Stitch N Stuff

Progress on the wizard

2011-07-11T17:33:00.004-06:00

Well, I've been slowly but surely making progress on the wizard. Here he was as shown in the last post:

Here he is after stitching on him for a couple of weeks (forgive the crumpled fabby):

The boys and I headed off to CO for a vacation though and I haven't touched him since before we left. I need a new audiobook to listen to so I can work on him some more!!

Trick or Treat Fairy done!

2011-06-15T16:37:00.002-06:00

Well, last night just before 11pm, I finally finished up Nora Corbett's Trick or Treat fairy from the Sep 2008 CS&N magazine.

It feels like an accomplishment to have 2 pieces done so close together! So now I have to decide if I pick up yet another thing in my WIP pile or throw something new in. You wouldn't think that'd be such a tough decision! I wouldn't mind picking up my wizard and working on him more:

He probably wouldn't be too hard to finish! But then again, something new is calling my name! I'm thinking maybe one of those all one color Who Knew? patterns with the mermaids. Of course if I work on something in my WIP pile, I wouldn't have to ponder fabric and thread colors...lol! Maybe I'll work on that cute Halloween pillow I started long ago. It wouldn't take long to finish up!

Counting the Days

2011-06-11T00:12:00.002-06:00

Tomorrow it'll be 5 months that my husband has been deployed. I know we're on the downslope here, but man does this seem like it's taking forever! Since nursing school is out for the summer, I need another form of escapism to make the time go by faster. So, I have been glued to my Kindle all week reading a variety of books until all my favorite sequels come out. Too bad a lot of them come out in August...right when school starts again!

My hubby is feeling down. He doesn't think this deployment is as fun as the last. They had lots of pranks going on last time so, I've decided to send him a prank box. I filled it with whoopie cushions, squirt guns, nerf guns, slingshot rockets, water balloons, etcetera. I'm hoping it'll help him get people going over there. Yes, my hubby may be nearly 42, but he's still a kid at heart!

Meanwhile, I'm just trying to keep the boys and me busy so we can get through the last bit! Oh yeah, AND get the bathroom reno done. I have no idea how long these things take. Tomorrow I'll go out and buy the new tub, toilet, vanity, tile, etcetera. The guy says he's coming before the end of June to start the project, so I'm hoping it'll be finished before the summer is over? I get dibs on the first jacuzzi bath! :D I'm imagining filling that tub, lighting some candles, and having adult beverages after a long day at clinicals!!

I sent off my Grateful Nation to Jill Rensel to be framed and her ideas look fabulous, so I can't wait to share pictures when it's finished! Currently working on the Trick or Treat fairy and hoping that'll be done before the summer is over too! I'm already on the kreiniks and then I have a bit of outlining and some beading to do, so I'm thinking it won't take too much longer! Then I'll have to decide what to work on next...or maybe start something new! *grin*

Grateful Nation by Glendon Place finished!

2011-05-21T10:22:00.003-06:00

Well, I finally finished it. Sure, it took me almost 3 years, but hey, work and nursing school got in the way a bit. I've only been stitching this since sometime late last year so I could finish it and since nursing school is on break for the summer, I could concentrate on it fully. I was hoping to finish it for my grandfather's 80th birthday, but I didn't make it.

You see, back in 2004, I made one for my other grandfather for his service in the military. It was important to me to let them know I appreciated it. My brother is in the military and so is my husband and when they get around those two, they start talking about when they served. It was one of the first pieces I completed after having a long break from stitching anything! Here was the original piece I did for my other grandfather:

The grandfather I gave the above to is a man of few words. He thanked me but other than that didn't say much and at first I was worried that he didn't like it. But then as more and more people showed up at my grandparents' house that day, he showed it to everyone who came! Then I knew that he really enjoyed it. It now hangs on the living room wall at my grandparents' home. I happened to finish it just before his 80th birthday.

My other grandfather is younger and so I hoped to finish the one I was doing for him by his 80th. He is much more emotional and I have a feeling that I will know the moment he gets it how much he appreciates it. So here it is:

I changed the word "Soldier" to Sailor since he was navy and I am sending it off today to be framed. I can't wait to get it back and will be sure to post a pic of it framed.

I will now be moving on to Nora Corbett's Trick or Treat fairy since it's closest to being finished! Now I can finally include a 2011 finishes on the sidebar! WOO!

Purple Rain

2011-05-17T19:20:00.004-06:00

So, I watched this movie last night. It came out in 1984 and I was 9. I must have originally watched it sometime in my early college years because my parents were sticklers for the no watching rated R movie until I was 17 thing. I love Prince though and recently have gotten back into a lot of his songs, so I figured it was a great time to watch it!

I didn't quite remember the topic of this film being about abuse and the sexual overtone of the movie must have flown over my head back in college. Maybe it was more like I was embarrassed about the overtones because I was fairly innocent back then. And maybe it stuck out more due to my hubby being deployed I'm picking up on that more? Could be! ;) I nearly shut Purple Rain off last night when he smacked his little woman because I can't stand to watch movies with that kind of theme (though I understand where the story was supposed to go being that he saw his dad doing it, but don't you think stopping his dad from beating up his mom would make him stop his own hand when it flew??). I was also pretty surprised how quick she came back to him after, too. However, I stuck it out because hey...it's Prince!

Several thoughts ran through my head throughout this movie and I just had to share because I swear I giggled myself to sleep last night thinking of all this (and no, I did not partake of any alcoholic beverages before or during the film).

1. Those pants he wore, where the waist is nearly to his armpits? How fast do you think he had to work to get those off when he had to pee?

2. That man can dance in high heels better than I can walk in them!

3. How is it that he can dress so flamboyantly and yet still be so damn sexy?!?! (and somehow David Bowie is hot in Labyrinth too, isn't he??)

4. Speaking of the Labyrinth, how come Beautiful Ones from Purple Rain reminds me so much of Within You from Labyrinth?

5. Did he invent "guyliner"? Because you didn't see many guys with eyeliner like that back then. Now all the emo bands are doing it!

6. Speaking of makeup, did you see those strange men in the crowd wearing sparkly eyeshadow? I do not remember this being a fad in 1984, but then again, I grew up in a small town so maybe that's why.

I'm sure there was more, but I can't remember. I almost literally got up to get a pen and paper because these thoughts were running through my mind! Man, do I still love his music though! He's amazing!

Still hanging in there!

2011-04-17T14:06:00.002-06:00

Things have been so busy I don't even know how to describe it. Here it is April 17th and we're finally winding down this semester at school. All clinicals are now done, all classes at school are now done. We have 2 Elluminates (online lectures), 3 simulations, and one exam and a final left. As of today there are 16 days left until the final! I am so ready for it to end. Don't get me wrong, because I love it so far and I have learned so much this year, but my brain seriously needs a vacation! lol

I had a really crappy time of it around my birthday, but it's over and I've moved on. I have a really sweet friend in school who heard about how crappy my birthday was and she actually went and had flowers sent to me at clinicals (a simple trip to the hospital gift shop and voila....you can make someone's day!). It was really sweet of her.

Class has been my life these past few months and that's ok because it makes the time fly by. Thank goodness the boys are teenagers so that they can fend for themselves. Not that they're home alone or anything, but if they see me studying, they know what they can and can't and they've been trying very hard to just get their stuff done without bothering me. They've been mostly great (but again, teenagers, so not always. No one's perfect though. I'm sure according to them I am not always great either...haha)!

We're over the halfway mark in the deployment now and that's a relief. I've had to give up some stressors in life and just focus on the kids and school. DH comes to mind only when I pop him an email some evenings or I'm talking to him on skype, but other than that, he goes to the back of my mind for now. That's how busy I am and believe me, I love my husband to death, but I just have to compartmentalize life for now.

So, stressors I'm giving up?

The news. Yeah, it sounds funny, but do you realize how many depressing or blood boiling things you see on there? I just don't have the energy to expend on it anymore, so it's gone!

Losing weight/Eating Healthy. Yes, I wanted desperately to do it, but when it becomes even more of a stressor than school and deployments and teenage problems, I need to cut it out. I exercise when I can, sometimes that's once a week, sometimes 3 times a week, sometimes none at all, and I can't beat myself up over it. School will be done in 16 days and I can get into my workout routine then. I will have 2-3 months left when I get out of school to work on the weight thing before DH comes home. Unfortunately with the lack of time and the insanity of schedules, fast food comes into play a lot right now. I mean, who wants to think about what to cook at 6pm when the kids need showers and homework done and so do I? Tough shit, I'm just going to do what I can to keep everyone cared for and fed and if I don't lose weight right now, then I will later. I'm hoping to get into a good routine this summer as well as getting outside and doing things around the house which will help. At that time, I'll go off soda again and eat better.

Cleaning House. Yeah, I have an excuse not to do it! Sure, I'm embarrassed to have anyone drop by, but luckily I live enough out of the way that it doesn't happen very often. I mean, my neighbor comes over and I just apologize profusely for the way the house looks, but come on. It's not a dump! The floors and couches get vacuumed every weekend, the counters get washed down once a week, dishes are kept up by the kids and they are doing their own laundry, so it's not like things are crazy all over the house. But people walk in and the "shoe dump" is right by the door. Do you have a "shoe dump"? It's where people walk in and kick off their shoes and they just stay there. So I have my winter boots, my crocs, my tennis shoes. The boys have their school shoes and play shoes and winter boots. One kid has his dad's boots that he gave him and a pair of his good shoes there too. Normally I allow 2 pairs of shoes per person in this area, one they go outside in and a pair of slipons, but with winter, I've let the winter stuff stay around. Also normally, the shoes are nicely lined up. However, I have no time to worry about if there's a shoe in the middle of the entry way or if one of the dogs has brought one into the middle of the family room there. Who cares? I refuse to stress over this. The kitchen table has become the collecting grounds for any mail I have yet to put away or anything the kids don't need in their bags anymore. Not usually, but now, I'm just letting it go. Occasionally I'll go through it and throw crap away or tell the kids if they want it, do something with it, but it's not being kept up like usual.

Obligation stitching. Yeah, I'm setting it down for now. I was trying to work so hard on my Grandpa's piece, but I just can't right now. I have to make myself do homework and all the dropoffs/pickups from practices, games, meets study sessions, I refuse to do something else that I don't feel like doing! In fact I haven't stitched much at all since the last time I posted probably. That's ok, I'll pick it up later this summer or something.

Guilty pleasures I'm using to relieve stress:

Reading, reading, reading! I'm a reader, always have been, always will be. Love it so much. I've got book releases on my calendar in my email from my favorite author and I try to work very hard to get my homework done early so I can have a guilt free weekend day to read to my heart's content! Usually it's interspersed with having to run out and grab some milk or cat food or something crazy like that, but for the most part, I'm able to have one guilt free weekend day and the boys have been fabulous lately about leaving me to it!

Soda. I love soda. I don't drink coffee or energy drinks. I don't drink alcohol very often, I don't smoke, I don't do drugs, but by God, I'm going to drink my soda. Yeah, it's empty calories and goes along with that whole losing weight/eating right thing. Think about it for a second. I have to drag my ass out of bed at 4:30 in the morning so that I can get ready and look "professional" and drive an hour away for clinicals WITHOUT COFFEE?!? My friend at clinicals looks at me and asks, "Can I get you a Mountain Dew?" I'm going to say "HELL YES!!!" And then I started drinking more soda. I was doing so well and drinking only water, but screw that. I needed the caffeine! Too bad we signed that contract stating I wouldn't start an IV on my classmates or family or I'd have figured out a way to let one of them start me up a caffeine drip in the mornings!

Music. I love music too. I've been listening to some bands that probably aren't really mainstream, but I sure do love my music! My favorite is Blue October, but quickly reaching them have been bands like Thriving Ivory, Ryan Star, 30 Seconds to Mars. My iTunes spending has gone a little crazy lately, but that's ok. I'm allowing myself to spend it. I've put thousands of dollars in our savings account since my hubby left, I think I'm allowed a little bit of musical pleasure here and there. Besides, I've got music for when I'm mad and can crank it, music for when I'm sad and need to shed a few tears, music to beebop along to while doing homework. Music makes the world go round, doesn't it? (By the way, will be adjusting my playlist to make up for my new tastes.)

I actually had my hair done the other day too. Now usually I'll go reddish in the winter and more blond in the summer as far as the highlights go. DH loves me red, but I really like the blond because it makes me feel summer-y. So I went with a mixture and had red and blond highlights done together. I really love it. He wants me to have it done again right before he comes home. It was nice to get out of the house and not have to worry about school and the kids for awhile. Oh wait, that's not true because about 45 minutes before I was done, my kid called and told me he left his housekey at home. Yeah, that wasn't so fun, but hey, at least it was warm enough he could dump his bag on the porch and go walk the neighbor's dog to kill some time!

Movies. I've seen more movies since DH has been gone than I probably saw when he was home! The kids have been great about going with me. Even to chick flicks! My youngest went with me to see I am Number Four which I loved and then we went back again the next day and made my oldest go with us. He loved it. Then a couple of weeks later, my oldest went with me to see Beastly which was cute. He enjoyed it as well. We had a big break there when school was getting tough, but just last weekend all 3 of us went to see Arthur which was pretty funny. We've been renting some ON Demand movies too when we don't get a chance to go out. My youngest watched Devil with me yesterday. I am SOOOOO glad one of the kids loves scary movies! I love them, but DH....well, not so much. At least I have someone that can go with me now!

The good thing is, I think I've found a balance to manage the rest of this deployment. It was difficult for me to find it at first, but we've eased into a routine here now that is working pretty well. All 3 of us are counting down until school ends. My oldest is excited to be making some money by walking the neighbor's dog 3-4 times a week and that is keeping him busy. My youngest is keeping busy with school and track. I got my last homework assignment done last night and I feel like I can participate in life a little more now. Of course, I'll turn into a hermit to study for the exams, but soon, I'll get 3 months off which will be wonderful!

It's the last deployment! I keep saying it and am so excited about it. My hubby hit 22 years in the service a few days ago and since he'll retire at 24, they won't be sending him back and soon we'll get to move back home and be around family and everything will be great!

Keeping my head above water...barely

2011-02-19T21:59:00.002-07:00

So, it's been awhile since I posted. The holidays and my husband's deployment and my boys' schedule and nursing school are keeping me so busy I don't feel like I have time to breathe. And when I do have time to breathe and take a moment for me, I spend nearly every minute of that time feeling guilty because I SHOULD be studying or doing homework or prepping for clinicals.

Nursing school is hard enough, but add deployments to it and somedays I feel like I'm barely keeping my head above water. (Where is that drowning emoticon when you need it??) Typically I hit that deployment depression right at the midway point because it seems like it's been a long time since you've seen your husband and there's still a long time to go. This is the longest deployment we've been through thus far, but somehow it's only 5 weeks out and I'm feeling like that point. I'm sure it has a bit to do with the fact that due to the boys' sports schedules, I don't have a single day where I can stay home and focus completely on nursing school. I always have to keep the boys' schedules in my mind so that I know to pick up who, where, and when! It's absolutely insane! Why did I think I could do this again?! I think I need reminded, because tonight, I'm sitting here and wondering how in the hell I thought I could do it all! Sure, reminding myself that this should be the last deployment is helpful. But right now, the boys are in bed, things are quiet, I should be studying or doing work and I can't get up the energy to do it, so instead I've been watching some shows off my DVR and feeling guilty the whole time.

Maybe it's because it's the last deployment?
Maybe it's because it's the longest one we've dealt with?
Maybe it's because it's nursing school and hello?! It's freaking harder than anything I've done!!
Maybe it's because this time of year is the worst time for the boys' sports schedules?
Maybe it's because this year was the first year my husband has missed our wedding anniversary?
Maybe it's because this year was the first year my husband missed Valentine's Day?
Maybe it's because my birthday is in like a day and he won't be here for that either?
Maybe it's because I don't feel like I ever have a moment to myself?

DH has said on more than one occasion since he's deployed that he owes me BIG when he comes home. I don't care about that necessarily, but I sure as hell want a freaking vacation when he gets home! Is it a bad thing to say that I'd like part of it to be just by myself?! It sounds selfish, I know. I'll probably change my mind by the time he gets home because...haha...no I won't, who am I kidding?! I thought that I'd enjoy spring break because the kids will be at school and I'll have some time where I don't have to think about what's next, but nope, they'll still have basketball practices and games and parent teacher conferences, and even a day off in there somewhere! And I was thinking that once summer arrives, it won't be so bad...but yeah, there's still track practices and meets and Lord knows what else. And then the kids will be off and they will drive each other crazy which will drive me crazy. Yeah, I want a vacation. Somewhere alone so I can do whatever I want whenever I want without having to think about anyone else's schedules and needs but my own! Yeah, I really sound like a selfish bitch and I hate that.

Whenever DH deploys I think, I'll get in shape and lose some weight and blah blah blah and here it is, 5 weeks in and I can't even get a good exercise program going. In fact, where do I put it?! I have class on Monday mornings, clinicals 2 weeks on and 2 weeks off on Tuesdays and on one of those off weeks, the Tuesday is a lab eval(until late March, then clinicals are 2 days a week instead of just one) and then Wednesdays are off unless we have a Monday off due to a holiday then that class sometimes comes on the Wednesday. Thursdays are labs if we have them, otherwise off. Then there are Friday classes. Weekends are a rough time to get any homework done due to the kids being home. Afternoons and evenings are impossible due to kids needing help with homework or sometimes just being redirected to DO their homework, otherwise they'll sit around and do nothing. Also there are practice pickups and hauling back and forth to games and study groups for the oldest. So on Mondays and Fridays and some Tuesdays and Thursdays I have about 3 hours to get any homework/reading done and most Wednesdays and I can't find a moment to fit a workout in between any of this! I mean, I should really include one week's worth of assignments so you can see it. How about the week of February 7th?
Monday morning 9am-12pm class
Read 53 pages
Watch 6 videos
Take a pre-test
Do the quizes and assignments that are associated with the concepts that you didn't pass 80% or higher on that pre-test.
Do the post test until you get 100%
(The above is just ONE lab module and we had 6 due before Thursday of that week)
Tuesday work on more lab modules, pages may vary and amount of videos vary according to the subject. Like the next subject was reading 66 pages and 8 videos, etc)
Then lab Practice from 8am to noon on Thursday morning, come home and bust ass to get all the assignments done before 9am Friday such as reading 200 pages (I kid you not) watching 2 powerpoints (one of which took about 2 hours), do 3 assignments to turn in, take a quiz (open book), and then study for a quiz in class on Friday morning between 9-12pm. Then Friday afternoon, it starts all over again for the next week because you have to prep for Monday morning's class, the lab eval that is held on Tuesday morning, then you have a couple of days off to prep for Friday's class, then it starts all over for this week, except now I have to prep for clinicals by preparing a 2-3 minute speech on a peer reviewed nursing article, writing up I don't know how many meds for my med prep form (right now we're at 10 meds, but we're supposed to have the complete list by Monday at noon at which point we have to bust ass to have it in clinicals at 7am Tuesday morning), from the med prep form, we have to prepare a patient teaching form and read a 7 page article and answer some questions about a case study; oh yeah and study the meds we will be having a quiz on at clinicals. I haven't even looked at those yet. I'd count myself lucky if they were one of the ones I had to do a med prep on, then it wouldn't be SO bad. Let's not forget that if you get an average below 75% on the exams you're automatically kicked out. No pressure or anything...?

Yes, I NEED a vacation. This would be a bajillion times more easy if DH were home. Even if I still had to deal with school and other stuff from the above list, it's just easier when he's here. I don't even know how to explain it, it just is. Of course he gets off at about 4pm, so he can pick up from practices or hit the games and I could have more study time. I just have to make it through this semester. I keep telling myself that. Just make it through this semester. In less than 2 weeks I'll be at the halfway point and it'll be spring break. Thank God I have a great study group. Don't know what I'd do without them. Too bad my kids are off until clinicals. I did mention how much clinical prep I had this week, right? (One of those days my birthday. And the kids keep asking me what kind of cake I want, what gift I want. I told them it was stupid for me to go get myself a birthday cake. They keep telling me to give them money and drop them off and they'll go get it, but isn't that practically the same thing? I know they're trying, believe me. It just seems silly to me. It's not like they can hide anything from me in the car! I ended up telling my oldest I wanted him to go to the movies with me and LIKE the movie I picked out...LOL. I knew he'd like the movie anyway, but I just wanted him to go. I'd gone with my youngest and when we got done, I KNEW he'd love it. So we dragged him out today and did that.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to rag on my kids or hubby or anything. It's just teenagers are difficult to deal with at normal times of your life, let alone THESE kinds of times. I thank God that I have great kids, but even great kids have their moments.

I know I have one of the greatest husbands out there too. It can be hard to remember when he's thousands of miles away and I'm cursing the fact that he doesn't have to think about any of this crap. In fact, I don't even talk to him at least 3 days out of the week. There are 2 days on the weekend that he skypes to talk to the kids, but I feel like I can't really talk to him. My oldest makes gagging sounds if we get lovey dovey which kind of ruins the mood (not that we're getting risque or anything, but he'll tell me how much he misses me and he'll pucker up and make kissing noises and you'll hear "OH GEEZ!" in the background. Not conducive for getting mushy, believe me). Too bad there's not family nearby. I sure would love to get away with him when he comes home too. That happened once when my mom lived with us and she took the kids for a long weekend when DH came back from deployment. That was nice.

Yeah, well I can't think of anything else to bitch about (though I'm sure I will as soon as I publish this post) and I'm sure this is enough of a bitchfest for one day. I guess I'll go mope along off to my room and watch a chick flick that will make me even more blah, but I'm not really in the mood to laugh or anything. Maybe I should watch P.S. I love you. Guaranteed bawl fest. Maybe I just need to get it all out? I'm just so tired of faking happy around everyone else, but honestly, who wants to hear all of the above?? I know my kids really could care less, they're in that teenaged "I want a girlfriend and need to call the one I'm after every night as soon as I finish my homework in the fastest way I can no matter if I fail it or not" phase...or that "I could care less about anything going on with you as long as you get me to my practices and games so I can hang out with my buddies and when I get home, there better be something to eat fast or I'll be cranky" phase. People whose husbands aren't deployed don't really understand it, so they don't really want to hear it. Yeah, I'm just going to go ahead and get off here before I go on and on and on because really, who cares?

Yeah, so um...here I am?

2010-12-21T14:36:00.003-07:00

Ha! Whoops! Time flies when you're in school and all of that! It's been a couple of months since I posted. Seems like a lot was going on with my mom getting married at the end of October, then my best friend and her family arriving for Thanksgiving, and now it's almost Christmas! Shove school and finals in there and gift buying and all that good stuff and you have a busy couple of months! Things are settling down now though!

Haven't stitched much over the course of the last couple of months, but I did pick up my Grateful Nation and I nearly have the border done now! *cheer* I hope to get it framed early next year and have it ready to either ship or take to my Grandpa in the summer!

There's just so much going on right now. DH will be deploying, Nursing School is starting soon, the kids are growing up wayyyyy too fast! Can't wait to have the first semester behind me so I'm not so nervous anymore about it! I'm sure it'll make the time fly by pretty quickly too. Soon it'll be summer and the boys will be in camps and I'll be off school twiddling my thumbs and not knowing what to do to keep myself busy! (Can we say around the house projects?) I'm sure I'll find something ;)

I'd better get going though. Just got back from meeting a fried for lunch and I picked up lots of baking stuff, so I should get started!

Ugh, what's wrong with me?!

2010-10-13T00:42:00.002-06:00

I don't know what the problem is. This is night #2 where I can't sleep! Last night I couldn't sleep and didn't want to read, so instead of keeping DH awake with the TV in the bedroom, I came out to the living room and ended up watching 3 DVR'd episodes of CSI (from this past April).

Tonight is the same story. I went to bed, fell asleep, but unfortunately drank a lot of tea before bed and had to get up to use the bathroom. Once that happened, I was wide awake. I tried laying in bed and counting to 200 and each time I stopped to think about something, I'd start over. Finally, 40 minutes had passed and I STILL wasn't asleep. Don't feel like reading, don't feel like watching TV. I have to work out tomorrow, study for an exam tomorrow, TAKE the exam tomorrow and here it is, nearly 1am and I can't SLEEP! The sad thing is, I'm tired, I just can't go to sleep. When I'm laying there, I'm too hot with the covers on and too cold with them off (or with just the sheet on). It's like I just can't get comfortable.

I have a headache, I seem to be worrying about a lot of things, and I don't know what would settle me down enough to get some shut eye! I need it badly! I guess I'll surf the web for awhile and see if that helps? *sigh*

I GOT IN TO NURSING SCHOOL!!!

2010-10-10T18:50:00.004-06:00

This past Wednesday, I received an envelope from my university letting me know I'd been granted conditional acceptance to nursing school! I was so excited! They only chose 36 people to enter the Spring program! I was on my way to an exam at the time and it was around noon so my hubby was at lunch (in the gym where he throws his cell in his locker) and my mom was supposedly at lunch but not answering her cell, etcetera. I finally got ahold of my hubby before I walked into the test and was so excited to tell him the news! I actually starting bawling like an idiot. I figure the test people must have wondered what was up! I did get ahold of my mom after the test and texted various people later in the day.

So conditional acceptance means that you have to do a few things before they give you final acceptance. One is to fork over $155 for a criminal background check/drug test. So I signed up Wednesday evening to have that done, then I would just have to take some paperwork to a local lab collection place to do the drug test. The second thing is to fork over another $150 as a deposit to secure my spot in the nursing program, which I also did Wednesday evening. The last thing was take some paperwork over to the school office here once I'd read it, filled it out and signed. So Thursday I headed over to have my drug test done and I dropped off the paperwork at the university. Now, I just have to wait for the criminal background check and the drug test to be submitted to my university and then I should receive a final acceptance letter. I've never been arrested, nor have I done drugs, so I should be just fine.

My only concern was a medication my doctor has me on, but the lab people assured me if something showed up in their test, they would send the second sample to another lab to have them do it. If something still showed up, they would call me to find out if I was on any prescription medication that might show up. If so, all I had to do was give them my doctor's name, the prescription, the dosage, etcetera and they would call to verify before sending the green light on to the background check company. This company then submits the background check PLUS the drug check to my university as GREEN for all clear, YELLOW for something needing to be verified, and RED for no way should you let them in (I guess). They give you a link to check the background check progress and I saw today they had 24/25 completed already. I figure they can't find much, so it should be done fairly quickly!

I'll tell you what, Nursing School is going to be EX-PEN-SIVE!! I've already had to pay the $305 for the check/test and the deposit. Once I find out if I'm in, I am required to purchase a fujitsu tablet to use for the class. It costs anywhere from $1400-$2300 (right now because they're currently on sale, though that ends on the 15th of October). I have to put in this order by November 1st to have it by Spring semester. (thanks for that being so close to Christmas, by the way...yeesh!) Then there are various other things I'd like to have as a student nurse. I'm going to have to get lab kits and specific scrubs, probably some good shoes for the clinicals. I want to get a decent stethoscope, plus there are many books and apps I'd like to get to help me out. I want to get an NCLEX review book, a Fundamentals book and maybe the book about tests in nursing school. They're completely different than normal tests in school because they make you apply what you know to answers. From what I hear, all 4 answers may be correct, but you have to pick the "most correct" answer which sounds confusing. I've heard some of these books help you out with figuring out what the instructors want as well as how your NCLEX test will be. Each of those books is about $30-$50 apiece (not counting the textbooks needed for class either). I've heard that having an iPod touch is great for some apps that really help student nurses out on clinicals. Of course I have a classic and not a touch, so that'd be another purchase. There's a really nice app bundle, but it's a subscription you have to pay for every year and it's like $160? But it has lots of things in it about different types of diagnoses, lab tests, medical dictionaries, etcetera in it. Great for when you need to know something on the fly, you can whip out your iPod touch and have the info at your fingertips in seconds! Do you see how this is beginning to add up?

DH isn't worried at all. He says once I get the final acceptance letter, then we start purchasing this crap. It better pay us back in the end! I've heard many a horror story about how new grads can't find jobs since they have no experience. However, it'll take me another couple of years to get my degree, so I'm hoping the economy has changed by then. I've heard that once the economy is ok again, many of the retired nurses who came out of retirement to help their families will retire once again and positions will be open. Not only that but with the baby boomer generation getting older, more nurses will be necessary.

I just can't wait to get in there and get my hands dirty. I miss a medical environment. I loved going to work every day, not knowing what I'd see, having emergencies walk through the door, surgeries, etcetera. Sure it was with animals, and I know there's a difference, but I'm thinking if I can handle that, I can certainly handle this.

I had to write this essay about why I wanted to be a nurse. Most people probably say they want to help people and everyone says don't say you're doing it for the money. Well, I'm certainly not doing it for that. I'd have stuck with DVM if that was the case, they definitely make more than nurses do. I chose to speak about all the medical problems that had gone on with my family in recent years what with my mother and aunt going through breast cancer. How I wish I had more answers for them or was in a position to ask questions for them if I didn't know. I wrote about my uncle's lifelong battle with kidney problems and after two failed transplants and dialysis for decades, he gave up that battle last year. A couple of years ago several feet of his bowel died and they didn't know if he'd make it. I was in the hospital a lot that weekend helping my grandparents cope. They had no idea what the doctors or nurses were saying, I think they were in some sort of haze. Thankfully I had enough medical knowledge from previous classes and experience in the veterinary medicine field that I could answer my grandparents' questions once they left. But the reason that I most wanted to be a nurse was because of Mary. When I was 21(-ish?) I was married to my first husband and living far from home and that's when I had to have surgery for the first time ever due to endometriosis. I was terrified! But I remember waking up and there was a nurse by my side and her name was Mary. I remember she just slowly stroked my hand and told me she was there for me and if there was anything I needed to just let her know. I remember feeling so alone and lost and had just gone through this procedure and you wake up disoriented but she was such a calm and comforting presence. Isn't it something that nearly 15 years later, I still remember her name? That's how much it meant to me at the time. And that's what I put in my essay. 15 years down the road, I want someone to say, "Remember that nurse Lori and how kind and comforting she was?"

Who knows what got me in out of the many that applied. Could have been the essay, I'm sure grades helped out some. I had to have three letters of reference to the program which had to include educational or work references. I had excellent references, my best friend who was a veterinary technician with me; a customer who works as a therapist offered to write one for me; and then my Anatomy & Physiology teacher wrote one. My advisor had told me if I could get a letter from him it would look REALLY great because he's considered a very difficult teacher. I asked my poor professor after 3 weeks of class? I wanted to give him enough time to see my grades before I hounded him, but it was only an 8 week class and I had to have my app in by August 1st (my class started June 17th and ended August 6th), so I asked him in July. He agreed to do so thankfully and he even tossed the envelope I included and put it in the School of Medicine envelope which I think made it look better! LOL Yes, my poor professor, he has to deal with me even now in our A&P II class (I switched profs for my second class because I felt I learned what he taught very well and I didn't want to mess that up)! Too bad I couldn't have asked him now because he could surely include more info now that he's known me for months, but obviously it worked anyway!

Though he might include how annoying I am...lol! My friend and I (we met in the first class and are taking the 2nd one together with him too) bug him via email about whatever we don't understand, though he says that's good because he knows we're really thinking about the material. He's a great prof. I wish everyone could take the class from him, though he makes you work hard for the grade and some don't appreciate that. It's totally worth it though because it makes you remember it for a long, long time! I think I'll actually be sad when the class is over because I don't believe he teaches nursing classes. Wish he did though! He is, without a doubt, the best professor I've ever had, I can honestly say that.

I really, really can't wait to get started in Nursing School! I hope the instructors are great and the class is wonderful and I learn lots and get the opportunity to get into a hospital and use what I've learned really well. It is my ultimate goal to get into a VA hospital and to be able to serve our veterans. With my husband in the military, it would make me feel very good if I could somehow do something for them!

Will try to keep this updated!

On the stitching front, I've been studying so damn hard, I haven't felt the need or want to even pick up any stitching. Though recently, I did pick up my Grateful Nation and get a bit more done on it. I can show a quick pic. Here it was in July of this year:

Here it is now:

I can't wait to finish this and give it to my grandfather! Better get going though. It's date night and DH and I sent the kids off to bed early and need to go pick out a flick to watch!

The neverending wait

2010-09-17T15:05:00.001-06:00

I'm not a patient person...I've never really claimed to be. So today, I'm a bit on edge because my prof hasn't yet released the score of my test this past Wednesday and I am STILL waiting on the letter from school telling me whether I did or didn't get into nursing school!

Please put me out of my misery!!

I can't wait

2010-08-16T21:32:00.003-06:00

Military Mondays-2010 Presidential Citizens Medal

2010-08-09T09:48:00.002-06:00

While I won't get into my feeling over Obama here, I did want to post this that I saw at another military spouses blog. This woman definitely deserved this award!

MM-something a little different

2010-07-19T08:10:00.002-06:00

I saw this on another blog and thought it was interesting! Active Duty military members versus the general population in a well-being poll! The only thing that worries me about this is the difference (if you scroll down) in the happiness and well being of active duty versus employed veterans because that's where we'll be in a few years!!

Military Mondays

2010-07-12T09:45:00.001-06:00

Have you heard the Lone Star song "I'm Already There", the version for military families? I first heard it when my now hubby (then boyfriend) deployed. It was the first deployment I'd ever dealt with and boy was it a doozy! (Not just due to his deployment, but things that happened at the time with his ex, his boys, etcetera)

God Bless our Military!

Happy 4th of July!

2010-07-04T10:11:00.001-06:00

Please take a moment to remember those who allow us to have our freedom still today!

Military Mondays

2010-06-28T09:46:00.002-06:00

Not sure whether you've heard of the Rolling Thunder. They're a motorcycle group that believes in educating the public about POWs and MIAs and helping our war veterans. They had a rally in DC this year on Memorial Day and there's a marine who has done this several years running who stands and salutes as they all pass by. His name is SSG Tim Chambers. I can't imagine having to hold a salute for hours like he does, but I certainly admire him!

Military Mondays

2010-06-21T16:21:00.002-06:00

Grateful Nation

2010-06-18T19:20:00.002-06:00

I did get some more done on my Grateful Nation. Last week I'd done the name of the ship my grandfather was stationed on, but I was off by a stitch!

So I've ripped it out, restitched it, and stitched the eagle around it!

This week, I'm working on the line above that which is a simple USN for United States Navy and will stitch more eagle!

Military Mondays

2010-06-14T09:47:00.006-06:00

I don't watch this show at all, but I saw this on another military spouse message board and I liked it!

Support our Troops!

Military Mondays

2010-06-11T23:08:00.002-06:00

I think on Mondays I will post something patriotic or military-ish. I'm just in that kind of mood lately! Check back on Monday to see what's in store!

Ooooh, Stitchy Progress!

2010-06-10T19:05:00.005-06:00

Well, I pulled out my Grateful Nation by Glendon Place and I've been going to town on it (with what time I have). I've gone from this (Sep 13, 2009):

To this:

To this:

To this:

in a manner of weeks! I did have to frog the U.S.S. Stribling line though and re-stitch it. I was off by one stitch (and I graphed and counted and recounted!! STILL off. But it's all been restitched now and I'm working on more of the eagle behind the words until I get to the next line of customization.) I think the Red, White, and blue SAL we're having on one of the boards is helping me stay interesting in stitching. Thank Goodness for that! :)

And since it's a patriotic piece, I had to post this that I saw on a military spouse blog!

No Stitching

2010-05-19T14:40:00.002-06:00

I haven't picked up a needle for months! I even ordered some stash from Froggy Stitcher since she's closing and I keep looking at several WIP threads, but I can't get myself to stitch. I think it's because of all the fabric dyeing. I don't feel like touching any of it at night when I'm "off" work. I did get the last of the retail orders shipped out on May 8th! I'm now working on the last shop order which is 308 pieces. We separated it into 3 smaller suborders to make it easier to pay and manage on my end. The first 100 pieces shipped out this morning and I will begin the 2nd suborder which is 108 pieces this week! It'll be exciting when it's done and also a bit sad. I do have several pieces though that will go up on the StitchSanity site that are leftover when I get it up and running.

With school starting in June, we'll see how quickly I can get everything going with StitchSanity though. I don't want to rush into it, as I'd like some time off before throwing myself into something else. It would be nice to actually get some landscaping done in the front while it's nice out this summer!

Bathroom renovation is coming along great. New drywall is up and I slapped on a quick first coat of paint today. I have to say, it's not the greatest drywall job, but DH is done with it and I don't think he wants to hire someone else to do it. At least there's no more mold! When it's completely done, I'll do a show and tell picture post!

Bout it for now. I have to leave soon for an appointment!

Blue October Weekend/Life!

2010-05-01T16:50:00.004-06:00

Sorry for the lack of updates, I'm sure I'll get back to it when EF finally shuts down! Just wanted to show some pics of my Blue October weekend (AKA Girls' Weekend)! My best friend and I get together in Denver (she lives in southern Colorado and I'm up in South Dakota. There's no where really in the middle that's fun, so I tend to get down to Denver and she meets me up there for a weekend). We began this last year and we saw Blue October, a band she wasn't familiar with at all. I am proud to say I've converted her to major fan status since then! Last year they were doing their Approaching Normal tour because they'd just released their new album. This year, they're doing the Pick Up the Phone tour in support of suicide prevention, help for drug addiction, and mental health issues. They were sponsored by To Write Love On Her Arms among others (one was a suicide prevention for our troops program, I believe it was vet 2 vet, but I'd have to look at the logo again to be sure). I'm always ready to support our troops and anything having to do with depression and suicide prevention, etcetera, so it was nice to go to support those causes as well!

I was really looking forward to my weekend with Loni (my best friend) and I know she was to. I was desperately hoping I'd be finished with work by then, but I don't think I realized the scope of the last two weeks worth of sales...well, that and my back issues that began the week of April 9th. Ugh. Bending over those Horizon and Desert Sands and Prairie Skies pieces really killed my back! Thank goodness my doc was fully understanding and prescribed some lovely pain killers/muscle relaxers and he knew I had a lot of orders to get through, so when I was done with the first small batch he gave, I called him back and he just gave me more. He knew I had only weekends to really rest until I'm done. I think I'd have been done by now if it weren't for that, but I really have to take it slow. I'd hate for this to be a lifelong issues just because I'm pushing myself too hard every day. I was so happy to have everything out in under 2 months(except maybe some of those Monaco orders since there was such a problem with getting that fabric in) considering I got a lot of orders in during that time. (It's over 6 months worth of orders in 2 weeks and technically when you consider that sales dropped a bit last year, and the fact that I typically close down for 2 months each year, it's nearly a year's worth of sales.)

Anyway, after a couple of weeks of hurting and trying to get out what I could as fast as I could, I was really looking forward to getting away to see my best friend. I also visited my dad while I was down that way.

I left Friday morning after packaging up orders and shipping them and got in to Denver around 3:30pm on the 23rd. The hotel comped us an upgraded on our room since they messed up while booking our reservation. We ended up with a 2 bedroom/2 bath apartment suite. It was nice because we were across the street from a Super Target, so Friday night I went grocery shopping and stocked up our fridge and cupboards with snacks for a girls weekend (and rum....and smirnoff ice). Loni couldn't get there until the next morning, but I was so glad to see her! It's been just over a year since we were last together unfortunately! We had breakfast and then went back to the room and chit chatted for hours. About 12:30 or so we decided to go over to the venue to see where it was and decide if we should park my car there and take a cab back to the hotel. Then we could just take a cab to the show and have the car there for me to drive us back. However as we drove by, we realized there were people already in line! The show didn't start until 8pm and the doors didn't even open until 7! I did remember then, that I'd been emailed that this concert had sold out. Yikes!!

We hurried back to the hotel and decided to take a taxi to and from instead of leaving my car there. We got ready, got some necessities at Target (blanket to sit on, sandwiches, water, etcetera) and caught a cab back to the venue. We got there at just about 3pm. I was texting my hubby to let him know we'd driven by earlier and seen people in line so we decided to get ready and head over to wait. Just as I'm putting up my phone, Loni elbows me in the side. I look up at her and she says, "Is that HIM?!"

OMG, it was him! Justin Furstenfeld of Blue October had come out to greet everyone in line. He was so very nice. He spoke with everyone, told us all he'd take as many pictures as we'd like and would sign everything "except boobies" because he has a 3 year old little girl and doesn't sign boobies. LOL ALREADY this concert was way better than last year and it was only 3pm! We'd planned on staying after because this band tends to hang out after the show and sign autographs and take pictures after too! I was ecstatic to get Justin's autograph and Loni and I got a picture with him too:

Of course I snapped another pic with my blackberry as he walked to the group behind us (but I was stupid and starstruck and couldn't think of anything to say to him when he was signing our tickets) and texted a pic to my husband. He immediately tried calling, but I didn't hear the phone. He then texted me and I heard the beep of that though. He wanted to know why we hadn't gotten a pic with him?! I called him back and he asked again and I said we did, but it was on my camera, not on my blackberry! My husband likes this band too. He has them on his iPod and when he runs at the gym, he cranks some of their heavier stuff to run to. Anyway, he told me that he likes them that much MORE now because he respects them for coming out to greet us all. Yeah, I was impressed too!

The concert was fabulous. Unfortunately, there were TWO opening acts this time. I have to admit The Stars of Track and Field were an excellent band and very good live (which you know you can't say for everyone) and I'll be purchasing some of their music for sure! The only reason I say this was unfortunate was because...well, remember that little back issue I talked about? After standing for HOURS, my back was killing me. I hadn't brought any painkillers to the show because I thought we might have alcoholic beverages and being the responsible person that I am, knew they don't mix well and refused to take both. However, since it was a sold out show and since we'd waited in line for so long, we were like 4 rows from the front and there was no way to get out and get drinks and get back to your spot. Even if you were legitimately there, people would think you were cutting and not let you back in. We saw it happen...and we saw people trying to shove in too (and security was called in and they got booted from the front area).

They played some of their older stuff which I was excited to hear. I was really hoping for A Quiet Mind, Balance Beam, Ugly Side, The Sound of Pulling Heaven Down, and Amazing. (You can hear some of these in my playlist on the blog.) I know they probably chose some of the songs like Independently Happy and HRSA because the concert had to do with mental health issues though and I loved hearing them!

About the time they hit Jump Rope (also a great song and Loni's kids' favorite song) I couldn't stand there anymore. I had to get to the bar for some water and find a place to sit. I knew I wouldn't be able to get back, so I pulled Loni close and yelled at her what I was doing and to stay and enjoy the show. I felt terrible because I felt like I was ruining her time. But honestly, this is my favorite band in the world, I was also ruining MY time and I was pissed off at myself! I ended up calling my DH because I was upset and worried about Loni not having a good time and upset because I had to leave in the middle of the show and get some water and sit on the stairs. He thought it was pretty cool though because he could hear them playing Hate Me in their encore. Luckily, I had left close to the end. Course I couldn't hear DH too well on the phone so we ended up hanging up (after he reassured me that Loni was up there this weekend to see me and she's "had my back"-so to speak...haha- for so many years, she'd probably be more concerned about my back hurting than missing the concert). Anyway, I realized the show was wrapping up, so I made my way back to the bar because that's where I told her I'd meet her. Of course it took awhile because there were so many people packed into this place. I finally saw her coming up the ramp and she waved at me so I knew she saw me to. She walked right up to me and said that she'd have come back to stay with me here except that she really wanted to catch something for me. (When the show is over, they throw out their guitar picks, towels, drums, set list papers, etcetera.) So she reaches into her pocket and pulls out a guitar pick. She'd actually caught one! Oh man, I nearly cried right there. This is how sweet my best friend is!

Sadly, I felt so bad, we chose not to stay to get autographs of the other bandmates and pictures, just get back to the hotel so I could get something in my stomach to take pain meds. I desperately wanted Ryan's autograph:

Can you say instrumental genius?! Yes, that's what he is. He's my musical hero. If I had one ounce of the talent this man has, I'd drop to my knees and thank the Good Lord for blessing me with such a gift. He plays keyboards, violin, mandolin, sings backup vocals and pretty much everything else that's needed. Of course Loni reassured me and said that last year we just came for the concert, this year, we came to the concert, met Justin Furstenfeld, got pics and autographs, so NEXT year we'll meet the rest of the band because it'll only keep getting better! And the next morning after having pain meds, and getting off my feet (10 hours total on our feet that day) and sleeping all night, I wanted to kick myself. WHY didn't we just walk back there and get autographs and pics while waiting for the cab (which took probably 20 minutes to arrive)?! We so could have done that. But I was saying that to myself when I felt totally fine, not when I was near tears in pain the night before and felt like I was walking on bloody stumps that were supposed to be my feet. (I kept telling Loni, "PLEASE remind me next year that I'm an idiot if I wear heels!" Of course I had them kicked off for most of the time we stood in line and took them off quite a lot in the theater. Who knows what kinds of things I was standing in. I do know it was dry at first, but it got wet later, but I could not make myself put on those shoes again.)

No stitching recently either. I'm so sick of touching fabric for 12+ hours Monday through Friday that the thought of touching it on weekends makes me nauseous. I can't wait until I'm done so I can get back to my hobby again! (Not that I'm complaining about the orders, it's just that I can't stand touching more fabric for my hobby when I'm doing it all day WAY more than I normally do.)

Other than renovating our boys' bathroom with our tax refund, that's about it that's going on here. I'll have a post about that showing the before, during, and after pics!

So tired!

2010-03-28T10:28:00.002-06:00

I find it pretty sad that I work so hard and so long during the week that when the weekend comes, I just want to sit and do nothing. I veg in front of the computer or tv. I rarely pick up any stitching. I have no desire to play any video games. I am just tired.

Just yesterday, I realized my kids are on Spring Break next week. We don't have a week off here like other schools do, we just have a long weekend around Easter. So it's an extra Friday and Monday off making it a 4 day weekend. However, it is extremely difficult to get work done when they're around and I have LOTS to do. Just fretting over how to make it all happen together. *sigh*

Yes, I've been away

2010-03-10T13:34:00.002-07:00

Well, not really AWAY away. Hubby came home overnight the night of the 29th of January. He got in about 11:30pm. January 30th was our 6 year wedding anniversary so that was the best gift ever!! I chose not to tell the boys when he was coming home. They knew it was soon, but the expected him really the next week. They kept telling us after midnight at first and then as they got closer, the time kept moving up and up. I was on the phone with my mom killing time that night shortly after the kids went to bed and my other line rang and it was one of the key spouses letting us know the time had been moved up about an hour. Yikes! Had to get ready and go!

It was so hard to hold in the tears seeing all these families there. I was surprised people had their kids up so late though! Especially little ones. People had signs, there were balloons and everything. I've only been to one return previously, and it was nothing like this, just everyone crowded into a small room and the returning troops walked down the middle of all of us which was roped off into an aisle. This time they had chairs set up, balloons everywhere, snacks, a HUGE tv with cartoons playing for all the kids, a bouncy castle, coloring book station, music playing, etcetera. They came over the loudspeakers every so often and gave us updates. I think the hardest part for me was when they said they just entered South Dakota air space. I was sitting there trying not to break down into hysterics LOL! Course he was one of the last ones off the plane, so it seemed like an eternal wait! It was really cool though because they let us go out onto the flight line. We had to wait while the commander greeted the plane and then all the sirens started going off and the bright lights and police lights going off and again had to suck up the tears! He found me before I found him. They had these bright lights shining on the building so all the people walking towards us had their faces in shadows. We didn't get home until well after 1am because we had to wait for bags to be unloaded and stuff.

The boys woke up the next morning and knew he was home because his jacket was laying on the dining room chair and one of his rucksacks was in the living room. Our oldest was waiting in the rocking chair that looks down the hallway to our bedroom. I think we were surprised that they didn't come knocking at the door, but they were so good and waited. Of course DH had a hard time sleeping anyway since his internal clock was all off. But he got up and saw our oldest and he just ran to his dad! He really, really missed him. Teenager or not, he really did miss his dad. The youngest, well he missed him, but he wasn't as vocal or expressive about it. Definitely different kids! DH was surprised at how much they'd grown during his deployment. I'd told him that our 13 year old was about as tall as I was now and he was pretty surprised to see us standing next to each other to REALLY see that.

DH had a couple of weeks off from work, which was wonderful. I got to spend lots of time with him which left little time for stitching, but it didn't matter! DH also got to start going to basketball practices and games which he was really excited about. Of course the oldest boy's teammates think his dad is "baller". He says that's a new word for "cool". I hope it really is and not just some slang for some bad word I'm just not catching because I'm out of the whole teen loop. LOL

DH went back to work on the 16th of Feb and I went back to work on the 17th. Been working like mad ever since clearing up as many orders as I can humanly do in a day. There were so many orders that it was a little shocking to me and I know things are shutting down and that's why, but wow. Just wow! I'm so lucky that everyone has been fairly patient so far. I'm thinking this week I will finally finish the first day's orders. That's how crazy orders were!

I did get my BFG back from Jill Rensel and she did yet another stunning job. The picture is kinda crappy because I snapped it real quick, but here it is:

Here's a closeup of the tiny little flowers she painted in all the indentations of the mat (excuse the flash):

She's wonderful, isn't she?

I have purchased some issues of Cross Stitch Collection for the Joan Elliot pieces. I got the January 2010 one which had the Lady and the Unicorn in it. I also picked up the September 2009 issue which had the Autumn Fairy in it. I've gotten the first one, but still waiting on the 2nd to come. I emailed them about it to see if it might have gotten lost in the mail since I placed the order December 30th. I also placed an order for JCS March/April 2009 for the Ink Circles Growth Rings chart. There's someone on the 123Stitch board doing it in blacks and grays and it is absolutely stunning! I'm thinking pretty hard about joining the HDF fiber of the month club to add to my silk thread stash too. Still haven't decided between premium and regular though. I'm leaning towards regular in case I stitch on higher counts and use some for backstitching.

That's about it for me otherwise. I haven't stitched on a single thing since DH came home. Working with fabrics all day doesn't make me very keen to touch more in the evenings or weekends on my off times. Hopefully the itch will come back soon though, because I truly miss it! I WANT to, but when I sit down to do it, it just doesn't happen. Maybe when I finish up all the orders...though that may be a couple months.

Updates

2010-01-26T09:26:00.002-07:00

Well, I have updates. I did decide to put my HAED into the rotation and chose to work on it last Friday. I took the day off from cleaning and happily stitched all day and most of Saturday too! Here it was the last time I showed it to you:

And here it is after stitching it over the weekend:

I'm almost done with the top row of pages on it, so I hope to get those done this week!

It was also ToT SAL day yesterday, so here she was as of last Monday:

Here she is after yesterday. I didn't get much done on her because I had to frog a bit:

This week I have several cleaning things on the agenda in preparation for hubby's return. The dogs are at the groomers this morning, so I have the house free of children and dogs to be able to get a really good vacuum in and then steam clean the upper floor! I did get my bedroom done yesterday. Just needed a few spot cleans since Murphy was sick a couple of weeks ago. So I need to do my great room, sitting area, and dining room. (What crazy person puts carpet in a dining room?! I can't wait to get the sitting area/dining room all redone in laminate flooring!)

I will also be mopping the kitchen and bathroom and cleaning up the bathroom. Tomorrow I'll tidy up desks (again) and the boys will vacuum downstairs in the "man cave" where the cats track all the litter in from the boxes in their bathroom. I still need to wipe down countertops, clean the stovetop, clean the coffee pot (since I don't drink coffee. It's looking pretty gross about now.), etcetera. So much to do! I'm so glad I gave myself enough time off to complete all of this AND still have some stitchy time! I really lost my stitching mojo after shutting down during December and it's finally creeping back, which is nice :)

Jill Rensel has my BFG and sent me an email over the weekend about the mats and frame she was looking at. I think it all looks lovely! Can't wait to see it when it's done!

Trick or Treat Fairy update

2010-01-20T19:34:00.003-07:00

Well, here's the last time I stitched on her back in October:

And here she is after a couple of weeks (Monday before last I didn't do much on her except finish teh dress):

Her skin kind of blends in, but it's all backstitched, so it'll look fine!

I sent my BFG off to Jill Rensel to be framed yesterday! I talked to her about the little amount of fabric on the one side and she said she'll make it work. I did serge some fabric on to the side for lacing purposes. I'm anxious to see what she'll do with it, but I know it'll take awhile. That's ok, the results are stunning and well worth the wait!

Still waiting on DH to come home. The last little bit is always the hardest. Trying to keep my days busy with stuff so I don't have much time to think about it. Tomorrow I'm having my hair dyed so it looks nice for when he comes home. I should have scheduled it for next week, but oh well. Then Friday through Monday, the kids will be off school (teachers have an in service day on Monday). Tuesday will be taking the dogs to the groomer and doing some vacuuming/steamcleaning. It'll be nice to get that done while the dogs AND kids are out of the house! Then I'll be cleaning up the bedroom and scrubbing the bathroom, and I've still got to scrub down the stovetop and kitchen counters, but I'm trying to wait until last for that because it will get dirty again quickly. I'm just doing some major cleans in each part of the house to kill time and to make it look good for the homecoming. There are a bunch of big boxes I need to get downstairs to store too.

Today I applied to the university where I will take nursing school. I've got all my official transcript requests filled out and will mail them all off tomorrow.

I think we've finally got my toe/knee pain sorted out, so I can begin my exercise routine again. I'm anxious to get back into doing all of that.

I've also got to figure out what to put in my rotation to replace BFG. I think I'd like to put a UFO in there. So I chose two to choose from. Either The Guide by Brigid Ashwood (HAED):

OR, I'll work on Teresa Wentzler's The Storyteller:

I stopped working on Storyteller because I decided to purchase a PAKO needle organizer for all the tweeding involved. I have that, so now I could put it to use. Except I might need more needles! LOL

Here's to hoping the days pass quickly!

Blackstone Fantasy Garden FINISHED!!

2010-01-17T11:30:00.002-07:00

I finished this late last night! It's stitched on 28ct Lugana Opal Sahara Flair.

Yay! My first finish of 2010!

Meanwhile, DH will be home soon which is great, but it's almost unbearable when you've waited so long and know you're going to see him soon. And then I go through this nasty insecure phase that I hate, but I can't really stop it.

The boys are both in basketball at school and the youngest's first game is on Tuesday, so that will be fun.

Colts won last night too, so they'll play division championship next weekend and hopefully go to the Superbowl! GO COLTS!! (I'm a hoosier, can't you tell? *grin*)

My youngest turned 12 today and it makes me feel old. Next year we'll have two teenagers. Wow! It seems just yesterday they were 5 and 7 with little round babyfaces and cheeks so cute you could pinch them!

That's about it for today! Lots of stuff to do this week. Hopefully I'll get enough done during the ToT SAL tomorrow that I can post a pic of that! Meanwhile, I'm trying to decide which UFO to put in BFG's place now. I'm waffling between HAED's The Guide and TW's Storyteller! I asked on the mb for help deciding because it's so hard!

Hope to post new pics soon!

Newet Pic of Blackstone Fantasy Garden

2010-01-16T08:49:00.002-07:00

I'm ALLLLLLMOST there!!

Last pic from 1/4/10:

Newest pic from 1/11/10:

I've since stitched the rest of the little bit inside the green and gotten the bottom left corner square done and am working on the last 3 colors!! I hope I can get it done soon!

Just a quickie update

2010-01-07T20:03:00.003-07:00

I've been working on BFG and trying to get it knocked out. The last pic taken was on the 31st of December and it looked like this:

Most recent pic (taken on the 4th of January):

Still trying hard to get it done! I've gotten one of those inside green things filled in as of last night and am trying to knock out the last but getting tired of hte same old color. Maybe I should switch to some of the blocks tonight so I can feel better about getting the inside color complete!

I also changed all my Finishes on the right side into links so you can see the pictures! (I was bored and that sounded fun...lol)

Happy New Year's!

2010-01-01T00:38:00.002-07:00

Well, I didn't quite make my goal of finishing up my Blackstone Fantasy Garden, but it shouldn't take much longer! Here it was on Monday the 28th:

Here it was tonight about 10 minutes before midnight:

The brown is all done, everything is filled in inside the brown, so that color is done. I just finished all the green shortly before midnight, so I can put that color away. Now I just need to fill that in and do all the little designs in those boxes! Apparently this will be my first finish of the year. Now to figure out how to add some fabric for finishing. I'm kicking myself for not making the fabby big enough!

Here are my handsome guys on NYE looking cool as always:

Happy New Year's everyone!

Can I finish it?!

2009-12-30T19:58:00.004-07:00

I'm so close to finishing Blackstone Fantasy Garden and I'd love to have one last finish by the end of the year! This is what it looked like on October 26, 2009 (before I lost my stitching mojo for months):

Here is what it looked like as of Monday afternoon:

Since then I've finished all the dark brown and am working on finishing the color in the middle which isn't that much further to go. Then I'll map out the rest of the dark green and fill that in and I'll be left with stitching the squares. I'm hoping to get going right now to try to finish some of this up! I do have to run out to base tomorrow to pick up a prescription but nothing else planned the rest of the day. Wish me luck!!

Also, I was able to snag a Cross Stitch Collection #178 with Joan Elliot's Winter Fairy in it today at Borders! She's so pretty and I'd bet she'll look fab on Hocus Pocus! I was also able to order a back issue for her Autumn Fairy too! Maybe Lilypad for her? I'm desperately searching out the other 2 so I can complete the 4 fairies! Oh and have ou seen the gorgeous Maiden & Unicorn coming in next month's issue? Divine!! I've ordered it in as well!

Yucky Friday!

2009-12-19T08:11:00.003-07:00

This is how my crappy Friday went.

Since I had all the orders done I could get done, I packaged everything up, changed all the messages (email, voicemail, website), and shut everything down. I re-hid Christmas gifts because my neighbor and I will be going to see a movie either today or tomorrow and I know how I was at the boys' age, I'd go look for gifts too if I were left alone. Then I talked to DH briefly (connection was really bad) and then went off to run errands.

First I had to head to the post office where I was able to drop off packages, pick up a book of stamps and mail out the rest of my Christmas cards. While there, I checked my box, and I checked the boys' po box (the one their biological mother has access too so she can mail things. She hadn't yet said she was mailing anything, but while I'm there, I figured I'd check it. Well, my key wouldn't open it. So I went back to the PO Box office to make sure I had the correct number. I hadn't opened it in so long since she hadn't sent anything for them. The lady takes about 15 minutes to find out if I'm using the correct box because she's having an allergy attack she says and then she talked on the phone during looking me up and I don't know what else. Then she says, "Well, you did used to own 3914, but the invoice wasn't paid, so we closed it." I said, "What?!" She said, "We put the invoice in the box on the 1st and when it hadn't been paid by the 30th of November, we shut it down. I said, "But you used to mail those invoices to me at home!" She said (and I kid you not, this is her quote), "Oh, we stopped doing that because some people lead 'mysterious lives' and their husbands and wives don't know about their po box and what they're doing with it and so when we sent the invoices to their house, the spouse would find out and then they'd all come in and go Jerry Springer in the office here." I was quite upset that they never notified me of the change in their policy. I mean, I'm sure most people check their boxes with regularity, but I didn't waste my time when I knew nothing was there! Meanwhile, I feel terrible, because the boys' mother had recently asked for their address again (you see? She hadn't sent anything in so long, she forgot too!) and I had given her the one I thought was available. So since I hadn't received an email, I was hoping that she hadn't sent anything. The lady asked me if I wanted to go out and stand in line (AGAIN, because I'd just waited there interminably to drop off packages and get stamps) and pay a fee and get the box reopened, or if I just wanted to close it and have mail forwarded to me. I chose the latter. I was hoping if something was already on the way, it would be forwarded to me instead. I knew when I came home that my first action would be to email her and let her know.

So, I was mad about that, but headed on. Went grocery shopping at Sam's Club. I had to laugh when I noticed so many things in my shopping cart were pizza flavored. Bagel Bites, Hot Pockets, Pizza Rolls, DiGiorno Pizzas, Red Baron mini pizzas. But hey, I do have teenagers and they are off of school for the next couple of weeks! Sam's Club went without a hitch. Then I went across the street to Wal-mart so I could pick up one last thing for my youngest and grab some big bows for their desks (because there's no way I'm wrapping those suckers). You know how you walk out the door and if you have something in your cart that's too big to fit in a bag, they checke your receipt? Well the guy checked my receipt and I, still being upset about the post office thing and tired from pushing around that huge cart full of groceries at Sam's Club, apparently looked tired. The guy said to me, "You look tired." I said, "I am." He said, "Well, I hope you're able to relax some today." I must have looked really upset or something, it was surprising to hear a total stranger comment on it. I walked outside and the wind blew up so hard that it whipped the bag with the bows out of my shopping cart and sent them flying. Ugh. I had to chase them down and by the time I got to them it had stopped traffic in the parking lot and the bows and bag were all wet and muddy.

So after that, off I went to Best Buy to purchase a vacuum cleaner and a computer. (Oh, just a few days after my vacuum cleaner crapped out, my oldest son's computer did as well.) So I knew the vacuum cleaner I wanted to get and then I was trying to decide which computer I wanted and after spending too much time there (remember, I still had all those groceries in my car and while it was cold, it was still above freezing yesterday). After finally having picked everything out, I headed up to pay. I get to the checkout line and get all the warranties and stuff and then they tell me my card is declined. Now I'm truly mortified, but this is my DEBIT card, so I know the money is in there! The guy said maybe he punched in the wrong last 4, so he tried it again, no go. So I go out to the car and call the bank and make sure I have enough in my checking account and go back in to try it again. It STILL won't let me do it. So I tell them that I have groceries in the car, kids due home from school, and as soon as I go home and unload and get the kids, I'll be back after calling or stopping by my bank to figure out the problem. Of course they're all looking at me like I'm one of those people who don't manage their money correctly and am lying about why my card is being declined. I'm truly humiliated because I worked retail, I know people don't tend to believe those who get declined. So on my way home, I call my bank. I say to them, "I'm being declined at a retail store and need to know why when I know there's plenty of money in my account." She's "hmm"ing and "huh"ing and and she says, "That's really strange." I mean, SHE can see there's plenty in there. So then she says, "Have you spent anything else this morning?" Well yeah, I was at the post office, wal-mart, Sam's Club (which was the big one with about a month's worth of groceries), and now Best Buy. She said, "Oh, well that's why." I said, "What's why?" She says that the debit cards have a daily limit of $1500. Huh? I've never run into that problem before, so I guess I wasn't aware of that fact, but it's a bit upsetting to me as in "I have money but you won't let me spend it?" I guess it's helpful for fraud purposes, but it's still silly that at Christmastime, they'd make me go to the bank and withdraw the funds in cash if I'm going to make big purchases that day. So I went home, unloaded, waited for the kids (and emailed their mother about the post office box fiasco) and went back and got the stuff. The same register guy was there next to me and he goes, "Did you sort it all out?" I said, "Yeah, apparently there's a daily limit on this bank's debit cards." Then my register person started talking about how the daily limit on her card is $500 and that she spends more than that on groceries. Of course I was telling my mom all of this last night because after all that, I just wanted to go home and curl up on my bed and cry. Mom said, "You should have just written a check!" I said, "Well I could have, but I didn't even think about it and I think they'd be concerned if they know it's my debit card and it's being declined and I wanted to write a check out of the same account!" (I only write checks for bills anymore, I rarely write them unless a place won't take a debit card for some reason.)

I got an email last night from the boys' biological mother and she was upset because she'd just sat down to let me know the package should have been there, when she tracked it only to see "Addressee Unknown" listed on it and went to email me to find out what the heck was wrong. So now she's upset because she said she was trying to make the mail deadline that day and she doesn't even know if she put her "frigging address on the envelope"...but somehow manages to say in the next sentence that she's not mad at me or doesn't blame me. (But why would you say words like that if you weren't angry?) I had apologized to her in the original email and I had told the boys what happened and apologized to them if it somehow made her package late. I figured at worst, they'd get sent back to her and she'd have to reship them and they may not make it by Christmas. But it isn't MY fault she didn't put her address on the damn envelope!

I mean, yeah, I probably should have checked the box, but if you know there's nothing in there, why bother? And for God's sakes, my husband is deployed. I'm so stressed that sometimes I can't remember things I should be doing on a daily basis, let alone something I should be doing twice a year! Not only that, but as you all know, November was quite a hellish month for me with spending the holiday alone, people saying they'd come visit, then not coming, and then my uncle's death. I'm sorry, but I had other things to worry about rather than this stupid PO Box we've had so that she doesn't know our home address. (She was very unstable when we first got sole custody of the boys and we were trying to protect them so that she wouldn't just show up one day and they'd hop in the car with her and take off. Now I'm still not sure of her mental status, particularly on certain days when she emails strange things, or says she's done things that she hasn't, but the boys are teenagers and are better able to protect themselves.) Besides, DH has said recently that we should just let her have the home address. After all, if she really wanted to look at our house, then she'll know how much better he's doing without her. His words, not mine. So screw it, I'm not spending more on her to reopen a PO Box for another year. My only concern is that I gave it to her while DH is deployed, but I don't think she much cares anyway. She hasn't seen the boys in nearly 2 years.

She also whined a lot about how if the cards don't come back to her, she can't recoup the loss of the gift cards etcetera. Well, I understand it was my mistake about the Po Box being shut down, but it's NOT my mistake about not putting her return address on it. That's most likely because she STILL hasn't given us her address since she made a surprise move to another state in September. Who cares though, I wouldn't go near her house if someone paid me a million dollars. The state is still garnishing her wages for child support, so it's not like I care where she is as long as we're getting the money. (Though with over $6,000 still owed to us and her only paying a mere $45 extra a month, she'll be paying for a LOOOOOOOONG time. Thank God she had a federal job so the garnishment didn't cease when she moved.)

Anyway, I'm just upset and pissed about the whole damn day. I asked the boys last night if we could make TODAY start our winter vacation and not yesterday because I didn't want it to start off that crappy!

On another note, I did finish my mom's pillow for Christmas:

That's the only stitching I've done since end of October (hers and my dad's pillow). I did try to pick up a needle Thursday night, but only got a few rows in before I was done. My stitching mojo is gone. I'm hoping it'll come back while I'm off and am not working late hours trying to get fabrics done. Wish me luck!

On the deployment front, we're almost to month 5 of the deployment, which means DH will be home sometime soon. (And by soon, I mean sooner than he would if it was just month 2. It's still over a month away :( ) One day while he was talking to me he said, "Honey when I get off that plane, I don't know if I'll be saying 'I love you' to you or 'Baby, please don't cry!' to you!" LOL, it's pretty sad when he knows how stressed I am that the floodgates will probably open when he comes home! But at that point, nothing will matter anymore, he'll be HOME!

That's about all here. I'm going to go try to start off my winter vacation on a more positive note!

November SUCKED!

2009-12-06T21:40:00.003-07:00

It's been a month since I last posted and November was just a terrible month. I'm hoping December proves much better.

I was in kind of a funk during the second week of November and I just let myself be in it for awhile. I knew I was caught up at work, so it wasn't a problem. I finally pulled myself up, dusted myself off, and got going the next week at work. I really pushed myself, but the only thing I was really looking forward to was the New Moon release that next week!

I think the thing that was most horrible for me was that I knew I was going to have to get through Thanksgiving alone this time. The last two deployments I've been through, I had my mom around and this time I don't. My aunt and uncle tried coming up for Thanksgiving, but they were scrambling to find a dogsitter at the last minute and realized no one was available (and all the kennels had been taking deposits since September, so nothing was open there either). My dad knew I was kinda down so he called to tell me he had the day after off and he could probably make it. I was pretty excited since he's never been to my house! But then he changed his plans to include his wife and she couldn't stay as long so then it was going to be less than 24 hours which didn't really make any sense. I told him to wait until he had more time, but I never heard anything definitively from him until the morning of Thanksgiving, which was a real bummer.

Then late on Wednesday evening (the 18th), I received an email from my dad letting me know that my uncle, who is only probably about 10 years older than I am, had chosen to stop his dialysis treatments. He'd lost the ability to walk several years before and was losing his hearing and his doctors said his sight was next to go. I know he'd been on dialysis for over 15 years (with 2 failed kidney transplants in the past as well), and I just don't think the human body is meant to deal with that for so long. He had a lot of pain. My dad said he was going in the next morning to sign the paperwork to terminate treatment. He didn't know much else at the time.

Apparently when he got in there to do the paperwork, the doctor pointed out that since Thanksgiving was coming up, if he could just do 2 more treatments, he'd get through the holiday and it wouldn't be a bad day for my family to remember. So he agreed to that. His last treatment was Tuesday the 24th. I called him on Monday, the 23rd to talk to him. He doesn't do well on days of dialysis so I knew to call him on a non-dialysis day. I was afraid to talk to him, but there were things I wanted to say. My dad said he'd felt guilty about making the decision and because I'd been so emotional lately about other things, I was afraid while talking to him I would cry and that would make him feel worse. That phone call was probably one of the hardest things I've done in my life. I didn't talk to him very long, but I told him that I supported his decision and he knows what is best for him and if this was what he wanted, I stood behind him 100% but that I wanted him to know that I loved him and I would miss him. I was doing fine until the last part and then I broke down. He was ok with it though. He told me it was very comforting that everyone had been so understanding and it really meant a lot to him that the family was supporting his decision. He said it made things easier on him to make the decision and be at peace with it. He told me they had a hospice team set up that would come give him morphine injections to make things as painless as possible and that he would slip into a coma before he passed on. The hospice team would also be there for my grandparents (who he lives with) afterwards to help when necessary. It almost seemed like he was comforting ME with telling me that it would be painless and easy and Grandma and Grandpa would be taken care of.

After I hung up the phone, I literally sobbed for awhile. Since he lives so far away and I don't see him every day, it was easy to just compartmentalize those emotions and set them aside for later. Besides, I would probably have until mid December now to talk to him again if I wanted. So I moved on as best I could. I mean, hubby is deployed, I have 2 kids to think about, work to do, plenty to keep me busy.

As Thanksgiving rolled closer, I had to go on the assumption that my dad just wasn't coming. I was so down about it, I just ordered our Thanksgiving meal from the grocery store instead of going all out and cooking. The one good thing about that was that it left me time to do some of the baking I usually do on Thanksgiving. My hubby usually does all the cooking (on Thanksgiving AND on every other day) and I do all the baking. Anyway, it was just a so-so day. The boys and I ended up eating by noon and heading to a movie around 1:30. They saw Old Dogs which they loved and I hit New Moon for the 3rd time.

Friday I did a little Black Friday shopping, trying to get myself in the spirit of Christmas. I'm just not feeling it this year. It's just one more thing to get past until my husband comes home. If it were just me, I'd do NONE of this. But since the boys are around, I do it all for them. I ended up sleeping until about noon on Black Friday since I was up at 4am and back by nearly 7am. I got up briefly to talk to Dh at about 9:30 but then went back to sleep. Usually we do Christmas decorations on Friday after Thanksgiving, but I couldn't bring myself to do it.

Saturday I finally did though. I had the kids help me get all the Halloween stuff repacked (it'd been sitting downstairs overflowing the bin since they mostly just threw everything in there) and put up and then drug out all the Christmas stuff. I'm not putting up lights outside, I just put up the fake wreath on the door, got the tree up and the stockings on the mantle and I called it done.

Saturday night I slept pretty hard. But Sunday morning my mom called and woke me up at 9am and said, "Have you heard the news?" I'm like "What news?" She said, "Your uncle David passed away at 6:30am this morning." *SHOCK* Total and complete SHOCK. I thought I had a couple of weeks! I thought he'd go into a coma first?! WHAT?! I mean, I knew it was coming eventually but I was surprised at how soon. I was actually surprised that my dad didn't call me. It is his brother after all (and my parents are divorced and live in separate states). Apparently my other uncle (married to my aunt who lives there near my uncle and grandparents) called to leave a message for my mom while she was in church letting her know.

I got up and checked my cell phone to see if my dad had called and he hadn't, but I had an email from him. He was too emotional to call me this morning. He was the same as me. We all knew it was coming, but we never expected it so soon and he did NOT slip into a coma before he passed. I wonder if he got through Thanksgiving and go through my dad's birthday (which happened to be Saturday) and decided he made it through all the important dates and he was simply done now. I was told that my grandma was sitting beside him and he was breathing a little awkwardly and that she told him she had to go to the bathroom and would be right back and when she came back, he was already gone. I wonder if he waited for that moment too so she didn't have to watch him pass on.

Of course my husband couldn't get a decent connection on the computer (it's always like that on the weekends because I think more people are talking to their families) and he was so upset that he couldn't talk to me about it. He wanted me to call, but after that one time where I got hung up on, I wasn't going to get into full on emotional mode only to have them interrupt my call. No, thank you.

My uncle, who is a jokester, gave me one last laugh though. You could never be in his presence without laughing within the first 5 minutes of talking to him. My mom had talked to him I think Wednesday or Thursday before he died (while he was my dad's youngest brother, my mom was married to my dad for nearly 30 years, so she still treated him like a brother and they talked often). She talked to him about burial versus cremation. Of course he was always joking about it, so she told him he should be cremated and they could get a Pittsburgh Steelers urn for him. We're talking Pittsburgh Steelers fan for life here! He laughed. I don't think he even realized you could do something like that. She told him "Or NASCAR." He said, "Oh no, definitely Pittsburgh Steelers." She had told me about that conversation on Friday night because she thought it was funny. Well, when I got my dad's email that Sunday morning after I'd already hung up with my mom, the last line in the email said, "He chose to be cremated and his only request was that he have a Pittsburgh Steelers urn which we found for him." Seriously? I didn't realize a person could laugh and cry at the same time but that's exactly what I did. Then I had to immediately call my mom and tell her and she did the same thing, sobbed and laughed together. She didn't realize he'd taken it so seriously, but she thought it was funny that he did and it felt like just another way he made us laugh.

I couldn't stand to be home that day, so the boys and I went to see The Blind Side. (I'm real good at escapism when I need it) That was a wonderful movie by the way! We even had dinner out and I just stayed out of the house as long as I could. My mom called me at dinner that night though and asked if we should go in on a plant or something for the service. I told her I didn't really want to do that, I'd prefer instead to donate to the National Kidney Foundation in his memory. So that's what I did. I think he'd have appreciated that.

Monday I spent the day baking. I needed to get my chex mix/unbaked cookies done to mail off to my husband and my brother. Packages needed to be mailed to APO addresses by December 4th in order to arrive by Christmas. So I've basically tried keeping myself busy every day since then.

Today marks one week since he's been gone. It will hit me hardest when I go to visit and he's not there. I'll be wondering why he isn't rolling in in his wheelchair to crack some joke. He also loved looking at my stitching! He wasn't shy about it, even though he was a guy. I remember working on my Grimm, Glum, and Gloom out in Indiana once and he wanted to see it and he kept running his fingers over the clouds and the house and the moon and asking all sorts of questions about it. He was vastly interested in my business as well and was constantly asking me how I did things. He ran a t-shirt shop where they did some embroidery and screen printing images onto shirts. It wasn't going as well as he'd like I think, and he always wanted to know what I did differently. He was an amazing man and he will be greatly missed. The good thing is, now my Aunt Susan who passed away very unexpectedly 4 years ago, has someone with her now. Out of all the aunts and uncles I had, those two were extremely close-knit and I think they're just hanging out together now.

I'm very glad November is over and I'm hoping December turns out much better. As of December 1st, DH was able to say, "I'll be home next month!" Which while it may be true now, that could change and probably will change quite often before he actually comes home. I don't ever hold my breath having been through a couple of these before and I try not to be excited until he has boots on the ground in Bangor and calls me! Then he's not so far away anymore!

I haven't felt much like stitching, though I was able to get in a little bit last week. I purchased pillow kits from Pine Mountain Designs as gifts for my dad and my mom. My dad's I finished up and here's what it looks like:

It's really cute! I hope to finish my mom's this week so I can ship them out. I've got my husband's goodie package shipped off. My brother's goodie package plus cards for his birthday and Christmas has been shipped off. My in-laws gift was taken to the UPS Store earlier this week and shipped off. It should arrive tomorrow in fact! So if I get my mom's shipped out and my dad's shipped out, I believe my family is pretty much done! I'll still get Christmas cards out to extended family members and have to include the boys' school pics too! Then I have my moderators and get the boys' stuff all picked up and wrapped and Christmas will be one huge CHECK off my list! I can't wait until January *whimper*

And for my uncle.... GO STEELERS!! Love you!

/rant on

2009-11-06T15:39:00.000-07:00

Do you know what I hate the VERY most about deployments? When you feel you've just had enough for the day and need to let it all out! Unfortunately your husband is thousands of miles away on a completely different time schedule, but luckily, it's late at night and you know he's at work near a phone, so you jot off a quick email that says "Important-Please read" so you know he'll look at it and beg him to see if there's any way you can call him and talk to him AWAY from the other 3 guys in his office. You feel relieved because he writes you back immediately and says "call me at this number, I'm headed there now". So you call (which you have to do through the base operator), and you begin at the beginning of your day with the first thing that minorly irritated you and by the time you work up to the end of your day where you're just so frustrated you want to cry and you're holding back the tears (ok, not really holding them back anymore), the base operator gets on the line and says, "Break, Break, please limit your call." So you try to wrap it up quickly (while still trying NOT to sob like an idiot) and then the operator hangs up your line before you can even tell your husband you love him.

It SUCKS!

In the military, when your spouse is deployed, you are allowed two 15 minute phone calls a week (WHICH you have to share with your kids of course). These are called "Hearts Apart Morale Calls". They're free because you use a phone line between the bases. Now, DH and I talk nearly every morning (for me) during the week (and the kids talk to him on the weekends or when they have days off of school) on the computer, so I have only used this call twice. Once when the connection on the computer was just terrible, and once when I had another really bad day. But sometimes, you just need to call and vent to the person who understands you better than any other person in the entire world and that moment you NEED to vent doesn't always fall in the 45 minutes we set aside to talk in the mornings. I've NEVER had an operator hang up on me in all the deployments! And I know that many times, if it's slow, they'll let you talk and not break in, but apparently tonight, they were so bored, timing a call was vitally important to their staying awake or something and even though it was obvious I was upset when he broke into the call (He had to say BREAK BREAK BREAK a few times before I realized someone else was on the line because I was in full on whine mode), he had to go and hang up on us! I'm so mad. I think they should put all the calls you don't make into a bank and then if it's not busy, you can juse use those extra minutes up!

/rant off

(Thanks for letting me vent about that) (cross posted on the message board)

Yeah I'm bored, but lookie what I got!

2009-11-02T20:34:00.002-07:00

I received this in the mail today! I can't wait to stitch it! The bottom fabric on the pillow is a bit different than shown in this pic, but I'll take a picture when it's all done! I bought 4 more of them too! Two are for me and one is a Christmas gift for my mom and one a Christmas gift for my dad and his family! I can't wait to get them as well and get started!

Twi-hard

2009-11-02T20:09:00.003-07:00

Have I mentioned it? I'm a Twi-hard. I love all things Twilight. My ~~obsession~~ love for this series began last fall. The books had been recommended to me before by a friend of mine who is a librarian who knew the types of books I liked. I had heard of them, of course, but had heard they were teeny bopper books, so I just kind of let the recommendation go in one ear and out the other. Then I saw the trailer for the movie. Yeah, I'm a sucker for chick flicks! Who isn't? (By the way, The Proposal is one of my favorites right now!!) But I'm a big reader and I know how the books are typically ALWAYS better than the movies, right? So the day that Twilight was released in theaters, I went to the bookstore to buy the book. I began reading it at 2pm that afternoon and was done by midnight that night. Thanks to DH cooking and rounding up the kids, I ~~neglected my family~~was ensconced in Forks, WA the rest of the evening!) The next day, I dragged my entire family to see the movie (including my two almost teenaged boys who moaned and groaned because all the girls at school loved the books/movies too)! On the way home from the theater, I bought books 3 and 4 (I'd picked up 1 and 2 the first day).

Saturday I read New Moon beginning right when I got home from the theater until sometime the next day. That one was a tougher read to me because of the heartbreak involved! Let me remind you that I'm a big reader and I've loved reading since I was little. In New Moon, there's a part that just shocked me so much more than any other book I've read. For those of you that read it, it was pages 85-92. Reading what led up to that moment and then those pages.... I turned to my husband and dropped the book to my lap and exclaimed, "Oh my God!" Of course he wanted to know what was going on and since he hadn't read it, didn't really get the shock value. It was truly amazing! (I'm tired and I can't come up with an eloquent way of putting the emotions I felt during this book!)

Eclipse and Breaking Dawn followed that week and I had the series done in about 5 days. I have to admit I'm glad I didn't read it until after Breaking Dawn came out. I would have died waiting for it to be released! I have since read this series multiple times and I never get tired of it. That's really something for me, because usually I will read something again, but it will be at least a year before I'll pick it up again. This book, I could immediately pick up and start back over and STILL be just as enthralled as the very first time.

The movies make them even more special and it's like you can still live in this universe for a little bit longer! I saw this shirt the other day that said, "Yes I'm a Mom, Yes I read Twilight, Of Course I love Edward (don't tell my husband)!" Ha! I might have to get it!

Anyway, I've just finished up Twilight and New Moon again for the umpteenth time since November 2008 (Really when rereading New Moon previously I would read the beginning and skip a lot of the middle and go to the end because it just kills me! So technically this is only the 2nd time I've fully reread New Moon). I'm pausing on Eclipse to read Evermore by Alyson Noel. I know they've filmed Eclipse but it will be next June before it comes out so I've got awhile. I'll probably finish Eclipse and Breaking Dawn again before the year is out and start over again before Eclipse comes out next year!

Ok, so this is my explanation for the New Moon Widget in the sidebar! *grin* I love Twilight and I admit it!

My Deployment List

2009-11-02T19:57:00.003-07:00

So when my husband deployed, I didn't look at it in terms of days or weeks or months. I look at it in terms of things I have to do before he gets back. This is what my list looked like when he left:

School Shopping
Beginning of School
My oldest's Birthday
My Mom's Birthday
Halloween
My best friend's birthday
My mother in law's birthday
Thanksgiving
My dad's birthday
School lets out
My brother's birthday
Christmas
New Year's
Back to school
youngest's birthday
and other holidays and important dates depending on extensions and exact dates which are as of yet unknown, but you get the idea.

Anyway, here is what the above list looks like now:
~~School Shopping~~
~~Beginning of School~~
~~My oldest's Birthday~~
~~My Mom's Birthday~~
~~Halloween~~
~~My best friend's birthday~~
~~My mother in law's birthday~~ (this hasn't yet passed, but I've already bought the gift and it's been received)
Thanksgiving
~~My dad's birthday~~ (same as above)
School lets out for winter break
My brother's birthday
Christmas
New Year's
Back to school
Youngest's birthday
etcetera...

I don't look at these things as dates of significance sadly. This year, they are things to get past to get closer to DH coming home.

Blackstone Fantasy Garden Progress

2009-10-30T20:50:00.003-06:00

Well, I stitched on Blackstone Fantasy Garden by Ink Circles the week before this past one. I got quite a bit done on it! Here it was last time:

Here it is after week before last:

This past week was Grateful Nation week, but it was also my vacation and I didn't get much stitched on it. I might finish a star before the weekend is over. At least it's progress I guess! Next week is Summer Fairy Spirit by Passione Ricamo!

ToT SAL 10/26

2009-10-30T20:47:00.002-06:00

Well, here was my ToT Fairy last time:

Here she is after this past Monday stitching on her!:

She finally got some legs, feet, and a bit of body! I hope this Monday I can finish her arms and face too!

ToT SAL 10/19

2009-10-20T16:53:00.002-06:00

So, here was my ToT fairy on 10/5:

I didn't take one on 10/12 because I'd only got a bit more of the ruffles along her skirt done and didn't have much time to stitch that day.

Here she is after yesterday, 10/19:

Pic is a little blurry, but I just snapped it real quick for progress pic purposes. I didn't have much time yesterday to stitch either, but I'm excited for next Monday so I can add her legs and maybe move up to more of her body!

Midnight Enchanter

2009-10-13T12:21:00.002-06:00

Here's my WIP of Midnight Enchanter from last time:

And here he is after stitching an extra week on him:

As you can see, I finally finished out his cloak (I was tired of the kreinik, but last week, I had an "ok" feeling about kreinik so I knocked it out while I was feeling decent about it. Ok, that sounds strange, but you guys know what I mean, right?) and some of his staff, and got more of his robe done!

I have a new ToT pic to post, but it's not much more, since I worked through a lot of my weekend!

ToT SAL Monday 10/5

2009-10-07T22:56:00.003-06:00

Well, Monday was our ToT Fairy SAL again! Here she was last time (on Lugana OPal Sahara Flair):

And here she is after Monday's stitching:

YIKES!

2009-10-02T20:04:00.003-06:00

How terrible am I at posting? In my defense, EF had a sale at the beginning of August and I am just TODAY catching up finally! I keep thinking I was crazy, what was I thinking? But here was my thought process. Hey, DH is deployed, the kids are going back to school, I can get even MORE stuff done now, why not have a sale to keep myself busy?

Welllll, this was the biggest sale in our history. It was great because some of our customers went and posted on various message boards and there was such an influx of orders! As soon as I realized just how many were coming in, I posted a notice on the website saying to please allow additional time for orders. Of course those who ordered in the first couple of days got theirs pretty quickly, but the ones who ordered on the last day waited about 3 1/2 weeks! I HATE being that far behind and I felt so bad every time a customer would email me asking about the status of their order. I know most of them aren't upset, they're just curious, and most of them know my hubby is deployed and I'm busy with two boys who are in sports etc. But it is me personally that puts the pressure on myself to get things done. I swear there was a point where I couldn't see my way out! But finally last week I saw the light at the end of the tunnel. It took a long time, but I finally made it!

So, that's how work life is going!

Military life? This will be short and quick: hubby is deployed. We're over the 2 month mark, so that's good! The boys and I are anxiously awaiting his return, but he will still miss all of the holidays :(

Stitchy life is ok. Of course when I get this busy at work, I tend not to stitch as much. It's hard to touch fabrics all day and then touch them even more at night when I'm off work! So I go weeks sometimes without stitching. I do have a couple of updates though!

Here was my Blackstone Fantasy Garden (by Ink Circles, stitched on EF Lugana Opal Sahara Flair) last time I worked on it:

Here it is as of September 6th:

Here was my A Grateful Nation (by Gleond Place, stitched on EF Jobelan Raindrop Flair) last time I worked on it:

Here it is as of September 13th:

I started work on Passione Ricamo's Summer Fairy (stitched on EF Jobelan Raindrop Mystique):

And I'm involved in a Stitch A Long on the EF message board doing Trick or Treat fairy by Nora Corbett (in the CS&N Sep 2008 issue, stitched on Lugana Opal Sahara Flair):

Not much done on it. I started it and then had to frog it and start over again, so this is just one Monday's worth of stitching! I'll get some more done this Monday.

This week is my Wizard week (Midnight Enchanter), and even though I don't have much done on him, I'll show the pitiful amount I did stitch on him when the week's over!

Home life is just busy. Since DH is gone, I am running around like a chicken with my head cut off. A typical day goes like this: I get up at 6:30 every morning and get the kids off to school and then I get to work, iron fabrics, package, ship orders, then proceed to cut, serge, and dye as long as I can. Usually around 3:30-4pm I have to stop because I've got to go pick up my youngest at cross country practice. Then I come back home and attempt to make dinner and continue dyeing at the same time. (This usually doesn't work well and usually it's the dinner that suffers. The boys have actually picked up 2 days a week of cooking so they can have dinner when THEY want dinner, which is usually right at 5pm.) Sometimes they get tired of waiting for me to cook (which I usually start closer to 5:45 or 6) and they'll just fix themselves something and then I usually go without because I'm so tired, I can't even imagine cooking something just for me. The youngest is usually in bed by 8-8:30 and the oldest follows right behind him, not because he has to, but because he's tired. I give them 30 minutes to settle down then I lock up and go to bed. But then I get there and usually can't sleep well because my mind is racing 100miles per minute figuring out my schedule for tomorrow and making sure I don't forget anything. I typically drift off after midnight.

That's the typical day. This doesn't include days with sports physicals, other doctor's appointments, dentist appointments, eye appointments, cross country meets, or anything else that can come up.

Boy do I miss my hubby! He would come home from work around the time the boys are getting out of practice so he picks them up on the way home. He also loves to cook, so he typically takes care of all of that and I can keep right on trucking along with no interruptions. Deployments definitely make you appreciate your spouse a hell of a lot!

I have stress reactions too. I forget things. I hereby admit to the world, I am a control freak. My husband knows it and allows it and puts up with it because he knows that's....LOL...as my oldest son would say, "...that's how I roll." So I keep track of everyone's schedules in the house. Even though I may not take someone to an appointment or pick up from practices, I keep track of it all to remind my husband of dates and times. Since he's been gone, I forget the strangest things. Usually I'm on top of it all, but not when he's gone. I forgot to sign my mother's birthday card...can you believe that? THIS year I remembered to call her at least. The last time he deployed, I even forgot to call her on her birthday. That was the first time that's ever happened! THIS year, I put it on my calendar because I could tell I was having problems remembering things so when I logged on to my email that morning, it came up *bling* Mom's Bday TODAY!!!. Whew! Saved by the bell! I will also walk out of the house to do something and get halfway there and realize I forgot to bring something with me that I needed to do! One day I was driving to pick up my youngest from school and I went right past the turn to the school and kept going. It's really, really bad.

BUT, the end to much stress is in sight for work since I'm going to be all caught up after I ship out in the morning! I will have to continue working hard over the next couple of weeks to get several shop orders finished up and shipped out, but I have great shops that are completely understanding! I am working hard towards the last week in October where I think I'll just take the week off. I'll start the week off at the local spa where I will FINALLY use the 30 minutes massage Gift Certificate that my husband bought me last year for Christmas. I think I'll make it an hour and add a pedicure too! Spoil myself! Then I'll spend the week reading and stitching to my heart's content! I definitely need a recharge of the ole batteries before the holiday season starts!

Well, signing off for now!

Fair Entries 2009

2009-08-30T21:32:00.003-06:00

How could I have forgotten?! I picked up my fair entries today! Here's my Letter L by Nora Corbett stitched on 28ct Jobelan Mystical Flair (Enchanted Fabrics). She won 1st Place:

And here's my big winner! Moon Fairy Spirit by Passione Ricamo stitched on Stormy Night Flair (Enchanted Fabrics) and framed by Jill Rensel. She won 1st Place, Best in Class, AND Best in Show!:

I'm excited to have them back home and hanging up! Now to work on next year's entries :)

Don't you hate those projects...

2009-08-30T21:19:00.002-06:00

...you know the ones I mean, right? The ones that come up in your rotation and you don't really feel like working on them, so you find excuses the entire time you're supposed to be working on them?! Yeah, I just had 2 of those back to back. I had Skeleton Crew which is killing me for some reason. I think it's that Glow in the Dark thread I chose to use. I did get probably a couple of stripes on the boat done and that was it. Then I have the snowman piece and I couldn't find my threads for it. It literally sat on the coffee table the whole week until I could pull threads. The thing is, I never did because I really didn't want to work on it! So today I was supposed to start my Blackstone Fantasy Garden and I actually pulled it out early yesterday and stitched on it. I should have a great WIP pic to show by the end of the week!

The boys will be back in school on Tuesday! YAY!!! I know they're excited as well. The youngest has Cross Country practice the first day, so I'm going to have to be picking up from practices and such now. I'm greatful that my hubby will be back home when they're BOTH doing basketball and track. I'll probably have to figure out something for a couple of weeks and then he'll be home to help! It should be fun to figure my work schedule around when I have to go pick up kids and somehow cram dinner in there too...NOT! LOL, we'll get through it though!

DH is doing great and I'm still able to talk to him every morning. There was one week there where his internet was out and we didn't get to talk, but things have been fine since then. It was around the end of July, so we'll see if the end of August happens the same way!

We went to a Back 2 School Bingo on base last week and the grand prize was a laptop. They let only the children play for the laptop. I couldn't believe it when my youngest son won it! I mean, the whole night we played for $25 GCs to Walmart and the oldest kept grumping about "we're not winning anything!" I told him we were saving it up for the laptop and sure enough! My youngest couldn't believe it. He had one number left and his heart was pounding so hard and his face was all red and everything. He was really excited when his number was called! It's an Acer which isn't my favorite brand, but it had 320GB hard drive and 3GB RAM so he was happy with it. He gave up his old Dell which really isn't that old. I'm thinking of using it somehow for business.

Well, that's the update for now. I'll have a WIP Pic at the end of the week!

One month nearly done!

2009-08-16T22:41:00.003-06:00

Well, we're nearly at the one month mark of the deployment! We got back from Colorado this evening and we all had a great time. Only two more weekends left until school starts! Next weekend our big plan is the fair. I'll have two submissions this time around, my Moon Fairy Spirit and my Letter L. That is, if the framers ever get the mat in! They called me last week and said they ordered it since it hadn't come in with the other backordered mats and they thought it would be in on Friday making it ready Saturday. However, I didn't receive a phone call. I'll call tomorrow to see what's going on!

I'm ready to switch my rotation again. Here was Midnight Enchanter last time:

And here it is after working on it last week:

You can see I finished out the DMC on his cloak (but I skipped the kreiniks because they were driving me a little nuts). Then I started working on the trim down the front of his robe. Didn't get too much done, but any little bit is good!

This week is Skeleton Crew. I'm stuck on this one too. I've replaced the white with glow in the dark threads and I hate working with the stuff, so I get sick of doing all those ghostly sails. So I'm going to work on the boat some this week! Wish me luck!

Will this week ever end?

2009-08-12T19:02:00.002-06:00

It seems like it is lasting FOREVER!! Yesterday most of the day was spent on base doing the "mass physical" they do for kids needing sports physicals for school. By the time I got home, it was 3:30 in the afternoon with little time left to do any actual work! I hate it when that happens! I was so tired last night that I just laid in bed and read until I got tired enough to drift off to sleep.

Today was a busy day at work. I'm playing catch up from yesterday. Trying to get my delights finished up and shipped out early so that I can leave on Friday at noon to go to my aunt and uncle's house for the weekend. It's about a 5-6 hour drive and the boys are really excited to go. I'm excited to have other adults around to talk to! Adult conversation has been sorely missed since DH has been deployed!

I have been working on my Midnight Enchanter this week, so after I come back from my aunt and uncle's house, I'll have an updated WIP pic! I'm hoping to get a lot of his robe done this week below his waist. I had to stop stitching with kreinik in his cape because it was driving me crazy.

As soon as the boys are done speaking with their biological mother on the phone, I'm going to go pop in a movie and get back to him!

yawn Sooooo tired!

2009-08-07T20:18:00.003-06:00

It's been a long week! I finally got to talk to DH again on Wednesday. The wifi there was out for about a week. He said he heard that's common around the first of the month. Guess we'll see if it happens again that way!

I need to find something to replace my Pirate's Creed. It was nice having that quick little finish! Maybe I should look for another quick one. Or you know, 3 others to replace the one I finished? I think that's only fair!

Today my oldest's friend came over, so now there are 3 11-13 year old boys in the house. Not only that, but my neighbor called to ask if I could watch her little one (she'll be 2 in November). She always comes over to visit my doggies and kitties, and the neighbor wanted to go out to eat with her hubby, so they were trying to find someone to watch her for their spontanteous outing. Luckily she keeps herself busy chasing down my animals to pound on. I am trying to teach her "nice pet"! We did go to the park for a bit too. She left about an hour ago and the youngest is playing Wii and the oldest and his friend are watching Get Smart and having popcorn. I'm THIS close to calling it a day and going to my room! If only the day were over yet...

Guess I'll go hunt up something new to start. Hopefully that'll keep my interest for awhile!

A little finish!

2009-08-04T19:24:00.003-06:00

I finished this cutie today. It's called Pirate's Creed by Sue Hillis and I stitched it on a linen Champagne Cocktail Flair by Enchanted Fabrics.

It was a really quick stitch. I started it on Saturday, August 1st and finished it just a few minutes ago!

Because I finished something, that should mean I can add about 3 things to my rotation, right? *grin*

My New Car!

2009-08-01T15:26:00.006-06:00

So, I did it! I'm so excited. I think of every excuse I can to go somewhere!

Ok, so here's the scoop. Though I've wanted a Wrangler for my entire driving existence, I couldn't make myself go through with giving money to a company that took a government bailout. Yeah, I know, it would help the average american worker and they aren't to blame for Chrysler or GMC's lack of financial sense, however, the people who ARE to blame are the ones who pocket most of the money, so I just couldn't do it. (Not to mention that their salesmen at the dealership totally sucked here!)

So this past Sunday I did some hard core research. I believe I sat at my computer for about 6 hours studying Ford Escapes and their competition (Nissa Rogue, Mazda CX-7, VW Tiguaron, etcetera). I compared vehicles with options and Ford still came out on top. Then I went to this fabulous place called Edmunds.com. GO THERE if you're thinking of buying a vehicle. I was able to enter all the options on the vehicle type and find out approximately what the dealership paid the automaker for the car. This is called the Invoice Price (and is not the "sticker price", or the MSRP of the vehicle). Usually the difference between the MSRP and the Invoice is the amount you have to play with when negotiating with a salesman. Surprisingly that's only about $3,000 difference in the vehicle I wanted. Ok, so according to two different places, they paid about $23,513 to the automaker. I decided that I would NOT pay over $24,000 for this vehicle and if they asked me to, I'd walk away and could just wait until later.

Now I have to say here that we could afford more than this, I mean we probably paid about $27k or so for the truck, but I decided on a number I wanted to pay based on the invoice price and decided that I would stick to that. There was also a deal for Fords that you could get up to $2500 Cash Rebate OR 0% APR. Now lots of times, 0% APR in the teensy tiny print is only for 36 or 48 months. Always check this.

Here is another thing I learned while studying up everything about negotiating vehicle price. Negotiation does NOT stop at the price you're willing to pay. If you're financing your vehicle through the dealership, they submit all their paperwork back to the finance and insurance office. These people run your credit report. They then put it out there for many companies to bid on your business. This is how you typically find the best APR. According to Edmunds.com the dealership is not obliged to tell you what that best APR is and can, in fact, add a couple of percentages to that rate to make even MORE profit!!! Can you believe that?! The bastards!!

So, here is what I decided to do. Since I wasn't sure about the 0% APR, I decided to get pre-approved through my bank for a decent APR. This way I knew the dealership couldn't fleece me. Monday morning, I called the dealership and spoke to my salesman (who is a complete sweetheart by the way. He is absolutely NON-pushy!) and asked him about the 2500 or 0% APR. He told me that it is 0% APR up to 60 months with approved credit or if I wanted to stretch the payments to 72, they could go to 1.9%. No thanks! I'd prefer not to be paying longer! I knew with our credit scores we'd be approved for the 0% APR, so I was ecstatic! I set up an appointment for a test drive, armed with information regarding invoice prices and such.

I didn't know how this would go. The last time I negotiated the price on a vehicle, I had to negotiate not only what we were paying on the truck, but how much they were giving us on our trade in. What a pain! Also my husband was with me and he is any salesperson's wet dream. He was test driving the truck with a shit eating grin on his face and practically bouncing in the seat while the salesman sat in the back practically warming his hands together while $ signs rolled through his eyeballs. This is NOT conducive to negotiations!!

I left my kids at home, and went by myself (since hubby is deployed anyway). I test drove the vehicle and was loving it. It's an SUV but drives like a car. I asked several questions about the features as well as discussed with him why they changed to drum brakes from disc brakes on this model. (This wasn't really important to me, it was more that I was letting him know I had done my research. I had also read that it isn't uncommon for FWD vehicles to have front discs and rear drum brakes.) All a part of my sneaky plan (LOL...I have to laugh because I'm not really sneaky). So when we were done, I asked him if we could talk numbers. He didn't push me at all about "SO, now that you've test driven, are you ready to buy it?" He didn't at all. He's very personable and we talked a lot about things OTHER than cars. Maybe that's part of THEIR sneaky plan, who knows? LOL

So we went inside and I ask him what the best price he can give me is. He draws this sheet of paper from his desk and writes the sticker price of the vehicle at the top. (I had read about salesmen's tactics on this website that I studied.) He then starts to get up to go to the back. Don't you love how they do this? It's like they have to clear it with some "higher power" that is unseen. This allows them to never be the bad guy, it's their boss that's the bad guy. So before he walks off, I say to him, "Are we really going to go back and forth about this?" He says, "Naaaa....well not too much anyway." I said, "This is the point where I tell you that I know the invoice price of this vehicle." He turned and sat back down and said, "Ok, show me what you have." I pulled out two invoice prices from two different companies and showed him the one was from Edmunds.com. He said, "Oh I like them, they're very reliable and I use them quite often." He says, "Ok, are you willing to pay $500 above invoice?" I said, "Depending on what that is..." He writes on this paper, "Lori is willing to pay $500 above invoice" and asks me to sign it. I said, "Well, what is the invoice price? I am not signing my name to this to agree to pay $500 above invoice when I don't know exactly what that is yet." He said, "oh, I see." and proceeds to go get the invoice information on this vehicle.

Now, once I test drove the vehicle, I realized the invoice could actually be higher than what I'd been quoted online because I didn't realize there was a cargo rack on top and I hadn't added that as one of the options when I got the invoice price. So when he returned, sure enough, the invoice showed as $23,887 (remember, I was quoted around $23,513 for it as the invoice price). So, this meant that $500 above was $24,287. Remember, I said I didn't want to go above $24k?? Ugh. So now what, I'm getting 0% APR for 60 months, so technically this will not charge me any extra APR and it's only a few hundred bucks. Do I cave? This is all running through my head along with HOW MUCH I WANT THIS CAR!! What comes out of my mouth is "I'm very disappointed as I really did not want to go above $24,000. That was really the top number I wanted to pay. He says that the 287 was only going to add a few bucks a month in the scheme of things. I told him that I realized that, but based on the price of the vehicle, I had set a number, so it wasn't about the monthly payments to me. It was the principle of the thing, you know? Yeah...I caved. DAMNIT! So I sighed and said, "Ok, fine, I'll purchase it for $24,287." He beamed and shook my hand etcetera and went back to write out the numbers. Then he comes back and says, "I just want you to look at this. I have you agreeing to pay $24,287. Then down here, I've given you a $500 military appreciation cash rebate, putting the actual cost at $23,887. I think rays of sunlight must have come out of me because I just had the biggest smile and told him, "Ohhhhh, you got me under $24,0000!!!"

See, technically, I don't think he was supposed to do that. The original deal was "Up to $2500 cash rebate OR 0% APR" and I had already chosen 0% APR. However, he knew just from talking to me that we were military and my husband was deployed. I think he either A) took pity on me or B) wanted to say thank you in some way. I was absolutely excited. I paid invoice price on the car! I said something to him about, "I know you probably get a percent commission based on how much profit you make for the dealership..." He told me no and that this company had changed awhile back to a flat fee based on each vehicle sold. This makes it nice because the salesman (or woman, sorry) is not pushing to get you to pay more money because it affects his income. This guy knew he was getting paid this fee just because he sold me the car, period, end of story.

Because I had a power of attorney and my husband was not present, it seemed to take forever because they had to fax my PoA into the ford company to get it approved by someone higher up. I'm not sure how long this took, but the salesman and I just chit chatted until he was needed by someone else. I was fine with that, because I know he needs to make money too. The guy spent about 4 hours with me in the end. He did walk out and help a couple of other people but always came back to see how I was doing, asked if he could get me anything while I was waiting etcetera. I was just fine because I had my book and was happy waiting until everything was finished.

They finally called me back to sign all the papers and of course they try to add the extras in at that point. I did cave and get the Resist All treatment. I have leather seats and with two boys plus 5 pets, this guarantees for 6 years that there will be no stain, tear, rip, puncture, or even normal wear show on these seats. At first I turned it down and then he droppe the price by $250 so I took it. I guess the dealership did get extra from me after all, but it is worth it to me to have one less thing to worry about I guess.

Once all the paperwork was signed and I made my downpayment, my salesman walked me out to my car (they had to pull it into a garage because it started storming horribly badly and I thought it was going to hail, so they wanted to make sure it was fine while the papers were being drawn up! LOL) and he taught me how to use the voice sync and sync my phone up to the car and everything. He rode with me to get gas and paid for it (they always do that in new cars, give you the first tank of gas). Because he knew my husband was deployed and that I was the only adult, I made a comment about getting the new car home and having my neighbor have to bring me back. He told me no, he'd drive my truck home if I could drop him back off, so sure enough that's what we did!

We had some payments left on the truck and I didn't really want to pay two vehicle payments for about 6 months, so they also financed the rest of the truck on my loan. They charged me about $95 to do that, but when you think of the APR I saved paying it off over the next 6 months, it was well worth it. It's now financed at 0% APR with the rest of everything. They just sent me a check for the rest of the truck payment and I deposited it and sent the payoff check to them yesterday! WOO!

I told my husband that you can't really beat a day like that! I bought the vehicle at invoice price, completely paid off our truck, and our monthly payments are less than what I was paying on the truck! Financially it was a good deal all around!

So now, here are pics!

Side view:

Front view:

Back view:

I can just pop the window up to throw a few bags inside if I want:

Or I can pop the whole thing. Look at all that room! (back seats lay down too for more space):

Here is the view across the back seats (with my L fairy sitting there waiting to be taken to the framers LOL). I love the nice big doors in the back for the required trips to Mt. Rushmore and Deadwood and such when family comes:

Here is the view across the front seats. You can see the center console:

Here's a pic of the dash. My car speaks to me. It has a woman's voice. My mom thinks you should be able to choose and I could have Hugh Jackman's voice instead! The black space at the top of the pic is where I can see what song I'm listening to or who is calling me on my phone or what station I'm on etcetera. There are still so many buttons I haven't had time to play with yet!:

Here's my steering wheel. You can see my cruise control buttons on the left and on the right are all the buttons that control my voice sync or radio! I can raise/lower volume, seek stations or next tracks on my iPod, answer my phone and hang it up, and choose to switch to something else like from my phone to my iPod or something:

The cool thing is by the gearshift there's this little button and it controls the "ambient lighting". At night, the inside can glow and there are 7 colors to choose from. The boys and I were flipping through one night. There's purple, pink, red, turquoise, deep blue. I can't remember the other two. Must be greens and oranges or something. So my outside color is a "Light Sage" (green is one of my favorites) and I can make my inside glow purple (my other favorite color). How cool is that?

I love it so much! The boys were so excited, my youngest says, "Oh man, i want to MARRY this car!" So my oldest tries to top him and says, "Oh yeah? Well I want to have babies with it!" LOL

Come to think of it, I haven't driven it today...maybe it's time to go somewhere! *GRIN*

Uh-oh

2009-07-26T13:51:00.001-06:00

I think DH being gone is really, really bad. I have more time to update my stitchy wish list! EEK!

Saturday

2009-07-25T21:23:00.003-06:00

Post-Deployment Day #5

Hey the first week is almost over and it's not even been too bad!

WORK LIFE
I took a mental health day on Tuesday since that was the day after the deployment. I worked all day on Wednesday and then on Thursday I had this nasty headache that not even aspirin would get rid of. I think it was because of the lack of sleep the night before. I believe I last looked at the clock after 3am and I tossed and turned all night and then at 8:36am the doorbell rang. I forgot I'd scheduled the Gas Meter guy to come and replace the meter. Oops. Lack of sleep = bad day. So I popped the aspirin like candy and tried to remain in dark, quiet places. Not an easy task with two boys full of energy! Friday I busted butt and worked about 10 hours. I got the Delights all finished up and finished all orders except about 4. I don't think my inbox has been that empty since I first started! LOL Right after I came back from vacation I was back over 100 items in my inbox and I'm back down to 20! (That includes orders and inquiries and such that I need to follow up on.) That's really good because taxes are due out by the end of next week and I have to sit down and focus on them this week! I HATE accounting!

HOME LIFE
Not much going on, just keeping busy. The boys have been having their friends over quite often during the day. Friday night we went to military appreciation night at one of the pools in town. We all got in for a can of food. They had drawings for deployed families and we actually won tickets to miniature golf! That was pretty exciting! Something else we can do one week. Five weeks until school start and then the boys will be busy with school, homework, and sports so it won't be so bad. I'm trying to spread out the sleepovers and fun trips for the next five weeks to keep them busy and looking forward to things!

The deployment hasn't been that bad either. DH took his laptop and we've been able to video chat every day since he's been there. It really makes getting through deployment so much easier to handle than previous ones! I also ordered my deployment watch that I read about on the military spouse blog. I can keep track of DH's time and our time so that I know when we can call! The military provides us with two 15 minute phone calls per week and he gets one back to us. This will be really great for the fall when the kids to go school. Right now we video chat around 11am, so when the kids are in school, they can use those phone calls to talk to him before school so they don't miss out too much!

I found a new book series to read. If you're into fantasy books, this is turning out to be a great one! Until August 10th, you can read the first book in the trilogy at that website for free!

Today I was bored. The big joke is that the last time DH deployed I bought a house so he's dreading what big ticket item I'll buy this time. I told him I'd buy my jeep. He promised me that if he made rank, I could buy the Jeep Wrangler I've wanted since I was 16. He made rank two years ago. Since I do the finances in our family, I really like having only one vehicle payment. However, our truck is almost paid off so it's my turn again!! I really fought with myself about it though. Did I really want to buy a jeep now that Chrysler took a government bailout and it was sold off to Italy?! But man, I've wanted a Jeep for sooooooo long! Also the gas mileage would really suck. DH drives my old car to work. It gets about 36mpg for him. We aren't trading it in because the boys will be driving in a few years, so we figured they could have it. He can drive it until then, but a jeep gets terrible gas mileage too. When he has to hand the car over to the boys, shouldn't I get a vehicle that he can get better gas mileage than the truck in? I did have a backup vehicle that I had in mind over the jeep, Just in case.

Today the boys and I decided to mosey on over to the jeep dealership to see what was what. BOY were we disappointed! They had a whopping TWO jeep wranglers on the lot. One was fully loaded on the lot and cost over 32k (if I remember right). The other was in the showroom and had the "Dakota Edition" package added to it which they charge about 3 grand extra for. No thanks, and who needs a GPS? I mean if I was off roading, I guess, but I'm not going to. I really don't need all the extras and I don't really want to pay over 30k for a vehicle right now either. Plus gas mileage? Ha! It was like 15 city and 18 highway or some ridiculous number like that. The salesmen there seemed few and far between and very uninterested in my patronage. One guy even said "Here's a key to the one on a lot, go have a look" and walked away. One finally informed me that since the Chrysler plant had to shut down for a couple of months during the bankruptcy proceedings, they were backordered on many of their vehicles and they MIGHT get more Wranglers in about 3-4 weeks. This salesman even told me he was embarrassed by the lack of vehicles on their lot. Yeah, I was embarrassed for them too.

So we left there and on the way home passed the backup vehicle dealership. Now, my hubby owns a Ford F-150 and adores it. Ford also didn't take a government bailout. They're looking better and better! I drive into the Ford dealership and immediately a salesman comes out to ask how I'm doing and can he help me with anything. This is what I'd expect at a dealership. I explain our situation and how I'm not real sure what I'm looking for as my first choice is a Jeep Wrangler, but I guess I'd like to stick in the SUV category and I had been looking at the Ford Escape (this is my backup vehicle). So he says he'll show me what he has. They had my color! Light Sage. I love green. *sigh* So, he shows me this beautiful vehicle that has PLENTY of space behind the seats if I want to shop for groceries (and of course the seats fold down for even more room). The doors to the back are nice and wide and there's plenty of leg room in the backseat. The boys jumped right in and were in heaven. The front was the best though. The sticker on the window shows city average 20mpg and highway 28mpg...not too shabby for an SUV and WAY better than the Jeep! It comes with satellite radio (6 months free and then you have to pay after that) and voice sync. Now I have to admit this is the coolest invention in a car! The guy plugs in his flash drive into the dash (yes there is a USB port in the car! LOL) and the car begins speaking with him. She says, "Hello and welcome to voice sync. Application, please?" He says, "Access USB" She says, "Accessing USB" He says, "Play artist, Alan Jackson" She says "Playing Artist, Alan Jackson" and boom, music comes over the radio. This is all by the touch of ONE button on the steering wheel titled "Media". How cool is that? You can also request to have a particular song played as well. I can plug my iPod into the dash and play any song off of it by asking my car to play it! (Is it a bad thing that I'm already calling it MY car?!) The other cool thing about it is that it uses blue tooth technology to tap into your cell phone and so you can say "Call Home" and it will use your cell phone to call home. No fumbling with your cell phone while driving or anything, it just calls! There is no additional charge for these things either. Also, he said if the car detects a crash with airbag deployments or the emergency engine shutoff thing, it will use your cell phone to call the nearest 911 dispatcher and have someone talk to you or come out. Now, I've heard of OnStar before, and my Grandma has it, but she has to pay for it. This is so cool because it uses your own cell phone capabilities and you already pay for that so you don't pay for this! Talk about safety! It also has the neatest ambient lighting that makes the interior glow. You can choose from 7 different colors. LOL It was so cool. I think I have a new favorite vehicle...don't tell Jeep. *grin*

STITCH LIFE
Absolutely nothing here. I haven't stitched since before DH deployed. I fully intend to do some later this weekend though!

That's about it for an update from me! Now I'm off to either read or begin stitching something!

I Can Has Cheeseburger

2009-07-23T12:43:00.003-06:00

Have you ever seen this website? I can look at it for hours and crack up. Just now I was laughing so hard I actually had tears rolling down my face! Here are some of my favorites today:

see more Lolcats and funny pictures

see more Lolcats and funny pictures

see more Lolcats and funny pictures

see more Lolcats and funny pictures

see more Lolcats and funny pictures

see more Lolcats and funny pictures

see more Lolcats and funny pictures

AND MY ABSOLUTE FAVORITE:

see more Lolcats and funny pictures

Moon Fairy Spirit framed by Jill Rensel

2009-07-22T19:30:00.002-06:00

I received an email from Jill Rensel that she had my Moon Fairy Spirit framed! She's sending her back home tomorrow! Here she is all matted and framed!

Isn't she to die for? I can't WAIT to have her back home! I probably won't be able to stop staring at her!

I can't believe it!

2009-07-21T19:43:00.003-06:00

The year is already halfway over! Well, this is an update post vacation and such!

WORK LIFE
Of course we were closed in June because we went to Indiana on vacation. I had shut down the shopping cart while I was gone. The shopping cart charges at time of purchase and I didn't want to have people waiting on me to get back to begin processing their orders. It causes me a lot of stress!

Due to my husband's deployment, I did get behind a bit on some Delights this month, but thankfully I have wonderful customers that were understanding and for that I'm very grateful.

I believe EF will soon be twittering too! We'll see how that goes!

HOME LIFE
Our vacation to Indiana was great. Every time we go, I can't wait for DH to retire so we can move back home. We were both raised with family all around and our kids don't really know that feeling. It's sad! The older I get, the more I just want to come home. (And it sure would be nice to be able to vacation elsewhere!)

I got to go to Lake Michigan for the first time ever! I mean, I've seen it many times, but I've never actually been. The kids really enjoyed it!

We knew when we got back from vacation that DH would be deploying soon. We had three short weeks when we got back to spend time with him before he left. He deployed late last night. It was hard to see the boys crying and expressing how long they felt the deployment would be. I am really anxious for school to start because they will be busy with school and homework and sports and the days will begin flying by! We made plans to do some things with friends and sleepovers and such to make the last six weeks of summer go by as quick as possible!

STITCH LIFE
Well, there are many updates to be made since I haven't posted in well over a month. One update is that I sent my completed Moon Fairy Spirit off to Jill Rensel to be framed and I spoke with her today and she will be shipping her home to me tomorrow! She'll send me an email with some preview pictures and I can't wait to see them! I'll be sure to show them when I get them, but for now, here's a picture of my finished Moon Fairy Spirit by Passione Ricamo (stitched on 28ct Monaco Stormy Night Flair-Enchanted Fabrics) since there's a Red X in the previous post:

When I went to Indiana, I took a Nora Corbett Letter "L" with me. I hadn't done any of the letters, but they are so cute, so I decided to try one out! I stitched her on 28ct Jobelan Mystical Flair (Enchanted Fabrics) and here she is finished:

I did stitch a bit more on my Blackstone Fantasy Garden by Ink Circles. This is stitched on 28ct Lugana Opal Sahara Flair (Enchanted Fabrics). Here it is last time:

Here it is after I stitched on it awhile when we first got back:

It's not much, but it is a bit more! I feel close to being finished with this one and it's stitch up so nicely!

This last update is A Grateful Nation by Glendon Place. I'm stitching this for my grandpa. Last time, I had finished the left side of the piece:

I didn't have much time for stitching over the last few weeks, but I did do the left half of the bottom graphic. Just a repeat of this graphic on the right side and the bottom will be finished:

I'm also a part of the Secret Sister exchange on our EF Message board. My Secret Sister has been sending me the LK Boo Club and I can't wait to start those too! I think I'll be slipping in Shepherd's Bush Halloween Night though first. I actually have a piece of Champagne Cocktail already dyed up that I can use for it. I really hate dyeing fabric for myself, so I usually try to pick something that's already done that's just laying around anyway! I'll show pics when I get a chance!

For now, I'm signing off and going to stitch some!

It's been awhile!

2009-06-07T10:48:00.003-06:00

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

2008-12-22T10:53:00.002-07:00

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!

2008-12-20T22:32:00.004-07:00

*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?

2008-12-10T12:34:00.002-07:00

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!

2008-10-06T21:51:00.002-06:00

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

2008-09-24T18:25:00.002-06:00

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

2008-09-22T17:31:00.007-06:00

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!

Almost September

2008-08-30T10:52:00.003-06:00

Well, I've been really, REALLY bad about updating this month. Things have been soooo busy! So, let's get started!

Military:
DH had a first day off in a long, LONG time last Friday (Aug 22). It was his birthday pass (from early July). It was nice because he took the boys and I was able to work in peace that day! It was also nice having him home! He gave up shirt duty in mid August, but had to stay in the office until the 21st. He got everything done that he needed to get finished that week and requested to take his bday pass. Yesterday, (Friday the 29th) was an ACC family day and of course Monday is Labor Day so they all get off the 4 day weekend. Then he proceeded to put in for 2 weeks of leave started September 2nd. He's so excited to have some leave scheduled! Of course I figure he'll be playing World of Warcraft mostly, however he did get some things done I wanted on Friday! He has so much leave built up, I asked him why he didn't take more, but apparently they have an exercise later the week he gets back. Oh well!

He thinks he'll probably deploy next summer since he ended up not going this time around. We're going to try to schedule a leave for June of next year to go visit the fam before he takes off.

HOME:
The kids behavior has been deplorable. I think they're excited for school to start, but being boys, they don't want to admit they're excited for school to start, so they tell me they HATE that school's going to start soon and meanwhile snipe at each other ALL THE TIME. They're also going through yet another lying phase which is my biggest pet peeve. We caught them getting up in the middle of the night playing Wii, so that was taken away. And then we caught them watching TV in the middle of the night so that was unplugged and the cable removed. Then last Friday, DH found the cable unwound from where he'd put it and plugged back in, so they got in trouble AGAIN for watching it. The TV has now been moved away from plugs and cable (and the thing weighs like 300lbs so they won't be able to move it back). It's like they don't care that they're in trouble, so they just keep doing what they're doing! Sheesh! I have been on a countdown until school starts since 2 weeks ago! Only 2 more days of them home and at each other's throats before peace reigns again in the house!

The oldest will be in middle school this year, so we had to do lots of "meet the teacher" nights and learning how to open his locker and how his schedule is at school, and then an orientation and then paying for activities, lunches, and PE uniforms. They've raised school lunches this year so that it'll be approximately $50a month! That's crazy! They used to eat for less than I could feed them at home and now it's gone up beyond that. We may have to start packing lunches because I think I can give them 2 PB&J sandwiches plus a banana or apple or orange and fill their water bottles for less than $2.15!

The youngest is in his last year of elementary school. I think he was more excited about middle school than the oldest since he went with us to all of the orientations and stuff. He can't wait for next year! Of course both are about the same size, so everyone thought they were both going to middle school. (I get asked alot of they're twins.)

I can't believe how much the cost of fuel affects EVERYTHING! We spent almost $150 on school supplies. Then we spent another $180 on socks, underwear, shoes for the youngest, 2 pairs of jeans per boy, a nice button up shirt (with a cool Tshirt underneath) for each boy for school pictures (this is our tradition), and a couple of other itmes for school. Then we got home and realized that the oldest's school shoes from last year (which he said were still ok) were raggedy. So I went online and spent another $200 on school shoes for him, new socks (which he said he didn't need, but I've seen the holes in his socks and made him start throwing them out), and then we needed shoes for basketball. We also needed a duffel bag for gym. and there were some cute shirts on sale for $3 each so I bought them each one. Not to mention the $50 per child for lunch money and the $20 for activities for the oldest to play basketball, and the PE uniforms which only cost us $36 but that's because they only had shorts available right now and he has gym 3 times a week, so 3 pairs of shorts. We have to wait for the shirts to come in and that will be $13x3 so another $39.

I think I added it all up and it was about $700. Not to mention that the oldest's 12th birthday is coming up here shortly. Oh and did I mention their mother is STILL not paying child support? (You can see the reason I'm so annoyed about the money issues now. Here comes the rant, so prepare yourselves.) It's been 7 months this year she hasn't paid. We had told her that if she can't afford to pay child support, she does not need to send the boys ANYTHING. (She was enjoying buying them all sorts of cool stuff and not paying child support. Such as a Nintendo DS for the youngest's birthday, a pirate ship cake that cost $50, lots of games, etcetera...oh and have you heard the story about how the boys got their Nintendo SPs thrown away because they continually played them at night during the school year last year? Yeah, but she got him another handheld game system. Go figure. She also sent them 8boxes of girl scout cookies another time and Wii games in Easter baskets, etcetera...but NO child support!) We finally told her we were through with this and that she was NOT to send them another thing until she could afford to pay for things they NEEDED. So we received an email in July saing we should begin seeing child support now and that she was purchasing the oldest a Nintendo DS system for HIS birthday in September plus games, etcetera. We did receive one payment. Then in August we received nothing again and I'm sure this trend will continue until Christmas where she'll pay yet another month just so she can send the boys $400 worth of gifts. (She does this every year...we call it her "guilt" that she spends so much money.)

DH finally called DCS yesterday and she said she'd referred the case to the state where the bio mom lives and she had to give them 90 days before she could begin garnishing wages. We wondered if maybe she received something from the state she lives in around July and that's why she paid (though I think it was also so she could send an expensive gift). Thankfully the bitch is gone to Germany for over a month for her job for all of September, so we don't have to deal with anything but stupid emails. I'm sure she'll buy souvenirs too and think that once her wages are garnished, she'll be allowed to send all of that. However, I'm half thinking she'll probably just quit her job when her wages get garnished so she doesn't have to pay. We had so many problems last year with her paying, we had to send her email reminders every month since last April and finally I said "She's a big girl, we need to stop doing that and report her." So we informed her we'd be reporting her if she couldn't pay on time. After that we never saw anything until July.

Honestly, if she doesn't want to pay, we'd be more than happy to have her sign a termination of parental rights form and she can have contact with them if THEY choose after they're 18. Our oldest remembers alot of the things she did in the past and has told us he doesn't know if he wants a relationship with her. The youngest was 5 when everything happened, so he still sees everything through rose colored glasses. In June, the oldest blew up at her and let her have it during their phone calls on the phone. He had talked to us one night about why his father had let the things happen back then and we had to explain that his dad was deployed and that's when everything went down. His dad and I were only dating at the time and I had to get power of attorney from their mother and drive 9 hours to get both boys and take them back home with me until their father got home. It makes me sick what happened and I'm thankful every day that WE have these kids.

She only gets supervised visitations and that was supposed to last the first 3 years and we'd decide what was to happen after that. Well September will be 5 years since I've had them both with me. She asked to have unsupervised visitations when the 3 years was up. We requested that if she wanted to see them unsupervised that she work at being more responsible with payments AND come out more than once or twice per year to see them. (She originally had a job that was allowing her to come out the last week of EVERY month, but she doesn't keep jobs very well. She went through 3 or so before she got this one she's had for about 2 years now.) So she said she would work on coming out more often but that it may just be for long weekends instead of a week at the end of the month. We said that was fine, but that the boys needed to see her more often so they could learn to trust her again. (We were thinking more of the oldest who remembers more of what happened.) So this started last summer. She came out in November for a long weekend and then said she was coming out either end of January or beginning of February. She did come out then for a long weekend. Then she told us and the boys she'd be out in April again, but she never showed up for that visit and hasn't since then. The youngest questioned her in early June if she'd be coming out this summer and she said she didn't know. Then in early June DH was put on the list to deploy and we had to let her know if she was coming to visit, it needed to be like NOW. She couldn't and was pissed off that we'd given her short notice. (She's prior military and works for a branch of the military now so she should KNOW this is how it works sometimes! Besides, we were told that due to him accepting the shirt position, he would NOT be going.) Anyway, as soon as he came off the list and it looked like he was staying off the list, we let her know we didn't think he was going and he was back to alternate status. However, she had lots of TDYs for her job and now this month long trip to Germany. I guess she won't be back til the beginning of October. So, who knows when the boys will see her again this year...probably around Christmas which will make it...oh yeah, twice a year again. We also let her know that since she hasn't been paying child support, we didn't see this as a personal responsibility on her part and would not be letting the unsupervised visitations begin until all of this happened like we requested (and she agreed to).

Then the visitation center we used closed down at the end of June. So now we have to drive to another city (and you know how gas prices are) to have the visitations happen. I've called once to talk to the lady, but I have written out a list of questions I also need to ask her so I need to call again. Did I also tell you that the judge requested that WE pay half her gas to come see the kids?! Oh yeah, that pissed me off too. SHE is the one who moved away because DSS was doing an investigation on her and when I got the kids, they dropped the investigation. She moved within 3 weeks of me getting both the kids. Why should we have to pay her gas if SHE chose to move away?!

One time she hadn't paid child support and instead came out to see the kids and we told her we'd pay half her gas when we got child support. As soon as it came, we sent her money (nothing states WHEN we have to pay it in the court documents). Then the last time she came out, she knew she hadn't paid, so she didn't even bother leaving gas receipts for us. In fact, she usually communicates via email about what nights she'll be bringing them dinner and if she'd like them to bring games and stuff so that we can remind them, or not feed them, or where she's left the gas receipts and when she'd like to be paid by and how (she's very demanding) or whatever. This last time she came everything was suspiciously quiet (because she hadn't paid child support and she knew it). To this day we have not seen gas receipts from that visit even though we've mentioned it in emails to her.

At this point, I'll be really pissed off if she chooses to come and see the boys instead of paying child support. She always brings crap they don't need when she comes and we have to deal with pretty bad behavioral problems from the oldest when she deigns to show up. They're better off without her in MANY people's opinions.

Ok, I'm going to turn the rant off now. Sorry about that. We got an email saying the oldest's gifts were on the way and with all the money we've spent for school lately and her not sending anything but that which makes her look good to the kids (because THEY don't know she's not sending child support) so I'm more than a little pissed off about the situation.

Let's move on, shall we?

I also start school on Tuesday, September 2nd and am really excited! I've changed my degree to IT and I think the business core plus the web design aspect of it will only help business! When I got my textbooks in and my notebooks and folders and pencils (I got girly camo colors...LOL), I fondled them about as much as I fondle new stitchy stash. I'm a sick, sick, person, aren't i? *grin*

WORK:
Work is insanely busy! I'd been thinking about picking up a part time job while the kids are in school just to help bring in some extra money (see above for the reason why). DH was helping me organize fabric bins the other day and I'd gotten extra for future expansions (thinking of picking up Jazlyn and Jubilee sometime in the future). He then turned to me and said, "I caused you to give up your first dream (vet school because we couldn't get moved to a military base closer to a vet school) and I will not LET you give up your 2nd." I'm glad because I didn't really want to pick up a 2nd job. I'm sure EF would have suffered a bit as well as school work, or I'd have had to quit that again.

Our September Online show is coming up here again, so I expect to be busy clear on into October. I'm trying to stock up on fabbies so if there's a manufacturer backorder, it won't affect me as much as last time(hopefully).

STITCHING:
Ahh, my favorite part! I picked up Moon Fairy Spirit and she has been FLYING along! Here she was last time I worked on her in May and took a picture:

Then I picked her up in August and took this photo on August 19th:

Then I snapped another pic on August 25th:

I was supposed to switch this week to the Halloween Heart Freebie I've been working on. Here's a pic of how it looks so far:

The flash kind of washed it out, but you can see the skelly so far!

Anyway, I was supposed to switch back to that this past week, but I could not put Moon Fairy Spirit down! I lamented about it on my message board, but everyone encouraged me to keep going with her! So I have. I haven't had time to stitch much during the week. After working with fabby all day, I usually don't want to touch any at night. I did pick her up one night and fill in some more of her dress. Because it's Labor Day weekend, I'm hoping to get lots of stitching time in on her!

Sunday I'm supposed to switch to Glendon Place's A Grateful Nation, but we'll see if I can put her down this time or not!

My Skeleton Crew has come a little ways since the last time I posted. Here it was last time:

And here it is now:

I also did get some more done on my Dawn Fairy in July, but I just hated the fabric I was using. I was using a Fairy Tears that was flawed and I just didn't like the flawed fabby with it. If I'm showing it off, I don't want people seeing the fabric thinking that's how it always looks, because it doesn't. I'm thinking of putting her on something different, but I haven't quite figure out what yet, and she's got so much confetti stitching that it's hard to get back into doing her again.

Oh, I also finished the And they lived Happily Ever After for my cousin's wedding on September 6th. Here's a pic of it framed!

I stitched it on Cashel Spring Meadow and had it framed with their wedding invitation. It was UPS'd out to my mother last week in time for them to take it to their wedding next Saturday! I wish I'd done the mats that I really wanted to have done, but oh well, can't change it now!

I submitted 2 of my cross stitch pieces to our fair here for the first time ever! I submitted my Poof Hat and my Glendon Place Grimm, Glum, and Gloom. I submitted the Poof Hat as framed cross stitch-linen and the Grimm, Glum, and Gloom as framed cross stitch-evenweave. However, when I went to see the results, they'd switched it to beading for some reason. I took first place in both categories though! Here are my pics!

And

I think that's about all I have to update for now! I'll get new pics up of the Moon Fairy Spirit after stitching on her today. I hope I can get back into my rotation soon, but she's just SCREAMING at me!

Is Summer Over Yet?

2008-08-03T19:45:00.003-06:00

HOME:

Is summer over yet? Not necessarily the warm weather, but the kids going back to school! The boys argue over EVERY little thing. They're "bored" all the time and I have to work, so I can't take them out to do things every day like other SAHM's. I'm a WAHM! I've got deadlines to meet and things to do! In July I signed up them for many field trips through the base youth center which they have loved and so have I. It gives them something to do without being bored and it gives me a day of peace here and there :) Unfortunately, the base schools start back up in mid August, so there are only 2 trips they can go on this month. Luckily, there are some school orientations for the kids to look forward to. They say they "don't know" if they're excited or not, but since it's not a no, I take it as a yes, but they just don't want to SAY they're excited about it! LOL

MILITARY:
DH is counting down the days until he gives up the shirt phone. The real shirt is back in town and on leave and he has only this upcoming week and the next weekend and then the phone is back in her hands. He still has to stay in the shirt office for a couple more weeks to help get some files in order and things like that and then he'll head to his new shop. The chief told him jokingly he was "fired" from his old shop and DH asked him where he was going. The chief told him he was being sent to another, bigger shop! DH was very excited to get in there and get his hands on that shop. However, he has told them as soon as he's done in the shirt office, he plans on taking a week or two of leave first.

WORK:
I'm staying on top of things. Unfortunately my accounting came due at the end of July and I worked over a week of late nights trying to get everything entered. (This was all due to the stupid idea of changing accounting programs and then when entering information, finding out it didn't have an inventory feature I needed. Then the show started and I was so busy for more than a month afterwards that I was stuck doing it all at the end!) Luckily, I was still able to stay on top of orders as well and do up some new colors! I can't wait to release those! Should be in September some time. August is here and now I'm back on Delights. I still have two more colors i want to try and dye up this time around and the rest of the ideas I'll save for next time I get to experimenting.

STITCHING:
I did finish up the wedding sampler for my cousin's wedding in September. Even though I haven't felt well the last couple of days, I stayed up late Friday night to bead the sampler so I could get it in Hobby Lobby's weekly framing sale. Otherwise, I'd have to wait until August 11th and with the 2 week waiting period, it'd cut it close for shipping it in time! However, I really was feeling poorly, so I got up, took a shower, got dressed, and headed to Hobby Lobby without snapping a picture of it. I'll get one when it comes back.

Now I'm back working on Skeleton Crew for the Halloween SAL!

My Hero

2008-07-14T19:28:00.004-06:00

My husband is my hero.

Most of the time we do day in and day out stuff and I don't really sit down to think about it. However, I've seen him do some things that just amaze me.

I remember being at church one Sunday morning and they asked the veterans and members of the armed forces to stand so they could honor them. This was most likely around Veteran's Day or 4th of July or something. I nudged him to stand, after all, he HAS been serving active duty for over 19 years. He refused to do it, absolutely refused. I joked like I was going to push him up. He adamantly shook his head no.

When we left, I asked him why he didn't want to stand and wasn't he proud of the job he's done because I know I am! He said to me, "Honey, I don't do my job for glory or honor. I do it because I know it's the right thing to do." Those two simple sentences blew me away.

It reminds me of the Toby Keith song American Soldier. (Ok, mine's an airman, but still.) The lyrics say:

I'm just trying to be a father,
Raise a daughter and a son,
Be a lover to their mother,
Everything to everyone.
Up and at 'em bright and early,
I'm all business in my suit,
Yeah, I'm dressed for success from my head down to my boots,
I don't do it for money, there's still bills that I can't pay,
I don't do it for the glory, I just do it anyway,
Providing for our future's my responsibility,
Yeah I'm real good under pressure, being all that I can be,
And I can't call in sick on Mondays when the weekends been too strong,
I just work straight through the holidays,
And sometimes all night long.
You can bet that I stand ready when the wolf growls at the door,
Hey, I'm solid, hey I'm steady, hey I'm true down to the core,
And I will always do my duty, no matter what the price,
I've counted up the cost, I know the sacrafice,
Oh, and I don't want to die for you,
But if dyin's asked of me,
I'll bear that cross with an honor,
'Cause freedom don't come free.
I'm an american soldier, an american,
Beside my brothers and my sisters I will proudly take a stand,
When liberty's in jeopardy I will always do what's right,
I'm out here on the front lines, sleep in peace tonight.
American soldier, I'm an American,
An American,
An American Soldier

My husband is my hero.

My husband gets up at 5am every morning and sometimes doesn't come home until after 7pm at night. On Saturdays, he gets the boys going and helps them do chores around the house on Saturday and REFUSES to let me help out because he knows that's a work day for me. Sometimes he has to go out to base on Saturdays too, but he still makes sure all the chores are done before he goes.

Every once in awhile the base has exercises and my husband may work a night shirt or he may work a day shift. When he works night shifts, he switches to nights in one day and works 12 hour shifts all night long. He then comes home and tries to still be a good dad and a good husband. Then he has one day to turn his sleeping schedule around to report back to work at normal time a day later. I tell him it amazes me because I don't think I could do it! We're getting too old for that!

He has supported my every dream. When we first met, I was going to school for pre-veterinary medicine. He supported that dream for me until we found out we couldn't get moved off of this base. We were trying to get closer to a school that offered a DVM degree. So he told me to take the rest of the semester of school off and decide what my second dream would be. I didn't even hesitate when I told him I'd love to open an LNS. He told me to start with fabrics first and see how that went.

One day this weekend, he turned to me and said, "Honey, you make me look good at work." I said, "Why? I don't do anything!" He said, "EXACTLY!" LOL But he went on to explain that some spouses have a difficult time with deployments or start making trouble for their husbands and that I allow him to do his job and I'M the reason he gets his stripes. How about that for a compliment?

My husband is my hero!

Stash Enhancement and other things

2008-07-10T13:04:00.002-06:00

HOME LIFE:

The visit with my best friend came and went the last weekend in June and went by WAAAAYYYY too fast! I have some great photos from the visit. They spent their 5th wedding anniversary with us and her husband's birthday was the day they left. We did cake and ice cream the night before. It was a really fun time. On the Sunday before they left, we rented a large SUV so we could all go to Mt. Rushmore and Bear Country together. It was a perfect idea so we could ride together and chit chat on the way!

Last weekend was the 4th of July weekend. DH had Friday through Monday off. It was really nice to have him home so many days in a row! It feels like it's been forever since he's had any time off. We went to the Heritage Festival in RC and saw the fireworks they set off there. They were cut a little short due to an accident where a mortar blew up in the tube and blew up the trailer near the shooter. I was just glad everyone was ok! I saw the explosion on the ground from where we were sitting and there was probably a 30-60 second pause or so and then they set off a few more and it stopped kind of suddenly.

We spent the rest of the weekend relaxing and fitting in a few things we wanted to do. The yard got mowed, the ventilator fan got replaced (except it's too small, so for now it works, but we'll replace it with a larger one later), chores got done, etcetera.

Today is DH's birthday. He's 39! Next year I'll have to plan something pretty big, but this year I bought him a table saw and we'll take him out to dinner tonight too!

MILITARY LIFE:
DH is still on alternate status to deploy, so we're holding our breaths to see what happens. As it is now, he gets home late nearly every night now. It's funny how everyone that has a problem comes in right at 3:30-4pm to discuss it when everyone else is leaving for the day. Sometimes I get a call saying, "I'll be late tonight honey, I have a meeting with the commander and an individual at 4:30" sometimes I don't. I'm hoping he gets home on time tonight so we can go out to eat! Otherwise it might have to wait until this weekend.

STITCHING LIFE:
Well, since it was the 4th of July this past weekend, I stitched on my Grateful Nation by Glendon Place. Here it was last time:

Here it is after the weekend:

It's a repeating motif around the whole thing. I'm nearly done with the left side of the piece. I just have to repeat the top motif again and then I'll probably go along the bottom next. (Yes my fabric is wrinkled because I had it on the Qsnap shoved in a bag.

I'm also doing a Halloween SAL on my message board. I chose Skeleton Crew this year and am stitching it on Cashel Siren's Call flair. Here's my progress so far:

It's a very nice and easy stitch so far. It shouldn't take too long. Which is REALLY good because I have to stitch something for my cousin's wedding in September! I chose to stitch this one. I now need to decide if I'll dye a fabric for it or go with easy and do it on a white or cream. I have all the threads on hand and ordered the bridal bloom beads from Amy at www.downsunshinelane.com. And then she had to enable me by asking if there was anything else I needed when she got the beads in! Of course she was having a sale on some Halloween charts! I had to pick these up:

You can see the beads up above the Witching it was Halloween. I also picked up Vinny the Vampire from her. Fantastic service! I also got in the new Murky manor by Glendon Place from ABC Stitch just a few days ago! I adore their Halloween Designs.

I also found a Halloween in June sale at VeeandCo and picked up a few of those:

It's been a great stash enhancement week for sure!

WORK LIFE:
Work's been hectic. I thought it would be a little easier this month with Delights on hold (to see if hubby will deploy or not) but it's actually been picking up. I wanted to get my accounting done which is due by end of July for taxes and I wanted to do some new colors too. Of course then I looked at my friend's Skeleton Crew on my message board and realized she's ahead of me and now I want to stitch instead of do my accounting, but I must resist!!! Ok, I'm logging off now and will plant myself in front of my laptop with business stuff for the rest of the day today and tomorrow!

3 days and counting

2008-06-24T16:22:00.002-06:00

HOME LIFE:

3 more days until my best friend is here. Can't wait! Not much to tell you other than I'm still trying to clean up a bit before they get here. I have to start looking at toddler height and lower to make sure there's nothing the little ones see that they could get their hands on! I got the boys' slip n slide out today. Mom gave it to them for Easter year before this past one and I just have never gotten it out. (Though they've begged several times) As it is, it's staying out until we mow the front yard because the thing is a pain in the butt to lay down and pick back up. I took some cute pics of the boys flying down it. They were only interested for about 20 minutes. I can't believe how much begging was involved in setting it up and then they didn't really care so much. Go figure!

Have I told you how much my oldest absolutely adores Toby Keith? I signed up for the fan club and got him the necklace, the CD, the T-shirt. I think he'd sleep in that T-shirt if I let him! He wrote TK a letter about a year ago and every once in awhile he still thinks about it and wonders if TK will ever write him back. I don't want to break his heart and tell him not to hold his breath. He gets so excited when he hears that Toby Keith is playing for the troops overseas. That's his favorite thing about Toby Keith. He supports the military.

Anyway, their fan club website is having a drawing for an autographed director's chair. I put my name in hoping I'd win. Wow, what a great 12th bday present that would be for him!!

MILITARY LIFE:

Not much new there either. Hubby's been a little late due to some things going on he's had to deal with but what's new really? He's got to go to a graduation on Thursday evening and it's semi-formal. Sadly, I won't get to see him all dressed up until he comes home because he's just going to head over after work. I wasn't sure about taking the boys to it and I know they'd be bored, so I opted out. Not like I really have anything to wear anyway!

STITCHING:

I did my Dawn Fairy SAL yesterday and I feel like I got farther than I have recently on her. I almost didn't want to put her down. Here she is from June 4th:

and here she is as of this afternoon:

I feel terrible showing this fabric as it was one that was a bad dye job and instead of tossing it, I decided to just stitch on it and salvage it. Oh well, what can you do? I'm back to Moon Fairy Spirit the rest of the week UNLESS I finally decide which wedding sampler to stitch for my cousin's wedding in September.

These are my choices:
Choice 1 and my favorte so far: http://www.123stitch.com/cgi-bin/itemdetail.pl?item=K35192
Choice 2: http://www.123stitch.com/cgi-bin/itemdetail.pl?item=06-2341
Choice 3: http://www.123stitch.com/cgi-bin/itemdetail.pl?item=06-2003

I put it up on the message board and 2 people picked choice 1, 2 people picked choice 3 and I think 1 chose 2? I need to decide quickly!!

It's Sunday

2008-06-22T12:48:00.004-06:00

Home Life:

So today we did our traditional Sunday morning weedeat/mow the lawn thing. Hubby got started on the front until the boys got up and then they had to pick up dog poop and then he started on the back. I held down the fort by completely organizing my floss storage. (So vitally important to Sunday morning chores...it really is!) Hubby came in when they were finished and asked me if he was done. HA! I said, "Remember, you're going to replace the ventilator in the bathroom?" He then pouted...yes POUTED!

So I had to go down and shut off the power to the bathroom. Then come up and hold the flashlight so he could see what he was doing. We weren't exactly sure how to go about this, so I ran and googled "How to replace bathroom ventilator." Isn't the internet a wonderful place? A video of how to replace it popped right up and we were able to watch it. (Thanks HGTV.com!) So now the hard part, to actually DO what looked so incredibly simple in a video! First we had to take the built in down out of my husband's closet because attic access is in there. He was so upset that I wanted him to get up in the attic (actually he was more upset that I reminded him that he promised to do it today and he didn't really want to) that he nearly tore the thing apart trying to get it out. I finally told him to leave and I would do it. Well, he didn't like hearing that. He explained that the shelf was too big to get out. After a small argument and him leaving the bedroom in a huff, I cocked the thing up at an angle and pulled it right out. (I think that pissed him off even more LOL) Anyway, we got up into the attic (the first time EVER since we just bought this house a year and a half ago) and there was so much insulation he couldn't tell where he had to go. So I had to take the ladder and knock on the bathroom ceiling until he could find me. He pulled up the insulation and then I heard a bunch of swearing going on. I said, "WHAT?!" He said that the ventilator wasn't actually ventilated ANYWHERE! There is supposed to be a duct that goes to the soffit vent or house fan or something, but no, whoever built the house just left it and covered it up with insulation! Not only that, but there was black stuff all over the insulation. Hubby is afraid it's mold, I guess it could also be dust, but I didn't get up there to see it. I'm allergic to that stuff! So I'm going to go get some masks in the garage and go up there with him another day sometime soon(after we buy the duct and figure out how to vent it to a soffit vent that we don't have on that side of the house...the house is 30 years old, I'm not sure if they didn't do soffit vents back then or what!). This'll all probably be after this weekend since my friend and her family will be here! He commented about buying a soffit vent for that side of the house. I said, then we might as well replace soffits all around thehouse. I'd really like to anyway because it just looks like plywood painted the same color as the trim. The great room was an addition to the house and it has the newer soffit vents on it, but not the rest of the house. Of course then I said "And if we're going to do new soffits and vents, we might as well do new gutters too." I think his eyes glazed over at that point.

STITCHING:

So my floss storage issue: I have hated keeping them in the floss away bags because I tend to have more than one floss per color and it makes the binders big and bulky. I also hate putting them away when I get them out.

So I decided to go back to the nuts and bolts storage boxes. I love these. I get the ones that have 60 drawers in them and I am labeling them with my DMC stickers. (I used to have one of those label machines, but the numbers kept popping off the plastic. The stickers work MUCH better.) I'm up to the 700s already! The reason why I didn't go back to that once we moved here is because I didn't have enough wall space where I wanted to put them. In my office there are built in cabinets and I didn't want them in my bedroom. The man cave...well that's a no no. What I have done instead is purchase bookshelves. I'm hoping I can get them all on 2 bookshelves, but we'll have to see. The ones I bought have this weird unmoveable shelf in the middle. That might be a problem. Otherise, I'll put them in the spare bedroom closet after my friend visits until I decide what's going on with them. I don't want her little ones getting in there and sticking them in their mouths. The boxes might just go on the spare bedroom walls! (Btw, my mother used to live with us, and so that's why I didn't put them in there originally. Now she has moved back home to Indiana, so it's a spare bedroom. It might as well have some use, right? STASH STORAGE ROOM! That's a perfect thing to call it!)

I said in the post before last that I would post a pic of my progress on Glendon Place's A Grateful Nation. I did snap a picture for the WIP pics of the week post on my message board, but I forgot to post it on here. It's done on Jobelan Raindrop Flair. I don't have much of it done, but I'm trying to stick to 1 week rotations. Here it is:

Ok, so it's not alot, but considering how busy I was at work the week I had to work on it, it's pretty decent progress!

We decided to start a fun thing on my message board where every week we can all post some cool new designs that week. I think it'll get most of us to expand our horizons. There are many times where I get in a rut regarding certain designers and someone new comes out and I see a post and think HEY!! Why didn't I know about that designer? A few agreed, but some were saying their pocketbooks might not be able to take it. LOL I told them I'd have to tag it with a *WARNING-May cause stash enabling*! If anyone shows any Halloween designs, I'm totally done! Last week, I posted an "Ack!! A Must Have" post and linked to the new Glendon Place design called Murky Manor that's coming out. I've already ordered it. One of my moderators (and a very good friend) said "Can you ever have too many Halloween patterns?" NO WAY! Someone asked how many haunted house patterns I have. I had to list: Grimm, Glum, and Gloom (seen below), the new one that I will have that's on order, the Stoney Creek one, the Brittercup one called Haunt the Night Away, and the Hinzeit one called Haunted House (does it count? I think so!)then I heard Just Nan was putting out one exclusively for Silver Needle called Scream House! I'm salivating just waiting for that one to be released!

Halloween is my absolute favorite holiday to stitch. I'm not real big on Christmas designs, though I have a few, and St. Patty's Day is probably equal with Christmas (but only because I'm a big irish/celtic nut too). I have a complete binder devoted to all Halloween designs. (I love the actual holiday too. Our family is very big into it. We had a graveyard in our front yard last year with one tombstone that had hands scratching and it moved and talked! It said: Help, get me out of here! LOL I also have a big skeleton that sings and dances and instead of having him do that, we hooked him up to a stereo with the spooky sounds and put blacklights in our porch light and our lantern in the yard. I had several teens come to the door saying that they absolutely loved our house and it was the best in the neighborhood. I told them thanks and come back next year because every year we add something to it! I will definitely snap pics this year and post them!)

MILITARY LIFE:

Hubby had to go yesterday to meet with the commander and our key spouse. He came back and told me he almost volunteered me to help out the key spouse if she needs it. I told him he should have. I have lots of good ideas. There are some gaps as far as reaching military spouses go. It seems that when you marry a guy who is just starting out in the military, they reach out to you right away. If you marry a guy who already has some time in, you're left out. I married my husband after he'd already put in over 14 years. So I had never heard of Hearts Apart and Enlisted Spouse's Club meetings and all of that. I did not see any advertisements for these meetings or anything, so I'm all about helping out those spouses who come in a little late to the game and still need to know what they can about how things work! I consider myself a veteran now. I've been through 2 deployments and another one coming up (if it isn't this one, it'll be the next go round). I've got a lot of information to share and I think it can be helpful to some!

So I was thinking about it last night and I was talking with my hubby about why they had this meeting and it was about the deployment and I said, "You know what? I find it pretty silly that the only time spouses keep in contact with each other is at these spouse meetings when their husbands/wives are deployed! What about if we just want to talk while our husbands/wives are home? Don't these people ever watch Army Wives?" LOL I mean, honestly, we're a breed of people that deal with something that most families don't have to deal with...long term separation from our significant others. I told my husband that I believe we should have once monthly meetings AT LEAST to get to know one another. I believe that when there are spouses whose husbands/wives are deployed, the non deployed families should put on the meetings for the deployed families. We could offer an extra babysitting night so they could have some time alone. Or we could try to find a sitter and have a chick flick night or something. The possibilities are absolutely endless. But in these meetings we can strike a bond with one another so that when our husbands/wives DO deploy, we have people that we KNOW that we can depend on. So I told hubby that between the meetings, we should have some other way to chat and the best way would be a message board for us! So I created a mockup last night and hubby has to meet with the commander and key spouse tomorrow and he's going to fly it past them and see what they think. I don't want to step on anyone's toes, but maybe something will happen out of this and make it a more sociable experience than what it is now!

Well, off to finish that RR. I got one square done and wanted to complete another small one before I ship it off! Then I'll get back to my Moon Fairy Spirit this week (except tomorrow. Tomorrow is Dawn Fairy Spirit of Grace by Passione Ricamo SAL)!

Less than a week left

2008-06-21T14:14:00.002-06:00

Life:

Well, my best friend and her husband and their two little boys will be coming into town on Friday. I'm absolutely ecstatic. This is my very best friend in the whole world and there is no one else like her on the entire planet. She has put up with my shit and I've not had to put up with much of hers. For a long time her husband and I disliked each other, but now we get along great and her husband and my husband are like two peas in a pod. Now she has two boys like I do and so we'll be going through some of the same things! No matter where we move in the Air Force, I won't find a soul like her to be friends with. She has said the same of me. Thankfully we live only 9 hours apart right now so we try to see each other about twice a year. We were down in Colorado in January for my husband to have eye surgery at the Academy and we were able to go down and spend the weekend at her house. They're coming up here for the weekend starting on Friday afternoon some time. I'll have to go into massive cleaning mode Thursday afternoon/Friday morning!

We did, finally, get the railing on the deck finished up. Thanks to my wonderful husband and occasionally the two boys helped out too. This is what it looked like as of last weekend with the north side finally complete:

And the back view (with my dog Baxter surveying his domain):

And here's what it looks like now:

And the back view:

Now we just have the railing for the stairs to complete and I can place my cool new solar cap lights on each end and at the top of the stairs and the bottom. I'm just so glad this is done so that when my friend comes out, we can put up the baby gate and her two little ones can crawl around the deck (without fear of falling off). For those of you who don't know, we actually started this project last summer. I think there are pictures somewhere of us pulling up the old redwood and we had to replace 2 joists, and then started laying new deck down. Next year we'll probably be putting the water sealant on. They told us at Lowe's, since it's pressure treated, you should give it a year or two to dry out before doing any of that. I'm trying to nag hubby into getting the stairs done on the weekend of 4th of July. Of course I'm also trying to nag him into having a BBQ with his shop that weekend. I'm not sure which of the arguments I'll win!

Work:

Work's going well, I'm pretty much all caught up except for people who have ordered fabrics that are on backorder. Zweigart has now told me that their backordered fabrics will be in on June 27th. I'm really hoping that's true (I was told they'd be in on May 16th and May 30th as well) this time as I'd love to get those fabrics done and shipped out to those who are awaiting them! I have to remind myself to call that morning to check to see if they came in. After they come in, it'll take another week to get to me so I can start processing all of those orders.

Now if I could find the motivation to do my accounting, everything would be perfect! I'd planned on doing it yesterday, but it was so lovely out, I ended up shipping out some orders, and then helping the boys with their workbooks, and then talking with my boys over lunch and stitching and then a storm moved in, so they couldn't play outside. We had to find a way to keep them busy (otherwise fights break out pretty quickly). Today I was going to do it too, but then my husband got up early and went straight out to the deck, so I helped him as neither of the boys were up quite that early. Soon our youngest was up and eating breakfast and then he came out to help. Sometimes their help is not so helpful though, so I stuck around and made them drink lots of water. (It was nearly 80 degrees outside at 8am!) My taxes are due at the end of July, so I need to get my butt in gear very soon!

After my friend leaves, I'll do up the newsletter and get that out. I have to put Delights on hold for July because of the possibility of my husband deploying, too. That's something I don't want to have to think about!

Military:

As I told you last time, my husband was deploying. Well strangely enough, the guy who he was replacing had his orders cancelled. It didn't come from our base. Apparently they'd slated too many people for that position somehow. He was upset and threatened to drop his paperwork (retire) and so there was a week there where every evening was a different story. Hubby was deploying, hubby was back to alternate status, hubby was deploying, etcetera. Not only that, but hubby has been the shirt (first sergeant, hereafter called shirt) for the squadron. Shirts usually get paid for extra duty because let me tell you, these guys (and gals!) get called at all hours of the day and night. We had one phone call at 2am and both of us were up until about 5:30am and both of us ran on about 3-4 hours of sleep the next day. (HAHA Hilary, I can REALLY take phone calls at 3am) The reason I was up is because it was a spouse of a deployed member that needed help and I thought I might need to go since I'm a spouse (maybe she would be more comfortable with me, etcetera). However, my husband has been covering for our shirt who is away at a school. So he's not getting the extra pay. I've heard though that the Air Force is very short on shirts. They've talked about moving our original shirt to another squadron and having my hubby keep the slot. I told him he'd better actually get the diamond (the diamond is an actual diamond in the middle of their stripes to show that he's a first sergeant) and the pay for it! I think they have some requirements he doesn't quite meet, but because of those shortages, I'm hoping they'll allow him anyway. The major requirement is a degree and he's 4 classes from his degree...SOOOO close!

Anyhoo, the new commander came in and people tried to pull one over on him by trying to make my husband stay on the list to deploy, even though they were told by the previous commander to take him off the list because the original guy could go now since his orders got cancelled. That didn't fly well with the new commander. I think I'm going to like him. He doesn't seem to take any shit. He's also prior enlisted, so he's been on both sides of the street which I find very refreshing! He told them to put the original guy back on. All has been quiet since then, but until that plane leaves and my husband is or is not on it, that's when I'll know for sure when he's going or not. That's the military!

Stitching:

I've been stitching on a RR, but I can't show pictures of it yet. I'll take some before I send it on and I'll show them when I can! I was supposed to work on Moon Fairy Spirit last week, but due to the arrival of the RR late the week before, I didn't get a chance. This next week, I'm supposed to start my Chatelaine MMM01, but I haven't gotten around to dyeing the fabric for it yet, so it'll have to wait.

As of July 1st, our Halloween SAL starts! I love this SAL! We did it last year and I was able to finish up my Grimm, Glum, and Gloom by Glendon Place!:

I've decided to enter it into our fair this year! I have to take it in on August 15th! More on that in August!

Anyway, this year I'm stitching Skeleton Crew by Cross Eyed Cricket! I'll be stitching it on 28ct Cashel Siren's Call Flair . I think it'll look good. I was going to stitch it on Ocean Depths, but when I talked to my friend about it, she said, "Ocean Depths is a happy ocean color. Skeleton Crew should be scary like it's coming out of fog or something." LOL, I loved that! She's right though! She's doing it on Smoky Haze which is a great color for it and I didn't want to stitch it on the same thing. So, Siren's Call it is! I think I'm going to swap out the ghosts and skellies for the DMC glow in the dark tghread. I think that'd look so cool! You'll see pics of the progress soon!

My Bad!

2008-06-10T15:41:00.002-06:00

Yeah, so I've been busy, sorry! At the end of March I caught that bug. Do you know that bug? The one that seems like a simple cold and then knocks you flat on your ass for a couple of weeks?! Yeah, that one. Man did I feel like crap!

In April I was in a show and I would say that I did as well as the last time I was in it (which was in late 2006). For skipping a year, that's pretty good. But I also received several orders outside of the show venue. It backed me up for awhile at work. The thing that I hated the most was that manufacturers had several backorders as well and there wasn't a whole lot I could do about that! I just wish I'd known before the show started! I had a deadline to meet so that I could decide which products to display in the show and didn't receive my order until after the show had ended...WITHOUT more than half my order! To this day, there are still some on backorder from one company. It gets frustrating to me because they have to wait because I have to wait!

The day after the show started, my husband called me from work and told me he'd been put on the alternate list to deploy. He said he probably wouldn't go though because that would take everyone out of his shop above a certain rank. Yeah right. If they'd created the list and had already blown through the alternates what makes him think he's getting out of it?! He was firmly in the "I'm not going" area, while I was in the "Well I'll still count on it" area. You can't be married to the military for over 4 years without picking that up!

My mother, who was living with us, had decided to move out and go back home to Indiana. She planned on going in June because she thought we'd try to make a visit out that way and she could ride behind us. Well, due to gas prices, and a potential deployment, our visit was put on hold. So shortly after the beginning of May, she chose to leave earlier than expected...May 12th to be exact! So I lost my serger girl about 2-3 weeks early! That was pretty hard for me as far as business life goes. That's just that much more I need to do.

Also, she encouraged me to sign up for both of the shows (Spring and Fall) because she would be there to help and now she's gone. *sniff* (We won't mention the great built in babysitter she was too! Or at least another woman in the house to chit chat with! LOL I'm back to being surrounded by testosterone!)

So yeah, where were we? May, still catching up with orders, still had backordered fabrics, Mom left, and then hubby says there are people trying to get out of the deployment and he probably will go. Then in late May, he asks if it's ok with me if he pulls first sergeant duty. The first sergeant we now have, had to go away for a couple month's training and then take some leave after it was over. (For those of you who don't know, the first sergeant is kind of like the commander's right hand person.) I said, "fine with me, but what about the alternate list?" He went in to talk to the first sergeant and commander and they said that no one will be getting off the list so he wouldn't go and they wanted someone in that spot because we're getting a NEW commander so they wanted some consistency (otherwise they have people alternate every 2 weeks on first sergeant duty).

Ok, so we were back to the "he's not going" thing. Then new PCS orders come out (Permanent Change of Station for those of you that don't know. This means they're moving to another base)...one of the guys on the deployment has orders and the report by date is before they get back....not only that...it's to HAWAII!! EVERYONE has that on their dream sheet for years! No way could they cancel those orders for him! Even my husband said that! So the commander tried to get the report by date pushed back, but no, they weren't having it, so as of yesterday, he is officially on the list!

Wait, that's not even all of my life's story the last few months! My uncle David (keep in mind he's about 8 years-ish older than me) was lifeflighted to the hospital one early Tuesday morning because of severe stomach pains. He was doing very badly. They finally got him into surgery and found that several feet of his bowels were dead. Unfortunately he was so weak that all they could do was clamp them off and close him back up and wait a few days. They basically said if he lives until Friday, they would open him back up and try to remove the dead parts. Meanwhile, they kept him sedated the entire time.

I was due to fly out that Friday anyway for my cousin's wedding. Remember that wedding sampler I stitched below? Here was the finished product (minus the names and other pertinent information as I'm sure they wouldn't like that info splashed all over the net):

Anyway, back to the story, I flew in on Friday evening and it was late (for them, I was on a 2 hour earlier time zone!) and it was very hard for me to get to sleep. We had to get up at the crack of dawn and go get dressed and go to the wedding as it was in the morning. The wedding was great with the usual family drama. Drama? Oh yes, my family is FULL of it!

1. At the wedding my uncle and cousin (father and son) were videotaping and my grandpa turns to my aunt (the wife and mother of the above) and says, "You know, they don't look like father and son, in fact, he (my cousin) looks like Tim's kid" Tim being my uncle's best friend. I apparently missed it because I was discussing with my mother and aunts about picture taking angles as they were stuck behind a pole and I had a clear shot. My aunt related the story to me and was turning at least 15 shades of red in anger!

2. At the reception the groom's mother walks up to my cousin and basically calls the groom's stepmom a crazy bitch. More to the point: "I hope you didn't place me next to that crazy bitch." Ooooh, my cousin was so mad. She couldn't act like a grownup for her son?!

3. At the reception, my 18 year old cousin made my 11 year old cousin (her younger sister) cry and she crawled under the table at the reception and cried there for I don't know how long.

4. My uncle got mad because my other uncle (who married into the family about 8 years ago) didn't introduce his parents to everyone. Keep in my my family is very large and very boisterous and none of us have a problem introducing ourselves to others so I'm not sure what the whole problem was.

I know there was more, but I just can't remember it all! Anyway, that day of the weekend was shot! But Sunday I was able to get up to the hospital to see my uncle (he's on the other side of the family by the way. My cousin is on my mom's side, my uncle is on my dad's side). I also got to see an aunt that I hadn't seen in about 12 years. We walked in and my uncle's eyes were open. I wasn't sure if that was normal or not, but then he started struggling and all the lights and sirens started going off and I almost broke down in tears. I thought I'd walked in just to see him die! I was scared. My grandmother said that was the first time they'd seen him move in days!

Later he opened his eyes again and would actually look at us, but he couldn't speak due to a ventilator tube in his mouth and he wasn't nodding or anything. Later that night, just as I was about to leave, the nurse said that when asked if he was in pain, my uncle shook his head. So it was progress that he was responding now!

I left and came back and spent the entire next day there. He was nodding and shaking his head and shrugging alot to all questions so that was great! Later that day they pulled his tube and he got to speak. It was hard to understand him because he was sort of mumbling and slurred. They started halving his pain meds so he could be more clear. He started joking around and was so funny! I was incredibly happy as we went from dire news to seeing him act normally! When he first started talking I sat down and my grandmother and my other uncle went up to stand by the bed, and I hear him say, "Where's Lori?" So my grandma says, "Lori, he wants you." I walked up there and he looks at me and says, "Can you please get me a Mountain Dew?" I had to laugh, it's his favorite drink! He continued throughout the evening joking and making us as well as the nurses laugh. I had to fly home the next day knowing he was on his way to getting better.

Later that week, he took a turn for the worse and started bleeding internally. He had to have several blood transfusions and they couldn't find out where the bleed was. They were afraid to open him up after 2 surgeries and the weakness due to blood loss. Finally they did go in through his throat and were able to cauterize the area. I haven't heard much since then. I had been trying to call every 2-3 days to check in but the last time I called, my grandmother sounded upset at having to relay bad news and said she would just call when something happened. I would like to call because my dad's been moving, so he hasn't heard much.

Talk about your emotional roller coasters! Up, down, Up down! My uncle was near death, and then doing well, and then near death, and now stable? My husband is deploying, not deploying, deploying, not deploying, and now deploying.

Oh yeah and the fabric companies had told me the fabric would be here May 16th, then May 30th, and now maybe in the next 7-10 days.

PICK SOMETHING PEOPLE and stick with it! Frankly, I'm exhausted!

Stitching wise, I did manage to get a Triquetra Knot done. It's by Celtic Obsessions. I haven't gotten it framed yet. I'd like to have it framed and have some writing on the mat that says Cead mile failte which is Gaelic for 100,000 welcomes! Here is that finish:

I've also been working on my Moon Fairy Spirit. This is the design that started everything for me. I really want to have Jill Rensel frame her (though now that I have the color Dark Fury out, I'd love to do the design again on that piece instead of the Stormy Night that I stitched her on...I don't think I have the patience to stitch that moon again!)

Here she was in March 2006 the last time I took a photo of her:

Here she is after working on her in May:

I did get alot of that moon done. That was what had me set her down for so long. I absolutely adore this design, but all that yellow was killing me! LOL

I also started Glendon Place's A Grateful Nation for my grandfather (my dad's dad). I did one a couple of years ago for my other Grandpa (mom's dad) and gave it to him for his 80th birthday. This is American Veteran by Stoney Creek:

So now I'm going to stitch one for my other grandpa who was in the Navy. I don't have much finished on it yet, but I absolutely love the colors and I'm doing it on Jobelan Raindrop Flair. I'll snap a pic soon!

That's about enough of a novel for today. I'll be sure to get back to posting regularly now that I'm more caught up at work!

It's finished!

2008-03-15T14:12:00.003-06:00

I finished the wedding piece in plenty of time! The invitations should be going out this weekend and I'll have them by mid to late next week some time. I will then cut them up and have them matted and framed with this piece and give it as a wedding gift. I'm so happy it's done!

Yikes!

2008-03-06T16:01:00.002-07:00

Yikes, it's been awhile since I posted. Well, my excuse is that February was horrendously busy at work (which is a fantastic thing)!

So, back in January I picked up this wedding sampler to do for my cousin's wedding in May. I had seen someone complete this design on the 123 Stitch board and it was very contemporary and I loved it. My cousin's not a flowery and frou frou type of person (and neither am I). Anyway, here it is as of January 28th:

Then here it is a week later on February 6th:

Then I hit a huge stitching slump for several weeks. I'd stitch a line or two and then quit. Just no interest. I think alot of it had to do with the fact that I had 3 30+ orders come in and I was just swamped at work. By the time I was done for the day, I didn't want to touch any fabric!

THEN, one day I got going on it and was whipping that frame along the outside right along when I noticed....I'm ONE STITCH OFF somewhere! OMG, I was so mad! And the bad thing was, I couldn't find where that one stitch was. Of course every time I looked at it I was about ready for bed and being tired isn't the best time to look for a mistake. So I let it sit for a long time and glared at it every time I walked by it.

This past Monday, I picked it up bright and early and within 10 minutes found the place where I was off. I had to frog ALOT, but once I did that, I was able to stitch back to where I left off. Then on Wednesday I stitched alot more...and RAN OUT OF THREAD!! I cursed myself for getting a kit. I've heard others who've not had enough thread and I know part of the reason was because when I frogged, I tore some of the threads up. (Am I a heavy handed frogger?) Anyway, I emailed the company (Dimensions) Wednesday morning and within an hour I had an email back saying they'd be happy to send me enough thread to complete the project. What great customer service!!

So this is the pic I snapped Wednesday morning:

Since I took this pic, I've outlined the letters in LOVE and have started backstitching the sparkly silver/gray threads inside the frame. I hope I'll get the new threads next week so I can finish that small 2 inch or so section on the right hand side of "frame" part of the piece.

I hope to show a finished pic soon!

Late Again

2008-01-28T13:47:00.001-07:00

Yeah, sorry, I let other a month slip by, didn't I? Well, my excuse is so much has happened. I found out shortly before my surgery that my husband's eye surgery was given the go ahead. I was told this wouldn't happen. So then I was under some pressure (mostly from myself) because I had to get back to work for a week and then leave again so I could drive him around after the surgery!

Thankfully I was able to get everything done up to the night before I left! I felt pretty good about going down with him for this surgery. Of course coming back was a different story!

I haven't stitched in weeks, but with my cousin's wedding coming up, I needed to get to it. I picked up the Dimensions kit "Happily Ever After" and it's a really quick stitching! I contemplated using a dyed fabric for it, but was afraid with the stitched swirls, they would fade into the background. I ended up using the fabric that came with the kit. Aida...I know, it's not something I usually use, but sometimes it's so nice just to be able to start something without having to think about cutting and serging your own fabric!

I'll get a picture of that up as soon as I can.

I've been reading J.D. Robb's Creation in Death. I've read all of the in Death series and I really like them.

Work's busy, but I pretty much caught up to a week back as of Saturday, so that made me feel better! Of course the big Delights week is coming up again! LOL. That week always makes me feel rushed!

DH is back at work and working hard as usual. He surprised me and came home today because he forgot some things for some training. The funny thing was, he came in the front door just as I'd gone out to unwrap the dog's cable from under the deck. So I didn't even know he was home! Then I heard all this banging and heard him clomping up the stairs. He saw me and said, "Where WERE you?" I'm like, "What are you talking about?" When he explained he'd been searching the house for me, I had to explain I was crawling under the back deck to get the cable untangled. (Boy I can't wait until we get that stuff put up under there to prevent the dogs from getting under there.)

So, I'm ready for spring, are you? Boy, we had 52 degrees yesterday and it really felt balmy! From what they're saying on the radio, we'll have wind chills in the negative 20s again though in the next day or two.

Well, I'm going to enjoy the rest of my day off!

Update post operatively

2007-12-17T18:39:00.000-07:00

WARNING: Gross moments ahead...

Today is the first day I have felt partially human since the day after surgery. (I say the day after surgery because I threw up at the surgery center and again as soon as I got home and in the door. I felt horrible for my husband who is a sympathetic puker because even though I made it to the bathroom, I did NOT make it to the toilet. Poor guy had to clean up after me. They tell you to call if you're vomiting because they DO NOT want you to vomit after having throat surgery. Well, we were told that was probably just the last effects of anesthesea and not to worry when we called.) But the day AFTER surgery...well, I even STITCHED that day...then it all went downhill from there!

They neglect to tell you that the 3rd-4th days are hard because your scabs are forming in your throat (which are really disgusting white patches) and every time you swallow you're cracking them apart which is entirely painful...particularly after you've been breathing through your mouth while napping or sleeping at night. (Note...keep lots of humidifiers on as this seems to help...at least a tiny bit)

They also neglect to tell you that your steroids wear off from surgery and your uvula swells up so large that you can't breathe if you have your head bent at certain angles and you can also have alot of fun blowing it up to land on top of your tongue. (Note...grosses out the kids and hubby) We also called the doctor and were told this was pretty normal.

They neglect to tell you that pain meds slow down or STOP the G.I. tract. Saturday was the absolute worst. I felt well that morning (well enough that my mom dragged me out shopping, but after spending a scant 10 minutes in the first store and heading to the grocery store for a few items, I was leaning pretty heavily on the shopping cart due to dizziness), but in the afternoon I felt like I could not put another thing in my mouth...not even pain meds...BAD NEWS. After eight hours without pain meds and not even being able to suck on ice chips anymore, I was in a bad way. I felt a burning sensation in my throat like reflux or heartburn and was very nauseous. My stomach was very bloated. I broke down and phoned the nurse line at the surgery center. (At this point, I think they were checking Caller ID and saying, OH NO, it's THEM again...you get it...no YOU get it...let's draw straws!) OH YEAH, pain meds slow or stop the GI tract and can trap gas along with all the other fun stuff. So the new advice was to get some anti-gas AND a laxative and get them down.

Dh goes off to get the above items and comes back with 2 anti-gas meds and ex-lax. One anti-gas med was Gas-X that dissolves on your tongue. He felt that maybe I'd have a better time getting this to get started than liquid maalox. I thought at that moment that the sun shone down upon my brilliant husband because I couldn't imagine swallowing some supposedly cherry tasting liquid. I dissolved 2 strips and went to lay on the couch. Within half an hour I knew everything I'd eaten that day was going to be revisiting me shortly...and it did. I then sat on my bathroom floor and cried...which was completely painful. I did NOT feel any better (unlike the previous two times I had vomited after surgery) My poor husband did NOT know what to do. I didn't feel like drinking water, I didn't feel like trying any more anti-gas or ex lax or pain meds or ANYTHING. I just didn't know how to proceed. The nurse had mentioned a very bad word...suppositories *shudder*. I was ALMOST contemplating sending DH back out (does THAT tell you how bad I felt?!).

Instead, I lay on the floor in the doorway of my bathroom. DH brought my pillow and my two dogs and 2 of my 3 cats came to lay down in the hallway with me. I think they thought it was some new ritual we were trying out and they seemed to enjoy it. Finally DH suggested I try to liquid maalox. I told him I'd only attempt it with a chaser. What would be my chaser of choice though when I didn't feel like I wanted ANYTHING in my stomach? Somehow, hot chocolate came to mind. Though I wouldn't call it HOT chocolate. It would be more like warm watered down chocolate. I gulped a tablespoon down and took a sip of the lukewarm watery chocolate and was ok...so far. I laid back down on my pillow and then the heater shut off and I became cold. DH went to get a blanket and my mother came back to talk to me. We talked and decided that maybe some sprite would do the trick! She ran out (keep in mind, this was at 11pm) and bought me a case of Sprite. They iced it down and brought it to me. It was the most heavenly ambrosia I have ever tasted. It was a miracle. It felt SO wonderful drinking it. After about half an hour had past (the timeline that I had been able to keep down the anti gas meds from before) I attempted the ex lax. After another half an hour, I took a pain med and promptly got up and dragged most everything to my bedroom.

Sunday was a bit of a relief, I had to keep taking the anti-gas med, but I was NOT bloated anymore. I wanted to keep it that way though so I continued with it. My G.I. tract was finally working as intended and at 10am my stomach actually growled!! What an improvement! I was able to eat some toast and fried egg (but had to chew alot) and later again I ate some toast with jelly on it. Then that evening, DH made chicken fettucini alfredo. I didn't want to attempt the chicken OR the alfredo, but I tore off the crust of bread and soaked it in alfredo sauce until it was soggy and yummy. MMMMMMMM!

Sunday night as I took my maalox, my ex-lax, and my pain meds and then went to bed, I said to my husband, "I hope tomorrow I feel human again." I woke up feeling marginally better, which was an even BIGGER improvement, but my stomach was feeling weird. I chose to only take ibuprofen for pain instead of the pain meds, but I decided to definitely STOP taking the ex-lax. I had taken it again Sunday night thinking that even though it had gotten things moving, maybe the pain meds I'd taken throughout the day would stop me back up. BAD DECISION. After the morning was over, I decided to have lunch and ended up having some ravioli which tasted great. Tonight for dinner, I had blueberry pancakes (they get pretty soggy with butter and syrup). I don't feel good enough to treck out and do things that need to get done, but at least I can maybe wrap my kids' Christmas gifts tomorrow (I was afraid I'd miss out on that and it's my favorite thing to do)!

Surgery darwing near

2007-12-07T16:09:00.000-07:00

HOME LIFE
Well, surgery is Tuesday! I have a pre-op on Monday I have to go do and then Tuesday is the day. My husband keeps teasing me that he's going to have a week's vacation full of peace and quiet because I won't be able to talk (tonsillectomy). I joked that I'd be using flashcards to wave in front of his face when I want ice cream. Then he started saying he's not giving me a pen or paper either! LOL In reality, he'll spoil me rotten and make sure I have anything I need including things I haven't thought about yet.

One of the boys is misbehaving at school for the last 2 weeks (the one with ADHD). The teacher says he's turning in homework assignments late and is very defiant and talking back. He's actuing similar here at home too. The only thing I could think of was that his biological mother came to visit last weekend. Every time we have these kinds of problems. Every single time! Usually it lasts the week prior to the visit and 1-2 weeks after. Fun times....NOT!

Would you believe I did get the Wii I was talking about? On Sunday morning I got up before the crack of dawn and headed off to Toys R Us. They opened at 8am and I got there right around 6:30 and there was already a line. I joked to the guy in front of me "What there's only 4 or something!" They came out just before 7am and told us there were 21. Guess what number I was....yeah, you guessed it, number 22! So I immediately hopped in the truck and drove to Best Buy, the other place that was supposed to have more. There were only 6 people in line (probably because they opened at 10am and it was just before 7am). So I got in line...did I tell you it was 6 degrees outside?! AND the store opened at 10am?!?!?! Oh yes, I froze my ass off! Thankfully there was some sweethearted lady whose daughter was waiting in line and she drove her SUV up and turned the heat up high and let everyone alternate getting in to thaw out while people held our places in line. I was pretty proud of myself, I only took a 10 minute break at the halfway mark in there and then grabbed the blanket in my truck and stood outside freezing for the rest of the time!

About an hour left from the store opening, I was thinking I was insane...WHY on earth, did I think this was a good idea!? I couldn't see the joy on my kids' face anymore. The only thing on my mind was how blue my lips must have been and how loud the chattering of my teeth were and how I couldn't feel my toes anymore! But once I entered that store with my ticket in hand, I felt victorious! I told my mother I didn't care if they liked it or not, what a coup to have the hottest toy in town!! LOL I'm sure they'll love it though :)

MILITARY LIFE
Did I tell you my husband made rank? It was effective December 1st! YAY!! It was exciting because of the pay raise that will come with it. He'll have increased responsibility too I'm sure.

Every year I usually make some chex mix and cookies for him to take into his shop. Of course the last couple of years, he was in a smaller shop, but now he's in a larger one. I don't know if the small tub I usually send in will last more than 3 hours! The good thing is that the shop chief he has now is the same one he had in his previous shop. This man is a good and kind man. He's like a big teddy bear. When my husband deployed last year, the shop chief lived just down the street and he'd stop when passing by and ask if everything was ok and he'd bring his kids over to mow my lawn. He's such a sweetheart. I told him that my boys could do the lawn, but he wanted to do it. He was so very nice. I want to have them over for dinner as a thank you (almost a year later) but his wife is having some health issues :( I hope she'll be feeling better soon so we can do it! Meanwhile this weekend I'm going to try to bake my chex mix and cookies so he can take them in on Monday because after that, he'll be off for a couple of weeks home with me while I recover.

He got approved to have eye surgery so we'll be taking a quick trip down to Colorado to have that done in January. I think he'll be happy not to have to wear his glasses anymore. I still think it's crappy that they'll do it, but we have to pay for the trip down there because that's the only doctor the military will pay for. I understand it's an elective surgery, but why couldn't they cover something here in town then?!

Most likely DH is on the list to deploy next summer, so they want him to do it now so that he's not on the non-deployable list (Non-deployable for 4 months after the surgery) by that time. I'm NOT looking forward to another deployment so soon. What makes me mad is that this will have been the SECOND time in 3 years that he's been on the deployment that is gone over Christmas. I wish he'd go on the January one. I mean, he'd miss our youngest son's birthday, our anniversary, Valentine's Day, and my birthday, but when he goes on the one in the summer he misses our oldest's birthday (which he's missed about 3 times in the last 4 years), Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year's, etcetera. I guess when you look at it, no time is really a good time unless they started doing a March to September trip or something! I'd hate him being gone during the summer though. The boys are handful enough when school's out. *shudder* We'll just wait and see what happens. In this life, you never know if you'll even BE HERE by then, particularly when he made rank!

WORK
Just finishing up the last few orders before I shut down for my surgery and recovery. I finished up Delights today and the last 2 will ship out in the morning. I have one order that came in this morning and it's a small one, so I went ahead and cut it up. I'll finish that up tomorrow as well as a second large piece to another order and ship those out Monday and then I'm done. I have a few birthday orders that will ship out while I'm recovering, but I spent today putting those together so they just need to be put in envelopes and shipped. That should be easy enough.

STITCHING
Ahhh, my sanity keeper! Since I finished up that Breast Cancer Mandala, I felt like I would be ok to start something new. I pulled out two that I was anxious to start. One is Crystal Roses by Just Nan and the other is Air Force by Hinzeit for my husband. Then for some reason, I went and picked up my Moon Fairy Spirit by Passione Ricamo and started stitching. I'm glad I did because it's one I haven't touched for months and months because that moon is so daunting! But she's looking good!

I watched Disturbia today while stitching. That's a great movie! Great psychological thriller and funny too. I thought it might be a bloody slasher movie but it wasn't.

Well, that's all for today!

December 1st!!!

2007-12-01T22:34:00.001-07:00

Whoops! A whole month and half slipped by and I didn't notice. Things have been busy after the sale in October! Then the holidays have snuck up on us as well and now it's already December 1st. I really can't believe it.

I have been stitching on My Pride and Joy trying to get that one finished up. It's supposed to be a gift for my Mother in Law, but it's really difficult for me to stitch on. I think it's one of those projects that just isn't normally to my tastes and that seems to make it harder! I haven't snapped a picture though of it because she visits my message board, so I was afraid to post any pics!

Over Thanksgiving weekend, my mother flew to Colorado to visit my aunt and grandmother and I was able to pull out my Breast Cancer Mandala by Ink Circles that I was doing for her and get a lot done on it! I was shocked, but once I got going on it, it really cruised right by. I got so much done on Sunday and Monday that I didn't want to put it down! I ended up finishing it Thursday night I think. It is stitched on Enchanted Fabrics Lugana Royalty Flair. It is stitched using the suggested Carrie's Creation Threads.

Here was the last picture available as of August 2007:

Then here's the finished pinkeep version as of Thursday night:

(FRONT)

(BACK)

I'm really pleased with how it turned out. I gave it to my mother that night. I could have saved it for Christmas, but I already have a Christmas gift for her and she walked in unexpectedly and I frantically hid it, so she knew something was going on anyway.

I put a couple of stitches into a new piece...which I really shouldn't have done considering how many WIPs I still have to finish up! I want to stitch something for my husband, a patriotic piece. I've been feeling that way lately, particularly because he just gained a rank. On Friday afternoon, we went out to the base and he and 5 others had their stripes tacked on. We got to punch his arm where they go on. It was pretty fun! Then on the way home, I picked up his uniform at the sewing place just off base with his new stripes on! The jacket has been sitting on the dining room chair all weekend and every time he walks by it, he pets it...I KID YOU NOT! It's funny and cute to see him do that. It's very well deserved (but I'm not prejudiced, am I? LOL)

I found this new blog that's done by military spouses and it's hilarious. I read it and I laugh so hard I cry...literally cry. The writers are full of wit and it's all about those military things that go on with us who are left behind. There's always the joke about when your spouse deploys, EVERYTHING breaks down. Luckily, I haven't had that happen yet. My hubby deployed once while we were dating and then deployed again September 2006 through this past February. It was a difficult time with the boys and I. And then I was crazy enough to purchase a house and MOVE...not only while he was deployed, but NINE DAYS BEFORE CHRISTAMS! Yeah, that's insanity! I barely got the tree up (and we had to forgo the lights and other decorations because I didn't have the energy left) last year!

So I was reading this blog and I saw this T shirt they have that shows a woman flexing her muscles and it says, "Dependent MY ASS!" I MUST have one of these shirts! I want to find where they're sold or if someone can make one, because that is a fantastic shirt!

One of the funniest things they had in this blog was a Best Performance for the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, and Coast Guard. They were all great, and I'm really not prejudiced when saying the Air Force one was the best! Watch this:

Well, it's just before 11pm and I have to sneak out to the stores tomorrow to see if I can get a Wii for my boys for Christmas. I found 2 places that will have one at open tomorrow, so I'm planning on getting there early and hopefully there will be no line! I'm off to bed!

October is half over!!

2007-10-17T17:35:00.000-06:00

Bad me, I haven't posted in a couple of weeks! I've had a couple of sleep studies and have finished more on my Blackstone Fantasy Garden!

First off, they did find that I had sleep apnea after the first study. I didn't sleep well AT ALL (ok, well obviously I slept a little...like 1.5 hours!). Of course it's difficult when they've got you hooked up to a million electrodes and want you to sleep on your back (I'm a tummy sleeper). Then the tech comes in every 30-45 minutes to adjust electrodes or bands or whatever! So, they showed me some brain waves and the breathing waves and how you'd see my chest would stop moving and then my brain would wake itself up. It's really neat to see those!

So they decided to set me up for a second one to put a CPAP machine on me and have me sleep again with all the electrodes on. I set up an appointment for the end of October, but they called me last week and had a cancellation and asked if I just wanted to come in. I said sure. I think it was better that way because I wasn't freaking out about it all day. I found out at 4pm that I had to be there at 7pm. I was tired that day anyway, so I figured I'd sleep pretty good!

Went in, they fit the machine to my head and had me wear it for about 20 minutes. Then they hooked me up and at 10pm I was going to sleep. They had a chin strap on me too because I'ma mouth breather. I've always felt like my nose is clogged when I sleep and my ENT told me my septum curves outward giving me a more narrow airway through my nose! Anyway, I drifted off to sleep, but I kept waking up feeling like I couldn't breathe and would have to open my mouth to take a breath. So my tech comes in and says I'm still opening my mouth. I told her I felt like I had to. Turned out that the mask was too small and was blocking my nostrils. So she got another one. I fell back asleep again, then she came in saying it seemed to be leaking. I told her I could feel it near my left eye. Turned out that mask was too big! So she got another one that seemed to fit really well! I drifted off to sleep again....so peaceful....and then BAM! Alarms going off! What the hell?! My tech rushes in and says they were talking about how they smelled smoke and then the fire alarms went off! She was frantically unhooking me and I grabbed all my crap (can't leave my stitching behind to burn down!) and walked towards the exit. There were 5 other people having the study too and of course we all looked like aliens from outer space with all the electrodes and stuff. It took awhile for the fire department to come and it turned out they were having a controlled burn in the area and the building's ventilators must have pulled in some outside air. Sadly, they couldn't find the panel to shut off the alarms! Finally, a hospital security guy came and said they couldn't shut it off, he had to shut it off anyway!

They got it turned off but it went off again. (I had turned on my cell phone to find out the time. 1:52am) By the time we finally got back to our rooms, it was probably 2:30. It took me forever to fall back asleep after that. Talk about adrenaline! So they determined I have an average of 17 apnea incidents per hour. Man, no wonder I've been so tired! I kind of figured it was due to having sore throats all the time. I'm going to try my machine for a couple of weeks and if I still have sore throats I AM having those damn tonsils removed!! One of them touches my uvula!

So, on to stitching. I haven't gotten much done, though it looks like it from my pictures. Keep in mind this is over a 3 week period or so! Here is my Ink Circles' Blackstone Fantasy Garden as you last saw it:

Here it was a couple of weeks ago:

And I just now snapped a new picture, so here it is now:

It's neat to see the progress, even when it doesn't feel like I'm making alot.

EF also had a sale last week, so as you can imagine, orders came rushing in. The first and last day always seem to be the busiest! I FINALLY today finished up all orders from October 5th. I also have all of Saturday's done and am working on Sunday and Monday (along with this week's Delights) tomorrow. My goal is to finish through Tuesday October 9th by the end of tomorrow! (I always make goals farther than I usually get done, but it helps me to bust butt until my husband drags me away for dinner or whatever.) After that it gets a little dicey as far as what I can finish. Wouldn't you know I'd find out a day or two into the sale that 28ct Lugana is on backorder?! With BOTH of my suppliers! Craziness!

Oh well, I hope to get all these orders done by the end of October. My husband has an induction ceremony on October 30th that I need to go to. Since he made rank, it's a big moment for him! So I'm taking off early on the 30th through November 1st (back to work on the 2nd).

Well, that's about enough for now. Ghosthunters is nearly on (one of my favoritest shows) and it looks good tonight!

New Pics!

2007-09-25T19:27:00.001-06:00

Well, I forgot to post last week! My Blackstone Fantasy Garden is just coming right along. It really is a fun stitch! Here it last week:

Here is my progress made since last week:

I also got my Fair & Square exchange pieces from my partner and they're the most adorable thing ever!! Here they are:

Now I'm sitting here anxiously awaiting House to start tonight. Less than 30 minutes!! I'm excited to see what happens!

Tomorrow I have my sleep study so we'll see how that goes I suppose. I'm not very excited about it.

But I AM excited because my best friend, who is like a sister to me, is scheduled to be induced tomorrow and I should have another little "niece" or "nephew" to spoil! She had a little boy a couple of years ago so I'm secretly hoping for a girl. As long as it's healthy I know she doesn't care though! (I don't know if I'd wish 2 boy hell on anyone though...LOL My cousin has 2 boys and they're 1 and 3. The older one bit the younger one on the back one day. Then the next week she heard the youngest crying and asked what was going on and the oldest says, "We're playing headbutting Mom!" I said and it doesn't EVER stop!!! Just the other day my 11 year old popped the 9 year old because supposedly the 9 year old broke his laundry basket...but it was already broken because he'd just shown that to his dad not 5 minutes prior!! Oh yeah AND it's the 9 year old's fault that he turned on the TV and the 11 year old got up and had to sit down to watch it instead of doing his chores in the morning. *sigh*)

Well, I'd better go get ready for House and stitch some more! Lots of work to do tomorrow before I go in for the sleep study too. I don't usually sleep well in weird places so I'm sure I'll be tired Thursday...which happens to be my mother's birthday. Damn! I've got to pick up a gift for her too! So much to do, so little time!

Yay!

2007-09-18T07:12:00.000-06:00

My Fair & Square exchange partner got her piece in the mail, so I can finally post a picture! This is Blackbird Designs-Spring's Notice:

Every Tuesday I usually snap a new shot of my WIP. On my message board, we do our WIPs of the week on Tuesdays. I used to do it on Mondays, but since Mondays are my days off, I usually stitched more and didn't go near a computer. It doesn't matter to anyone else really as people post throughout the week on that post! Anyway, here was my WIP last Tuesday after stitching on it for a few hours:

And here it is now after stitching on it last week:

It was a pretty good stitching week, if I do say so myself! It was a hugely busy wee though. My husband was on an exercise, my oldest's birthday was Wednesday so I had to make Wednesday special and take treats to school and still try to get everything done on my busiest Delights week to clear up some time on Saturday to have his party. We had a great time though. We grilled out brats for lunch and then went and played disc golf (A.K.A. frisbee golf) and then came back for cake and presents. I think he was disappointed because the only thing we'd wrapped was the requisite new underwear, pajamas, and a cool POTC shirt for school. Then we'd asked him to help his dad level a table, so we said, "Go and get the tool box." We snuck out the front door as he went out the garage door to take pictures of him seeing the brand new toolbox, fully equipped that we'd bought him for his birthday. He really liked it!

I had to work a little on Sunday to make up for the time I spent with the kids on Saturday, but it worked out ok. At least the busy Delights week is behind me now which always allows me to breathe a sigh of relief!

On Sunday, while DH was mowing the yard, I attacked the stump in the front yard. We had this hideous throwback to the 80s square bush that was huge and overgrown. (Keep in mind we moved in last December and are slowing making improvements.) It actually grew halfway over the small driveway beside it! Our drive is a private cul-de-sac with us and 3 other neighbors on it. We love it as it's safer for the kids to play on and we've gotten to know our neighbors pretty well. Well, since it's a private drive, we have to take care of it, so one of the neighbors got us all together to pitch in to reseal the road and all the driveways. So we did that...but before we could reseal our drive, we had to cut back that bush, so DH just ended up cutting it down. (Which I wanted anyway and he knew that) So we've had this stump sticking out of the ground for about two weeks now. So I figured I'd grab a shovel and start digging around it. The boys came and brought the little gardner shovel and a saw and started helping me dig around the roots and sawing them off. Finally DH got done with the yard and then came over and decided to "help". In the end, we had a new chainsaw and the stump was cut out. I could finally plant the rosebush I'd gotten to go there. And, I have pics! I'll put them up next time though, I have to change the format of one to upload it to my album! It looks so much nicer and cleaner!

It's been awhile

2007-09-13T13:29:00.001-06:00

Well, alot's been going on and so I haven't stitched in awhile.

I don't think I mentioned it in the last post, but I've had alot of sore throats lately. I can specifically say since we came back from vacation in late June/early July that they've been more often than ever! So after nearly 2 solid weeks of sore throat, I went to my doctor. (For the most part they weren't so bad that I couldn't do ANYTHING, just annoying. There were a couple of days though where I felt like I was running a fever or something and just felt blah.) So, the doc took one look at my tonsils and said I should probably have a tonsillectomy. YIKES! She told me, "I'm not going to lie to you, at our age, having it done is a bitch!" (Yes, really her words! Military doc, you know. I cracked up because it was hilarious hearing it come from her!) I told her I figure if I made it through a hysterectomy fine, I could do this too! She said, "Oh yeaaah, no problem!" Course I had that done at 24, it's nearly a decade later, I might have less pain tolerance now! LOL

Anyway, she had to refer me to an ENT doc so that he could schedule the surgery. She thought my adenoids might also need to be removed. She said it was like a chipmunk with stuff in his cheeks. I guess they rate tonsils 1-4 with 4 being touching in the back. She said mine were 3+. Well, the waiting game began. It takes about a week or so for the referral to come through via mail. I did get it in and called to set up my appointment with the ENT doc. It was scheduled for August 29th. I got in there and right off, he was an asshole! I HATE that! Part of me wondered if he took one look at my insurance and knowing the military insurance, they don't pay alot to the doctors, and decided to treat me like crap. He did, however, say that my left side was a 3+, but my RIGHT side is a 4. It is actually touching my uvula. He asked if I snored at night and acted like that's all it could be making my throat hurt. He also asked if I breathed through my nose or mouth. I told him mouth because I always felt stuffed in my nose at night. He looked in my nose and said that my septum curves outwardly and that could be the problem. *sigh*. All I want are my stupid tonils out and now it's gotten into septums and snoring and then he brings up sleep apnea! He wants to do a sleep study now. He claims that sometimes having sleep apnea they can remove your unvula and part of your palate when they go in to remove your tonsils. Well, I don't WANT that removed, I just want my tonsils out so I won't have sore throats anymore! I explained to him that I often have really bad sore throats (not just the kind where your throat hurts in the morning and after you drink something it feels better. To me that's open mouthed breathing/snoring sore throat). He asked is it on both sides or one. I said ONE! He said, which one? And I held my hand to my right side and he said, "Well, that's the side where the tonsil is larger so that in and of itself is a reason to have them out." And then there was one more thing I said (Can't remember) and he again said that was another reason to just have the tonsils out. He says he can't say anything about the adenoids because they're behind the tonsils and they'd look when they were in there at them and decide then. So meanwhile, he sets me up for the sleep study...which I could give a rat's ass about!

Course it took my insurance nearly 2 weeks to get me a referral for that. It did come in yesterday and so now I have the stupid sleep study set up for September 26th. I guess I have to go in that night at 7pm and plan to be there until 8-9am the next morning. I sleep really bad in places that aren't my own, so I'm sure I'll be exhausted the next day! I think my husband will be getting off early on the 26th because I have to do an evaluation at 4pm and then go back at 7. He's going to take off the next day too I think, just to get the kids on the bus and just chill out the rest of the day. He more than deserves it anyway. I think he's got nearly 50 days of leave saved up.

Yesterday was my oldest's 11th birthday! We told him we'd do cake and ice cream this weekend since it fell on a school night. I did get him a big chocolate cake slice he could have for breakfast. I try to always do something special for breakfast on their birthdays. Then I took in some packages of cookies to school that he could give his classmates. My husband had yesterday off because he came off night shifts on an exercise the base was having. He got hom about 3am that morning and slept until about 9am and then we ran some errands. We had to go to the post office to ship off my best friend's son's birthday gift. (He'll be 2 tomorrow!) Then we had to go get more cookies for the class. I thought he'd have the usual 20-22 kids but apparently he has 28 kids this year. I'd only gotten 48 cookies. So went to get more cookies and some napkins and while there, picked up his birthday gift. We got him some neat camo Denver Bronco's pj bottoms and some neat POTC pajama bottoms and a Football set of jammies and then we got a tool box and outfitted the whole thing! Since we've been working on the deck, he has just adored doing things with tools! So we thought what better gift than to give him his own set! It was a blast shopping for a toolbox in his favorite color and picking out screwdrivers and socket wrenches and regular wrenches and a level and a hammer and gosh, we got alot of neat stuff. We still want to get a small handsaw for him too. I hope he likes it!

He wanted to have a party at the ice skating rink, but they want to charge nearly $100 for all of that! Plus my husband and my mother don't skate, so it'd be me and the boys skating. I think instead we'll pack a picnic lunch and go eat at the park, then do some frisbee golf, have the cake and ice cream and let him open his gifts and MAYBE go putt putt after that. We haven't decided on that yet. All this bday crap gets so expensive! Buying the gifts, the cake and ice cream, and parties are just insane these days. All the themed ones which I've done, but I hope he's growing out of that stuff. It gets to be alot. Especially if you do the gift bags for all the kids at school! I'm through with that crap! I told my husband I didn't want to do it all anymore because you try to top the year before and it just gets impossibly expensive. Then I told him HE was planning it because he's missed his son's birthday the last 2 out of 4 years and I've planned them all! He said, "Ok, we'll do what I always did when I was a kid. Cake, ice cream, and gifts with family." Yeah that's what I did as a kid too, but kids know how to guilt trip you by saying things like, "Well so and so's parents brought root beer FLOATS to class!" "So and so is having a party at Chuck E Cheese." Blech. I think it'll be a nice family thing this weekend!

Work is going strong! I'm doing up Delights today to ship out tomorrow. I should have started yesterday but with all the errands we were running to get our oldest's bday gifts and running out for more cookies then coming all the way back to drop off at school, only to have DH say he's hungry and is craving breakfast...so we went to Tally's a wonderful little restaraunt here in town famous for their pancakes. They serve breakfast all day. Then by the time we got home it was already 2pm! So I'm cranking them out this morning. I keep smacking myself for not starting yesterday because this is the big week. But there were a few people who paid late anyway and they can be late going out. I have to tell myself that I say on or AROUND the 2nd Friday of the month and as long as they're out by Monday, it should be fine. I will have them all out by Saturday anyway barring some strange screw up with dyeing them all!

I'm finishing up orders from September 4th today as well as the Delights. So I'm working about 10 days back. That's about average. I always LOVE when I catch up and am popping out orders the next day after I receive them! Rarely happens around a heavy Delights week, but it's really fun to do! It did happen right before Labor Day. I bet a few people were surprised to see their items shipped so quickly!

I had this monstrous stitching slump for the last couple of weeks. I didn't stitch on anything for the last couple of weeks and then I realized that the exchange I signed up for was looming. Sadly, I had ordered all the threads for this project (I had never worked with GAST before!) and some were on backorder. I finally got the last 2 threads late last week and set them aside and continued working and then realized Sunday "OH CRAP!!! I'm late!" So I promptly started stitching it. (Thank God, they're a max of 50x50, that makes it a relatively quick stitch-except there seemed to be alot of color changes) I jotted off an email to my partner who thankfully was also late in getting hers out to me! YAY!! I didn't feel as bad LOL. I sat down and watched The Music Man and then watched Season 3, Disc 3 of House...the entire disc. I figure that's gotta be about 6-7 hours of stitching! I got most of it done that night and then finished it up the next day and had to do my signature piece too. I was able to get them shipped out Tuesday morning. I'd post a pic, but she may be lurking around here so until she gets it, I'll keep mum for now!

That really bumped me out of my slump thankfully! So I was able to FINALLY pick up my Blackstone Fantasy Garden piece! I had dyed up a Sahara flair weeks ago for it and it just sat there. I started it Tuesday night while watching a movie. DH was on the exercise that night so I figured, what the heck! Here is a pic after Tuesday night:

It doesn't do it justice really, that green pops off the Sahara! Last night I stitched some more and have even more than this finished now, but haven't snapped a pic of it. This piece is cruising right along and can't wait to have it done and framed!

That's about it for now, I suppose! I'll update this one soon as I get another shot and I need to work on my Breast Cancer one too! I'll post my exchange piece when my partner gets it!

A little finish and a little more on the WIP

2007-08-22T09:51:00.000-06:00

Well, I finished up another little design for the Halloween SAL. Stitched on Jobelan Fuzzy Navel Flair. Here it is with a few modifications:

Excuse the pet hair! I added the spider to it. There was something else hanging from the web, but I'm not sure what it was. It was added from another of the Halloween SAL designs called Bone Voyage Day.

I've also gotten a little farther on my Ink Circle's Breast Cancer Mandala. Here it was before:

And here it is after last week:

At least there's been some progress made. I've been a little ticked off because there was a water main problem in the area and last week JUST as I'd put on several Delights, they came and told us that the water was being shut off in just a few minutes! YIKES!! I had to run and fill buckets of hot water because they said it'd be down for 2 hours. When my Delights were ready to be rinsed there was no water, so I had to do the ole' hot bucket and hand wash/rinse deal. Then I stopped as there was no water to clean utensils and equipment for the next batch! No water to mix up new dyes, no water to wet down fabrics, etcetera! So I waited 2 hours and still no water...3 hours...nothing... FIVE HOURS LATER, it was back on. Talk about ruining a work day! Thankfully I got some stitching on my Ink Circle's piece done!

Then Monday night, we get a notice saying they're shutting it off Tuesday too! Monday was my day off so I was having a nice relaxing day and all of a sudden I thought, CRAP!! Better get something done! So I worked a bit Monday night and then water was out Tuesday. Now I hope they've fixed it! I did do that little design yesterday so at least it was a productive day somehow!

I'm working on a shop order today, so I hope to get most of it finished up as well as a large customer order. If I can do that today, I'd feel great! We'll see how it goes!

THIRTEEN DAYS TIL SCHOOL STARTS!!! (But I'm not counting...HA!) The boys have been getting on each others' nerves which gets on my nerves. They have settled down in the last week thankfully, but there was a point about 2 weeks ago where I was ready to ship both of them off to daycare and have done with it! Keeping them separate is hard! They like each other when school is in, because they hardly see each other all day so when they come home, then they'll play better.

My mom is taking the boys with her over Labor Day weekend to visit my aunt and uncle. The boys don't know where they're going yet, though they told her that's where they wanted to go which was great because that's where she'd planned to go! DH and I will be home and enjoying a little peace right before school starts! I have NO idea what we'll do. I hope to plan something nice while they're gone. They leave Thursday, August 29th morning and come home Sunday the 2nd. It's 4 days of freedom! Then Monday we'll all be off together since it's Labor Day and then the next day they'll go back to school!

I feel much more productive when they're at school, though in September I'll probably be having my tonsils/adenoids out which will keep me down for 2-3 weeks according to my doctor. If it isn't one thing....

Cross Stitch Groups

2007-08-19T20:53:00.000-06:00

Do you have a cross stitch group near you? I'd LOVE to find other people in the area who stitch! Problem is, there's no LNS here, so I don't think there'd be any groups. I can't think of where to look for something like that. I've been in the rubber stamping shops in town and the Scrapbook shops in town, but do not ever see anything like this.

I keep thinking I should start my own or something. Not sure how I'd get word out though.

We went to the Central States Fair today. I wanted to see what the Needlework section is like. I've wanted to enter some things for awhile, but I never get done in time! So we took the boys today with their unlimited wristbands to ride the rids and on the way out, we went into the buildings where they hold all the fine arts and stuff. They had a pretty meager display of cross stitching. I was kind of shocked, though I guess I shouldn't be. There were MAYBE 30 designs, only like 8 of which were larger than 8x10. I'm definitely going to have to enter next year (if we're still here)!

Other than that, just thinking about how I could meet people with similar interests. *sigh* I need to just create my own group, don't I?

Family Visiting

2007-08-15T00:15:00.000-06:00

Well, my aunt and uncle were in town last week through this weekend visiting and that was really nice. They got to come and see our house. I think they're the first family members to visit. We've had several friends from out of state come and stay though.

Then yesterday afternoon, my brother came into town! I was so happy to see him. It's been over a year since I last saw him because he's National Guard and went to Iraq for a year and just got back in late June. He then moved to ND so he's nearer to us. His friends were heading this way and he came along with them and stayed here while they're visiting the Black Hills area.

I introduced him to the finer arts of Guitar Hero II. Now if you don't love that game, there's got to be something wrong with you. Everyone's got an inner rock star somewhere! Out of our family, I'm probably the best at it. I think I could have been a rock start in my OTHER life! HAHA! Anyway, I taught him how to play it and then I think he was up until after 1am playing that game. He has an Xbox 360 too. I think he'll own the game soon himself! The thing that pisses me off about it is that I had a PS2 and DH had a regular Xbox. The only game I really played on the PS2 was Guitar Hero II. DH of course has been wanting an Xbox 360 but I refused to get one. Well, when Guitar Hero II came out on it, I said ok, we could trade both game consoles into one of the used places and see what they gave us and get ONE console! So we did. And then they were sold out of the 2nd guitar control. And have been ever since the first game came out apparently. So I finally had to spend the $90 to just buy the game + guitar again just so we could have the 2nd guitar. It's ridiculous! I think the makers of the Xbox should refund everyone who had to purchase the second guitar controller that way!

Today I got the kids registered for school again (Thank GOD school starts soon!!) and then we decided to take my brother to Reptile Gardens. We killed a couple of hours there and then headed off to have lunch and by the time we got home, all of us adults were exhausted and ready for naps! Mom and my brother crashed on the loveseat and couch. I booted up the computer and went through emails, placed an order for fabrics, etcetera.

Then Mom and my brother decided to head up to Rushmore to see it lit up at night and took the kids with them! Woohoo! I stayed home to get some orders done as I hadn't worked on any today since I was doing the whole tourist thing! I got alot done tonight actually so that's great!

I always feel a sense of accomplishment when I package and ship in the morning! I LOVE the feeling!

Well, I'm off to browse the web!

Oh, I did this today. I do these things, but they have no purpose. They're still fun!

Your Birth Month is February

Peaceful and harmonious, you seek the gentle side of life.
Your warmth and consideration touches many.

Your soul reflects: Purity, modesty, and faithfulness

Your gemstone: Amethyst

Your flower: Iris

Your colors: Purple, yellow, and light blue

What Does Your Birth Month Mean?

Saturday Finishes

2007-08-11T16:31:00.000-06:00

Well, I was able to get my charms on the Hinzeit's Poker that I finished Wednesday evening. It looks like this:

It's done on an Enchanted Fabrics Unique.

This one is for the Halloween SAL that some designers are putting on. It's on Evergreen Flair on Lugana and is called Mom's Little Monster by Helga Mandl (sorry the pic is a little blurry):

We've got company in town this weekend and early next week so can't write much!

Hinzeit's Poker WIP

2007-08-07T10:23:00.000-06:00

Here's my WIP this week on Hinzeit's Poker:

I haven't stitched any on the Ink Circles piece lately! Poker should be done this week sometime though!

I had ordered my threads for my fair and square exchange and they've finally charged me so I should be getting them soon! I'm anxious to get started on this cute little design! (Can't post pics of that until my exchange partner gets it though.)

Back from the Framers'

2007-08-04T22:11:00.001-06:00

I got Grimm, Glum, and Gloom back from the framers' today!

Design by Glendon Place
Fabric: 28ct Lugana "London Fog" Flair by Enchanted Fabrics

New WIP pics

2007-08-03T19:07:00.001-06:00

Yes, I finally got some batteries! Seems like those are the most often forgotten items on a list. (Or maybe just my list)

Here is my WIP so far on Hinzeit's Poker:

I've got the K almost done now, but it's such a quick stitch! It's done on 28ct Jobelan Unique 107 (because nobody bought it and it was a greenish gray, so it was deemed a "manly enough" color by DH)!

This is my WIP pic so far on the piece for my Mom, Ink Circles' Breast Cancer Mandala:

This one is being stitched on 28ct Lugana Royalty Flair by Enchanted Fabrics. This one will go a little slower because I can only stitch when she's not around and she has moved in with us.

I'm dyeing up a couple of pieces for the Halloween SAL and hope to have some time this weekend to stitch up a couple of ornaments and post them here soon!

Last day of July!

2007-07-31T15:02:00.000-06:00

I can't believe this summer is nearly over! I'll be happy when the kids are back in school. When you have 2 boys less than 2 years apart, they fight about EVERYTHING. It drives a person crazy!

So, my batteries died in my digital camera and somehow all the AA batteries in the house have disappeared. I used to have at LEAST 2 big boxes of them leftover from Christmas and they've just walked away...not a trace of a single AA battery to be found. So I thought I'd pick some up while out today and completely spaced it. So, sadly, I can't take any pics of my new WIPs. I'm stitching on Hinzeit's Poker for my DH's poker room and I'm also stitching on Ink Circles Breast Cancer Mandala for my mother who is a 6 year survivor. That one's a little hard because I can't stitch on it when she's around.

I have joined the Fair & Square exchange for the first time and I think it'll be fun. It took me FOREVER to pick out something to stitch for my partner. The rules say no more than 50x50 stitch count (and no less either) so I was frantically searching for something 50x50 with no luck. I finally emailed a friend who'd done it last time around (the same one who pointed me in that direction) and she told me hers was 52x52 last time and she thinks it's just so that it's not way big or way small. I found a really cute one I think my partner will like (but I'm not telling what it is, in case she reads this. We had to give our blog information for our partners to look at.) Joining up, we had to fill out things like our likes and dislikes. I didn't know what I was supposed to put. After reading member profiles, people put favorite designers and stuff like that. I didn't. I just put fantasty things because I love all things dragons, fairies, mermaids, etcetera. However, if my partner is reading this, I love all things halloween and fall too and to be honest, I don't care what you stitch for me, anything that anyone stitches for a person is just wonderful! For Christmas a dear friend stitched me a bookmark and I just love it so much! I took part in a Round Robin and it was cool to have other people stitch on that too, so I don't have many things that have been stitched for me and I would really appreciate just anything. Don't think you have to do something fantasty like!

I also joined the Halloween SAL that the Wonderful XS World is doing. Signups end today and I'm anxious to dye up some fabrics and stitch these little cuties! I can't participate in the prize winning, because I'm providing one of the prizes, but it'll be fun stitching with people from across the world.

Well, that's about it for now, I need to get back to work!

A finish!

2007-07-24T12:36:00.001-06:00

Well, I finally finished Glendon Place's Grimm, Glum, and Gloom! Here is the finished pic (minus the little ghost charm that I lost. I reordered it and attached it and took it off to be framed. I'll post a pic of that when it's back!)

It is done on 28ct Lugana "London Fog" Flair by Enchanted Fabrics (plug for me). I think it turned out great! I think this one will travel with my trunk show!

I've since started on a few smaller pieces. (Finish one, start 3...makes sense, right?) I'm doing Hinzeit's Poker for DH's man cave. I'm also doing the Ink Circles freebie Breast Cancer Mandala for my mother who is a 6 year survivor. I want to turn it into a pinkeep like Terry did. Hers turned out beautifully! I need to dye up another piece of fabric...I think I'll use Raindrop Mystique and do the Fantasy Wedding Blessing. I want to have it done by our anniversary in January! Then I need to start on another piece for the trunk show. I'm thinking a Mira or PR next! The only problem is, I love those so much, I hate to give them up! But a good thing is I started PR's Moon Fairy Spirit on Stormy Night on Monaco. I think I'll send that with the trunk show because now I'd like to do her on something different...definitely an opal!

Work is really busy of course. I'm running about a week back. If today goes as planned, I should have all my orders finished up through Monday the 16th. Friday the 13th was a big order day, so it's taken me a little longer than I thought to get through that day. Wednesday the 18th is another big day, so I'm planning on working tomrorow all on that day. Thursday will be for Delights and for Thursday the 19th and Friday I will finish up Friday the 20th all the way through Sunday the 22nd. If I'm running ahead of schedule, I'll pick up yesterday's orders as well as today's if I can! That'll put me ahead overall! In fact, I'm running a little ahead today so I may just get in Tuesday the 17th's orders finished up today!

Last Friday night was the Harry Potter party. I was a little disappointed this year. The last time the bookstore had the Harry Potter party for Half Blood Prince, they had alot of stations set up for the kids to do things at. They had face painting and fake tattoos and they made their own (edible) wands, and just different sorts of things. This year, they didn't have any of that. We got there a little later than last time because we had done everything early and then we were bored. This meant though that we were in a much later group getting our book. We got home around 2am and I read for another half hour before going to bed. We slept in Saturday and then finished the last row on the deck as well as fixing some of the stairs. It was well over 100 degrees when we got started (at about 1pm) and we still have a bit left. We need to do a small 2x6 on one side and tack down the rest of the boards and then move 8 smaller boards near the house to space them out a little better. After payday, we'll purchase the railings and finish it all up! It'll look fantastic when we're done. Then we'll have to have a barbecue to celebrate! I'll make sure and take pictures. Oh here are the before pics:

Deck at the time of purchase (note the cracked, untreated boards and some had been replaced more recently):

Deck when we started tearing it up, note the railings and benches are gone:

Here is midway through laying the new wood down. DH and the kids are hard at work!:

Here is what it's looking like now. Just need the railings (and that 2x6 underneath the deck)! We have moved the patio furniture back up so we can use it:

In my next installment, I'll show you the landscaping I've been doing and hopefully have some pics of my WIPs!

Vacation's Over

2007-07-06T15:43:00.000-06:00

June just flew right by it seemed! Probably due to the kids being out of school, us having company for a week, and then heading out a few days later on vacation.

Thankfully we were able to head out a few days early to see my husband's sister, her husband, and their kids! It'd been a couple of years since we'd seen them and 3 since we saw her husband. We had a wonderful time. DH's two older sisters were there with their families and they all came down and spent the night. It was one full house Saturday night! DH's twin brother wasn't there though. He lives in CA and it's a bit of a drive for him. Heck, it's about 16-17 hours for us and we're in SD!

I did get to stitch more on my Grimm, Glum, and Gloom while there, but I haven't yet finished it. The thing that drove me nuts though was that I had spent the week before leaving trying to get all my orders done and then when it came to packing, I was furious throwing stuff in bags. I'm surprised I had a complete outfit when I got there! So, yeah, uhhhhhm, don't pack your cross stitching gear quickly. My lesson learned. I left one skein of a Caron thread I needed at home. I was able to finish up the haunted house and backstitch it and then I went to stitch the clouds and....NOTHING! I couldn't find that damn thread! I was so upset with myself!

After spending a week with my husband's family, we drove a couple hours south to visit my family. While there, I was asked to make an appearance at a cross stitching retreat that was going on in Indianapolis. I agreed to go and had made up little sample fabrics for everyone to have and brought some little charts too. I was a little nervous because I didn't really know anyone, though I had emailed with one lady who is a customer of mine several times. I had told my husband that I'd probably only be an hour or two not knowing people. Ok, I'll admit it. I'm shy. No, no, I know it's hard to believe, but really I am! Once I get to know you, you can't shut me up, but until then, I'm a little shy. So I got there, and met people and met the lady I'd emailed with and sat down to stitch and then a couple of the gals asked me to go with them to one of the local LNS' there and show off my fabrics. So I did that and then they said we were kind of halfway between another one if I wanted to go there too. (Who are they kidding?! I have NO LNS, of course I want to go to ALL of them!!!) I was able to leave some samples at one shop where the owner had left for the day and I was able to speak to the owners of the other shop and purchase a few things! We were called while there because, the designer of Rosewood Manor had come to the retreat and they wanted me to come back to meet her. So we hustled back to the hotel and it was just lovely meeting her! I left 5 hours after getting there! I couldn't believe it! I had such a great time though :)

I did learn something there too. They were having a pinkeep class going on and I watched and took mental notes. To me, it looked so complicated when I'd seen them finished, but when I got home, I got all the pieces together and did one myself! Here is the front side:

Here is the back side:

It was so fun to make and I can't wait to do another small design to make into one of those!

Well, I'd better get back to work. I'll snap a picture of my GGG later this weekend. Hopefully it'll be done!

Vacation!!

2007-06-11T11:07:00.000-06:00

Well, of course the kids got out of school and then we had company show up and now we're about ready to leave on vacation. Factor work into all of that and you'll know why I haven't been posting.

Oh yeah and that pesky little foot problem! I can't believe it wasn't broken. I've had sprains, particularly ankles, since high school and they've never felt THAT bad! When I went flying and then came down and heard the pop, I thought, "Oh crap, now I've done it!" I hobbled around that night but thought, oh, it's ok, I'll probably have a nasty bruise and that's it. But waking up at 4am due to pain wasn't something I expected! I waited until a little after 5am to wake up my husband to tell him I thought I needed to go to the doctor and I wasn't sure if I could drive myself. (Right foot is the gas foot and all) I knew that they'd tell me they had something available around 9am, I just knew it. That was the time my Uniques were supposed to be released. When I called at 7am, I was right, 9:15am. So I had to send out an emergency newsletter letting everyone know why I was cancelling. I felt just horrible as people had posted they were looking for one or I'd gotten emails about them. I was amazed at the support that poured in via email and the message board! I mean, people that hadn't ordered from me before, but got the newsletter, took time out of their busy schedules to send a little "hope you feel better, don't worry about the fabric" email! It was absolutely wonderful! The stitching community is just amazing.

I didn't get much stitching done over the last few weeks for the reasons listed in the first paragraph, but here is a picture from a couple of weeks ago:

This is the pic I took this morning:

I finished up a couple of tombstones, got the owl finished up (except the beads) and outlined, finished up the fence and started the walkway to the house. The steps are done (but not outlined) and the doorway is done (but not outlined). It's not alot of stitching, just alot of changing threads!

Vacation starts for me later this week! We're not sure of the exact date. It'll be either Thursday or Friday. It wasn't going to be until June 18, but when my husband called his parents to let them know the dates, they told us that my sister in law is going to be there for a long weekend...the 14-18! So since my husband, having exercises, inspections, and a deployment last summer, hasn't seen them for a couple of years, we bumped up the date so we can get there before they go. The big kicker is if they'll let him leave or not. Unfortunately, his boss is away at this time as well as the guy who is directly under him, leaving my hubby in charge until Monday the 18th (the date we were originally leaving anyway). So now it's a matter of if the guy above DH's boss will let the shop go for one day without his rank or higher there to supervise! It's a Friday and usually they cut out early anyway, so he's hoping they'll have him work Thursday and we can leave that night and drive part of the way, stay in a hotel, and drive the rest of the way Friday getting there Friday evening. If not, we'll do the same thing Friday night after work I suppose. We'll get there Saturday evening and get to spend one day with them before they leave. I hope we get the whole weekend with them though!

We're planning on being back around the 4th sometime. That could mean anywhere from a couple of days before the 4th to a couple of days after. I'm not exactly sure yet. Since we're leaving early, you'd think we'd get back early, but we may stop off in Kansas and visit some friends of ours there for a day or two as well. I guess we're living spur of the moment the next couple of weeks. I hate that. I'm a big PLANNER!

We're going to have limited internet access while there though. My in laws have dial up and so does most of my family. I did get asked to make an appearance at a cross stitching retreat being held in Indianapolis, so that'll be fun!

Meanwhile, I'd better go and get as many orders done as possible and get laundry done and start packing and all that good stuff!

Oops...Time Flies

2007-05-15T13:50:00.000-06:00

Sorry, haven't posted in a month! I've thought about posting though (but I know, that doesn't count!) I started stitching on Glendon Place's Grimm, Glum, and Gloom around April 15th and have made lots of progress. Yeah, that's my excuse, I've actually been STITCHING in my free time.

Do you know what I think is helping me the most? I'm stitching this along with my friends Lori and Cerys and Cerys got really far ahead of everyone in the beginning, so now I'm being competitive and trying to catch up. I've nearly caught her! (Poor her, she had family sick and then was sick herself, so didn't feel like stitchinbg, so I took advantage of that time and stitched like mad LOL) Here is my Progress from the beginning until now by weeks:

Week 1:

Week 2:

Week 3:

Week 4:

Week 5 (the most recent pic):

I guess looking at these altogether I can see that I've made lots of progress, but I swear this tree grows branches when I'm not looking! Everytime I breathe a sigh of relief because I've finished yet another branch with more spanish moss hanging off of it, I see there are STILL MORE!! Once the tree is done, I think everything else will stitch up really quick. Basically there's tombstones, the rest of the fence, the haunted house, and the cloud and moon to do besides the rest of the branches and the owl. Then it's beading and done!

I have so many things I want to start next. I think I'll do a little something as this was a big one to do and then go back to a bigger design. I really would like to start PR's Queen of Fairies, or maybe MLOTS, or maybe the Little Wishes Make a Wish Fairy...HA! I want to start them all!

Everything else is going great, I've checked out the first 2 Harry Potter books on CD from the library. I figure I can "read" and stitch at the same time that way! I have all the books and want to refresh my memory before the 7th one comes out. I'm hoping book 7 ties up alot of questions and loose ends and I really hope Dumbledore comes back somehow!

Work slowed down a bit and then a boom since Friday. So I'm back to dyeing fabrics today. I'll probably get a few orders done today, but some of them are plain orders. I have one 16 piece that should go out tomorrow. That's the oldest order so that'll be nice to have it out. Then I've got a big 18 piece coming up. That should keep me busy!

I'm a little worried about how the new shipping rates will affect my shipping costs. Friday I raised shipping prices because I wouldn't be able to dye anything and get it out by Monday (I was ready to start the 16 piece next and Sunday and Monday are my weekends). I've heard that they really nail you for the smaller packages, but you get a bit of a discount for the larger ones. We'll have to see how that goes and I'll probably re-adjust prices again. Hopefully I can lower the larger orders!

Well, I'd better head out for now. Will post more of GGG later!

Eeek!

2007-04-15T16:06:00.000-06:00

I didn't forget to blog, really I didn't, I'm just not quite used to it yet!

Things have been busy in April, it seems one thing right after another! We had friends come visit from out of town over Easter weekend which was really nice. Of course (my luck), I started getting that scratchy throat feeling the day before they arrived. I seriously willed myself not to be sick while they were here. In fact, I forgot ALL about it until Tuesday rolled around (the day after they left) and boom, there it was bigger than ever, sore throat, achy body, etcetera. YUCK! So I was a wimp for an entire day and part of a 2nd day then I slowly churned out a few customer orders and Delights. I just this morning finished up the last Delight for this past week. It's reasons like this why I put "on or around the 2nd Friday of the month." Thank Goodness! Of course I typically stress about things like that anyway. Oh well, what can you do but work as quickly as you can!

I ordered the new Passione Ricamo design "Queen of Fairies". Oh my is she absolutely breathtaking!! I hadn't allowed myself to even THINK about what to stitch her on until she was in my hot little hands, but then a sweet customer of mine and I started emailing about it because she had preordered too and wanted the fabric. We came up with Mystical and boy will she look STUNNING on that! Since she is white with golds throughout and that is an olive with golds in it...wow, I just can't wait. I'm going to have to stitch her on that too!

So, I finally put stitches into Grimm, Gloom, and Glum today...about 2 weeks later than our SAL started! I wanted to do the fabric up but it took me approximately a week to decide if I wanted it on a Slate or a Smoky Haze. I procrastinated soooo long about this that I decided forget it, I'm tired of dyeing fabric, I'll just stitch it on this Mountain Mist SW fabric that I received as a bingo prize a few weeks back. I put stitches into it and then I just couldn't stitch on it anymore. It felt weird to stitch on another company's fabric! Then I thought I'd get a gray fabric and dye Smoky Haze on the top. It turned most of the fabric a darker gray than it was with some orangey browns in it. I think it'll go well with the pumpkins! I can see dyeing Siren's Call over the gray fab too and coming out with something gorgeous for PR's MLOTS!

I had a customer tell me I should just be an ONS so she could buy fabrics and other things as a one stop shopping experience! I told her the original plan was to open a brick and mortar LNS (as there's nothing around for about 5 hours) but DH was a little leery of that whole idea so he told me to go with my fabrics first and perhaps expand later!

I've started picking up commercial real estate leaflets so I can see what retail space is available in town. I really want to expand. Course I originally had another name entirely I wanted to call my LNS/ONS and when I had to start with the whole fabric thing, I came up with something just for that. So part of me says, just add " 'n' things" on the end of it and call it good, but another part of me says that I want the original name I thought up before! Well, there's plenty of time before that decision is made! My customer suggested to start adding patterns and the flosses and specialty beads that go with them and that would start my expansion. Fantastic idea, and one I'm itching to pursue, but at the same time, I'm afraid it might potentially scare some wholesalers away from the fabrics. That's why I'd really like to do a brick and mortar here as there's nothing around and that way I'd do what I originally wanted. I would like to carry some of the smaller designers as well, particularly ones using EF so people could get their patterns and fabric together!

I'm still searching for that perfect floss storage option. I did the bobbins in the plastic bobbin storage boxes and didn't like that. Then I did the Stitchbow system both in the plastic boxes and in the binders and wasn't a big fan of that. Now I'm on the flossaway bags but man it takes alot of those for just the DMC collection and they're not very neat. Now I've picked up the File-a-Floss boxes. They're kind of neat, but there's no way they actually hold 100 flosses! They're like a shoebox size and have a hanging rack system in there and you use bags similar to flossaway bags and add this plastic thing to the top that hangs over the racks. But sometimes I have more than 1 of each color which makes it bulky and I just can't see how this small box will hold 100 flosses!

Lately I've been looking at floss cabinets but that's getting in the pricey range for DMC storage. What is the best way to store this stuff?! I had a great system with nuts and bolts boxes that I hung up on my wall in my craft room. Here my craft room has cabinets on the walls already so I have no room for them. I have to find something smaller and convenient...particularly when I have many floss tosses to be done! I need something that's easy to pull out and put back!

Well, I'd better get off here and actually get some stitching done! Damn computers, they take away so much stitching time! LOL.

Stitch N Stuff

Progress on the wizard

Trick or Treat Fairy done!

Counting the Days

Grateful Nation by Glendon Place finished!

Purple Rain

Still hanging in there!

Keeping my head above water...barely

Yeah, so um...here I am?

Ugh, what's wrong with me?!

I GOT IN TO NURSING SCHOOL!!!

The neverending wait

I can't wait

Military Mondays-2010 Presidential Citizens Medal

MM-something a little different

Military Mondays

Happy 4th of July!

Military Mondays

Military Mondays

Grateful Nation

Military Mondays

Military Mondays

Ooooh, Stitchy Progress!

No Stitching

Blue October Weekend/Life!

So tired!

Yes, I've been away

Updates

Trick or Treat Fairy update

Blackstone Fantasy Garden FINISHED!!

Newet Pic of Blackstone Fantasy Garden

Just a quickie update

Happy New Year's!

Can I finish it?!

Yucky Friday!

November SUCKED!

/rant on

Yeah I'm bored, but lookie what I got!

Twi-hard

My Deployment List

Blackstone Fantasy Garden Progress

ToT SAL 10/26

ToT SAL 10/19

Midnight Enchanter

ToT SAL Monday 10/5

YIKES!

Fair Entries 2009

Don't you hate those projects...

One month nearly done!

Will this week ever end?

*yawn* Sooooo tired!

A little finish!

My New Car!

Uh-oh

Saturday

I Can Has Cheeseburger

Moon Fairy Spirit framed by Jill Rensel

I can't believe it!

It's been awhile!

Christmas gifts and finger update

Finger owie!

Where'd November go?

It's October!

I'm an idiot

September 22

Almost September

Is Summer Over Yet?

My Hero

Stash Enhancement and other things

3 days and counting

It's Sunday

Less than a week left

My Bad!

It's finished!

Yikes!

Late Again

Update post operatively

Surgery darwing near

December 1st!!!

October is half over!!

yawn Sooooo tired!