It's been awhile!

Yeah, so I've been busy *cough cough*. Ok, I haven't been that motivated to sit at my computer. So, an update. Let's see.

WORK LIFE
January was really busy at work catching up from all the time I was off in December. Then February was really busy too, still catching up from the time off in December and finals for the end of quarter at school. March was busy too because it was next quarter starting again and then finishing up as much as I could so I could make a trip to Denver at the end of the month. April I had the actual influenza virus so I got behind in work. May I had to catch it all up again because in June we shut down so I could go home to visit family.

HOME LIFE
In March I found out DH was deploying later this summer, so I made some plans. I decided to go to a concert that my favorite band, Blue October, was putting on in Denver. I went down a day early and got to visit my dad and his family, and then I met up with my very best friend in the whole world and we checked into an awesome hotel in Denver (The Burnsley...it's really nice!) and had some fun up there. Unfortunately, the band got stuck in Utah due to travel conditions, so they postponed the concert another night. My DH was ok with that, but my best friend had to call her hubby to see if something could be done with her little ones so she could stay an extra day. Luckily her husband and mom worked together to make sure her mom could watch the boys and told her to just have a good time. It was awesome of them! So we got to stay an extra day in Denver and shop and have fun and then go to the concert. It was General Audience, but we were about 4th row back so not too bad!

When I got back from Denver, I came down with a nasty case of the flu. By the 5th day, I realized I should go to the doctor. They told me I had the actual influenza virus and since I waited 5 days to come in, there wasn't much they could do about it, so I had to let it run its course. They gave me some cough suppressants to help, but they didn't help much. It took nearly the whole month to get back to 100% because I went back to work, but I was so tired, I'd have to stop earlier than usual and take a nap!

My oldest son is having a real hard time with his dad deploying. We went through a few weeks in April of this crazy behavior. He would be so angry from the moment he got up until he went to bed. Anything would set him off into screaming and crying. Things got pretty bad, but I think it's under a bit more control than it was. We still have days like that, but at least they're not 3 weeks long like in April. Part of it is probably puberty. Part of it is probably the ADHD/ODD. DH has deployed 3 times since we've dated and gotten married, so it's not like this is anything new. It'll be interesting to see how it goes when his dad is actually gone. I'm hoping I can depend on him to help out a lot around the house, but it depends on his behavior.

School's about to end up for the year and then we'll pack and be on our way to go visit family! We can't wait! It's been a couple of years for DH and I saw my mom and grandma last November, and I flew out to my cousin's wedding last May. So it's been over a year for me for most of the family!

DH has been trying to get some things knocked off his honey do list before he deploys. I wanted him to fix the drain for our driveway, fix the stairs in the retaining wall (all the blizzards broke some of the steps up), do the stair railing for the back deck, and I'm sure there was something else, but I can't quite remember it. He got part of the stairs in the retaining wall mortared down, but ran out of the mortar and it has rained ever since then, so he hasn't been able to finish it. He also got the drain in the driveway completed. Now we're just keeping an eye out for some good weather to see if he can finish the steps and the stair railing!

STITCH LIFE
Wow, I've actually made quite a bit of progress in the last few months on some things.

Here is the last Blackstone Fantasy Garden I posted:


Here it is now after stitching on it for a week or so:


I also got the entire left side of my Glendon Place's A Grateful Nation done. It doesn't look like much now, but it will!:


I started Midnight Enchanter by Dimensions for my youngest son and here is how it looks now:


And last but definitely not least, I FINISHED my Moon Fairy Spirit by Passione Ricamo!! Here she was the last time you saw her:


And here she is all finished!


She has been shipped off to Jill Rensel for matting and framing. I can't wait to get her back!

Since I finished something in my rotation, I allowed myself to add something in. I chose to do the Letter "L" by Nora Corbett. It'll be a quick but pretty piece to finish I hope!

Well, that's all for now! Probably won't post until I get back from vacation. Hopefully I'll have some updated pics to show on my stitching!

Christmas gifts and finger update

I received some lovely packages last week in the mail. The moderators on my message board and I do Christmas exchanges every year. We swap wish lists and send gifts to each other. I received very lovely gifts this year!

My first one came from Andie. You can see it here:



I'm a total Halloween nut and i love those Who Knew mermaid and fairy charts! The Irish Eyes are Smiling is fabulous. I think it'll be a great quick stitch! (I love all things Irish/Celtic) Serendipity Fae is absolutely breathtaking! I've been wanting that one since it came out. Isn't it a lovely Christmas gift?! Thank you so much Andie!

I received Cerys' package last Friday. She always manages to surprise me somehow! Here's hers:



She sent me the Who Knew pattern and the Halloween one off my wish list, but then she was sneaky and sent me Jasmine. I hadn't yet put it on my wish list, but she remembered a thread on the message board when they were released where I said I really liked her. She got the beads and kreinik and everything! I adore Stitcher's Lotion and with as much as my hands are in water I go through lots of it. I hadn't yet tried the blackberry vanilla scent, but it's wonderful! Thank you Cerys!

Talk about a stash kind of week!

One of my lovely customers worked out a trade with me too. My oldest son, who is 12 years old, LOVES the Ranger's Apprentice books. They're written by an Aussie author and over there, they've released more of them than here in the U.S. I just bought the 5th book in hardback for him in November and he had it read within a couple of days. He'd been begging me to buy the rest of the books off E-bay and I refused. I figured I'd get them from an Aussie bookstore for Christmas and happened to mention something about it on the message board. One of my lovely Aussie customers told me she'd pick them up for me and send them and I could send her stash. Well, that works for me!! She was wonderful! She waited until the next book was released and picked up 6-8 for me and shipped them to me. She saved me quite a bit on postage (the Aussie book store wanted to charge me $15 for the first book and $12 for each additional book). I HAVE to take pictures of him opening the books for Christmas because he's going to FREAK OUT! I love it! I'm so grateful to her. Thank you JM!!

Today I had to have my stitches out in my finger. I KNEW it would hurt because I could tell the area over the knuckle hasn't healed as well as the sides had. Boy did it ever. Sometimes you wonder of those nurses are masochistic! She was digging deep with those scissors to snip the stitches! I'm grateful to have them out though and not have to worry about it anymore and since I'm on Christmas vacation, it'll have lots of time to heal before I have to put it in water for dyeing again! Here's a picture I took just a few minutes ago:



Much better than the picture below, that's for sure! It bled alot when she took out the stitches, so I have to keep a bandage on today. The skin split back open after she took out the stitches too, so she wants me to keep it straight today. I think it's looking a lot better though since they've been out for a couple of hours now! She said I may never get the feeling back where it's still numb (between the suture line and the fingernail), but at least I can feel things with the tip of my finger, so that's good!

Yesterday I stitched...OMG I STITCHED!! It's been weeks and weeks since I picked up something to stitch. I was just in a mood, so I pulled out a bunch of movies and started with Pride and Prejudice and then moved on to Ella Enchanted and then to Underworld and stitched on my Moon Fairy Spirit dress! I hope to show some before and after pictures after this week or so! It's great to stitch again :)

Well, I'd better go call the kids in. They're off of school and outside playing, but it's still very chilly out, so I need to keep calling them in to warm themselves up before they go back out. It's lunchtime too, so they can do both at once!

Hope everyone has a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Finger owie!

*WARNING GROSS PICTURE AND DESCRIPTIONS AHEAD*

Well, the day after I posted my last comment, I was working and took a break for lunch. I had this round loaf of bread called shepherd's bread or sheepherder's bread (I forget the exact name) and was slicing it with a big bread knife and wouldn't you know, I tried to take off a finger!

Now, I'll tell you, I'm a complete klutz, so this isn't very unexpected of me. In fact, my mother and aunt have told me to stay out of the kitchen and my aunt has even requested that I let my 10 and 12 year old handle the knives from now on. How sad is it that my family members ask my CHILDREN to handle the sharp objects in the house?! LOL

So, what I find funny looking back on it now, is that when it comes to anyone else in this house getting hurt, I'm the first to react. Hell, I was a vet tech for 8 years. I know how to handle emergency situations, right? Yeah, so what that it was animals, if an animal comes in bleeding, you do the same thing for humans, apply pressure.

But when it happens to me? I don't know what came over me! I just stood there. I saw the flap of skin that I had sawed through turn a whitish blue. It didn't bleed for a split second and I thought, "Oh, I'll just slap a band aid on that..." Then the blood came. I was right by the sink, so I just moved over to the sink and stood there. I literally stood there holding my hand up until my palm was cupping so much blood that it was running over. The thoughts going through my head were something along the lines of, "Ok....no bandaid...urgent care or emergency room?!....hmmmmmm..." I kid you not! So what do I do?!?! I turn around to pick up the phone that I had left on the kitchen table and I call my husband. As soon as he answers I burst into tears and tell him that I cut my finger and should I go to the emergency room? What an idiot I am! He's not standing right there, he doesn't know if I should go to the ER or not! LOL He knows me though, and knew if I was crying it had to be bad, so he did a mini freak out and dropped everything and said he was coming home.

HE was the one who said, "Did you apply pressure?!" I'm holding my hand out and had at this point dripped all over the kitchen floor and into the dirty dishes in the sink now and said, "No". He said, "Get something around it and apply pressure. So I grabbed a paper towel. Folks, when you're bleeding THAT bad...paper towels don't do jack for you! I bled through it in seconds. It at least got it cleaned up enough that I could run to the bathroom for a washcloth, which still wasn't the best because the terry cloth dries to blood, but it worked for what I needed at the time.
Then he told me to get a baggie full of ice and put it on the finger around the washcloth to keep the swelling down. Thank goodness for a bit of a clear head while he was driving home. He was proud of himself because he'd just taken a class at work about Self Aid Buddy Care (Or something like that?) and was able to use the information he'd learned to get me moving. (I still feel like an idiot just standing there watching it all)

It ended up being a good thing that he came home because it had snowed unexpectedly that morning and so he had taken the truck (which has 4WD) leaving me the car since I hadn't really needed to go anywhere. The problem was that my car is not only 2WD (and our drive is on a hill, so can be slick) but is also a clutch. It would have been difficult to drive a stick to the hospital down out of the hills in the snow WHILE trying to apply pressure and hold an ice pack to my left hand.

He talked to me the whole way home and I got ahold of myself after a few minutes realizing that I needed to get out of my lounge pants and put on jeans and shoes somehow (it's hard to button jeans while applying pressure too). Thank goodness for crocs...I just slipped them on. But while trying to think of other things instead of my finger while he was driving home, all I could think about was that I had fabrics in dye that needed to come out in 20 minutes! I had to pull a batch out of a rinse and iron while waiting for him too. (At least it's easy to iron one handed...at least it's easy to iron jobelan one handed! It smooths out pretty easily.)

So my DH, bless his heart, is a little weak stomached and didn't want to see it and was getting queasy just having me describe how I did it. So we went to the ER (where I was thoroughly pissed at the people there. I mean here I am obviously bleeding and in front of me stood a man who was worried about his boy who conked heads with another boy at school and wanted someone to take a look at him. The kid was playing and laughing and running circles around the dad's chair. Didn't look like an emergency to me! There was another lady there who was coughing...
Puh-lease! Poor ER people!!) So, it didn't take long before I was called in and they ask me if I DID THIS ON PURPOSE?! LOL...uhhh no! You don't try to slice your finger off at the knuckle for attention do you?! Or maybe people do...who knows?

So I get in there and the EMT and ER docs were great. They were making me laugh and everything. I had to peel off that washcloth which let me tell you REALLY sucked (remember my comment about it drying to the blood? Yeah...ugh). At least I knew which way the flap of skin was so I could pull it down off my finger instead of up the flap and re-open it. Didn't matter though, it started bleeding again as soon as I took it off. The doc took one look at it and told me I'd need stitches. I asked him how many and he asked why? I said, "Well my husband and I were discussing how many we'd think I needed and we thought 5." He said if I was betting on 5 with my husbnad he could MAKE it 5 so I'd win! LOL I said, "NO, please do however many are needed!" I ended up with 7. Seven lovely stitches in my finger.

The numbing part was so weird. I was terrified of the stitches. The worst part of the whole experience was him injecting the numbing meds into the palm of my hand. Yeah, that hurt more than my finger (though I had it half numbed from all the ice). Then the EMT came in to give me a tetanus shot because I couldn't remember when my last one had been. Compared to my finger, I didn't even flinch at the shot. (Course a couple of days later my arm was pretty sore though) They could have given me 20 in the same injection site and I'd have been fine with it. The doc left me for 10 minutes to let it numb. I could start feeling it numb my palm right away. DH joked that maybe it had already numbed up my arm because I didn't feel the tetanus shot. After 10 minutes we called the doc back in but I was worried it hadn't yet numbed all the way (Have I ever told you of my fear of dentists due to numbing?! Yeah, that's another story I guess). I couldn't feel the right side of my finger, but I could feel the left side! So the doc came in and joked with me about hoping he remembered how to do stitches. And he dips some gauze in alcohol and starts scrubbing my finger. After that I breathed a huge sigh of relief and settled back. I couldn't feel it! YES!!! It was fascinating watching him stitch the sucker up! He said I was extremely lucky because I cut right to the tendon, but not through it. (Thank goodness for that...I didn't want surgery to reattach tendons!)

I had to wear a bandage for the first 48 hours and then they told me I could take it off. During the day I could air it out, but I'd probably want to bandage it up at night so I didn't bump it. Stitches come out in 10 days, etc.

So the day I took off the bandage, I snapped a finger. Here is pre-bandage taking off:



Isn't the bow pretty? LOL

Here it was when I took the bandage off:



I did a bang up job, huh? I cut it from the top knuckle to my fingernail, so I did it pretty good! Of course this was all 9 days ago so it's looking a lot better now, I just haven't shot a photo of it.

It killed the ability to work for the rest of the weekend. This past Tuesday I worked again but had to wear gloves because I'm not allowed to get stitches wet and he didn't want me putting my hand into water for at least 2 days after they come out even!

Typing has been fun...NOT. I am going back to school and have all online classes and so it made doing homework and turning it in pretty difficult. I thought I wasn't going to make the midnight Sunday night deadline! I worked on HTML class for 2 days (Friday and Saturday) and couldn't do anything else after that because it was so sore! By Saturday night, I was worried I couldn't get my accounting or programming class finished, so I popped off emails to both teachers requesting extensions, and they both allowed it, but I got up early on Sunday and got my accounting done by 11am and had my programming done by 3:30, so I was glad to have everything done!

Now it's the weekend before Christmas already! I got all my schoolwork done (the last class finished this morning), and I got all the orders cleared up (save one that's awaiting fabric and the customer knows about it) and I am OFF for a couple of weeks to enjoy the holidays with my family!

I want to stitch a lot, but it's hard watching movies that I want to watch with the kids home. I wanted to watch Wedding Date for the umpteenth time Friday, but when the kids came home, I just couldn't leave it on with some of the diaologue that goes on. Anyway, stitching is pretty hard to do when you have a finger that's slathered with neosporin. I didn't want to get that stuff all over my fabric. I'm hoping Monday they'll take out stitches and I'll be able to get my stitching mojo back! I'm a little concerned about some of the stitches though. The area just over my knuckle doesn't seem to have healed as well. The sides look great and you almost can't even tell there was a cut there, but the middle part still looks pretty hideous. I guess I'll find out on Monday!

Well, I'd better get off of here. Maybe I'll have some stitching to show you after the holidays! Hope everyone is doing well and has a Merry Christmas!

Where'd November go?

I have to apologize, my November was completely crazy. I had my mother and grandmother fly out to visit in early November. The day they got here, a huge blizzard hit and all anyone saw for the next couple of days was the inside of our house including DH and the boys! We did finally hit some of the tourist stuff over the weekend.

After that it was studying for finals because it was end of the quarter. I was lucky and got a 4.0 last quarter. I was happy because there was a break from classes for a couple of weeks but that seemed to fly by way too fast!

Thanksgiving was in there too and while we didn't travel anywhere, DH and the boys were home for it, so we spent family time together. Then all of a sudden it was December!

I haven't stitched in weeks and weeks. I feel like I lost a bit of my stitching mojo :(

On November 21st I saw the trailer for Twilight and was running errands that day and happened to stop and pick up the book. A friend recommended it to me months ago, but I didn't think anything about it. When I saw the trailer, I thought, "I bet that's a good book!" Yeah, got home, cracked that sucker open and did not MOVE for the next 12 hours. I kid you not, I read the nearly 500 page book in a little less than 12 hours. I think I started it around 2:30pm and finished by 1:44am! Thankfully I'd had the foresight to pick up book 2 in the series while there and Saturday I read part of it, then dragged DH and the kids out to see the movie, picked up books 3 and 4 and then finished book 2 that night. By the end of the long weekend, I'd had the series re-read and seen the movie 3 times. It's such an excellent well written series and it is the first time a series has grabbed hold of me so hard that I couldn't wait to read it again! A+ for this book series! If you haven't read it, I recommend it. I also recommend it before seeing the movie because there are a lot of questions answered in the book that the movie seems to take for granted that you already know!

Well, that's about it for me, just wanted to leave a little update!

It's October!

HOME LIFE:
Sooooo, I'm a little late, but I ADORE October! It's almost Halloween time! This weekend, DH mowed the front yard and we got our cemetary up and our little grim reaper thingy that runs back and forth on a line between one of the trees in our front yard and the lamppost. We got the lights around the door up. I have more to go outside, but haven't yet put them out. We usually wait until Halloween night to put everything else out as they're not weather proof. Here's how it looks so far. Ok, so I can't hold still when taking a pic, so the lights are blurred on the first pic, but you can see the purple lights around the stonework and the white lights at the top of the door. They're skeleton lights!



Here is the cemetary in front of the front porch. The gravestone with the hands moves and talks and the eyes flash. It's hilarious. It says, "Help! Help! Get me out of here! I'm not dead yet!"



Then here is my little grim reaper. He moves back and forth on the line and moans and groans.



I have a 5 foot tall skeleton pirate that sings too, but on Halloween night, we hook him up to a microphone that is attached to a radio and he sits on our front porch and screams and his eyes light up. Then I have another pirate skeleton that moves up and down on wires with a blue light shining on him and there's the scary "WOOooooOOOOOooo" sounds that come out. We've been talking about what to add this year. Every year we add a decoration to our repertoire. I really would like a cemetary entrance, but I don't want the cutesy blowup kind. I want scary! I'd also like a fog machine! Another thing I'd like is to create a tunnel for our driveway to get the kids to walk through on the way to get the candy. Last year we had lots of teens who said our house was the best in the neighborhood. I'm hoping they tell their friends and come back this year, because it was a blast!

SCHOOL LIFE:
A new part of my blog. My classes are going well. I have A's in all three! It's midterm time now. I took one midterm last week (200/200...YAY!) and I have one this week. The other class doesn't have one. Wish me luck!

MILITARY LIFE:
DH is back in his shop and it seems he likes it. I definitely like the fact that he actually gets home on time, unlike when he was in the shirt position. I can't believe he'll be hitting 20 years soon! I desperately hope they don't try to send him to Korea to get him to retire. They're famous for that. We haven't heard anything yet. Part of the economy thing that scares me is if we have to PCS, we're going to have to try to sell our house in a time where there's a credit crisis and I doubt houses will sell much at all if that's still the case. Boy, I hope this stuff gets fixed soon!

WORK LIFE:
The show ended so it's busy. That's all I can really say about it. Just busy. Can't describe it, just busy! Not as many orders as the Spring show, but considering we paid for our fall show at the spring show, this show was just sales for me. It'll still be busy for a few weeks though! Not only was the show busy, but it stirred up retail sales as well for those who didn't have an LNS or ONS at the show. They came directly to the site to order. Lots to get through!

STITCHING LIFE:
Well this is just a big fat zero for me lately. :( When my back was hurting, it was impossible to stitch. Then I felt really blah for a few days after. I almost though I was going to come down with the flu, but whatever it was went away after a couple of days. Thank goodness too, the show was ending soon! Of course with that ending and the customer orders coming in, I'm elbow deep in fabric for 8+ hours a day. Last Friday I worked from about 8am until midnight (with breaks for meals and another break to watch a David Blaine show with my kids) and you can guess why I wouldn't feel like touching any fabby all week! I can't bring myself to pick up anything to work on because I'm just tired of touching it all! It'll go away soon though!

That's about it for now, though, so I'm gonna get outta here!
/salute

I'm an idiot

WORK LIFE:
Yeah so I felt GREAT yesterday and was so anxious to get a full day of work in. I got a shop order all finished up and I knew, being mostly painteds, that I would probably only get that order done. Then I had a designer contact me desperately needing 4 pieces of fabric in a hurry, so I tacked those on at the end and got those done too. I felt tired but really great yesterday since I accomplished more than I thought I would.

Then I woke up today....and my back was aching. I took the pain meds and got everything ironed up and shipped out and then proceeded to get started on today's orders. By the time I was doing the scouring of the last batch of fabbies, my back was hurting so badly!! (I think I overdid it yesterday and today :( )I was almost tempted to leave the fabbies for tomorrow, and just finish up what I had on, but...well...I'm a workaholic. I ended up sitting with my heating pad while the last batch was curing and then I felt ok enough to go and do the rinse/wash and put the next batch on. Thankfully I just sat with the heating pad between the timer going off and was able to get through the last batch ok. Then I sat until the kids came home with the heating pad (and popped another pain pill). By the time they got home, I felt a little better. I needed to go get some more serger thread and a longer T-square...it's not really called that, but that's what it reminds me of. I had a 24" one (the thing quilters use to cut fabby in a straight line) but wanted a 36" one. So I got those.

The Online Needlework Show started today and there is a lot of interest in one of my new colors called Witching Hour. I love it too! It's a great night time color! I did a couple of things different at this show. I did an incentive thing for the first time(buy $250 worth of fabby and get a free FQ) and I'm interested to see if that ups the sales!

HOME LIFE:
While I was out, I stopped off at Borders because my youngest has been desperately waiting for the new Brisingr book to come out (3rd book in the series with the Eragon book. I think it's called the Inheritance series or something like that). While there, my oldest saw the 4th book in the series he's reading so I picked that up for him. I'm a HUGE fan of reading and I have told the boys that if they want a book, I'd get it for them, I don't care how much it is. I'd rather buy them books than toys to be honest! My parents always allowed me to buy books because they wanted me to read too, so I'm trying to foster the same in my boys. For a long time they hated reading, but now they both have found books they love and I adore that in them!

I find myself a little behind in school right now. I haven't done a thing for homework this week, so I need to get my butt in gear. I don't want to fall behind!

MILITARY LIFE:
DH is out of the shirt office again (he had to stay through yesterday) and back in his shop. He was so excited to get in there and really get his hands into things. He's been shop chief of that shop for a couple of months now but with all the shirt duty and the leave he has taken, he couldn't ever really be in the shop!

STITCHING LIFE:
Not much new with that. I did put a few more stitches into my HAED piece, but because it's over 1, it never seems like I get a lot of it done. I plan on sitting tonight to watch Ghosthunters and Destination Truth and the David Blaine series, so maybe I'll get something done tonight. However, I'm not feeling the HAED tonight, maybe I'll pick up my Moon Fairy Spirit!

September 22

Well, I'm still slacking because school started for the kids and school started for me and work is busy all the time now, so I apologize for not keeping up.

HOME LIFE: DH took two weeks off of work, so it was nice having him home. After all that shirt duty, it was well deserved time off. Course he was called on leave asking him to pull shirt duty for a few more days when he got back and he was pretty upset about it. I told him to take it as a compliment that they knew he could do it and wanted him in there. Turns out there was a switcheroo around the squadrons, so he had to cover between our shirt leaving and the new one coming in.

I ended up pulling something in my back though and last weekend was really bad. The 12th was my oldest's 12th birthday and I just sucked it up because he had a friend over spending the night. As soon as the friend left Saturday morning, I drove myself to urgent care. They did a urinalysis and saw bacteria and thought I might have a kidney infection, so they gave me some non-narcotic pain meds (which didn't do crap) and antibiotics (which also didn't do crap). Saturday and Sunday I was confined to the couch and then on Monday I got an appointment with the base docs. They did an Xray and found nothing and since the antibiotics hadn't done anything, they believed it was a muscle pull instead. So they gave me some muscle relaxers and some of the good pain meds (Vicodin). I slept off and on all day last Monday and Tuesday and started working half days Wednesday-Friday.

WORK LIFE: Work is BUSY BUSY BUSY! You won't hear me complain though! I worked alot of late days in the last couple of weeks just trying to catch up before the Online show. So last week I was freaked out because of my back and I had a bday order to get out, so I worked Wednesday morning and finished by 1pm and ended up getting the bday order plus 3 others done. Thursday I did all the Delights and one other customer order. Friday I had to run some errands (check post office box, pick up supplies, etcetera). I was planning on finishing up a shop order that day but by the time I got back, I was hurting from getting up and down out of the truck all morning, so I ended up not doing much of anything. Saturday I got caught up on my accounting and stuff. Then I took it easy the rest of Saturday and all of Sunday, and Monday.

I actually feel pretty good today, so I'm hoping I'll be able to get back to a normal work schedule tomorrow. The only problem is painting fabrics has me bending over them for awhile so it starts hurting. I'll just have to take it slow and easy.

The needlework show starts Wednesday and I'm all stocked up on fabrics except for the backordered ones, so I'm hoping that I have enough to complete all the orders that come in! Keeping my fingers crossed!

STITCHING LIFE: I haven't been able to stitch much lately due to working late nights and then with the backache, but I for some reason picked up my HAED yesterday and worked on it for the first time in nearly 2 years!! Here was the before pic:


Here it is after yesterday:


You can see I've completed more of the light colors rounding down and I've gone almost 1 block of 10x10. It takes forever but the detail is worth it!

I also finished my halloween heart freebie. Here it was before:


and here it is finished:


It was stitched on a Jobelan Royalty Flair.

SCHOOL LIFE:
A new chapter in my blog since I started school! I'm taking Principles of Accounting I, Principles of Marketing, and Computer Concepts. The accounting I'm finding very interesting because it's teaching me what my accounting program actually does when I use it with work! Computer Concepts is pretty easy because I'm a computer geek anyway. Marketing I find a little harder and I have to write a 1-2 page paper EVERY SINGLE week! The first one I got an A on, but the teacher hasn't graded week 2 or 3 yet. I'm anxiously awaiting my grades. So far, I've aced every quiz, assignment, and discussion that I've had to do. I'm hoping to stay that way. I'd love to have a 4.0 again for school! I love this degree I'm taking (IT) because I can do it all online. That allows me to work around my business schedule and the kids and family time and all of that! This week is week 4 already and next week is quarter midterms...ALREADY!

Well, it's my last weekend day, so I'm going to go and stitch and enjoy the rest of the evening. I believe Heroes starts tonight, so I'll be planting my happy butt down in front of the TV for the duration!