Exciting New Family Member

9:26 PM Edit This 0 Comments »
My husband surprised me today with a new family member for our household, for my birthday. I had mentioned some time ago, after seeing one in a pet store, that I would really like to have one....................


His name is Otis, and he is a Min Pin. Most people think that a Min Pin is a Miniature of a larger bread of dog, a Doberman. However, this is not the case. Otis is 4 months old, partially potty trained, and crate trained. He has a very sweet temperament and likes to lay on the shoulder rather then on my lap. We are finding out that he is much like having a 2 year old around with boundless energy. He will not get much bigger then what he is here, full grown. I am hoping that he will make a great companion at all the soccer practices and tournaments that we attend.


Because of all the traveling to go get Otis, and then subsequent traveling to get food, toys, bedding, etc. I didn't have time to stitch today. Its now after 9, so I think I shall go to bed early and read! I can start fresh on stitching tomorrow. BTW, the man in the picture is my hubby Tim :)

Stitching, Flying and LAZYNESS

6:23 PM Edit This 0 Comments »
Sat and stitched with my best friend Mary today. Put in 180 stitches in the 2 hours and 45 mins. that I stitched. Not bad I guess, but I sure hope my stitches per minute pick up a bit once I am past this confetti stitching. I am hopeful to finish the first column tomorrow, and work on the 2nd one.

I had planned to spend some time this morning flying. I had my TaDa list all printed out, and sitting on my desk for when I got up. I got the bed made, dinner made and dishes done, and laundry going, but that is as far as I could get. I did not sleep well last night, so there just isn't much energy to do anything today! I am hoping that when I get up tomorrow I can get my home blessing hour done, before I sit to stitch.

Lazy?? Well I had thought tonight that I would spend sometime cleaning the house, you know get all the things done that need to be done (vacuuming, dusting, cleaning bathrooms etc) so that tomorrow I could do nothing but stitch........but guess what?! Okay you got me! I am being L>>>A>>>>Z>>>Y So Guess what I am doing.....yep, playing Poker LOL. Tomorrow, I promise with be a better flying day!

Flying

9:20 PM Edit This 0 Comments »
I realized as I was sitting here playing poker tonight, that I have severely lacked in the area of Flying. Not that my house is completely in CHAOS, but there are the things, that haven't been done. Most of them revolve around my Zone's. So tomorrow I am going to start over with my Flying, and see if I can't get it under control. I must do my Flying before I sit down to stitch, and figure out my schedules for the weeks, so that I can be more proficient in my Flying.

Sistine Chapel

2:19 PM Edit This 0 Comments »
I have been waiting nearly a month to start one of my 2009 Projects. I had agreed to do it as a SAL (stitch-a-long) with several in the group. I was so excited I could barely contain myself. Here is a picture of the project: The project is a gigantic undertaking, with 76 pages of pattern and just under 200,000 stitches. By far, it is one of the most detailed projects, I have ever tried. It falls under the category of "Really??? What was I thinking???"

So anyway, started stitching this morning. The 1st page (at least the area I am on) contains a lot of confetti stitches (for those of you stitching illiterate confetti stitches are colors that aren't all together~ie one here, one there). This fact alone has made it very slow going so far. I am hopeful that the whole pattern is not like this, and I do get some positive affirmation in this by looking at the rest of page one.

Top all this off with a very volatile day with my 17 yo son, who has just recently moved to a new placement locally, and it has been a rather depressing stitching day. I am hopeful, however, that things will pick up as my best friend is on her way over to stitch with me. Good company, good conversation, and a cozy warm room. What more could one person want LOL.

8:30pm Update~So my friend came over, and down we sat to stitch. Excited I was about getting some work done on Sistine Chapel. Low and behold at the end of the row I was working on, I came to a color I did not have~how could this have happened, as I have every color DMC makes (I guess except one!). So I put it away for tomorrow, and will head off to Hobby Lobby tomorrow to pick up the last color I did not have.

HAPPY NEW YEAR

5:14 PM Edit This 0 Comments »


Just wanted to wish all my friends a Happy New Year. I hope it is full of blessings and wonderful memories!

As the year ends, I always find myself with mixed emotions. A bit sad, for another year has come and gone; and excited to see what the New Year might bring. In addition to my already mentioned New Years resolutions, I believe that this year I am going to try to concentrate on the "Little" things in life.... a sort of stop and smell the flowers mentality. Life is just to short to be so concerned with the things we let consume our lives. To this I am swearing off television, unless it has something to do with a family thing (i.e. movie night, playing the Wii together etc.). I just think that I spent way to many hours in 2008 absorbing worthless garbage in my head, and there are so many better ways to spend my time. Instead of watching television, I will read or cross-stitch, spend time doing things with the kids or my husband and on.

Just another Tuesday

4:35 PM Edit This 0 Comments »
Not a whole lot to blog about today, as it was pretty much the same as every other Tuesday, in a long string of boring Tuesdays LOL. I did the wash, cleaned the kitchen, made tea for Tim, and stitched. I went to bed last night feeling under the weather, woke up this morning feeling even more so. That being said, I decided to take at easy today. My goal was to finish the page of stitching I was working on (Quilts in the Garden), which I did successfully do. I even went a bit further by working a few stitches in on the following page. I will continue on that tomorrow before putting it up to complete my first 1/2 page of Sistine Chapel. (Sistine Chapel is a stitch-a-long project that I have committed myself to do at least 1/2 page of stitching a week). I have been waiting over a month to start this project, so the first 1/2 page should go rather quickly.

Tomorrow is also grocery day, thanks to the holidays. I will be starting my new calorie monitoring tomorrow, and already have the menu (and 3 snacks a day) figured out for the following weeks. It made making a shopping list pretty easy :) I have been doing menu planning for awhile now, but mostly just for dinners. This menu has breakfast, lunch, dinner and three snacks. The only "extra" food I will buy is for the kids lunches and their snacks (as they still need more calories).

My plans for tonight are going to be very simple...To Do NOTHING. Okay, well maybe something. I plan to play a few games of poker, maybe spend some time reading, take a bath etc. I have not been watching any TV lately (expect once in a while the nightly news). I am thinking about giving up TV watching for the next year, but then that is quite a commitment!

Bed Trials

11:21 AM Edit This 0 Comments »
Okay let me start by saying THIS IS NOT AN X-rated post! I know some of you who might be disappointed (but you will get over it LOL). No, rather this post is more about the actually trials of sleeping with one's significant other, in bed. Notice there I said SLEEPING! So last night Tim and I performed our normal bedtime routine. (Just for a little history, the routine goes something like this: I come into the room about 10:45 after waiting for him to come home from work. He plants his self in front of the TV. I read in bed until somewhere about 11:30 to 12:00 while I wait for Tim to come to bed. He hops in to bed, we turn out the lights, and I hear snoring within a few minutes, while I lay staring at the ceiling for an hour trying to fall asleep.)

So last night, same routine. And as I was sitting there in the dark I began contemplating the differences in our ability to go to sleep. From this I have decided, he sleeps because he has nothing on his mind! (and no I don't mean that in a derogatory manner). It is just that he has spent the last hour to hour and a half sitting in front of the television, allowing it to suck out any thought process he might have had. I on the other hand, have been richly involved in enhancing my mind by traveling to some far off distant country, and helping the hero or heroine achieve their goals. Therefore, Tim comes to bed, completely oblivious to everything and quickly drifts off to sleep. I however, spend an hour or more, detailing to plans for a book that has already been written, as if I have to re-write the entire ending for myself. There is not even enough space to begin to write what happens when I have finished the book, on any given night!

As I was writing this opinionated post, Tim walks in and takes great offense to my personal observations of our sleep habits. And while I may feel a tad bit bad for him, exposing him in such light, I have decided that this post may well save marriages everywhere, and therefore, must be inclined to keep it in my blog! After all, if we women understand the nuances of the marriage relationship.......we can better defend ourselves!

Updated Albums

7:53 PM Edit This 0 Comments »
I have officially updated all my albums, and all my cross-stitch patterns to date. My hopes is to do update pictures every Monday (at the very least every other Monday). Except of course Sistine Chapel, which will need to be updated, rain or shine, once a week!

Diets and other New Years Resolutions

2:58 PM Edit This 0 Comments »
Every year it seems, I spend massive amounts of time (at least for a day or two) trying to follow some of my New Years Resolutions. Generally by the 3rd or 4th of January, something has gone amiss, and in my world of 100% one way or another thinking, I quit! Well this years resolution is going to be to accept things done well, NOT perfectly! That being said, here is my list of New Years Resolutions:
  • Eat Healthier (try to keep at around 1700 calories a day)
  • Be Nicer to People
  • Read my bible more often (I am going to strive for once a day, but remember perfection isn't achievable
  • Spend more time with my friends
  • Be more consistent in my church time.
  • Spend time every day stitching.
  • Update my photos on a weekly basis (again perfection isn't achievable)
  • MOST IMPORTANTLY get back to FLYING! I have really lax ed on this lately, and I need to follow my system in order to stay caught up.

On the eating healthier note, I am really excited about what I am doing! Every time in the past, I have started a diet and then failed because I didn't like the food or I got bored. What I have done now is figure out what I need, calorie wise, for each meal and each snack. (For example for me: Breakfast is approx 323 cal.; Lunch and Dinner approx. 510 calories; and snacks (3 a day) is 119 cal.) Then I took index cards. At the top I wrote whether it was breakfast, snack, or lunch/dinner. Then on the card I wrote down appropriate stuff for that category, trying to keep the totals in range. For instance, one of my snack cards is a sugar free jell-o pudding and two vanilla wafers (130 cal). My goal is to have 20 to 30 different cards for snacks and lunch/dinners. Then at the beginning of the week, I will mix them all up and pull out cards for 21 snacks, 7 breakfasts, 7 lunches and 7 dinners. That will be my menu for the week. And all the calorie counting is already done for me. And since I am putting only food I really like, I won't hate what I am doing. I will post later as to how this is going, as my official start date will be Wed. Dec. 31st. I have a goal weight that I would like to get to, but I don't want to get stuck on the numbers right now. (I did post a widget to help me watch my weight loss on my blog though).

Would love to see comments of others New Years Resolutions, or thoughts about having them!