PHD Stitching for 2012

Today was our last day with Kyleigh.  We didn't do much today besides watching TV, painting, cutting and taping and taking a long nap.  Janice picked her up about 4:00 and the three of us went shopping since Kyleigh was running out of pants--she's really hard on clothes.  We went to the Outlets at the Block and got her several pairs of leggings, some long sleeve shirts, a skirt and shirt combo, a nightgown and a dress.  We also got her some new earrings. 

I spent some time going through my PHD (Potential Happy Dances, also know as WIPS/UFOs) projects so that I could "plan" my stitching for 2012.  Here is what I came up with (in alphabetical order):

12 Days of Christmas - Margaret Sherry

Angelic Ornaments - Dimensions Kit (There are eight angels altogether)

Ballerina Kitten - Dimensions (No Count) Kit

Butterfly Whimsy - Dimensions Kit

Christmas at the Beach - Gold Collection Mini

Crabapples, Lemon & Berries - Borderline Towels booklet

Christmas Cutie - Cross Stitch Card Shop #81 (Cover Kit)

Denim Darlings Bib - For the Love of Cross Stitch - March, 1998

Let Freedom Ring - Sunset Kit

Majestic Eagle - Sunset Kit

Tinkerbell - Disney/Thomas Kinkade Kit

Tropical Paradise - Mill Hill Kit

I have approximately 75-80 PHDs, but these are the ones I'd like to complete this coming year.  Several of them don't have a lot of stitching left so should be completed quickly.  I plan to either work on them on the weekends or do an every other week rotation similar to what I've been doing the past few months.  

I also have the HAED, Seaside Victorian that I'd like to continue stitching, but probably won't finish and my current WIP, One in a Million (Precious Moments) if it's not completed by tomorrow night and at this point it doesn't look like it will be.

In addition, I have several charity commitments and would like to do a bunch of small Christmas ornaments.  I also have a couple more projects that will be added to the list, once some of these are completed.

Too Much Help

Kyleigh again arrived bright and early in her nightgown, but today was a different kind of day.  It started with grandpa having to move the car on the lawn just in time for the street sweeper to go by.  While it was there, he decided to wash it since it was very muddy from our trip north last week.

Kyleigh was grandpa's willing helper, but she managed to get wet when they were rinsing the car so we took a bike ride around the block hoping she'd dry off. (She rode, I walked)  The shirt dried, the jeans didn't.  Grandpa went to move the car back to the street since the sprinklers were ready to come on and Kyleigh ran out to watch him and came back even wetter, so I let her go out and play in them before I changed her. 

If you haven't guessed already, it was about 78 degrees out today--not exactly normal weather for the end of December.

After lunch we decided to deliver Christmas presents to the friend that provides our seats at the Angels' games, but first I had to wrap them.  This time the help was provided by our two cats, Pumpkin and Soxie.

They totally ripped the paper on this side of the box, but with some creative compensation, I got it done and we got the presents delivered safely.

Once we got back, grandpa decided to do some cleanup in the backyard.  He mowed the largest section of lawn and then he weeded the border between the patio and the grass.  We used to plant impatiens there, but haven't for several years.  Again, he had a willing helper.

Janice calls Kyleigh "a tomboy in princess clothing".  She always wants to wear a dress, but she's not afraid to get dirty.  Janice was a tomboy too, but never wanted to wear a dress.

Another Kyleigh Day

Kyleigh arrived bright and early this morning in her nightgown and slippers.  After getting dressed, eating breakfast, watching some cartoons on TV, playing with her new Tangled game on her MobiGo and watching grandpa change the flourescent lightbulbs in the kitchen, we went to the Michaels in Buena Park to do a free make-it/take-it which involved gluing pieces of tissue paper to a palm tree or a dinosaur.  Here's Kyleigh's completed project:

Our next stop was McDonalds for lunch and then on to Barnes & Noble where we tried to resolve a problem with a Nook purchase and got a book for Kyleigh.  Resolving the problem took almost 1/2 hour and she was a good waiter so the book was a reward.  Then it was home for a nap.

Kyleigh enjoys playing Doodle Bear on the Fisher Price website.  This involves stamping various colored stamps on one of three bears and then printing or washing the bear and starting over.  We have several bears lying around our house now, all pink with pink stamps.

A Kyleigh Day

Janice had to go back to work today so Kyleigh had a sleepover last night and spent the day with us.  We were really lucky that she slept until 7:45 this morning.  We had a real lazy morning and it took us til almost 10:30 to get showers and breakfast.  I received a Belgian waffle maker for Christmas so David made us waffles and scrambled eggs with ham for breakfast.

We spent the rest of the morning putting boxes in bags, playing Doodle Bear on the Fisher Price website, watching Strawberry Shortcake and generally annoying the cats. We did manage a two hour nap and then had a late lunch (peanut butter and jelly with cheese sandwich, of course).

David went to mail packages (Q4OC, Binky SD, a welcome baby present for my nephew's new daughter and the return of an eBay purchase) and birthday card and floss to Australia.  And Kyleigh and I walked to the store to get milk, bread, raspberries, broccoli, hamburger, cat food and Tinkerbell gummies for her mommy.   On the way home, she decided she needed her picture taken.

This is our next door neighbors front yard and Kyleigh has been fascinated by these statues.  I took the first picture and she came and looked at the camera (on my phone) and decided I needed to take the second one.  BTW, that's my Mickey she's holding.

She went home with mommy after dinner, but she'll be back about 7:00 tomorrow morning.  Now I'm off to stitch.  I'm working on a Precious Moments design for Q4OC.

Merry Christmas

MS 12 Days of Christmas

I have this posted as individual finishes on my other blog http://cathy-mystitchingjournal.blogspot.com/ but a friend asked to see the whole piece so I'm posting that here.  The fabric is 25-count potato Lugana which isn't showing well in the photo and I'm using the called for Anchor floss.  This is on my to be finished list for 2012.

Weekly Update - 10/2/2011

This was my week to work on Seaside Victorian and I've now completed the top half of page 1 as well as part of the bottom half.  I like that it's actually starting to look like something.

Now I'm back to charity stitching, this time for Binky SD.  So far, this attempt at a rotation seems to be working!

My talented daughter has been busy

We gave Janice a sewing machine for her birthday--actually we gave her money and she used part of it to buy a sewing machine.  She didn't have Kyleigh this weekend, so she spent part of it sewing.  First she made the Tinkerbell pillow for Kyleigh to use for naps at preschool.

Next, she made a prototype of a green snack bag that she'll sell at the boutique next month.  The previous one she made was squared off and had velcro across the top, but I felt the velcro might make too much noise when opening or closing so she came up with this idea instead.

 Her final project was the tutu and wings that will become part of Kyleigh's butterfly costume for Halloween.  The wings still need to be painted pink and purple.

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Weekly Update - 9/25/2011

This was my week to stitch something other than Seaside Victorian, so I chose to stitch two butterflies for WOCS since the target date is 10/1/2011.

For this project, we were asked to use a butterfly pattern designed for WOCS and choose three shades of one color to stitch it in. There will be 36 butterflies in total.  We were also asked to send a fabric for the border along with it. I scanned the squares with the fabric I chose for each.

For my first butterfly, I chose to use DMC 3607, 718 and 915.



For the second, I chose 964, 959 and 3812.





Seaside Victorian Update

Stitches, that is.  Seaside Victorian has been set aside for now, but I managed to add about 1700 stitches this week.  (The colors in last week's photo were more accurate.)  You'll probably notice that the first two columns are one row too long.  I'm not sure how that happened, but I'm going to leave it for now.  It's close emough to the colors in the next row that I'm planning to skip that row to get back on track.

 

Because I'm enjoying this so much, but have other obligations that need attention, I've decided to try a rotation.  I'm stitching on Seaside Victorian every other week and in the other weeks will be stitching on various squares for WOCS, Binky SD and Q4OC. plus an exchange project for Shared_Crosses and a finishing up a project I started a couple of weeks ago.  Lots of stitching in my future.

Pumpkin and Soxie

In April, we brought home two kittens that we got from a friend of a friend of Janice's.  Janice took their brother who Kyleigh named Bobby (after Bob the Builder)  Ours were immediately named Pumpkin and Soxie, mostly because of their coloring.  We were told at the time that they were six weeks old and both males, but we later discovered they weren't quite that old and that Soxie was a female.  Of course that didn't make a difference to us.  The top picture was taken the day we brought them home.

I took the bottom picture this morning.  They are six months old now and still spend a lot of time together.  They're not allowed on tables and counters, but they love to curl up on top of things.  Right now, one just got removed from the table in my home office and the other is curled up on the shredder. 



My Current Project

One of the ladies in my Yahoo Group, Shared_Crosses is stitching a HAED called Seaside Victorian by Dennis Lewan and I fell in love with it almost immediately.  She started in the bottom left and I started in the top right so we're working in opposite directions.  Below is the picture of what it's supposed to look like.  I'm seriously considering removing the ship, but I have a long way to go before I make that decision.

Below is my start.  I've only been stitching on it for a week and this is approximately 3/4 of 1/4 of the first page.  I'm using a light blue 25-count Lugana, one over one and I'm really enjoying it. I'm planning to continue with it through the weekend, then I need to work on some other projects.

I do have another HAED in process.  I started Faery Tales several months ago, but haven't quite completed the first page.  I'm stitching it on 18-count Aida, one over one and I don't really like the coverage so I'm thinking I might restart it using 25-count Lugana.  I've surprised myself in that the 25-count is easier than I thought it would be.

Kyleigh spent the weekend

Janice was at a women's retreat with our church this weekend, so Kyleigh got to spend the weekend with Grandma and Grandpa.  This is the first time she's ever spent the whole weekend.

Friday night we went to see the Angels play the Yankees.  It was a long game and we left before the fireworks, but got to see the fireworks from Disneyland on the way to the car. 

I was closing the back door after letting the cats in and managed to close my right thumb in the door.  The nail is now a beautiful blue/purple and I'm going to lose the nail.  It was painful the first few days, but isn't too bad today.

Saturday we woke up to thunder and rain showers so we had a very lazy type day.  David had promised to make pancakes, but first he fixed the knob on our bedroom door.  It's been sticking and hard to turn and I've been afraid of being either locked in or locked out, but I think he really did it because he asked Kyleigh to open the door and she couldn't get the knob to turn.  Late in the afternoon we went out and played in the backyard and Kyleigh found Janice's old wagon and filled it up and pulled it around the yard.  She also spent time lugging our cats around.

Side Note:  Have you ever realized after the fact that you should have taken a picture of something but missed the opportunity.  I did that a lot this weekend.

Sunday was church.  During the service a sheriff in uniform sang the song "Where were you when the world stopped turning?"  I'd never heard it before, but it's a beautiful song and there was also a slide show of 9/11 images to accompany it.  Here is a link to the lyrics if you're interested. http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/alanjackson/wherewereyouwhentheworldstoppedturning.html

I took this picture of Kyleigh all dressed and ready to go and sent it to her mom.

We met Janice at Olive Garden for dinner since it's within walking distance of her condo (I had her car), David had a gift card and they had the neverending pasta bowl special.  Kyleigh wasn't happy about it, but she did go home with mommy.  And I have the next two days off work to recouperate.

Angels Game Fun

Janice, Kyleigh, Bob (the holder of the season tickets) and I normally go to all the Friday night Angels games.  Janice wasn't able to make it tonight so Bob and I took Kyleigh to see the Angels play the Yankees by ourselves.  The pre-game ceremonies included a walk around the field by active military and their families.  There was also the flag ceremony where they unfurl a large flag on the field and a flyover by seven jets.  I didn't get any pictures because I was holding Kyleigh.

Bob normally keeps score, but not when Kyleigh's around.  Then he spends his time either entertaining or being entertained by her.  The picture above was taken at tonight's game.  He's responsible for the sweatshirt being on backwards.  BTW, Kyleigh doesn't spend much time watching the game

The pictures below were taken at last Friday night's game.  Bob purchased that monkey (purple is her favorite color) and later said it was the best $20 he ever spent.  They played "There's a monkey on your head", Hide the monkey", The monkey is mean", etc.

;

Kyleigh's School Picture

Janice had a dentist appointment this afternoon so David and I picked Kyleigh up at preschool. There was a note on the door saying pictures were in. Isn't she just the cutest thing!

Janice got to our house before we did so she fixed dinner: spaghetti and salad, yum!

Birthday Club and an Easter Dress

Kyleigh spent Friday night with us so we started the morning by meeting Janice for breakfast. Then we ran errands: Party City, WalMart, Penneys and Toys R Us. We went to Toys R Us so that Kyleigh could get her birthday crown and Geoffrey balloon. They also announced her birthday over the loudspeaker so that everybody that wanted to could wish her happy birthday. She had several people come up to her and very shyly said thank you to each one. One of her favorite parts of going to Toys R Us or Babies R Us is to ride the vehicles at the front of the store, but she's only allowed to if she behaves while we're in the store. She did this time so she got her ride. That's a sticker on her arm (another thing she's "into"). Easter dresses were on sale at Penneys and Janice and I had picked out a few last week, but decided to let Kyleigh choose. This Penneys had a dressing room in the children's department so after she'd chosen three dresses, we let her try them on. Below is the dress she chose. I took the picture off Penneys website, but the background of the dress is white white.

Riding the Bike

Kyleigh has been fascinated by this bike ever since she was a year old and could climb on and sit on the cross piece. Every time she comes over, she tries to ride it and now she can, although she still can't sit on the seat and reach the pedals.

That's most of my stash in the background, although there are two more cabinets that aren't visible.

Tinkerbell Dress, Part 2

We picked up Kyleigh at preschool and met Mommy for dinner at Norm's restaurant. Kyleigh saw the dress when she got into the car and insisted on taking it into the restaurant so that she could try it on. We made her wait until after she'd finished eating, but here it is on the real life model. The picture's a little blurry, because I took it with my cell phone and she might have moved a little. She does like the dress and it fits so now I can use up some more material in my stash and make another one.

I also took this picture at the restaurant while we were waiting for dinner.

Tinkerbell Dress

A couple of weeks ago, Janice and I were at JoAnn's and I spotted an inexpensive pattern that I thought would make a cute dress for Kyleigh. We almost purchased princess material, but then saw this Tinkerbell fabric. Since Tinkerbell is one of her favorites right now, we bought this one instead.

I cut it out yesterday while Janice was using my sewing machine and stitched it up today in between power outages (we had five varying from 5 seconds to a couple of minutes within a couple of hours). I modified the dress slightly--the bow was supposed to tie in the front and there was supposed to be a border of ribbon across the top with buttons above. Instead, I left off the buttons and the top border and stitched the ribbon down on both the front and back and the bow ties in the back.


I took the picture to show Janice since we were meeting her for dinner at Pancho's. This is one of our favorite restaurants and they were doing a fundraiser for the school's basketball team. We met at 4:00 and the restaurant was extremely busy and there was only one waitress, but we got very good service, from I think, the manager. He brought us several bowls of chips and salsa and refilled our drinks before they were empty and was reasonably attentive. The kind of service you'd normally expect, but rarely get when they're that busy.

As far as stitching goes, I haven't done that much. Below is two weeks worth of stitching on Cat Lessons for People from Lizzie Kate. I did a lot of frogging on this one, but there are two mistakes that won't be frogged because I don't think anyone will notice them.

I changed most of the colors, because I'm not into browns/khakis. It's being stitched on 25-count Wedgewood Lugana.

My Daughter is so talented

Kyleigh's birthday party is next Sunday and she's having a Tinkerbell party at a local park. Janice wanted a couple of games for the kids so she bought a ring toss game, but decided to make a bean bag toss game. Here is the (almost) finished product:

She painted it last week, but came over today to reinforce it and make the bean bags which are pink and purple.

Kyleigh's reaction when she first saw it was "That's cool, but that blue flower, it should be pink."

February Stitching Plans

For February, I'm planning to stitch the following:

UFO
I (heart) Cats

Binky, South Dakota
Feathered Friends - Owl
Penguin Alphabet - Letter T
Newborn Cuties - Clown
Newborn Cuties - Rocking Horse
Newborn Cuties - Duckie

Q4OC
Kylee B - Butterfly

LQUSA
Cars - Doc Hudson

Christmas Ornament
Festive Fairy

Oak Haven SAL
January
February

These are my plans, but as always they're not set in stone. The items for Binky SD and the Christmas ornament are very small and should only take 1-2 days each. I think I can finish all of these, but I doubt I'll have time to start a new ongoing project although I have several I'd love to start.

January Stitching Update

I didn't do too bad. I stitched every day but one and completed all the required stitching. It was the fun stuff that didn't get done. I just didn't realize that it would take almost two weeks to stitch the teacup.

For Q4OC
Alphabet Kitties - Letter V - Completed 1/7

For Binky, South Dakota
Spring Chicks - Chick 7 - Completed 1/8
January Teacup - Completed 1/19
Teddy Bear Alphabet - Letter A - Completed 1/21
Teddy Bear Alphabet - Letter U - Completed 1/22

UFO Finish
I (heart) Cats - started 1/30

Start and Finish
Christmas Smiley Ornament - completed 1/24
6 Geese-a-laying - completed 1/30

Start
Cat Rules for People - not started

I'll continue stitching on I (heart) Cats for the next week or so and Cat Rules for People will be added to my February planned stitching.

Look what I got

When we got Kyleigh's picture taken with Santa last month, they gave us a coupon for Shutterfly. This is what Janice got with that coupon. She also had a couple of reprints made of Kyleigh trying to eat Mickey's nose and her and Kyleigh at the baseball game.

I don't normally use a mouse pad, but I'm making an exception and this now graces my desk at work.

And I'm participating in a birthday floss exchange on the Shared Crosses Yahoo Group. Since my birthday is in January, this is what I got. It was really fun to open all the cards and see what colors each person chose. You were only supposed to send two skeins, but some people sent three or four (and only two were duplicates). I also received a gift certificate to an online shop because one of the ladies felt guilty for not sending her floss on time.