Did I make it?

Well... I've been dreading posting how badly I did on my goals from the beginning of last year. But hey things get in the way.
It's been quite the tumultuous year. Between my emergency operation and multiple hospital visits, to my Grandfather passing away, to having to put down one snake and getting a new one. It has been a learning and growing year for me and for my B/F. It will be two years in February that we moved into our place "officially" together. And while we've had a challenging year I can't imagine having done any of it without him. I am so thankful to have such a compassionate and considerate man to share my life with.
Okay... enough of the sappy stuff right. ;)
Onto how badly I did at my stitching goals this past year.

- Judgement Dragons - 4 pages (at least) 4 pages complete DONE!
- Romantic Rose Garden Chatelaine - finish (9 pages of cross stitch) 1 page completed
- Soul Mates - all half pages & 3 regular sized pages - 1 half page complete
- Elfland HAED SAL SK - Finish it (2 pages) 1 page completed
- Castles in the Air SAL - at least 6 parts Part 4 complete
- Ornaments - 2 or 3 (yet to be picked out) #1 Smoke - Complete, #2 Fa la la - Complete, Autumn Ornament - Complete DONE!
- Pirate - Sue Hillis Argh Pirate finish
- Cheryls Bouquet - finish DONE!

Added on Projects for the year:
- Hummingbird bell pull Complete
- Rose HAED SAL SK

Yes pathetic I know.
So... for next year, I will have less goals and ones that I know I can achieve, and then everything else on top of that is just icing on the cake.
So here they are:
- Judgement Dragons - 4 pages (at least)
- Wedding piece -finish (wedding is in July so there is no choice)
- 3 small Stockings - these are for my Mom and two siblings. They are to pick out their patterns shortly and I'll share with you in the next little bit what is happening with this, the stitching part is just ornament sized.

That's it! I know I can do these. :)
A few new starts for this year will include:
- HAED QS SAL, I chose Faerie Bride. Got the first page the other day just have to get some more supplies and start it.
- Wedding piece, I started this one but one of the colours is an issue, so need to get to the LNS and pick another one, I will share that one soon as well. (It's barely been started as I knew right away I had a colour issue)
- Canvaswork Carolyn Mitchell piece, yes you read that right. I'm gonna learn canvas! My guild is doing a class for it that starts in mid-January. I still have to get to my LNS and get my supplies (see a theme here, I really need a trip to the LNS, but it snowed this week and the roads were too bad to get on the highway to get here, gotta get there next weekend).

And there will be other projects I'm sure.
In the meantime... I will be stitching Dragons most of this weekend, maybe some work on Rose as well. I have almost a half page finish on Dragons, as I have been off all this week. (I could have had more but a video game I got for Christmas was too addictive, lol).

Hope you all have a lovely New Years and see you all in 2011 for more stitchy fun!

We have Winners!

I've got winners (generated from a random number draw) for the blog packages. Thank you to everyone who commented and entered. There were 80 entries into the Christmas package and 71 into the Halloween one. Absolutely awesome!
Without further ado... the winners are:

Package #1 goes to Terri (bronzemom)!
Package #2 goes to Lisa V!

I have sent you both an email for your addresses.
Congrats!


I hope that everyone has had a fantastic holiday. Mine has been good. I've been stitching away and video gaming. I got an awesome new game for Christmas and it's very addictive, but I'm making sure I stitch too! Might even have a half-page on Dragons done by the end of the week. (it will be sad to go back to work after all this progress that is for sure).

I had a lovely surprise in my mail on a day when I needed a pick me up.
The lovely Evalina sent me an awesome kit for Christmas. It's from Mill Hill. I've already started it!
It's the first time I've used perforated paper and I gotta say it's a nice change from the usual small stitches I do. Thank you sooooo much Evalina.
Here is the one she sent me:

Hope everyone is doing well. Especially those that have been having bad weather and snow. We've got snow today, I figure it's because I wanted to go to the stitching store that is out of town. Maybe I'll get there tomorrow. (I got gift certificates for Christmas that I am itching to use to get more stuff!)

Winner Announcement Delayed

I'm sorry everyone, I will not be announcing the winner of my giveaway today.
There has been some very sad news in the stitching community this morning and I just can't bring myself to compile names and set it all up for the draw. Forgive me.
I promise to do it after Christmas.

However, I do want to wish everyone a wonderful, happy, safe and warm holiday! I hope that everyone has time to catch up with family, friends and some stitching.
All the best to you and yours.
Mel.

Cheryls Bouquet & Row on Dragons FINISHED!!

I'm very pleased to announce two finishes. (okay one finish, one row complete)
Let's start with the official finish. Cheryl's Bouquet. This is a free pattern by Needlemania. I used Rainforest thread from Wildflowers as the variegated colour. I chose not to do the square border that is in the pattern and will instead frame it as a square. I'm quite pleased with the colours and how it turned out. Here she is:

The second 'finish' is not really a finish but it's a huge milestone for me. I have completed a row on Dragons!! This was my goal for the years, to complete one row,which is four pages, and I have done it! It was very exciting to put in the last stitches of this row last night. Only three more rows to go.  This piece is about 1/3 of the way done now. Here it is to date:

If you haven't already, check out my previous post and enter my giveaway. You still have time drawing is not until Yule (Dec 21).

I have confirmed that I am not working at all next week, or the week after! I am sooo excited. I see some stitching time in there for me. And of course hanging with some friends and family and such. We are celebrating Christmas #1 with B/F's family on Saturday. Should be fun as my nieces and nephews love presents (they are kids of course they do, lol).

Hope everyone is staying safe and warm. it's snowy and cold here. But I know other places have been getting way worse snowstorms than us!

200 Followers Giveaway

Well I've *finally* got my act together and have the giveaway ready.
It's going to be two different ones as the consensus seemed to be that more people winning is better.

Giveaway Rules:

There will be two packages and therefore two winners.
All winners must have their email address available in the comment they leave or in their profile. (If I cannot find your email address another winner will be drawn).
You must enter by December 21 at 5:00pm MST.
Ways to enter:
1) Comment gets you an entry for both packages (if you don't want to be entered in one of them let me know, otherwise I'll assume everyone wants in on both).
2) If you are a follower you'll get a bonus entry (just let me know in your original comment that you are).
3) If you post on your blog you get a bonus third entry (please post that you did this).
I will ship anywhere in the world. Shipping will occur AFTER Christmas so I don't have to stand in a huge long line-up.
The packages all contain brand new items.

Package #1 - Christmas (forgive the slightly blurry photo)

Package #2 - Halloween (cause how can I not keep giving away things for my fave holiday)

I want to thank everyone so much for your continuing support and for reading my blog. I read all the comments and enjoy each of them (except the spammers, lol).
I have made so many fantastic friends online through this blog! So thank you, thank you.

Coming up: I will have the dragons page done before the week is out, so watch for the row finish. Cheryl's Bouquet is pretty much done, I have to make some decisions and then I will post a pic.

Ooopss...

Forgive me, I got caught up in a bunch of stuff last night and forgot to take pictures for the giveaway... so it's delayed until next week. But I promise it's worth the wait.
Sorry everyone... :(

Rose & What's Happening

Well as Christmas approaches it seems that things just get more and more frantic. But I did manage to get 1/2 of my Christmas shopping done. All the easy stuff. lol. ;)
We are having two Christmas' this year. One on the 18th with B/F's family and then with mine on the 25th. Seems odd to me to celebrate twice… but hey should be twice the fun then right?

As for stitching. I have been at it. Cheryl's Bouquet is closing in for the motif (then it's just the border which will be super fast I think). Dragons got neglected this past week but I will get that page done before the end of the month.
However, it was the last SAL for the second half of the year SK from HAED. So here is Rose. I gridded down (something I rarely do) so that I could still work from bottom to top. There is a giant section not stitched at the top, it's all one colour so I figured I'd save it for a day when I don't want to think at all and just stitch rows and rows.
Here she is:

Giveaway will be posted before weeks end. There is one Christmas item, One Halloween item and maybe some bonus stuff. I might split it into two haven't decided yet. I guess maybe I could get opinions. Do people rather have one big win, or two smaller wins so that more than one person gets picked?

I will also post some Cronus pics soon as he is growing so fast! We got him a new water dish that is larger and he seems to like it. So watch for more on my snake hatchling soon (and if you don't like snakes then don't watch for it. As always I will have a warning at the top of the post that there are snake pics below as I know some people just cannot deal with them due to fears)

Hope you are all staying warm and stitching!

I'm not dead! :)

Did you think I was dead?
Cause I was even wondering myself. :)

Well it's been crazy, but work has finally become normal hours again. And I'm starting to get organized for December and all the fun that comes with that.
So there hasn't been a lot of stitching, but there has been some.

I did work on dragons and am getting close to a page finish, so will make the goal of the end of the year for the row. Pictures to come on that one in the next week or so.

Onto ones I do have pictures of. Here is Cheryl's Bouquet. I was hoping to have it finished by the end of the year. But I don't think that will happen. Though I am giving it way more attention.
To date:

I've also been playing around with beading bracelets and different things since taking the classes at retreat. Made a few more rings for friends and such. Made this bracelet the other day to see if I could get the knots to work, it's just cheap Walmart beads, but hey turned out not bad I think. Check it out:

That is sadly all the pics I have right now.
But things while still busy, are less crazy so I will be back to regular stitching time to some degree and of course regular updates! I have missed chatting with all my stitching buddies in the last few weeks. Forgive me, I'm back now.
Hope you are all doing well and stitching away!


And a Happy Turkey Day to all my American friends. :)

PS: I just noticed that I hit 200 followers!!! So watch out for a giveaway in December in celebration.

Ornament Finishes

I got a great surprise in the mail the other day. I had sent three ornaments off to Meari for her to finish for me as I am really bad at it. And I'm SOOOO pleased with the outcome. They are just awesome.
These are finishes from 2009. There is Moon Mirror, Smoke project & Coffee Cat.
I think they have turned out just amazing. (I will be adding trim to Moon Mirror just haven't gotten to it yet). Thank you, thank you, thank you to Meari for doing this for me!

I have been stitching a little tiny bit. Mostly this week I have been working.
However I did attend my guild night on Wednesday and learned how to do a turkey stitch! I'll show my sample next post after I have a chance to get a picture. (the picture above was borrowed from Meari with permission).

Hope you are all doing well. In about two more weeks I will be very happy as overtime at the office should be over and I can get back to a more structured routine.
Until next time happy stitching!

Exchanges, Fabric & Dragons (oh my!)

I have a few things to share today. Even though it's been a very busy week in my world and will only get busier for the next three weeks, mostly b/c of work (overtime). I will just have to try and "keep swimming, just keep swimming" and hopefully still stay in touch with everyone!

First up, I received my exchange from Lily in the ILCS Yahoo group Autumn/Fall ornament exchange. She sent this lovely scarecrow my way along with a few goodies. Thanks so much Lily!

Next up, I picked up my fabric for the Glendon Place Witches Wheel. This fabric has been specially dyed for the project and you have to buy it as is essentially. But it's just gorgeous so I don't mind at all!
All the stitching on the wheel is in black, I chose to do it on Bell Soie silks. And the colour you see in the pattern (check out pattern here) is beads that I do have but forgot to put in the pic.
Here's the fabby:

And last, but never least I have dragons. Well on my way to my goal of finishing this last page in the row before the end of the year. (that will be four page finishes for the year). However I was lazy and didn't take it off the scroll rods for the picture, also there is nothing to compare where I was at anymore because it's the end of the row. So here's a pic of the area I am working on, and a pic of the pattern colored in what I have done on the page (the symbols are blurred for copyright reasons, your eyes are just fine, lol):

That's all for this week folks.
I'm headed to the store tonight to pick up a little something that will eventually be a gift for a friend, and to chat and hang out. And fit some stitching in there. Depending on how much I have to work overtime on the weekend will depend on stitching time. So here's hoping I get some in.
Hope you've all been having fabulous weeks and been stitching away!

Lots of stitching & Cronus

I participated in an autumn/fall exchange with ILCS Yahoo Group. And have just gotten word that my partner, Lily received my package. So now I can show you the ornament I worked on in September. Here's the ornament:

I was very proud of myself for managing to finish it. Only took 10 minutes to thread the sewing machine this time. Sadly that is faster than the hour I fought with it a few months ago. ;)

Later last week I finished up the last 'corner' piece of Rose Garden, which means I am onto a new page!
I will likely work from the top first I think and get that gate in... but gotta look at what makes the most sense for the next step. Here is Rose Garden to date:

I also SAL'd with Cheryl's Bouquet this past weekend. It's really starting to come together and I'm finding it hard to put away. So it may get a bit more attention… we will see.
Here it is to date:

Finally I did get some new pictures of Cronus (warning snake pictures below). Poor guy has had a heck of a time lately. We think he was very hungry and that is why he was striking… but to be safe for the meantime we are wearing gloves to ensure he doesn't strike us. We wanted to feed him a bit more as we thought he was hungry, so we moved him up from pinky mice to fuzzy mice. (difference in age and size). But the fuzzy mouse was almost too big for him. It took him awhile to get it down. And then… that same night he tried to shed, quite unsuccessfully it fell apart in pieces instead of in one nice long piece. So he got a bath to try and help him out.
At any rate, here are some new pics of him in his cage… (they 'yawn' after eating, we are not sure why, but we know it's cute!):

 

His home... just a cute little terrarium for now.

 

Why are you staring at my Mom? (this is what I imagine him saying to me as I take pics through the glass) :)

 

Mouth open! 

I have some more intense ones of him with his mouth open... except they are all blurry... so next time I will try and do better.

This reflection was achieved by accident, but I kinda liked it.

That's all I've got for now to share. 

The election is over that I was volunteering for, just in time for overtime at the office to start. But I'm home this weekend for some time so here's hoping that some stitching gets in! I need to stitch up my name tag for Guild before the end of the month. Guess I should get going on it. 

And of course, gotta get back to Dragons too!

Hope you are all have stitchy good weeks!

We have a Winner! (and a pirate)

Hello, hello. First up today, I wanted to address some questions from last week's post:

Evalina wanted more pics of Cronus - I don't have new pics of Cronus right now as we have been leaving him in his cage. However I will try to get some more on the weekend when we take him out and feed him. I'm hoping he will have settled by then, he's still really aggressive.

Qsnap Lover wanted to know how long Cronus will get - Cronus will likely be between 4-5 feet. He could get as high as 6 but it's highly unlikely. Onyx, our black snake, is also a kingsnake and she is about 4.5 feet (we are pretty sure she's done growing, she's about 5 yrs old)

Angel Parker wanted to know about Canadian Thanksgiving - Tradition (in general) is usually to have a turkey dinner (kinda similar to what you might do at Christmas) and spend time with family. Other than that I don't think there is much else to the tradition… it's almost always the last long weekend before snow and therefore lots of people get outside for those precious few last times. We also have Canadian football that is played during the day on the Monday (just like NFL in the US on the Thurs of Thanksgiving.) I think that is about it. :)


And what you have all been waiting for. We have a winner for the latest giveaway. (winners are generated by giving each entry a number and then a random number generator picks a number)

So without further ado…. the winner is Babs in Belgium!!!
Congrats!
Babs I have emailed you for your address.


In other news I pulled out my Rose Garden for the first time in months! I will share a pic of it when I have the next grouping done, probably get it done this weekend. And then I will be putting it away for a bit to go back to my other projects. I want to get that last page of dragons done before the end of the year, and get Cheryl's Bouquet complete so that I can start on the wedding piece for my friends who are getting married in July of next year.
However, I realized I hadn't shared a pic of the pirate in awhile. I know, I know really that's all I've gotten done. Well… sadly. Yes. Still have the backstitching *ugh* and the letters to go. I am disappointed in the coverage on him... but not enough to restart.
Here he is to date:

Coming up for me this week. It's the last week of push for mayoral elections here in town. I have been campaigning and supporting one candidate which is where lots of my time has been going. However, Monday night it will all be done. It's a super tight race between three so it's gonna be interesting (and nerve racking).
I will be stitching some this weekend, especially during the day on Saturday. So hopefully by next time I will have an update on dragons, rose garden and probably Rose as well.

Thanks for visiting and commenting. You all keep me motivated and remind me to find time for the things I love, especially stitching!

Rose, Cronus & Giveaway

Does it ever feel like life just never slows down to anyone else?
It seems sooo fast and busy to me these days. So I apologize that this is a bit later than I wanted it to be. But better now than never.

A few people asked about Cronus (our latest addition to the family, a Kingsnake hatchling). They wanted to know how big he will get. Likely he will be about 4-5 feet in length. And will of course get fatter than he is right now.

Cronus tried to eat my finger on the weekend. lol. We were handling him before feeding him for the first time and after about 10 minutes he decided he'd had enough and wanted food. Apparently I was the potential food. The good thing about the snakes when they are hatchlings is that they can't hurt you, more tickle you. (adult ones however can strike hard and break the skin and it really hurts I am told). But I think he's settling in okay so that is nice.

Stitching… well this past weekend was the Rose HAED SK SAL. So I pulled her out. I love her, big solid areas of colour something I am not used to getting to do. :)
Here she is so far:

And now for the giveaway…
It's a Halloween theme. My favourite season of the year! :)
I'd like to thank each and every one of you that has followed, commented and sent me emails etc in the last 150 posts. It's been a ride hasn't it!
Let's hope the next 150 posts have less issues and more fun.
As for followers, I can't believe that 182 people care about what I have to say. It still baffles me.
But I am so happy to share it all with you, and to follow your own blogs. I have made some fabulous friends via stitching blogging!.
So thank you, thank you.

This time around it's just one package as I wanted to make it a little sweeter.
So it's three spools of Krenik, two are #4, one is #8 braid. 30ct Linen. I love this purple linen, it's a cut of about 4" x 4" so great for a  Halloween ornament! And a brand new, unused pattern!

The rules are:
1) Leave a comment that you want to be included in the giveaway (make sure you leave your email if your profile doesn't have an email attached to it)
2) Have to be a follower to be eligible.
3) You'll get an extra entry if you re-post on your own blog, please comment and let me know you have reposted.

I will ship internationally. This giveaway will close in one week, at 5:00 MST on Monday, October 11 (Canadian Thanksgiving!!)
Good luck!


It's a long weekend this weekend coming up for me. It's Canadian Thanksgiving. I'm hoping there will be some time to get some stitching in. I also have my second Guild meeting tomorrow night, so some stitching time then too. I need to get back around to dragons and get on that last page of the row soon!
Thanks for visiting and commenting!

New addition to our household, and being busy

Well things changed a lot over the weekend, multiple different times.
I didn't end up going to 12 hour stitching because of some other things that came up. So I got almost no stitching done. I did finish the stitching and beading on my autumn ornament, but I can't share pics until it's been received by my partner (it's being finished this weekend and then sent next week).

I've not had a lot of time to stitch as I have been working on a political campaign here in town. So that has been taking up A LOT of time.
So no stitchy pictures, sorry.


(please note the next section of the blog is about a new baby snake and there are pictures. If you prefer not to see I understand and hopefully we'll see you back later in the week for my stitching giveaway)
Those that would like to see me share our new pet please proceed below the white box. He's really cute! :)

However I do have some exciting news… we got a new snake!
Many of you will recall that we had to put down Kihone (one of three snakes we had) back in May.
Well it was the reptile show this weekend and there was a guy with lots of hatchlings. As it was my decision to pick out which one (so long as B/F agreed) it was very exciting for me. This is the first animal I've ever had that has been my choice. I adore his plaid looking pattern.
So meet Cronus (named after the Greek Titan), he is a Florida (Brooks) Kingsnake. Just hatched in July.

Isn't he adorable??? :)
I love him already. We can't take him out for a few more days now so that he gets used to his new home. He was very very stressed out when we brought him home from being moved.


Giveaway: I know I promised one. I have not forgotten. I am at my LNS tomorrow night and gonna take a peak around, see what catches my eye. I have package 1 already at home that will be in the giveaway just need to get a package 2. (as I like to have two winners.) :)
So watch for it later this week or early next. It will be coming…

Cheryl's Bouquet & Car Update

Is it really Sept 22 already!?! Where does the time go?
I feel like I am doing well on somethings, like Dragons, and poorly on other projects, like Rose Garden & Papillion SAL that I have not touched in months! But I'm getting over it and just going with it all.
This week however was the Cheryl's Bouquet SAL weekend (these SAL weekends are great as they really force me to put in some stitches on some projects). I frogged almost ALL my stitches from last month… or darn close… as apparently I can't count. *sigh* But it's all fixed up plus some now. Here she is:

As for the car… thank you all for your comments and opinions. We have decided to keep the vehicle. It went in for some service today and everything seems fine. So just have to call the insurance company and get it all sorted out. We will have PLPD insurance on it, so if we hit someone we are covered. Just no collision for the actual car itself. This will allow us to put away the money that would have been car payments for things like our trip to Europe (my BFF moved there so we gotta go visit!) and a house down payment. It will be nice to have a little bit of money in the bank that is for sure.

Coming up this weekend I have another 12 hour at the Stitching Corner. However I am leaving it a bit early for football. I should also get some stitching in tonight and tomorrow evening. It is busy, busy with lots of things going on. Just a lot of stuff going on, so trying to make sure I find some stitching time so I can relax.

I've just realized that this is my 150th post… and the followers list is at 177! Thank you all so much.  So there will be a giveaway next week!! Watch for it...
Gotta see what the store has this weekend and come up with something awesome for the giveaway.
In the meantime hope you are all doing well and stitching up a storm. I am, as always, trying to get around to everyone's blog but sometimes it's just tough.

Page Finish!!! - Dragons

Yep you read that headline correct. I got the dragons page finished a few weeks sooner than schedule! So that is awesome. One more page to finish for this year to meet my goal which shouldn't be a problem (I hope). So that is exciting. (even if all my other goals won't be met b/c of it, dragons is the 'focus' project)
Here is the page area I just finished:

And here they are to date: (there is starting to be dragon looking items in there)

In other news... we had a bit of a mess on our hands yesterday (and it continues to be a mess).
(you can skip this to the last paragraph if you only want to read about stitching)

My car had gone in as scheduled (last week) to get the hail damage from the huge storm two months ago done. It had been quoted on and approved by insurance for the repairs.
So a week after dropping it off I get a call (yesterday) that the car is now a write-off because their estimator totally botched what it should have been double what they said it would be. (so essentially it would cost more to repair the car than to just pay me out for it).
So here's where it gets messy, we have 2 options:

1) Give the car to insurance and get a payout. (about 75% of what the payout will be has to go on the loan against the car, so we'd see 25% of the money)

2) Keep the car, and get 70% of what they offered above (almost all of which would go immediately towards the loan against the car). The car is drivable, a 2005 Corolla with 106,000 kms. It's mechanically awesome. Just has lots of dents from hail. However if we do this we can't have collision insurance. Which means if I hit someone or someone hits me I won't get anymore money for the car, it's value is $0.

So... what it really comes down to is this:
Option 1: means that we essentially have to refinance a new car almost from scratch as the 25% of money we keep from my current car is about 1/6th of the cost to buy a new one. So then have to pay each month a chunk of money to have new car. However in this case you have new car so no problems, warranty, insurance etc.

Option 2: Keep the car with no insurance, but pay off loan as well. This means I would have no payments to make on the car, and my insurance would be dirt cheap. Which puts money in my pocket right away. (I can gain back the 25% that they would have give me in option 1 in a year just on car payments alone).
So that would mean that so long as the Corolla doesn't get smashed up and keeps running we have extra money in hand. (maybe to buy a house, or you know more stitching stuff, lol).

I'm very torn on the issue... it's a tough call. So anyone that wants to chime in their thoughts by all means.
However this is the main issue that is stressing me out this week. But what can you do.


Coming up in my stitching, I am working on my autumn/fall ornament exchange for ILCS. As it's meant to be a surprise there will be no pics until my partner has received it.
Also gonna get some stitches into Rose and Cheryls Bouquet this weekend I hope!
Thanks for reading and your lovely comments.

Retreat!!!

I have lots to share, so grab a coffee or tea, settle in and I hope you enjoy this picture filled post, full of lots of stitching amoungst some other neat things. :)

First off, the retreat was amazing. I loved sitting around with everyone and just stitching for three days! There was a lovely group of ladies that took me under their wing and really made me feel at home. The pieces people are working on are just stunning. It's so great to see so many different techniques, fabrics and all the rest.

Of course, I did a lot of stitching while I was out there. I had a finish! This is Little House Needlworks Ornament #1 (in their series of 12 this year) called Fa La La. Stitched on Cafe 28 ct linen. (I substituted a some colours b/c I wanted more than just red and green in mine.)

Wanna see where I stitched this all up? This is a pic of my 'work' station at the retreat: (I do not have any other photos of the building or people as I want to ensure privacy is kept for everyone)

They also gave us the awesomest name tags! I will cherish mine forever. :)

And then there were classes! I took two classes. One on making bracelets with wire. The technique is eyelets and not that hard at all actually, perhaps hard to get perfect, but to just do up it wasn't too bad. I also took one on making a cute little ring. This was my first foray into wire work with jewelry, and I now have a plier set on order to make more! Here they are:

And more and more stitching. I worked on my HAED Rose SK as part of the SAL on the BB. Here she is so far:

There were also giveaways!! Our welcome package was this cute bag with some bonus little extras in it:
(there were also lots of free patterns and other little things through the weekend as well)

And then I won this awesome scissor fob that I will have to put together. More beading. Looks like I will need to learn how to do it all! :)

Who could let a weekend go by without buying stuff?! I got this pattern from Glendon Place called Sleepy Hollow. The fabric is just divine. The B/F also liked this pattern so it may get moved up on the list to be stitched soon.

Last, but certainly not least. Dragons. I have spent a lot of time with Dragons lately. I know I haven't shared them too much this month, but here they are. I am very close to a page finish and should be on par to get this page done by end of Sept, which is my goal, and then have the next row complete by end of the year. (at this rate it will only take three more years to finish, lol). Page to date:

Full piece to date:

Thank you so much for visiting and reading this far!
I am going to be catching up on BB's, groups and blogs over the weekend.

Fa La La Start & A Gift

I started Fa La La by LNH last week on holidays. I have changed the colour in the first girls dress from green to purple (just wanted to give it some more colours). It's stitched on Cafe 28ct Linen.  Here it is so far (this is a sad pic, sorry I was tired when I took it):

I got a lovely surprise in the mail the other day. Becka who won one of my giveaways last months sent me the cutest cross stitched card and a few skeins of DMC. THank you so much Becka!!! Here is a pic of what she sent:

I did not take dragons out yesterday as it was BF's birthday and we have so much going on with a dear friend of mine permanently moving to Europe at the end of the week. So I may have to wait until after retreat on the weekend to update you on Dragons. But if I get a chance I will see about updating Thursday before I go.
I can't wait!! I am taking a bracelet class at the retreat, hopefully it turns out good. I also need to kit up my autumn/fall ornament for the ILCS Yahoo exchange that I enrolled in. So lots to come for sure!


Thanks for visiting and all your kind words on Cherly's Bouquet and my holiday pics.
I am terribly behind on commenting and checking out blogs. My apologies, I will try to get around in the next few days.

Holidays & Stitching

We are back from holidays. This update has mostly holiday pics but will also have an update on Cheryl's Bouquet at the end. (so those who just want stitching just scroll down).

We had a great time in Panorama. It is a secluded mountain village just outside of Invermere. We were in a condo (that we got for uber cheap, so awesome). It was sunny and beautiful. We hung around the pool, had great food and enjoyed a short hike at the top of the sightseeing lift. Here are a few pics. (keep in mind these are in the BC Rockies so less impressive, if you will, than the Canadian Rockies that are near our home, but still mountains, just less pointy) ;)
This shot is from the bridge just behind our condo. You can see the building where we stayed on the side of the river (it's taken at dusk so the colour is off, my apologies).

This next shot is from the top of the sightseeing lift. You can see the resort below There is a bit more to the resort than you see, but this is the main area with the pools and such.

From the top of the sightseeing lift this is the gorgeous view. This is more than 5000ft above sea level.
Very high! This is from the downhill World Cup route that is an open clearing on the hike we went on.

We went into Invermere, another resort style town (they have a big lake) for an afternoon and found this huge Inukshuk. So here is me pretending to also be an Inukshuk. ;)

 We had dinner in Invermere at this great place called Ray Ray's on the beachfront. This fountain was also just next to it. (can you see the rainbow?)

On the stitching front I worked on Cheryl's Bouquet last weekend and made great progress:

I started on Fa La La ornament from the LNH 12 ornaments series. But didn't take a pic yet. I know bad me. So a pic of that, and an update of dragons will be due in the next few days (and trying to finish up on the bellpull for Hummingbirds, so will share that when it's done). It's a bit crazy this coming weekend/week as my best friend is moving to the Netherlands and we are doing lots of stuff for her before she goes. BF's b-day on Monday and then retreat next weekend. Whew, and I gotta go back to work. lol. So lots coming up to share in the next few weeks.
I will also be holding another giveaway later in the month, likely a Halloween/Fall theme as it's my favourite time of year! (I just signed up for the ornament exchange for Fall on ILCS Yahoo Group... so gotta get cracking on that too). Wow, I've exhausted myself just typing all the things I have to do.

Thanks for visiting and for all your comments. :)