The other "F" word......

Yesterday was one of those milestone days for me....I turned the big 40. What started out as a normal day ended up being fantastic! Hubs went to work super early but came home about 10:00 am and told me to take a shower and shave my legs so we could go get my birthday present. I'm just thinking..."what on earth do my legs have to do with it?" So I get my shower, toss my hair up in a ponytail and get ready to go. My mom shows up to watch the boys just as we're getting ready to leave.

Hubs then drives me to a fancy schmancy spa about a half hour away! Hubs, our daughter and my mom all pitched in together and got me a spa day! I've never ever had one of those. I had a FULL massage with seaweed wrap and very pretty smelly stuff...it was fabulous! After the SUPER LONG massage I went to another room where they gave me my first ever manicure! Yep, 40 years old and never had one. My hands were seaweed wrapped, exfoliated, oiled and painted a very lovely shade of what my hubby says is "hooker red". My nails are naturally long and the ladies there oohhed and aahhed over them, made me feel so good to hear it was okay to not have the fake kind since I always feel like I'm left out of some secret society when I see other girls with those pretty things on.

After the manicure I recieved my very first ever pedicure! Yep, they seaweed wrapped and exfoliated and got rid of those nasty cracked heels! Then they painted them the same "hooker red" and put glitter on top! They said since it was my birthday that my toes should have a party too, LOL! I was kinda thinking I was too old for that but then I peeked at them and fell in love! They sparkle! Who knew your toes could sparkle like that?! I walked out of that place feeling so spoiled and diva-ish. I am soooo going back there again! :)

When hubs brought me back home mom had cleaned my house and decorated it up all birthday-ish. It was very cool and unexpected. The above pic is flowers from my mom and the boys and a pretty Lily from a good friend.

These are my nails after my manicure......so shiny! :)
And here is my chubby little feet with my sparkly toes......
Ok, now on to the good stuff.....we have a birthday club in my group and I was very spoiled from all the ladies. From Miss Vicky I recieved "Seaology" by the Trilogy, LHN's "Bookshelf", some chocolate covered peanuts (if you look closely you'll notice it's an empty box...I couldn't wait) Some cute stickers, a notepad and the cutest little bear figurine that is already displayed on a shelf in my craft room. :)
From Miss Ethel I recieved Mill Hill Button & Bead kit "the Firehouse", and Stone and Thread's "Keeper of Snow". :)
From Miss Pat I recieved Mill Hill Button & Bead kit "General Store" and some DMC floss. :)
From Miss Chele I received the first 2 charts of Lizzie Kate's "Less=More", JBW "Twas the Night II", #8 pearl cotton and some red beads. :)
From Miss Georgena I received a large piece of 32 count linen, a big box of skittles, 3 packets of tea and some DMC floss. :)
From Miss Carrie and Miss Sierra I recieved gift cards to 123stitch. :) I already kinda have an idea of what I will use them for but I keep changing my mind.

From Miss Tonya I recieved a gift card to JoAnns....this I will use for trims and embellishments for "finishing". :) I'm going to hang on to this one for a while and plan a big finishing day later.

It was a fabulous birthday and I know there is still more coming. I felt very spoiled and special all day long. Thanks everyone for making it a wonderful day! :)

I can't end this update without a little bit of stitching progress so here is the last photo I took of Lavender Blue. It's not a great pic because I didn't want to take it completely off the scroll frame, but you can kind of get the idea of what it looks like.
I have the next parts for this but I ran into a snag with some hand issues so haven't been able to stitch like I normally would. I'm going to keep at it and try to keep up with the SAL though. This may be the only "finish" I get this year depending on what happens with my hand. I'm okay with that though....just gives me more to look forward to stitching in the future. :)

Hopefully my next update will have the next part of Lavender Blue finished and maybe some progress on something else too. Happy Stitching everyone!

Happy Spring!

I know I've been super behind in keeping up my blog this year. "Life" just has a way of getting in the way of things. I've had a billion personal/family things pop up this year that has cut into my stitching time. I've fallen so far behind on my Crazy January Challenge I don't think I'll ever catch up!

I did choose to do a SAL this year and have fallen way behind on it. It's from: http://magicaspuntadas.blogspot.com/ I just finished the first two parts and she's already released parts 3 & 4. Hoping I can catch up before the next one's are released. Here's my progress so far.......

My other focus project is a SAL from Sylvia at: http://syku66.blogspot.com/ She's releasing these really cute seasonal pieces. I'm doing this SAL with some of the ladies in my yahoo group and I think I'm the last one to get started on it. I chose some silkweaver fabric called "rainbow dreams" and I'm hoping when all the seasons are done it'll look kind of like a sky in the background. Here's my progress from yesterday......
The title of this blog post is Happy Spring but spring has been slow to come to Idaho this year. Earlier this week I found some pretty flowers that popped up over night........I was so happy to see these!
Unfortunately they aren't a good indicator of the weather in my area...just this morning we woke up to snow falling. Ugh. It didn't stick around but it's still cold and I am looking forward to warmer temps so I can start a vegetable garden.

That's it for me this time. Hope all you stitchers are enjoying warm weather and lots of stitching time. Keep those needles smoking!

Long overdue update..

I finally have a long overdue update. I am suppose to be doing a SAL with my good friend Tara on this Grand Marquoir piece. I haven't gotten far, just the first little square.

Here is my Lavendar Blue SAL....
As you can see I have not finished the first two parts yet. "Life" has bit into my stitching time lately. The next 2 parts were released today and I did not get them since I wasn't finished with the other parts. I will spend today and tomorrow trying to get this finished so I can get the next parts.

Not much else to say since I haven't been stitching alot lately. Hope everyone has their needles moving and making more progress than me.

I'm a slacker...

I am officially a slacker! I didn't keep up with my Crazy January Challenge and honestly don't even remember what day I stopped at. I did start quite a few new projects and after looking through all my starts and WIP's discovered that I have at least 17 that I want to get finished this year. Most of them are fairly large so I'm definately going to be a busy girl.

I started my first HEAD-ish pattern...it's not a HEAD, but it's similar to one with multiple pages and it will take forever to get finished. Here's a pic of what it'll look like when finished....

And here's my progress as of today.....
Ok, so not alot of progress to show..just one color so far. I've heard so much talk of how hard these multiple page patterns are and I have to say they are NOT as hard or intricate as I thought.

My next one isn't a new start...I started it in 2011 but only had a few stitches into it. This was a PIF from Chele and will be going to Vicky when I finish with it. It's called Sex & Chocolate...I love saying that..hee hee! Here's what it'll look like when finished.....
And here's what I have so far......
I'm not using the called for floss...I just picked out of my stash and chose colors I liked. The fabric is an old piece of Silkweavers in kind of a mottled purple. This will eventually be made into a funky pillow for my craft room.

Next up is the SAL I chose to join this year...it's called Lavendar Blue. The first 2 parts came out January 10th so I've been working on this the last few days.
This is my progress as of today. Not much to look at yet, just the bottom part and I've got lots more to go to get caught up before the next part comes out. I am liking it though...it's just different and I seem to have this secret love affair with samplers lately.
My final pic of the day is Grand Marquoir....I've barely touched this since the last pic. Thanks to an early morning phone call with my friend Tara, she's convinced me to stitch along with her today on it. Sooo, here's my before pic.....
Sometime this evening I'll update with a pic of how much I get done today. Probably won't be a huge amount since it's so hard to hold the GIANT scroll frame but at least I'll get a few stitches in, right?

Ok, that's it for me..don't got much else to show so until next time....Happy Stitching!

Crazy January Day 5

Well day 5 of my crazy challenge did not go so well. I chose to start Bent Creek's "Snapperville".

I've had this in my stash for a long time and have been itching to start it. The fabric is a hand dyed 32 count and the charts with border is super long so I spent a good hour or two just counting out from the center of the fabric so I could find a good starting point. This one would just be too hard to start in the center. After finding my starting point I got on a pretty good roll with the stitching. Then I discovered I was off by two stitches at the beginning....Ack!
Spent another half hour picking out what I had stitched and now I'm at the part where I can start from where I messed up. Not much progress for me today since I had to frog so much, but I still think I'll enjoy working on this one.

Tomorrow I'm going to switch things up a bit and work on a UFO. I'm starting to feel super guilty about all these new starts and not working on one of the pieces I already have started. So my project for tomorrow will be "sex & chocolate"....I'll post before and after pics to show how much I get done tomorrow.

Until next time....Happy Stitching!

Day 4 of Crazy January

Day 4 of the Crazy January Challenge brought me my first finish of the year! Since day two's project was so large I had started another project also and figured it could count as my day 3 start. I worked on it yesterday for day 3 and got so close to finishing it I thought I'd work on it today before I started my day 4 project. I was able to finish it!!! Yay! I already know exactly how I'm going to "finish" finish it.

For today's start I chose another My Big Toe pattern: Stitching is Cheaper than Therapy. I'm using the called for Weeks Dye Works threads and a 28 count white fabric.
Here is my progress for now. It's not much but it's a start. This one should stitch up fairly quickly too so I definately see this finished sometime this year.
I am starting to feel overwhelmed with all these new starts. I have so many UFO's that I should be working on and I keep starting more and more. I think I really am crazy! I'm going to keep going though....it's just too much fun to stop. The hardest part is deciding what I want to start each day...who knew there were so many options? I had originally thought I'd keep it to small or medium projects but now I'm thinking about adding in a couple of larger projects, we'll see just how crazy I get as time goes on. :)

Until next time....Happy Stitching!

Crazy Day 2 & 3-ish

Today is day 2 of the Crazy January Challenge....so for today I thought I'd do something BIG. I've had this chart in my stash for so long and it's called to me and called to me but I just never had the chance to start it. This was a free SAL sometime around 2008 or 2009...*I think* Here's a pic of kinda what it will look like....

And here's my little progress for today.....not much.
Now before you all go...why is THAT all the progress she made? Let me explain.....this project is VERY large. I've had to pull out my largest scroll frame just to keep the fabric out of my way so I can stitch. I've tried a hoop, a q snap and stitching in hand...nothing is comfortable for me with the size of this fabric. So on my largest scroll it went! Which is why there is such limited progress....the scroll frame is hard for me to hold and stitch. I do not have a stand for it. Just to give an idea of the size of this frame......here it is propped against a chair in my craft room. See what I mean by BIG?
And since I can only work on that project for about 15 minutes at a time because of the frame size, I decided to start something else too. I pulled out this little Lizzie Kate boxer.....
And here is my progress.....
Since I started 2 projects today I will NOT be starting another one tomorrow. I'll just continue to work on these two projects for day 3. Grand Marquoir is going to be a long time consuming project just because of the sheer size of it and until I can get a stand for my scroll frame I won't be able to work on it for long periods of time. I'm looking forward to seeing it progress as time goes on though.

Well, there's my day 2 for Crazy January! Happy Stitching everyone!