VCE Finished

Grab you dancing shoes because that is what is happening here today! Whoo-hoo!!

Victorian Christmas Eve

by Nora Corbett

From Cross-Stitch and Needlework January 2008

Started April 16, 2009

Finished May 7, 2009

I really enjoyed stitch this design! The only part that I didn't care for was stitching with the Wisper white thread. If I was to ever stitch her again I would just use plain old regular white DMC.

On to the Beading

Last evening I put the final stitches in VCE. :) Now I get to do the beading part. I have said before that I am not overly fond of beading but I love the effect it has on the design. The actually beading part isn't so much the problem as I have a tendency to spill the beads. I HATE when I do that!

Allie came home from school with some good news yesterday. She made student of the month at her school....even only being there a month. She deserves it because she is a really good kid. She makes straight A's in all of her classes and seldom misses school. I actually have problems keeping her home when she is sick. She does get in to a little trouble sometimes in class for talking but that is because she always finishes her work before class is over. Congratulations to you, Allie!

I want to thank everyone for their comments on Megan's rolling over. Later when Daddy got home she had to show off by rolling from her back to her tummy and then rolled from her tummy to her back. :) It is amazing how quickly she mastered that skill because yesterday she was ALL over the floor. Her true age is 7 months but her preemie age is 5 months and 1 week so she is actually on target for rolling. When they are born early you have to subtract how premature she was from her real age to get an idea if they are delayed or not. Sometimes it gets confusing and I have been down this road before.

I am off to start the beading on VCE. Hopefully in the next day or two I will have a happy dance to show you. :)

Have a great day!!

So Very Close

I am so close to having VCE finished that I am almost willing to go without sleep to finish her! Notice I said almost...lol. Oh, how I yearn for the days when I could survive on just a few hours of sleep. That isn't the case anymore! I admit I tend to be quite crabby when I don't get enough sleep...actually it doesn't bother me, it is the people that I have to be around that it bothers.





Have a great night!

SAL Sunday

My grand plan for today was to sit on my butt and stitch my little heart out while watching season one of NCIS. I didn't get to stitch as much as I wanted because I was interuppted by a call from the in-laws. Let's just say the phone call was less than a minute but that was long enough for them to get under my skin....enough so that I had to set my stitching aside for a bit in order to prevent the frogs from showing up. Anyways here is my progress for today's SAL with Renee.

I worked on VCE yesterday and I am planning to work on her some more tonight. I should have a good progress picture tomorrow. I am hoping to have all the stitching done on her sometime this week. Of course, then there is the beading to tackle. I love the effect beading has on a piece but I'm not too fond of the actually beading itself! This piece only requires 2 different colors of beads so maybe it won't be too painful.

May Goals

I want to thank everyone who left a comment on yesterday's post. It is nice to know that I am not the only over protective parent. :) Krissy felt much better today so she went returned to school today. However around 10:30 AM when the phone rang and I saw it was her school I was a little worried but it turned out that all she needed was her track uniform brought to her. Apparently her track meet was today and not yesterday but her coach went ahead and let her participate in the meet today even though she didn't come to practice for 2 days. She did fine but in her last event she took a tumble but got right up and finished the race. She has a line of bruises from her shoulder down to her knees. I can honestly say I remember those days all too well!

I started working on some crochet yesterday but I quickly lost interest in it. I shouldn't really say I lost interest but it was more my hands started cramping up. The pattern I chose to work requires using 3 strands of yarn at once. I guess this rug might take a bit longer than I had thought!

I worked on VCE today and I am happy to report that I am finished the ribbon and leaves tonight. :) Tomorrow I will start on finishing the girl.




It is hard to believe it is May already!

April Goals

1. Stitch page 4 on QS Fairy Tales~Nope, didn't even touch it this month
2. Stitch/Finish 2 Christmas ornaments (need to stitch a total of 13 this year)~I only got one done this month
3. Finish Megan's sampler~YES!
4. Start SAL with Renee~YES!
5. Find a new large piece to start~YES!
6. Find some me time!~Not really

I guess I didn't do so well with meeting my goals this month.:(

May Goals

1. Stitch on QS Fairy Tales
2. Stitch/Finish Christmas ornaments
3. Work on Too Cute with Renee
4. Finish Victorian Christmas Eve
5. Start a new large piece
6. Work on Crochet rug
7. Start sewing Megan summer clothes
8. Prepare myself for the kids Summer Vacation (last day of school is May 22....so not ready for that!)

Here is a cute picture Mike took of Megan and I (well not so much of me) blogging yesterday.....she is definitely a future blogger...lol.

I hope everyone has a wonderful weekend!

Over Protective Parenting

Just when I say nothing is going on something happens. That is just how my luck runs. To start off yesterday morning Krissy wasn't exactly feeling well when she left for school so it was no big surprise when I got a call shortly after lunch with her telling me to come and get her. What I didn't expect was the school nurse calling a few minutes later screaming at me that SHE decides if a student is sick and not the student. I kept my cool on the phone and told her that someone was already en route to pick her up from school. The nurse then kept on with it saying SHE decides if the student goes home by taking their temperature. My hubby could hear the nurse yelling over the phone so he decided it would be better for him to pick her up. That was okay with me since Megan was napping. Mike handles these situations a little better than me because I will admit I tend to have a very short temper with people, especially if you start off yelling at me. Anyways, once he gets to the school to pick her up he walks into the office and the staff inquired to what was wrong and Mike told them about the nurse not wanting to allow Krissy to go home because she felt ill. Their exact response was "Oh no she (referring to the nurse) didn't do it again!"

Mike was just going to pick Krissy up and leave until he found out from Krissy that the nurse didn't even bother to take her temperature to start off with! That is when he lost his cool...and believe me that isn't a pretty sight! He had to have the nurse called out of a class and she started in on Mike about how Krissy just walked in and said she had already called us and was going home. Problem was Krissy had been in the nurse's office for 45 minutes before she called us and during that time the nurse didn't even bother to take her temperature. The nurse went on about how she see has 1800 kids to oversee at the school so she knows when a kid is sick or not. Mike made it clear that our concern was our one child and we have been around her for 15 years so we know when she is sick and when she isn't and by one look at her face yesterday anyone could tell she was sick. Normally, we probably wouldn't have been so upset but there has been at least one confirmed case of H1N1 flu (swine flu) in the county we live in and we aren't willing to take any risks to our child or the other children at her school. Maybe we are just being over protective but in my opinion I would rather be safe than sorry.

A little bit later when Mac got home from school he hands me a note from the school saying that if your child was showing signs of being ill please do not send them to school and if they show signs of being ill at school they will be sent home from school. Apparently the nurse at Krissy's school didn't get that note!!

Krissy still isn't feeling too well today so she didn't go to school. I know for a fact that she isn't lying about it either because she had a track meet today after school and she was really excited about running in it.

I worked on VCE some more last night but it was too late to take a progress pic. I'm not sure if I will work on it today or not. I was looking through some crochet books that were passed down to me when my grandmother died and I found a cute rug that I think I just might start today and I just happen to have some yarn for it. :)

I hope everyone is having a great week!

More VCE

I still have been working on VCE. I really am enjoying this design!

It has been fairly quiet around here this week so I don't have anything to blog about.

Have a great day!

Halfway Done

I enjoyed our nice weather while it lasted. Today it was cold and wet. Oh well, that is Spring in the Midwest for you.

I took advantage of staying inside and stitched. :) I made it to the halfway mark on VCE. Hooray!! She is really coming along now.:)


There isn't much going on around here tonight so I think I will head back to my stitching and see how much more I can get done.:)

Have a wonderful weekend!!

Springtime and Allergies

It was a fairly pleasant day today. The weather was beautiful.....close to 80 degrees and sunshine....well that is until Mike mowed the lawn. I knew he was going to mow but it didn't register in my brain till I got the first whiff of freshly cut grass and I went into a sneezing fit. Allergies really bite! I ran immediately and grabbed some medicine only to have Mike come in the house a few minutes later and asked me to help him with dumping the clippings into a brown bag. I really tried not to breathe but no such luck by the end of the afternoon I was sneezing my head off and had itchy eyes. Oh the joys of Springtime.

That didn't stop me from working on VCE. :) I did have a visit from the frogs so I ripped a good part out only to discover that in fact I didn't make a mistake. Grrr....I ripped out stitches for nothing! I blame it on the Benadryl!


Yesterday Megan had a check up and I am very pleased to announce that she is whopping 17 pounds 4 ounces (in the 60th% for her age) and 25 inches long (in the 25th% for her age). You can not tell that she was preemie at all! She is lagging in some areas like sitting up by herself, rolling from back to tummy, etc but since she was born almost 2 months early she is actually right on schedule for her age. Besides once they start rolling that means crawling will be soon and I am not ready for her to start that!

Have a great night and Happy Stitching!

Beware of Family

I have been steadily stitching away on Victorian Christmas Eve and I am pleased with my progress so far. At this rate maybe I will have a happy dance soon. :)


Now for a little ranting that isn't related to my Dad's upcoming surgery. When we moved back to Omaha it was mainly to be closer to my family. Mike also has some family here (his father and 1 sister) and we decided to try and have a relationship with them. First of all, his sister we haven't really spoken to in over 15 years as she used to live across the country. We had heard from his mom that she was upset with us when we named our son Mackenzie because that was the name she had picked out for her daughter. I would like to point out that my Mac was born in Feb and she didn't have her Mack until May! Anyways apparently after almost 11 years she is still upset about it. I honestly don't see what there is to be upset about but she has a BIG chip on her shoulder about it.



As if that isn't bad enough, his dad thinks that we need to be at his beck and call ALL the time now! We hadn't spoken to his Dad since 2002 when we moved to Mississippi. When we told him we were moving he informed us we couldn't come to his house since everyone was sick and he would stop by to see us before we left. Well.....he never did and so we were a little hurt by that so we didn't attempt to stay in touch. So when we moved back we decided to be the bigger people and try to attempt a relationship again. The dinner went okay although they were sure to make comments about an ex-girlfriend Mike had prior to me...they even have pictures of the two of them together still! (And we have been together 17 years as of March!!) I am a bigger person so I didn't make an issue of it but it does strike a nerve with me. Anyways, now that we are back in town his Dad seems to think we need to do all sorts of things for him like have Sunday dinner every Sunday with them....even though he knows my Dad is sick! But what really is irritating me is he needs some posts moved in his backyard and he didn't ask but told Mike he needs to do this for him and is calling everyday to see when Mike will come over and do it. Aggghhhh! I consider myself a pretty nice person and I don't like to say things that will hurt someone else's feeling but I don't know how much longer I will be able to keep my mouth shut!

Ahhh....I feel much better now. Thanks for listening to me. :) Now I can't leave this post on a sour note so here is something to sweeten it up.

Have a wonderful day!

A New Start

Sorry I have been quiet the past few days but if I had blogged the would have been very boring because all it would have contained was rants about the hospital care my dad was receiving. We finally were able to bring him home yesterday from the hospital. Whoo-hoo!! They gave us an estimate of 2-3 weeks before they can fix the heart valve and clogged arteries.

At least now that Dad is home I can actually get some stitching done! Actually I started this piece on Thursday so I have been working on it for a couple of days already. :) It is called Victorian Christmas Eve by Nora Corbett from the Jan. 2008 issue of Cross-Stitch and Needlework Magazine.





It has been a fairly quite evening for us tonight. My brother stopped by today and took Mac and Allie to spend the night at his place. His girlfriend (of 5 years) has a boy that is right at their age so they are having a blast terrorizing my brother....hee hee. :)

I hope everyone is enjoying their weekend!