Some finishes!

5th,

6th,
7th,
and 8th Santa from PS Redwork Santa's.
Angel Stitching's ornament from the 2005 JCS issue.

So I finished some small things, the last Santa's from The Prairie Schoolers Redwork Santa's leaflet and the last ornament in our ornament SAL. I haven't stitched that much during the break, I been mostly hanging out with the kids and seeing friends. So it's been really fun!

I have some great pictures of the gift from Kath and my presents that I finished before Christmas but I can't find the camera. This time I must have put in a real good place, giggle.

We did watch some good movies, Munich and Inside Man. I can really recommend both.

Christmas was lovely, got a new handbag and a Kitchenaid slow cooker from DH, plus some other cute things. We have had fun playing the kids new boardgames, my favorite is Clue. Today we're not going out nor having friends over for dinner so DH agreed on ordering in pizza to my surprise (he's not keen on fast food) so I will have a really relaxed evening.

I did pull out Mirabilia's Sleeping Beauty again and I think I will keep stitching on her for a couple of weeks. That project is a real beast, I have never worked on anything else for this long time but I do have a tendency to put her away.

Found this St Lucia picture!

The kids December 13th 2005

I went through my old pictures and found this picture of the kids from last years St Lucia celebration. Us Swedes here in Omaha get together and do a pot luck party with lots of yummy Swedish Christmas food and all the kids are dressed up and sings (well, at least they sing, my DS sometimes just opt for that as you can see). This year I ran out the door without my camera, it had been a busy day, but a friend is emailing her pictures. My oldest daughter LOVES this tradition.
The Great White Pumpkin by Heart in Hand.


I don't think I ever posted this piece, it's The Great White Pumpkin by Heart in Hand. This was probably the last piece that I finished stitching before I hit my stitching slump. It took me a month at least to scan it even. I don't really know how to finish it yet. Maybe a flat fold? I had a hard time finding cute fall patterned fabrics this year. There is a really good quilt shop in Gretna not to far from me, The Quilting Moose, and I plan to stop by there and see what they have in January.

Hopefully I will get some stitching in today, I'm just going to stay home and wrap gifts and try to relax a bit. The SAL ornament this month is a bit tedious, Angel Stitching's from the 2005 JCS ornament issue. I will see if I can't get some more done it though, I've stitched all the other 11 ones.

A Workbasket ornament
A Mosey N Me ornament
I think Gail Bussi designed this ornament.

I have been trying to take pictures of my finished ornament lately, I'm not the greatest photographer though. These are the pictures that turned out decent this time. But I'm going to keep trying to snap away and post pictures of my handmade ornaments. One day when the play room are used as the dining room it was intended to be, I'll put a tree in there with just handmade ornaments. I'm starting to get quite a collection with all the Ornament SAL's that I have done over the years.

A scrap booking friend of mine gave me some acid free thick paper that I'm going to play around with when I start finishing my pile of unfinished ornaments (I'm bad when it comes to finishing). It's really nice, very sturdy but you can still cut through it easily if you want different shapes. Evidently the scrap booking paper, etc cames with this acid free paper so they won't crease in transportation so my friends supplier gets loads of it so I can have as much as I want for free. Can't beat that. I've already used it for the Noah piece and I really like it, it's as hard as foam core but thinner, it doesn't fold when you lace the piece.

Otherwise I haven't done to much stitching, I'm almost finished with the box for Karen. Haven't had time to sit down and work on it in peace though. DH had to leave for India for a couple of meetings. He's not thrilled, he hasn't been there before and had to take lots of shots and pills. And it's a though trip, it's far away and he's just going to stay 2 days. But he won't go back into work when he gets back so that means a longer Christmas break.

We had a lot of games and one practice here yesterday so I had to scuttle kids around and try to keep a super active 3 year old of fields/courts during the games. They all did good though, one tie and one win so I think everyone was happy especially since I took them swimming for an hour after the basket ball game. Our YMCA has a great pool with a walk in on one side and both a small and big water slide so all the kids really enjoy that.

Then we finished the day off with a Christmas movie and lots of popcorn which I have all over the floor still. Hate that crackling sound when you walk over it. The movie was a disappointment, Christmas with the Kranks. It had a couple of my favorite actors in it so I thought it would be really funny. A friend of mine dropped by and watched it with us and she was in agreement.

The kids Christmas picture 2006

Noah's Ark JBW Designs 12 - 12 -2006


Finally stitching again!

And I have a finish! It's Noah's Ark from JBW Designs and I really like the way it turned out. Somehow I always think that these designs are going to be really small since the pattern cards are so small and delicate so I'm always so surprised by the end result.

I got a wood box that I just finished painting in a white wash, when it's painted I'm going to put this on top of the box,line it and give it to Karen for Christmas. It's the first time I tried this finishing technique so hopefully it's going to turn out nice.

Otherwise we are busy with Holiday parties, I'm sending out cards this week and are wrapping all the gifts. It seems like everything is starting to come together now! I added the kids Christmas picture that went out with card too.

I'm still not stitching a lot, I think that's why I haven't updated the blog for a while. This is just such a busy time of year for us and this year is worse then ever since DS's soccer is not taking a winter break this year. They have an indoor complex where they play and he's playing at least one game per week and then they have 3 practices per week. Add to that basket ball for DD and they are both in swimming and that's how our time flies by!!

Well, at least at this pace I'm not bored!

Yesterday (when youngest DD was in her KDO program) I was out shopping like crazy. I think I can start wrapping the gifts for Sweden and maybe mail that package off this week. It's gifts for 6 people there including birthdays so I have had a hard time getting that one together. And I'm almost done with the New Zealand package too. That one has been fun to shop for.

To my disappointment I think it will be really hard to find the new Nintendo Wii for DS by Christmas. I hit all the stores where I thought I might have a chance but no luck. At least my 11 year old seems to understand how hard it is to find it and the worse scenario is going to be a IOU note in the stocking and we'll just pick it up for him when it's available in stores. Seems like it's going to be easier to find it after the 20th this month so maybe he won't have to wait to long. I'm getting him some books and games, just little things so he will find some neat stuff under the tree.

I get the feeling that if he knows that it's going to be his soon he's happy!

Then I got this crazy idea to start painting too. I started in the entry from the garage and then continued over one wall in the kitchen too see how the paint went with the cabinet colors. Seems like it's working out fine so I'm putting the final coat on today. The color is Ryegrass from Behr, it's a very olive green color. I'm not sure when I can do the eating nook but it would be nice to do another big section before Christmas. But maybe that's wishful thinking;).

Haven't posted forever but I have been in a strange mood lately. My stitching is going really slow at the moment and it feels like I finish very few things. I did finish up my ornament for the STO SAL at least, now I just have to see when I will have the time to stop at Hancocks Fabrics to buy a frilly ribbon for it. It's supposed to be a needleroll and that's the way I will finish it.

I did get accepted into the Bloggers Birthday/Christmas exchange (link is on the top right) and I'm really excited about that. It's going to be so much fun to receive my names so I can start going through my patterns.

Otherwise Alice is slowly getting over her Mouth, Hand, Foot disease and her sinus infection. I even took her out shopping for Christmas gifts yesterday since I'm so behind. It wasn't ideal since she's a wild one but I found my in-laws gifts so I'm really happy about that. My plan is to mail a package to Sweden next week and then I can concentrate on finishing up my shopping for people here. I dread starting on Teacher gifts though, it's so hard to find something for them.

Here's my little scarecrow that I have been working on. I haven't gotten a lot of stitching in last week since DH has been in Washington DC. Being home alone with 3 kids and hurting my head made me very tired so I have spent my evenings sleeping in front of the TV. My Midsomer Murder mysteries from NetFlix took for forever to arrive too (came yesterday) so I didn't really have anything good to watch either. That was what I was planning to watch this week since DH don't really enjoy them.

We did watch The Great Raid together yesterday though and that was a real good movie. It was so nice to sit down and have good fish dinner with some white wine after running the kids to basketball and soccer during the day. DH did the soccer run in the morning and I took them to basketball in the afternoon. Since they are playing at the YMCA and we are members I did let the kids swim for an hour after the games which they really enjoyed. It was kind of nice to sit there and read and watch them play.

It's beautiful here today, the sun is out and I think we will have temperatures in the 60's. I'm planning to do some picking up, laundry of course since DH was gone all last week and then I'm going out to cut back some irises. I'm sending some of my dwarf variety and a couple of Immortality's to a friend.

Then my DH is going to do his baby back ribs in the afternoon, it takes him 4 hours or so to cook them on the grill. They usually turn out yummy!

Finished something Halloweeny this year too! October always seems to swish by so fast so I don't have time to stitch up all those yummy Halloween charts in the stash.

I did something really stupid the other day when I took out the recycling. It seems like I pushed on the bins a bit to hard and all of a sudden the top one just flies of with me still holding it. So I landed on my face on the concrete driveway! I'm sore, bruised and I think I got a mild concussion. Got all the symptoms with it, nausea, a killer headache and just a bit more absent minded then usual even. Nothing that I can take for it really except taking it easy.

Here's the matching scissor fob for Melanie's Altoid tin topper. I'm hoping to find a small scissor so she can store the scissor and some needles in the tin.

This day went by quick, I had to take my car into the garage because the brake lights didn't work (had it serviced too). That meant that I had to drop Anders off at work, so I went straight to my Body Pump class afterwards. Managed to pick up some gifts for the kids at Shopkos toy sale too. I really have to start on Christmas gifts, it's hard this year though because I don't feel in the mood yet. But when I get in the mood the stores are crowded and all the toys I want are sold out!!

The car was ready for me at 5.30 pm so that worked out nicely. It was the brake switch that had broken down. Didn't even know that it existed before today so I learned something new I guess.

I'm working on HIH Great White Pumpkin at the moment. Super cute design but the border is a killjoy. Little squares all around, it takes forever to stitch on it. Especially in that poor hotel room ligth in Topeka, at least with my Ott-ligth I can see the fabric.

We are back from Topeka! It was very wet and cold, so I think everyone was pretty miserable. I had clothes everywhere in the hotel room, just so they would dry for the next day. Next time we travel we have to book a suite, one hotel room for us and 3 kids just don't work out anymore. Nice to discover that on a short trip I guess since I can plan it that way in the future.

My son's first game was at 8.50 am Saturday morning so they had to be at the field at 8.20. At 7 am he figured out that he forgot his cleats at home. So that day started really bad. Thank goodness for Walmart, never thought I would say that but there it was and they had a good selection of cleats despite it's the end of the season. We arrived about 10 minutes late which was awesome considering that we had 40 minutes to find the shoes in a city that we don't really know.

We ate ok though, found a real nice authentic Mexican restaurant Friday evening where we ate with some other players families and then we went to Old Chicago Saturday with the girls since the team had a movie and pizza party.

Due to the rain and that it took us so long time to dry everything in between games I just took the girls with me to Sunflower Seed for my stash shopping when Oscar played his second game. That kind of stunk but it was raining hard so I couldn't really have the girls watch the game with me and I knew that when the game was over we just had to get back to the hotel so the guys could jump into the shower to thaw. The Sunflower Seed closes at 3 pm so we really were running out of time too.

But the girls were just brilliant in the store, just went around and oohed and aahed over the models (there was a lot of them) especially the 3 year old. She fell in love with a LK model that wasn't framed yet and was lying out on table so she could really check it out. They had some kids books and little chairs where they could hang out too so I was able to look around and take my time.

I was a bit disappointed that she didn't have a lot of the new charts on my wish list but I did pick up some older goodies from the Workbasket and BOAF. The newest chart that I found was Autumn Leaves from PS, she didn't have the other new releases though. I'm very happy with what I found though and Anita seems like a real nice lady.

Didn't stitch much, it's so dark in hotel rooms. But last week I finished the October ornament for our STO SAL so now I should start kitting up November.

I had lots of mail waiting for me when I got home, some lovely fabrics that I bought from Carol, a whole bunch of perle cotton from a friend that cleaned out her stash and knows that I do a lot of hardanger in periods and a prize package from Sandy for the favorite designs contest at STO. Feeling pretty spoilt now!

Finished something small! It's the May tin topper from Samplers and such. I'm going to mount it on a altoid tin and stitch a matching scissor fob to give to Melanie for Christmas. This year I'm getting a head start on my Christmas gifts with Elf Night over at STO, this far it has been fun.

I'm starting to plan what we need to bring to the soccer tournament this weekend, not to much since it's 2 nights only but with 3 kids it's nice to have everything organized before we hit the road.

It's going to be fun to stop in at the LNS down there, I don't really have a list of things that I need except some threads for ornaments. But I'm sure I will be able to find some nice things!

Finally finished something!

I have been so tired and grouchy lately, I think that the fact that is getting colder and darker is really getting to me this year. Most evenings I fall asleep in front of TV instead of getting some stitching in. I haven't been online much either.

So it felt really nice to finish this sampler. It's Autumn Song from Just Nan on a 28 ct R & R reproductions fabric. Don't know more then that, I picked up a R & R scrap bag at the last Gretna retreat. Huge pieces in it, great buy over all.

A little sad note. My closest LNS (1 1/2 hours drive from Omaha) is closing. I will really miss Cathy and Hands on Needleshoppe. It was always fun to go up to Sioux City and browse that wonderful shop.

Another week or more has gone by. It feels good to see the end of the fall soccer season, just one more game to play. The boys will still practice, but probably not as much when they can't be outside anymore.

We will have a tournament in Topeka the end of October but since the whole family is going we are just trying to have fun too. I know I will since I think the Sunflower Seed LNS is up there, have to check that up.

My dearest husband decided to power rake the yard yesterday, the power raking part was easy I guess since he hired a machine for that but the raking afterwards was a lot of work. Our yard is big too so the whole family was out there working on getting the grass raked up and removed. At least the weather was beautiful!

I have been stitching a lot lately, usually when I choose it's that that wins out over the computer. Last week I finished the Pine Mountain kit that I got from Kath, Tiny Toile Heart from Just Nan and Bright Needle freebie I had for a while, Blue Moon.

Since I was in a finishing mood I finished Just Nan's Star of Wonder into a bell pull too. The hardware is not the greatest but I can use it until I find something nicer.

I'm so darn busy at the moment. It's soccer season and it just stresses me out!! At least that is the only activity we do at the moment, but Emma's basketball will start soon.

Alice has started in a kids day out program on Fridays and I find myself running errands like crazy during the time she's there (9 am to 2.30 pm). It's wonderful to get all these things done finally but Friday night I'm totally exhausted. Starting to catch up on a lot of things though.

This Friday I handed in the wallhangings and ornaments that I have been finishing for the Humane Society here in town. They are going to be auctioned off in their silent auction 2 weeks from now. I'm never going to offer to finish anything for our outreach projects again. The lady that was going to help me moved in July and none of the other members stepped up when I asked for help. So this took up a lot of my time since finishing is not something that I'm good at.

Some finishes are posted above, in all I handed in 10 pieces.

We got 2 additions to the family today too, 2 guinea pigs. The kids are thrilled with Milkshake and Chocolate ( I did NOT pick the names). They seem very sweet although the kids are probably really stressing them out.

My goal for this week are to finish some things of my own! And to finally pick up some paint for the down stairs bathroom. This house desperatlye need some color.

Just wanted to post my HIH sal finish. It's an oldie, Checkerbird, that I have been wanting to stitch forever. This might have been one of the first half kitted kits that I got, I got the fabric and the tuck a way pillow with it but no threads. It's really cute and will be perfect as fall decoration, it's going on display immediatly since I'm starting to get in the mood for fall.

Allergies are still bad here, we got another 2.5 inches early this week so the ragweed is flourishing. Both me and my son is going around half groggy and with ears, throaths and eyes hurting. It hasn't been this bad for years.

But we are still enjoying our soccer season, it's not going that well for the team but all their practices have been rained out and you can see that they don't really know how to play with each other yet. They are always doing so much better at the end of the games since they are more in sync with each other after 30 minutes play.

We are playing a tournament this weekend and I think that will be really good for the boys!

Otherwise I have been mostly just going to the gym for my bodypump class and been trying to fix up the house a bit. I have been watching some movies that I enjoy when Anders are in China, well one was a documentary about Henry the VIII and the other was a Midsummer Murder mystery, just love those. But they are not really Anders cup of tea so I try to get them when he's off travelling.

After I finished Checkerbird yesterday I put a couple of stitches into Sleeping Beauty, I think I will try to work on her today too. I have to put together my next few projects, another couple of sal's for the Stitcherstimeout board. It's the next ornament for the Ornament sal, this month we are doing the Santa from the Artists Collection. Then our designer sal is Just Nan so I'm planning to stitch one of her smaller charts, can't really decide which one yet, have to go through the stash.

Finally scanned all my finishes!

Took me a while to sit down and scan, with the kids starting school and soccer a lot has been going on here. Somedays I have just gotten 30 minutes for myself and those I spend stitching.

Wow, those pictures really got uploaded strange. I take all the blame for them being crooked but all the different sizes and how they were placed is bloggers fault. Anyways took me 1 hour to get them in there so I will just let it be I guess.

I started a HIH piece Checkerbird for the HIH SAL at Stitcherstimeout board and it's going quick. Hopefully I will finish it tomorrow, the SAL is over in September.

It's been raining quite a bit here lately, which is weird since August usually is hot and dry here. This year it's wet and cold. Think we got 6 inches more rain then usual. It's really great for me trees, I can almost see them growing, and since we are in a new house that's great. Can't wait until some of those trees are fullgrown but that will take quite a while. Not so good for my allergies, after every rain fall all the ragweed pollen releases as soon as the sun peeks out and there is a lot this year. So I'm feeling it in my eyes and nose, kind of gets tired too.

I started going to a new class at the gym too. It's called Bodypump and it's really fun. You don't have to be very co ordinated when you do it, very simple moves. Which is great for me since I do have 2 left feet.

Just an update of the Golfing piece that I'm stitching. I'm hoping to finish it soon, that landscape is not the most fun stitching I have done. But I'm about half done so that's fine.

The kids and I went up to their new school today and checked it out. It's still in the finishing stages but at least it's ready to start having classes in. It will be a beautiful school, fresh and so much needed space for the kids. Both of them got good teachers too so I'm pretty happy.

I went back to the Body Pump class this morning and felt much better afterwards this time around. Last time I started aching after 2 hours and then couldn't hardly move for 2 days. The lady in charge of the class took it a bit easier then the regular one (who's on vacation). Suits me fine, if I can do the 2 more classes that's left until the regular lady is back I might be able to do this. Kind of easy into a better shape. At least I had lifted weights for a year before this, don't even want to think how I would have felt otherwise.

Haven't posted here forever. We have been home in Sweden all summer and just now came back a couple of weeks ago.

Problems was that both our computers had caught a virus and when we did shut them down we couldn't get them up again. DH thought it was just mine first after he was upgrading it just before he left. Now, he didn't have time to fix this since his plane was leaving the same afternoon so I knew that I had to use his computer until mine was working again.

Well, don't you think his had caught the same bug when we tried to start it up again. Must have been some kind of virus.

Both of us lost all our links, emails etc etc. At least we had some good backup on our pictures. DH tried to recover data for a week almost until he gave up. But my new hard drive arrived last weekend and I have been online again for that time. It's very time consuming to find all the old favorite sites again and email addresses.

But our vacation was just lovely! We spent a lot of time at my dad's beach house, the kids were swimming and just enjoying building sandcastles and snorkeling all day long. Lots of good food and meeting up with friends and family. I took the kids to see some touristy things like an old fortress, going on a through downtown Gothenburg on the canals and of course Liseberg, the huge amusement park back home.

When we got back home we had to finish our projects and paperwork for the Sarpy County Fair. The kids are active in 4H and that's were their projects are displayed every year. They did good a couple of purple and blue ribbons came home with us. The whole family really enjoyed the Rodeo on Friday night too.

Otherwise I have spend a lot of time cleaning up my yard. The flowerbed sprinkler system that DH put in this spring really worked great so I had to go out and prune back and cutting away flower stalks for hours. It's really beautiful out there and my daylilies and roses are just gorgeous. That really motivates me to sit down and plan what I have to add next spring, since the yard is starting to get more filled in I can start splurging on some pricier plants even next year.

The scanner is not installed yet after our computer adventure but I'm hoping to add pictures of my latest cross stitch finishes this weekend after it's up and running again.

I did start something new though, Charmed Golfing from Hinzeit

http://www.stitchesnthings.com/detail.cfm?ID=6649

for my DH's birthday in September. Yesterday I even found a frame that I'm hoping will work for it.

Did get my gardening done this weekend!!

The back of the yard is now all cleaned up and looks pretty ok. I find that Hostas and Daylilies don't do very well the first few months or even the first year. This time it could have something to do with the fact that it was 95 degress when I planted them.

Worked my behind of Saturday, a little bit to much I'm afraid since I got all dehydrated in the evening and was all nauseous when I drove Oscar to his sleep over. Drank lots of water and that was taken care of. We watched Amarcord, a Fredrico Fellini movie that my husband really likes in the evening and I finished another PS Santa for the Santa SAL at STO. All the santas are from St Nicholas II from The Prairie Schooler. I'm planning to stitch all 8 of them and then probably go for another PS leaflet. She has designed so many Santas.

Anders finished his retaining wall that he started working on Saturday yesterday. I thought that we were just going to mulch another area and then Anders was going to finish up the flowerbed drop watering system that has been his big project that last few months. Well, surprise, surprise, he decided to do a retaining wall instead since we have talked about the necessity of one in that certain spot for years. The dirt is slowly getting washed away when we get storms. Quite a change of plans but it looks great now and I'm hoping this is our last retaining wall that we have to put in.

Otherwise we are slowly getting into our routine here with school being out. Try to do my daily stuff and adding some fun things too.

Slowly getting WIP's finished!

This is Shepherd's Bush's A Simple Egg that I started in March, but put it away because I had other things that I had to finish.

Finished it while watching Prime with Meryl Streep yesterday. Cute movie, glad that we got it via Netflix though. There's so many movies that I enjoy watching once but would never watch again so the fact that we didn't buy it is nice. We have a so many DVD's that we never watch and just to store them are hard after a while.

It's thundering and raining here this morning. Hope it blows over soon since I planned to go out and work in the yard this morning. The end of our yard looks awful. It used to be a cornfield there but they are developing a new subdivision on that land now, we ended up with a bit larger yards since we pushed them to not take down the huge trees that are on it. Well since the those square feets weren't ours when we bought our house we have no lawn on it, just LOTS of weeds and 4 hostas.

My plan was to go out and weed that area, plant about 4-5 bags of hostas that I got from my friend Melanie last weekend and then mulch everything down good. Can't do the whole area but about 80% since the sidewalk hasn't been put in yet but after they finished the road I kind of get the idea where my yard will finish.

It will look so much nicer when this is done and it will compliment our neighbors yard better since he did this last year already. So hopefully it will stop raining soon!!

Another finish!

Finished up my May SAL ornament from Stitcher's Time Out yesterday! It's so nice to be done with it and I thought it turned out cute without all the buttons it called for. I stitched it on another solo from Silkweaver, got a whole bunch of them a couple months ago. This came out of Just Cross Stitch 2005 ornament issue, the designer is SamSarah Design Studio.

Hopefully I will have another finish this week already. Another Easter project that got put away, A Simple Egg from Shepherd's Bush. When I started it again I found that it's working up quick. Then I should start an bookmark for our library, our EGA is donating some for their anniversery celebration and I got the ok a bit late so I don't have that many to donate so if I can add one or two that would be great!

The kids are thrilled to be out of school but they have already had one serious fight over Chinese Checkers (some game pieces were lost and found after some finger pointing). We'll get into a new routine after a week or so. I'm taking them to the library today to sign them up for the Summer reading program, that will occupy them somewhat at least. The pools are opening up next weekend and I can always take them to the indoor pool at the gym. We have nice weather here to so soon they will be playing baseball in the backyard.

Finally went out and checked over the yard after our hard rain storm the other day. I was afraid that my irises had been battered down by the rain and I was right. My really tall purple and white bearded iris was just laying on the ground. The other ones were doing better though. So now I have a huge bouquet of Jazz me up! irises on my breakfast bar, it looks really pretty actually!

My roses had started to bloom too, not all of them but my climber, 4th of July from Jackson Perkins and another of their varieties, a grandiflora called Love. I have a bunch of pictures to upload so I should do that tonight.

Time flies!

Seems like I wrote in my blog yesterday but it's almost a month ago. May has whirled by quickly with the garden season in full swing (I have to upload my pictures) and huge flower beds that need my attention.

With Anders being gone for 8 days to and intensive soccer schedule for the kids when he was gone I just been so busy.

But I did get my big things done this month. The garage got cleaned out and re organised and I had my garage sale so I got rid of a lot of big baby toys!! Feels really good.

The kids are out of school today at 11.30 am so that will be fun. I always enjoy the first month that they are off especially much. With 13 weeks of summer holidays the last 2 weeks are a bit slow but in June we can sign up for summer reading, we have a couple of camps and it's still cool enough to bring them to the Zoo. I might splurge on a membership in Omaha Children's museum too, they usually have a couple of nice exhibits per year and I start saving money with our third visit.

I did finish something, my bunny rabbit from The Workbasket, I added a picture above. Stitched him/her on a Solo from Silkweavers. This was the one thing that I wanted to finish for Easter and see how well I did, lol.

But I do have a couple of other things that I'm working on, some PS Santa's and my May ornament, they should be all finished soon.

Here's my finished ornament! It's the Joy Tree ornament by M Designs, out of the 2005 Just Cross Stitch Ornament issue.

It was not the most fun thing to stitch but turned out pretty IMO.

Me and my youngest daughter went to the library today and I found an interesting book there, The quilter's legacy by Jennifer Chiaverini/Elm Creek Quilts series. Now, I'm not a quilter but I think it will be an interesting book to read due to the similarities of stitching.

Tomorrow it's Carnival time! When it's over in the evening I should be done with with everything that I volunteered to do for the school this year. It's a huge relief, getting volunteers and making sure that nothing is forgotten can be a bit stressful. Especially since co chair had to step down since she broke her arm, poor thing. All the kids at school seems to be excited though and hopefully we'll get enough money for the new playground equipment.

Allergy season is here!

That means that I'm walking around with a constant headache despite being on all my allergy drugs. Hopefully all the leaves have branched out soon so I will get better!

Hasn't really been stitching a lot lately, it's hard to concentrate with the headache. I did finish my monthly ornament for the STO SAL, have to scan it soon. Mostly I have been stitching on Mirabilia's Sleeping Beauty, an UFO that I pulled out again. I'm really enjoying stitching on her when I do, the shading is wonderful but time consuming in this one.

My garden is coming to life again, I have tulips and daffodils blooming and buds on my irises. We have only been in this house for 2 years and since it's a new house we put in almost all flowers last year. It's so nice to see which ones that survived the winter and are thriving. All our trees came back which was a relief since they are a pain to replace. Seems like we are in for a rough tornado season this year so I have figure out a better way to support the trees, I wouldn't surprise me if they broke off during one of the storms otherwise.

Our Easter was really relaxed, just the family which was what we chose after our hectic spring! The kids really enjoyed their Easter egg hunt so it was fun to watch.

Since the kids were off from school Monday too I took them to see Ice Age 2 in the afternoon. Very funny and cute movie!

Naughty blogger!

Haven't posted anything for about a week. Maybe I was silly to start this during the busy season!

We have soccer, soccer and more soccer going on now and add in some swimming and Destination Imagination too and that's our schedule. At least we are done with DI (www.destinationimagination.org) by this weekend, the team and I are going to State in Kearney and since we are competing on elementary level I really doubt that we are going to be one of the 2 teams out of 200 to go to Global in Tennesse. It's been an interesting experience and I think it's great fun for 6 4th graders to compete at State so I think I'm pretty content to not go.

And that way I can get some more stitching in!! I think I did lose my Trilogy kit Warm Hearts at the Regional competition though, just can't find it after we came home. It's a real bummer!!

At them moment I'm stitching on Simple Egg from Shepherd's Bush with Kath! The Shepherd's Bush kits are always fun to do and the silks are so yummy. Much more fun to stitch on it now when I'm filling in the flowers.

And I also finished a couple of Prairie Schooler Santa's from St Nichola's II leaflet. I'm going to finish these as ornaments when I have stitched all 8 of them.

My other WIP at the moment is to clean up the yard! We have some nice weather at the moment (when it's not interrupted by severe storms and tornados, remember I live in the midwest) and I'm itching to prune back roses and a just prepare the garden for the spring. My crocuses and scilla has started blooming and in a couple of weeks I'm sure the tulips will be in bloom.

I'm going to try and post a bit more these coming weeks and hopefully I can figure how I can get my pictures to go where I want them to go. These ones just popped up on top.

Thought I would try this out!

Some of my friends are blogging and I thought it looked like fun so why don't give it a shot?! There will probably be some funny mistakes here in the beginning until I figure out how things work.

To start of things, here's a picture of the ornament for STO's ornament SAL that I finished a week ago but have been to lazy to scan until today!