaurant since her boyfriend did take her to the favorite. I did get to make her requested birthday "cake", however, and it was DEEEEEElicious!

Make a wish!

Yes, it was a chocolate pudding pie! And she blew the candles out so hard, she knocked them over. When my son asked if she made a wish she said, "I don't need to make a wish, I already have everything that I want." What an awesome kid! So happy to have her in my life.

The rest of the week just seemed to get away from me. I did get some progress on my birth announcement, but didn't finish it, like I'd planned. But here's the progress on that one.

This is so darn cute, I really want to finish it up quickly so that when my friend has her baby I can give it to her mom (who also works at my office) as soon as I get the name and date on it and get it framed, probably the following Monday, whenever that may be.

I worked on the SAL all week, off and on as my mood allowed. I spent most of the week battling a case of the blahs. Depression hadn't set in until last night. So here's the progress I made over the past basically 2 weeks.

I saw in the enlarged photo that I missed a leg on one stitch that I'll have to go back and fix, because even if you can't see it, I know it's there and it will drive me crazy knowing that I didn't take care of it.

Can you see it?

I finally got a version of Adobe Reader that will allow me to highlight my progress on the chart. This was very frustrating for me since I love the paper print out and all, I just can't see it very well. Now that I have the updated version that will allow me to highlight it, I can zoom in and highlight and see it without straining my eyes. YAY!!!!

I found out some really disturbing news about one of my cousins this week and I'd really appreciate any prayers and good thoughts for his health and welfare. He and his brothers have been more like brothers to me than my own brothers at times. I'm pretty heartbroken for him right now.

I'm hoping this week will see me cheering up a little bit more and I'll get more done on the birth announcement and then maybe I can get back to my crazy 15 rotation and get some of them worked on too. Wish me luck?

Have a wonderful week!

Baby announcement progress

This week I worked almost exclusively on the baby announcement for my friend at work. I didn't really plan on giving it to her at the baby shower today, but I did hope to have it close to finished. I did make great progress on it and I will work on it again this week until it's ready for the new baby's name and date of birth. I'm really happy with what I got completed.

It is definitely a quick stitch. I didn't get to touch it one night so I'd say another day or two and I'll have it ready for back stitching. We had the baby shower today and we succeeded in surprising our friend! She had no idea that we were planning this for a couple of weeks. One of our managers almost let the cat out of the bag today though, he caught himself just in time. Thank goodness for that. I was a bad girl and didn't take my camera so I have to wait to get pictures from one of our other girls who did remember.

I was working on my SAL last weekend a bit, devoted a little more than a day because the other girls are blowing me away in their progress. I'm enjoying it anyway so I'm not too worried about falling behind. I will take another picture on Sunday but here are the progress pics for the Train of Dreams.

If I can finish the stitching on the baby announcement I'll roll the number generator to find out what is next and post an update during the week if I can.

Tuesday is my wonderful daughter Sami's 25th birthday. She's probably my best friend aside from my hubby. I'm taking her and her boyfriend and my hubby and son out for dinner at her favorite restaurant Red Lobster. The boys aren't really seafood people, they'd prefer steak to seafood any day of the week. They will order whatever else they can find that isn't fish and be happy about it....or else! LOL

So here's hoping that you have a wonderful and relaxing week ahead and I hope you all find time to treat yourself to something special this week. See ya next time!

TUSAL #2

So it's the new moon today, that means TUSAL update. Here's this months. Loving the colors I'm working with right now, it's making it so bright and happy looking!

If you want to take part in the TUSAL you can do so at Daffycat's page.

It's also my grandson Skylor's birthday. Happy Birthday Sky! Grandma loves you tons!

I'm working on Dysfunction all week and will post an update later this week. I have decided that I'm going to work on a weekly rotation, that way everything gets worked on for a week and that way I have a chance of avoiding that boredom that comes with only having one piece to work on. I'll still use my random number generator in order to decide what's next.

So until I am able to post more...Happy Stitching!!

Grandson's Birthday and update on Day 4's project.

My eldest grandson will be 7 on Tuesday. I can't believe it. It seems like just yesterday he was a baby. Since his mom and dad aren't together, we had a birthday party yesterday at a skate park that he and my son like to go to.

Last year his mom and me got him good with cake and icing. This year he did it to himself with his cupcake. Love that kid!

Next weekend I'll have some more birthday stuff for him since I get paid this week. I didn't plan ahead to have his ice cream cake for after the birthday party, so we'll do it again. Lucky kid!

Day 4 of the 2012 Crazy Cross Stitch challenge was this wonderful design that totally describes my family. "Our Family Puts the Fun in Dysfunctional" by Sue Hillis Designs. I needed something that required very little thought or true counting. So decided this was the project to work on this weekend. Oh how much fun I had working on this.

I may work on this a little more tonight to help me unwind from this crazy fun weekend. As quickly as this is working up, I may just run with it for the week and see if I can't finish it up. I bought a frame for it yesterday and I think I'll not put the buttons on the actual stitching but hot glue them to the frame, just for something different.

Looking forward to a new week and lots of interesting new stuff at work. So until next time...Happy Stitching!!

Not necessarily an update

The last two days I have been working on First Bass and Here Comes Treble. I decided that my daughter and I will give them to our honey's on Valentine's Day. I don't stitch very fast so I am taking as much time as possible working on them.

Here are the updated pics of both. I'm pretty proud of how they have come along.

I know I said that I'd post the last few of my challenge pieces, but I'm just about out of steam today. It was my birthday and I spent the evening stitching in peace. No one bugging me to do something or go somewhere. It was nice. It also happens that my daughters boyfriend has the same birthday as me, so we've been having our birthday cake together for the last few years. Here's a picture of this years cake.

So tomorrow (later today) I'll try to post those other challenge pictures. Until then, Happy Stitching!