Christmas Star ornament is finished!

Hope you all had a great weekend and a terrific Monday.  As mine comes to a close, I wanted to give an update on my progress as it was a week ago today that I last updated my blog.  It was a very busy week last week and the weekend was great, but also busy and passed by very quickly.  However, I did finish my Christmas Star ornament by The Workbasket.  This one was DH's pick and was easy to stitch, but the star shape was a tricky finish.  Excuse the sub-standard photos, I had to borrow DS's camera and it was NOT being my friend...grrrrr!  Here it is: 

Now I just need to finish the snowman for DD!  I have started it and will post pics of progress next time.

Also, I need to get cracking on some ornaments to donate to our churches charity auction which is fast approaching!  I figured that I would do some ornaments since I am in the ornament swing right now.  I have a couple of patterns picked out and will get started on those this week.  Hopefully I will have something to show you soon!

I hope you are all off to a great start this week!

Cheers,
Alisa

Happy Family Day!

Happy Family Day to all my fellow Canadians out there!  Happy Presidents Day to all those in the USA!  Happy Monday to everyone else! :)

It's always nice to have a three day weekend and I have been puttering around all day.  I woke with a bad sinus headache this morning, so opted out of tagging along with DH while he took the kids to visit his parents.  After some Advil, a nap and a cup of hot tea, the headache moved to the background and I decided to get some things done during my "quiet time".

I snapped a couple of pics of our spaniel Lady...affectionately called Lady Love...snoozing in the bay window.  She is well loved and quite possibly the sweetest little dog in the world.  Here she is:

Also, I finally got around to "finishing" my Ink Circles, Stained Glass Pine ornament.  This one was my DS's choice and I really love the background colours.

 

I finished the Ghost half of my Quaker Ghosts and Bats by VeeandCo earlier this past week.  I am not sure how I'll finish it yet...I am thinking that they would display nicely as flatfolds and I have the perfect fabric to use for the backing.  Now just to stitch the Bats!

I also started a new ornament, which is called Christmas Star and is from The Workbasket.  This one is DH's choice and is stitched with Rainbow Gallery Treasure Petite Braid, which is a little slippery to work with, but I have the hang of it now.  Hopefully I'll have the stitching part of it finished soon.  This pic doesn't do it justice, hopefully I'll get a better one when it is done:

My DD's choice of ornament (I let them each pic one from the 2010 Just Cross Stitch Christmas Ornaments edition) is Frosty Blue by Blackberry Lane Designs, which I have just barely started and realized that I don't have all the floss colours that I need, so that will have to wait for next time.

In other news, my DD's 7th birthday is fast approaching, so I have started her birthday party invitations:

I'll wait for her to come home so we can colour them in with either markers or paints together.  She decided that she wanted a Pop Star party, so we are having a Hannah Montana impersonator come to the house...should be fun! 

Hope you are all having a wonderful day!

Finish to show off!

A couple of updates today.  Firstly, I received my 3 free skeins of Rosace today and they look and feel great.  For those who have not yet heard of the offer, there is a company called Rosace from Spain that are new to the floss market and are offering 3 free skeins of thread to try for a limited time (till the end of the month I believe).  Shipping was also free for the trial offer, so how could you say no to that?!?!  Their website is www.threadrosace.com.  They do have a conversion chart on their website for DMC and Anchor floss.  They claim that their product is softer and smoother than DMC.  I must say, it does feel wonderfully soft and I am looking forward to trying it.  It shipped fast also, I had it within 10 days of putting the order in (Spain to Canada).  I selected three purple shades and the colours blend nicely, although I am not sure that my picture captures that.  I really must dig out my camera next time as opposed to just snapping pics with my iPhone.  Now I just need to decide on a chart to try these threads with. :)  The shipping charges from Spain would be a little much for placing an order, but they are currently trying to secure a US distributor, so that would eliminate that problem.

Secondly, I finished my exchange piece...here is the finished stitched piece:

...and here is the finished biscournu:

I am happy with how it turned out and I hope that the person receiving it enjoys it. :)

In other news, we set up the new electric fireplace and mantle that we bought for the rec room downstairs today.  It looks great!  We had to move all of the furniture around, as I had a vision as to the way it should be and it turned out well.  Wow, does that thing throw off a lot of heat!  Thank goodness is has 4 levels of heat and also a non-heat setting.  The flame is surpisingly realistic and it has a downlight for when the flame is not on as well which looks cool.  I am looking forward to curling up beside it and stitching! Will have to take some pics and post them soon so you know what I am babbling about.

Hope you are all enjoying your week!

A quiet evening!

Hello all,

I have a very rare instance of a quiet house tonight as both children are away.  Wow, this doesn't happen very often and I must say I am enjoying it.  DS is away for the entire weekend on a winter camping experience trip and DD is away at a sleepover birthday party tonight.  DH and I celebrated by immediately going out for a nice Thai food dinner.  I got him with my iPhone...he doesn't do pictures well, but I think he looks pretty good in this one. :)

I have been busy stitching this past week as I signed up for an exchange on the EMS Cross Stitch Forum (http://www.cross-stitch-board.com/).  If you've never been there, it's a wonderful site with lots of great people and very worthwhile to check out.  The rules of the exchange are that it has to been done over-one on evenweave.  I had come across this cute little free chart on Ink Circles website called Breast Cancer Awareness Ribbon Mandala.  I am using the DMC conversion they provided, which makes it look quite different, but I still really like it.  I am thinking of finishing it off as a biscournu as I think it would look cute.  What do you think?

I am going to work some more on it tonight as it needs to be sent out by February 28th and I hate running down to the wire.

It was sooooo windy here this morning.  When I took DD to ballet class the wind blew the door out of my hand as I was getting out of the car.  Thank goodness there was no car parked right beside me!  Other than the wind, it was beautiful and sunny.

I hope you are all having a wonderful weekend!

Cheers!

Stash shopping!

Hello all,

I am thrilled to say that I went stash shopping with my friend Judy yesterday and we had a blast.  Such a nice thing to be able to shop for "supplies" with someone who is also passionate about cross-stitch.  We hit 3 different stores and I now have all of the supplies I need to finish my current and recently completed projects.  I also bought a couple of things that I didn't need, but merely wanted, but that is just par for the course.  :)

One of my current works in progress is Quaker Bats and Ghosts by VeeandCo Cross Stitch Designs:

It is meant to be done on a lighter fabric, but I was itching to stitch on black.  It will end up being a square biscournu pattern and the flip side will have bats instead of ghosts.  Since I am doing it on black I will stitch the bats in purple.  Can't wait to finish it!

I also purchased a new chart from Praire Schooler that has a few ornaments that I'll be stitching at some point.  I really like the two with the buildings.

We got another big dump of snow here yesterday and it looked really pretty coming down.  Thankfully I don't have anywhere far to travel today.

Thanks for all the comments, it's very encouraging and I must say that I am having a great time with this blog so far and an even better time reading all of yours!  Thanks Dani for the tip about moving the pictures around once they are in the post, I get it now! :)

Hope everyone is having a great weekend!

Thanks for the warm welcome!

Hello all,

Thanks so much for the nice comments!  I am looking forward to posting more and getting to know you all.  I have already been enjoying reading some of your blogs and getting some great tips.  Slowly but surely I will figure this whole blog thing out. :)  I'm not sure why all my pictures are ending up way down at the bottom...but hopefully I'll figure that one out soon.

I have a couple of pieces that I have finished recently...one is Faith, Hope and Love from Stofnest and the other is Stained Glass Pine from Ink Circles.  I'll try inserting the pics into the body of this post and see if it works!

More to come later...thanks for reading!

Cheers,
Alisa