Vase and Vine

I'm zipping right along on A Wish For You! The vase has been re-stitched in it's proper place, and it's viney vegetation is almost complete. I'll get the leaves (or are they flowers?) stitched next and then it might be time to tackle the over one verse. Better double up on the ginkgo biloba and get my frog swatter out before I do!

We've had a couple of days in the 70s here with the temps dipping into the 40s at night. Time to rediscover the oven! I made a cozy chicken and wild rice casserole for dinner the other night, and this morning we had blueberry muffins. (If I ever wrote a book it's title would have to be "Eat Eat Eat", although I don't expect Julia Roberts to be too enthusiastic about playing the role of the main character after I sell the movie rights!) (Have you ever wondered who would play you in a movie??)

Quite pleased with the Rangers performance the past few days. They played a four game series against the Twins and won three out of the four. I was able to watch two of the games on TV which was doubly nice since they were home games and I got to see my beloved Ballpark at Arlington! Triply nice if you consider I spent the duration of both games working on my stitching! My version of bliss!

Have a great weekend and thanks for stopping by to visit!

Two Steps Forward

This is all I have to show for a weekend of stitching. Two steps. The rest of what I did falls under the heading of "Three Steps Back". Yep. The dreaded Frog came to visit me Saturday. He quietly hopped in and hid until I had finished the entire vase on the right hand side and had started on the green vine. I could tell something wasn't quite right when I picked it up again on Sunday. I looked at the chart, looked at my stitching, looked at the chart, looked at my stitching, back and forth for a good ten minutes before... Oh %@#$! Everything was four stitches too high because I hadn't finished the very bottom part of the house before working my way over to the vase. (Because, hey, I wanted some brainless stitching to do while I watched The Gladiator. Russell Crowe... what can I say?)

I had intended to finish the windows on the house but the two threads I have for the frame and panes (Onion Skin and Harvest Basket) are so close together in color that instead of a window it just looked like a beige rectangle. So along with the vase and vine, the one window I filled in was de-stitched last night. I managed to keep my grumbling to a minimum and hopefully I'll be back to making some progress on this piece tonight.

I must warn you, however: the where-abouts of the Frog are unknown (cue foreboding music).

Housework

The walls are complete!

Cloudy day today with rain threatening. I really should get those windows done!

Brick and Brittle

It's been slow but steady stitching on A Wish For You. I'm loving this checkerboard house! The red is Old Brick, so perfectly varigated and bricky looking. And who wouldn't want to fill the gaps in between with Peanut Brittle?!

I'm off to get my hair cut! I made it a point to tell them I only needed an appointment for a trim. It reduces the chance that I'll come home with cute bangs and pink highlights.

Have a great day, y'all!

Make-a the pizza! Make-a the pie!

Tonight's dinner:


Homemade pizza!
I'm having mine with red pepper flakes and about an inch of Parmesan cheese! Yum!

The Weekend Report

I had such a pleasant weekend!

It started Saturday morning with a trip to LaPorte, IN for the Midwest Stash Exchange at House of Stitches. It's about an hour and a half drive for me but well worth the trip. I saw so much I wanted to buy but had to exercise some restraint. It'd be a long walk back to Three Rivers if I spent my gas and toll money on stash! One gal had some great bargains on Shepherd's Bush kits, but the one item I kept picking up and putting back down was The Riddle by The Drawn Thread, all kitted up with fabric and silks. I tried my best to justify it as a 'house expense' but in the end I had to pass. I wish I'd had the sense to get her name and email address! I'll be crying myself to sleep over that one for a while!

Got back home around 2:00 and after a quick trip to the grocery store we went out to the lake to grill burgers and putt around on the pontoon boat. Anyone else have the feeling we're in for an early fall? Maybe it's just all the back to school ads I keep seeing, but I feel like summer's almost over and I need to spend as much time outside and eat as much potato salad as I can.

Sunday was a lazy day, doing a few chores and taking care of paperwork. We made Tex-Mex rice for dinner and had it with leftover taco meat and fixin's from Friday's dinner. Deee-lish! I would have sat outside on the front porch to eat it but we seem to have attracted every cat in the neighborhood this past week. We'd been putting a little bowl of kitty krunchies out for a stray and it didn't take long for the news to spread. I had three of them lined up and waiting for breakfast this morning at 6:00 AM!

I found some time to stitch Sunday evening and got a little more done on A Wish For You. It finally dawned on me to stitch all the windows and the door so I wouldn't make any mistakes with the checkerboard part (hopefully). Why didn't I think of that before?


It's back to the drywall and sweating through my undergarments today. What a pretty picture that must paint! There's no AC upstairs and it's stiffling hot in the closet we're working on. I'll be soooo happy when we get it finished.

Hope everyone enjoyed the weekend and had time for some stitching and potato salad!

Midwest Stash Exchange

Just a happy little reminder to all you stitchers in the northern Indiana area (because I almost forgot myself!)

The Fourth Annual Midwest Stash Exchange will be tomorrow at the House of Stitches in LaPorte, Indiana from 10:00-3:00 Central whatzit time.

More details are here.

Anyone else planning to go?

Sweet Popcorn in a Bag!

(The title of my post is something we heard being shouted by a vendor selling kettle korn at the Ballpark in Arlington. We now use it as a sort of expletive as in, "Sweet popcorn in a bag! It's hot today!") (Yeah, we're weird.)

Not much progress to report on A Wish For You but I have an excuse! We took a break from all things 'house-renovation-y' and visited the Shipshewana Flea Market in Indiana. What a fun place to spend a day! I wish I'd taken my camera! (Because what this blog needs is more evidence of my lack of photography skillz, right!?!)


I've used some of our purchases from Yoder's Meat and Cheese Company to prop up my q-snaps for the picture. I could easily spend my monthly grocery budget there on cheese alone! And yes, that's a bag of kettle korn, or "crack-korn" as Edgar likes to call it. It is addictive, that's for certain! We had ourselves a Charlie Brown's Thanksgiving type of dinner last night, feasting on cheese and crackers, and kettle korn. Not sure what we'll have tonight but I know it'll involve cheese!

Don't even mention the Rangers to me! They blew a 6-1 lead over the Yankees last night, losing 7-6. I'm sure the neighbors must have heard me yelling at the TV and wondered what was going on! (And true story... my daughter woke me up at 2am one night in TX to tell me there was a roach in her room. The neighbors must have thought some horrible crime was being committed because after 15 minutes of us screaming while we tried to kill the damn thing there came a knock at the door. All I can say is some folks don't have much of a sense of humor at 2am! Maybe they were just trying to politely ignore that I was dressed in Hawaiian luau print boxer shorts and had monkey slippers on my feet!)

Oy! Half the day is gone and all I've managed to accomplish is measuring for shelves in the bathroom. Does that even count as work?

I think it's time for a snack...

Two New Projects

A heartfelt thank you to everyone for the sweet comments on my Winter Wonderland finish! It's so nice to hear from folks who stop by my little corner of the webbernet!

As promised, I started A Wish For You. I started with the easy peasy part of the checkerboard house but I'm going to have to start being careful because some of it looks a bit tricksy when you get around the windows and door. It might behoove me to pop over to the library tomorrow and make a working copy of the chart. I can just see me getting off by one set of squares and then spending three days scratching my head trying to find the mistake. Anyhoosie, here's how she's lookin' after last night's stitchin':


I also have another DIY project in the works. This time it's an upstairs closet that needed some 'revision'. The sheetrock on the walls was about 1/4" thick and full of holes. I swear, the stuff they used was more like cardboard than sheetrock. And when I say holes I don't mean nail holes. These were more like somebody put their fist through the wall. Again and again.


I'd never be happy with just patching the stuff and hoping it looked okay, so out it all came.


We're taking the opportunity to put in some insulation while we can. The only insulation in this house is in the attic, and I know this is just a closet but the way I look at it is every little bit helps, especially up here in the frozen north. I'd hate to not make the extra effort to do it and then regret it later on.


In closing, my work gloves (yes, I know they're actually garden gloves but I like them because they're thicker than the cloth ones but not as thick as the heavy duty leathery type) would like to offer a round of applause to all of my bloggy friends, commenters, followers, stitchers, and DIY'ers!

Hooray! And thanks for stopping by!

Happy Dancing in a Winter Wonderland

Winter Wonderland
Blackbird Designs
Fabric: 30 ct. Dark Chino linen from R&R Reproductions
Fibers: Weeks Dye Works & Gentle Arts
I'm happy to report that Winter Wonderland is finally finished! At least I hope it is! Twice I've thought I was done only to find a few stitches I missed. Chances are there's one or two more!

Next project in my to do pile? Another BBD! I've had A Wish For You kitted up and waiting in the wings for almost as long as I've been working on Winter Wonderland. I can't wait to get started!

Another Project

This one is of the DIY variety and, like Winter Wonderland, is almost complete.

The old house I bought back in 2007 was in need of some major repairs and updating. Okay, that's putting it a little mildly. Check out the bathroom...


Yeesh! It's hard to imagine anyone actually using this bathroom!

First order of business was to remove all the old fixtures and flooring. We also opened up the little closet-sized area where the toilet was, planning to completely rearrange where things were...



Next came all new plumbing and electric, tub, toilet, sink, vanity, lighting, mirror, faucets, tile, paint. I'll skip over the bazillion pictures of the work in progress and show you how it looks today...





Quite an improvement, don't you think? There's still more trim work to be done, and I'll be adding some shelves in the area to the left of the sink but those things have been put on the back burner while I work on other projects.

I've just realized this means my bathroom has officially become a UFO!

Almost There!

All that's left to stitch are the bits and pieces in this corner and I'll be finished with Winter Wonderland! I swear someone's going to have to super glue me to the chair first because I'm just not gettin'er done! I must have an acute case of finish phobia! Is there a cure??