Saturday Stuff ...

Chris and Monica came over for dinner last night (Friday). It was game night, we don't do this enough .. we had a blast last night. First was a dinner of lasagna, salad and garlic bread. After dinner I gave them the bell pull I made from the Lizzie*Kate double flips. They both loved it. It was fun to watch them read each word, check out the charms and talk about the colors they liked. It really was a perfect anniversary gift! Then it was time to play a game. C&M brought a couple with them and we had a few to consider .. The Farming Game won out. Most of us had never played it .. yet it was a very important part of our family when Chris was growing up. I think he discovered the game when he was about 10 and played it religiously with his close friend Nick, for years. Chris lost track of the game and Nick in high school, but always talked about how much fun they had. A couple of years ago I found it online and bought him a new one. OMGosh after playing it last night for the first time, I can understand why they were addicted to it. If you haven't every played it, and enjoy games like Monopoly and Life, I would high recommend it .. very fun and challenging. We played until midnight! lol .. and I won *smile*

So this morning Lisa arrived so we could work on our Christmas project a bit more before I leave for my stitching retreat. We finished 1 of 16 today! Here's the Fold a Tote bag we are making ...



Here's what it looks like folded out. We wanted to try and go as green with this bag as we could while not spending a huge amount of money on each. Pacific Fabrics close to me has some wonderful organic fabrics that weren't expensive and were really pretty! Here's what the bag looks like folded out ...


I really like the size of this bag ... would be great for taking to a farmers market for all your produce.


I started decorating for Halloween .. here's my mantle .. the black piece is new this year .. I found it at Illuminations and just fell in love with it! There's voltive candle holders behind each of the figures .. looks awesome all lit up at night.

Oh and have you seen these? I think this is adorable! From Val's Stitching ...


And of course I love this one too ... by Waxing Moon ... I think this might be my reindeer for 2008 .. cute eh?!

I received my Halloween Fair and Square exchange .. these were stitched by Sue W. Sue doesn't have a blog .. the design is Shepherd's Bush Scary Jack .. aren't they great! I can see a flat fold or pin keep in their future ...

Thanks for all the lovely comments about my Double Flipits ... I really was pleased with how they turned out :) Hope everyone is having a great productive weekend! Fall came in with a vengence here .. we had quite a wind storm all day today .. I loved it!

I'm grateful for game night ...

A finish!

Woo Hoo I finished L*K's double flipits last night. I'm so pleased with this piece. When I started stitching it, I was going to keep it for myself. After stitching the first 4 or 5 words, I decideed that it would be a nice gift for Chris and Monica and since their 2nd anniversary was coming up I thought it would make a great gift for them. Definately words to live by and a great reminder for a young married couple don't you think? I didn't get it done exactly on time .. their anniversary was the 23rd .. they are coming over for dinner and games this week so that's when I'll give it to them. Here's a couple of pictures ...

I found a perfect hanger .. it's from the same company that made these that I got last year ...

My mailbox was very happy on Saturday .. I received my Fair and Square squares (round 9) from Jenn ... I think she read my blog *smile* The design is Manuela's Sunflower from Chatelaine Designs. She changed the border from green to my favorite color, and look at all the beads she added! DH really liked all the bling :) The sunflower on the signature square is from a breadcloth leaflet .. really cute!

Here's a close up of the sunflower square ...

and the signature square ...

She also made me this really cute scissor fob .. the beads match the design so well! and look, I have earrings that match! lol .. don't you love when it all works :) She also made me a really cute bead angel, but the cats found it and started playing with it, so I moved it and forgot to take a picture .. damm cats! lol

This was Jenn's first exchange with the Fair and Square group and she was a bit worried about stitching for someone else ... well after receiving these lovely squares, I can say that anyone that gets partnered with Jenn will not be disappointed. I had so much fun getting to know Jenn during this round .. thanks for stitching these wonderful squares for me!

I leave for Myrtle Beach, SC for the Pals Fall Fling (stitching retreat) in two weeks .. and I'm sooo not ready! I'm off to watch Hero's and work on my Christmas ornaments .. actually I haven't started any ornaments, I need to pull some patterns, fabric and floss and get to stitching!

I hope everyone had a great weekend .. I know there's so much going on that we really don't have any control over. I really hope that those in power take their time and put together a plan that we can all support .. as scary as the outlook seems .. if it's not a well thought out plan I fear we will be right back here in another year.

Thanks for all the comments, it's nice seeing old friends and meeting new friends :)

I'm grateful for wonderful fall weather ...

Happy 2nd Anniversary Chris and Monica ...

Can't believe it's been 2 years already! Seems like just yesterday that Monica became a member of our family. It's been such fun having a daughter in law :)

Aren't they the cutest couple!



Last May they took a trip to visit their friend Jay in London. Here's a picture from their overnight trip to Paris .. what fun!


My hope for you both is that you can always remember how you felt on that very special day ..

An anniversary is a time to celebrate the joys of today, the memories of yesterday, and the hopes of tomorrow (one of my favorite quotes).

Love, Mom

I'm grateful my son found someone that is his equal in every way ...

Lots of Stuff ...

Oh where to start .. it's Sunday night and I had a very nice, busy week and an awesome weekend. Let's start with some stitching .. yep, stitching! I finished two Fair and Square exchanges last week .. only one has arrived at it's new owner, Jennifer. Here's the little bunny I stitched for her ... she had this design on her wish list .. it was a very fun stitch (I stole this picture from Jenn's blog, I mailed off both my exchanges before taking pictures of them ... grrrrrrr lol. This was Jenn's first round in the Fair and Square exchanges. I hope she enjoyed it, I know I enjoyed getting to know her, even if she is a Dallas Cowboy fan! lol .. I seem to be meeting lots of new stitchers that are rival football fans *smile*

I'm making progress on the L*K Double Flipits ... I'm on Laugh now, and then there's only Create and Live left .. my deadline is this coming weekend .. we'll see if that happens! lol

This last weekend I had a great girls weekend with two very dear friends, Lisa and Yvonne. You've heard me talk about Lisa alot. Yvonne, Lisa and I went to high school together. Yvonne and I were roommates after we graduated high school. After high school we lost track of Lisa, and a couple of years later, I lost track of Yvonne. Because we all still lived in the general area .. every once in a while we'd cross paths, but never reconnected. About 7 years after high school, Lisa and I reconnected and have been pretty close ever since .. but we only saw Yvonne at high school reunions .. and after a lot of I miss you and let's get together soon .. well it never seemed to happen, life always got in the way somehow. We graduated in 1972. Our class decided to have a 35th reunion instead of waiting for 40. Again, we really enjoyed seeing Yvonne that evening and swore we would meet for lunch soon. Well, surprise surprise .. this time we did keep in touch and meet for lunch about 3 times in the last year. The last time we met for lunch we talked about how great a long weekend away would be .. just the 3 of us ... and you know what, we actually made it happen! We left on Friday and returned today (Sunday). Ocean Shores is about 3 hours from us. We arrived about 3, checked in and headed to the beach for a nice long walk. Then it was back to our room for margaritas and cribbage .. Lisa kicked out butts! lol Saturday was morning walking on the beach, some shopping, a nap and then off to the casino. The slot machines were very mean to us, but we drank and laugh and hit spin anyway. Of course Sunday had to come and we had to get back to reality .. but I have to say this girls weekend was really fun and relaxing, and it was wonderful to spend time with Yvonne like that. We are definately planning to do it again *smile* Here's a few pictures ... first it's Yvonne and Lisa playing around ...

Here's Lisa and I .. sure was windy! lol

and here's Yvonne and I ... yes, Yvonne is the silly one :) lol

I love finding rocks and shells on the beach. We found a lot of sand dollars this trip .. gotta figure out something to do with them.

Thanks for all your comments on my new red bag .. I can't wait to use it! And welcome to new visitors to my blog .. I really enjoy getting to meet all of you. I'm off to settle in and watch Army Wives and do a little stitching.

I'm grateful for girlfriends and the weekends away ...

PIF's make me smile ...

Is there anything more enjoyable than coming home from work and finding mail waiting for you? Not the bad mail, bills and such .. nope the good mail, like some new stash, a new ebay purchase, nor perhaps an envelope that you weren't expecting. You look at the envelope, can't remember ordering anything that size, and of course like an idiot you don't look at the return address .. you just grap the first sharp thing you can find and rip, carefully, but you rib open the envelope ... look what I found when I got to rip open a package today ...

This lovely RED bag was a PIF from Jean ... and it's perfect! And I can't wait to use it! Of course I told Jean that it was too pretty to use .. but I can't wait to use it anyway! Look how lovely the lining is! Jean is great with a sewing machine!

And here's a close up of the stitched design on the front of the bag .. it's a little pocket :)


This was Jean's first ever PIF and omgosh she did a wonderful job! Jean's new to blogging, but not to cross stitch .. go over and say hi .. she's such a nice lady, for a Buffalo Bill fan *lol* Thanks again Jean for the wonderful bag .. I'll think of you everytime I use it :)

Hope everyone is having a good week .. I'm really glad the week is almost over .. I spend way too much time wishing my life away at work .. but dammm I just have way too many things I want to be doing other than work .. but owell, it does help pay for my many additions! lol

No stitching pictures yet again, but I did get my Halloween F&S exchange done .. woo hoo! Sure is nice to cross things off the deadline list!

May your day be a peaceful one tomorrow and I hope you can take a moment and remember what happened to all of us 7 years ago .. doesn't seem like it was that long does it? heavy sigh ...

I'm off to stitch a bit before bed ...

I'm grateful for a new stitching bag and a new blogging friend ...

A little stitching and some Enabling :)

I'm still doing a bunch of secret stitching so no recent pictures .. however, my squares for the Fair and Square Summer Round (yes Summer!) finally arrived in Australia. Gotta love the mail system! Anyway, here are the squares I did for Nicky ... the chart is Trilogy's Summer Tree .. I just loved the sunflower and the birds.


Now for the enabling part .. I found these on Shakespeare's Peddler's website ... am sooo in love with this new design ... so sweet and delicate!

And check this cute basket from Homespun Elegance .. it comes in 5 different colors .. what fun!

Hope everyone is staying safe and dry .. such crazy weather everywhere! We are having our typical Seattle fall weather, about 70 during the day, and cooler in the morning and at night .. I love Fall! The weather and the colors and the sounds .. yes the sounds of fall .. in our house that sounds a lot like GOOOOO Seahawks!!! Yep, football season starts tomorrow .. well officially I guess it started on Thursday, but our first game is tomorrow with the Buffalo Bills in Buffalo .. so let's hear a big GOOOO SEAHAWKS! lol

I'm grateful for fall plants ...

Waving Hi ....

Happy September! The weather here sure is telling us it will soon be fall, we actually turned on the heater this morning .. there was quite a chill in the air when we got up. I'm sorry to see the summer go ... but we are heading into my favorite time of year, fall and winter .. so I can't complain too much :)

We had a great time in Bristol, TN. The weather was great, not too hot .. the race was awesome, even though my driver struggled all evening .. I met up with a few Matt Kenseth fans and enjoyed a few margaritas with everyone. If you are a race fan and have never been to the Bristol night race, you really need to add it to your to-do list. This is really an incredible track .. it's like sitting in a football stadium that holds 161,000 people and 43 very fast cars going round and round! lol Here's a couple of pictures .. this one is a few of the Matt fans hanging out at the campsite ...

and here's a picture of Terry, Robert and me ...

While I was gone I received this wonderful award from a few fellow bloggers .. Kim, Dawn, Mary Ann, and Karol ... thank you ladies for the award. I'll pick a few blogs to award later this week. I still feel very very behind since getting back from vacation.

Veronica received my fair and square squares while I was on vacation .. here's what I stitched for her. The design is 'I Love Cross Stitch' from the July 2008 issue of The Gift of Stitching magazine by Maryse Dupont of Les grilles de Maryse. I really enjoyed stitching this for Veronica. I'm glad she liked it. I think I'm going to stitch this a couple more times ... sure would make a cute pinkeep, don't ya think?!

I didn't do much today .. was nice to just be lazy .. I stitched and watched a couple of movies. The first one was with Michelle Pfeiffer called I Could Never Be Your Woman. Definately not an award winner, but a very enjoyable movie and one you can stitch and watch. The other was Diminished Capacity with Matthew Broderick and Alan Alda. I really enjoyed this one and would highly recommend it.

I've been stitching, but it's nothing I can show .. yet :) Hope everyone had a great weekend! And thanks for all the comments about my L*K double flipits .. I seriously need to stitch on it this week.

I'm grateful for vacations ...

Bristol Baby ...

Seems like the weekend was a long time ago. We had record heat for about 3 days and now I'm sitting in the family room, watching the Olypmics and reading blogs and listening to it raining like crazy .. and it's still warm! Not hot like over the weekend .. 90 with 90% humidity .. makes us Washingtonians really ugly and grumpy! lol Even in the heat we had a good weekend. It was only Terry and I .. the kids were at a subaru car rally all weekend. Friday was take out dinner and Weeds. We are on the 3 season. This is one great tv series on Showtime. We just started watching it this summer, I love Blockbuster online! lol Saturday Terry worked on the deck and I worked in the house. Once it got to hot outside to work, we got in the air conditioned car and ran errands. One of the errands we had was for Robert. His favorite Nascar driver's show car was at the mall and he asked if we'd go and get pictures. The country radio station I listen to was there giving away stuff and promoting their station. One of the things they were giving away were Gary Allen tickets .. well, guess what? I won a pair of tickets!! woo hoo! I love Gary Allen .. he'll be at one of our local state fairs on Monday (8/25) with the Lost Trailers. I'm soo excited! Nobody in the family really likes country music except for Monica (dil) .. she's going to take a day off work and we're going to the fair and then the concert .. should be lots of fun! Sunday was spent dealing with family stuff with my dad (cleaning up stuff from the passing of my Auntie Dee) and laundry .. such a fun day! lol

I have been stitching off and on during the Olympics .. sure is hard to keep my concentration sometimes! Anyway, I did get some secret stitching done and finished two more words on the L*K double flipit's. I have 4 more to do by the end of September .. they stitch up pretty fast if you just sit and stitch! lol Here's what it looks like so far ..

The best part of this week is it's a short week for me .. Terry, Rob and I are leaving on vacation tomorrow (Wednesday) night. We are off to Bristol, Tenneessee for the Nascar race. We've been planning this trip for a year now. It is one of our favorite tracks and we are all sooo excited! We leave on the redeye, arrive Thursday morning and have a day to spend enjoying the city of Bristol. Friday night is the Nationwide race, and Saturday night is the Nascar Cup race. We fly back on Sunday. I'm seriously hoping for Matt to have another win at Bristol like he did in 2005 *smile*

Hope everyone has a great rest of your week and a fun weekend. I'm sure I'll have lots of blog reading when I get back .. do a lot of stitching for me, cause I don't think I'll get much done while I'm gone ...

I'm grateful for vacations with my boys ...

He's a fish ...

Michael Phelps is just blowing me away with his swimming abilities. That boy is awesome to watch .. just beautiful in the water. I'm really enjoying the Olympics so far. Do you have a favorite event? I always say I like all the swimming/diving the best, but then when the track and field events start, I really enjoy those too. And of course there's baseball/softball and beach volleyball .. they are all great! lol I joined Melissa's blog for 2008 Summer Olympic Stitching Challenge. At first I thought I would concentrate on my Family Sampler that I started 2 years ago, but changed my mind yesterday. I really want to finish L*K's double flip-it's for Chris and Monica's 2nd anniversary (9/23). I'm about 1/2 done, and since it is a pretty quick stitch, I think it's a great use of my stitching time. At least I hope so!

I finally received my copy of the Halloween JCS issue .. omgosh there are some incredibly cute Halloween ornaments in here. I think the witch shoes are my favorite. I know I'd love to stitch all of them sometime.

I also picked up this cute Halloween kit by Cresent Colours. I don't know if you can really see the colors of the flosses, but omgosh they just soo yummy, deep and rich.

Thanks for all the compliments about Christmas Drawers and the framing. I have it hanging in the hallway and really enjoy seeing it everytime I walk down the stairs. And thanks for all the positive thoughts and prayers for my two friends. We all really appreciate your gentle loving concerns.

OK ... time to get off this laptop and get to stitching and watching the Olympics .. gooooo USA

I'm grateful for Wednesdays ...

Starts and Finishes ...

Hope everyone is having a great week. It's been pretty crazy at work and at home .. I'm thinking the plants are a bit out of alignment? Owell, as they say, this too shall pass .. quickly I hope! I have been stitching, but mostly on exchanges I can't show you yet but I do have a couple of pictures of stitching to share. This is my first pictures of Joyful Summer by CCN. I changed the fabric to a neutral brown (can't remember the name of it). I already have a couple of pieces stitched on the light blue and just wanted sometime new. I really like the colors on this fabric. It's a very fun stitch .. the birds make me smile! I'm leaving all the french knots to do after it's all stitched .. poor birdy doesn't have any eye yet :(





Earlier this year I posted pictures of my finished Christmas Drawers by Shepherd's Bush. This piece has meant a great deal to me .. all the challenges with new speciality stitches, the number of retreats it attended and just the fact that after about 7 years I really finished it. The bad thing, I waited to long to order the frame that SB had used. I was talking to Lois at Elegant Stitch about it and she suggested I have Jill Rensel do the matting and framing. I loved the idea and decided I was worth the splurge. Well it arrived home on Saturday and all I can say is I'm so glad I decided to splurge .. it turned out better than I ever expected. And DH was still impressed with the framing after seeing the bill *grin* Here it is ...


A close up .. yes, there is a bead missing on the top drawer :( I didn't noticed I had left it off .. until after it was framed! owell .. makes it mine, right? along with a few other "mistakes" ...


Don't you love the mats! So danity and a bit whimsical too :)

I don't know what I love more .. the frame or the mats .. but check this close up .. this is a lovely frame ...


I know I won't spend this kind of money on everything I have framed, but I am very glad I have Jill do the framing and now I know what to do with that "special" piece in the future.

Before I close, I would like to ask you all for positive thoughts and prayers for a couple of my dear friends. One is dealing with some major health issues concerning her 19 year old daughter. The other is my good friend and neighbor who had surgery today, they were taking a biopsy for possible lung cancer.

I'd like to say hi to a couple of new readers of my blog .. it's always nice to get comments from new readers (and old ones too! lol) .. check out Jade and Dawn's blogs. I'm really enjoying getting to know them.


I'm grateful for Karen and Joan ...