Happy Mother's Day

Hello Stitchy Friends!

I hope all of you that celebrate it will have a pleasant Mother's Day tomorrow.  I am looking forward to it.  Ever since I became a Mom, 26 years ago, it has been one of my favorite holidays.  From the early years when they would come home from school clutching a secret present made at school to this year when for the first time We welcome into our family a son-in-law and a daughter-in-law to be!  I feel truly blessed.  There is such a wonderful feeling seeing your children happy in life.

We went to the nursery today to pick out some plants, and it was obviously THE place to be!  Lots of people were there taking advantage of a beautiful Saturday.  

I chose this beautiful hanging basket for the deck.  

Then we found this cute little set of clay pots that mount on a metal bar.  So when we got home, mike hung it up for me while I planted the pots.  

I have to share a picture of this adorable fairy garden that was a birthday gift to our future daughter in law.  Her sister created it.  I thought it was so cute!  There is even a tiny tea set on a little wooden table!  We were at her birthday party last weekend, and had a great time.   

I have been diligently stitching on Mr. & Mrs. This week.  I don't particularly like stitching something twice, but a friend of mine saw the one I made for Holly and Joe, and asked me to stitch it for her daughters wedding.  I agreed, and have it close to being done.  I want to finish it by Monday, so she will have time to get it framed before their wedding.  

I did finish stitching the Spring sampler by LHN.  I think I mentioned that in my last post but neglected to share a picture.

Please excuse the wrinkles.  I have the summer sampler about half done now.  So I will press them both when I finish.  The best thing about these is that I can usually find a ready made frame for them.  That doesn't happen often!  

I took several pieces to my LNS for their framing sale, so I will have some finishes to share one of these days!

  Harry says hi!  Happy stitching!

hello..anyone still there?

Hello Stitching Friends.

It seems I have not been a good blogger this Spring.  I feel that my mojo for blogging and attending our stitch group gatherings has left me.  I need to get back on the bandwagon!

The big wedding day in our family has come and gone.  But, I have to say, the day was glorious!  The weather cooperated as well.  It was windy, and a little chilly, but overall not bad for this Spring!!

I have some pictures to share.  So, I hope I won't bore you with some wedding pictures.

Here is Holly and her Dad, making their way to the bridge for the start of the ceremony.

Here is the wedding couple saying their vows.  We had a last minute change of plans, on Thursday, we found out the person that was to conduct the ceremony couldn't do it.  So, Holly's brother, David agreed to become a certified online minister, and he conducted the ceremony for them.  He did a great job.  Their vows were very touching.  I noticed in a few of the pictures David was having trouble keeping his composure.  Many of the rest of us had tears leaking....!  What can I say?  It's easy to cry at weddings!  Holly and Joe have know each other since she was in high school, dated and then broke up, but last year got back together.  So, they had an interesting road in their journey together, but I am glad it all came together for them with a happy ending.

This last picture is of the flower girl, daughter of a friend of Holly's, and the ring bearer, son of another friend of Holly's.  They were adorable.  They both did a good job.  The flower girl's Mom, carried her, while helping her drop rose petals.  The ring bearer also did a good job! 

A good friend of ours did the photography for us.  He took a ton of pictures, I have to do some work with them selecting which ones to share with family, and which ones we want to print. 

I hope I haven't bored you too much with wedding details.  Next post I promise to have some stitching pictures to share. 

I have been doing some stitching.  I finished the Spring sampler by Little House Needleworks, and have moved onto the Summer sampler by LHN as well. 

Hope you are all having a good Spring.  Spring-like weather has been very elusive here in Illinois this year.  Many days with below average temps.  I am sure being Illinois, we will skip temperate days of Spring and move right into Summer....

Happy Stitching!


 

Spring may be showing up?

Hello Stitching Friends!

It's countdown to wedding around here!  Lists are getting check marks, and weekends continue to be busy.  But less than two weeks to the big day now!

I have written this post about 3 times, I have been having issues with blogpress on my iPad, and iPhone.....  I have been doing all my posting from my iPad, just because it is so much easier to take pictures with either my phone, or iPad, and then post them on my blog entries.  But, when I would write then leave the page to insert a picture, the whole thing would be gone and I would have to start over again....  Very frustrating. 

This may be a picture-less post.  I hate those.  But, I have technology issues to work out.  Mike is into photography, and has a photo editing program on the desktop computer.  So, if I upload pictures on this computer, they go into his software for editing.  And, it's a pain.  So, I've opted for the easier way out by just posting from my iPad. 

I have been stitching on the Spring sampler by Little House Needleworks.  It has been a fun stitch.  I took the two pieces I stitched for Holly and Joe to be framed at my LNS.  They should be ready to pick up this coming weekend. 

My LNS is having a framing sale this coming week, so I think I will do some looking through my drawer of completed stitching to see what I would most like to take to be framed.  I have a gift certificate from Christmas that I have been saving for this event.  So, I will keep you posted. 

I suspect I should uninstall blogpress from my phone and iPad and then reinstall it, to see if that fixes the issues I am having.  So, stay tuned.  Hopefully I will have things worked out by the next time I am ready to post. 

The forecast is sounding promising for this coming week with more Spring like temperatures.  My sister in Minnesota had snow last weekend.  I could tell she just didn't want to talk about it anymore...Lol.  I don't blame her.

Hope you are all enjoying some Spring in your neck of the woods!

 

New Start!

I just had to share my new start.







I tend to like stitching things appropriate to the season.

I looked through several charts last night before I decided on this. But I have done the winter band sampler and the autumn one. So, I need to stitch this one and the summer one to round out the group.

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Hello

I can't believe how long it's been since my last post! This has been such a long winter here in the midwest. We are finally starting to see some warmer days. After a cold day tomorrow we are supposed to see 50 degree temps for the next week or so!

We have been busy here working on wedding planning! It is less than a month away!
Keep your fingers crossed for good weather on April 19! The wedding will be a small affair, outside, at the Roseman covered bridge in Winterset, Iowa. The location was chosen by them as a place with special memories for them.

I did get two pieces stitched for them, I still have to have the framing done.





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Sorry for the sideways picture. I am having some issues with this program tonight!!

This past weekend was a bachelorette party for the bride. The girls invited me as well. I joined them for dinner, but then headed home while they continued on with their evening.

Our son's fiancée has a birthday coming up next month as well, so I wanted to stitch something for her as well. She has a thing for owls, so I thought this piece would fit the bill.



I am planning on finding some cute fabric and sewing it up as a cute little pillow. The design is from Cricket.

I have been doing quite a bit of reading too. Probably more reading than stitching.

I think we have most of the details for the wedding under control. There are challenges in planning a wedding at a destination 4 or so hours away from home.

I have kept up reading your blogs and have enjoyed reading about news in your lives and seeing beautiful projects in progress or completed!

I spent about 4-6 weeks with sciatic nerve pain in my left leg. So I did have to take a few days off work to get thru the worst of it. Luckily it is much better now, and I am returning to normal. Not all the way back but loads better than a month ago!

I will try not to wait so long for the next post. I'm not sure what I will be picking up next to work on.

Happy Stitching!






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Still cold

Hello,

Another day of below normal temps is here. No school or library again today. I have kept busy doing calls about wedding details and some cooking. Well, the crockpot is doing the cooking. It's a recipe I found online for beef stroganoff. It smells wonderful at least. You use two cans of golden mushroom soup, and stir in cream cheese near the end of the cooking time. I hope it turns out good.



I spent a couple of evenings taking out the heart and the L on my love piece. Then last night I finished putting the heart back in, in the correct position. I will probably work on this later today.

We were supposed to have stitch group tonight, but it got cancelled due to the extreme cold we are having. The snow and wind was so fierce last night it looked like a snow tornado out the back door. Harry didn't stay out long to do what was necessary!

I have been busy reading some good books. I enjoyed Return to Tradd Street by Karen White. It was the fourth in her series about old houses in Charleston, SC, that seem to be haunted by ghosts. Then, on completely other bent, I've started reading the Prey series by John Sandford. My future DIL recommended that I read them. So, I've been enjoying those too. I'm up to #4 in the series. There are lots of them tho. I will rotate one in along with other new choices. I also have the newest Julie Hyzy book home in her White House chef mystery series. They have all been good as well.

I realized I didn't share a picture of my big surprise from Mike. He gave me this before Christmas, to commemorate our upcoming 30th wedding anniversary.




When he proposed to me 31 years ago, he said one day I will replace this engagement ring with a bigger one. Well he certainly did!

Hope you are keeping warm if you are in the cold, and for those of you that are enjoying Spring.... Good for you!

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Cold cold colder

Hello Stitching Friends.

Greetings from the frigid midwest. This winter is wearing out it's welcome. I will be happy to share snow with those of you that are wishing for more of it! Schools have all cancelled classes today, and the library is closed as well. So I have been staying inside today.

The cats have the right idea...









They have all found cozy nap spots for the afternoon.

We have been busy here making wedding plans... Lord help me the details...the details. I hope we will be able to pull all this together. Our daughter will be getting married in April with a small family wedding, and then the plan is to host a reception in May for extended family and friends. So, planning is underway on two fronts. Both venues out of town. If you don't see many posts from me in the next couple of months you will understand why.

I have to order the wedding sampler she likes and get it going. But, she didn't pick one that will be all that time consuming, so I'm not too concerned about that. We've all been searching Pinterest for ideas. It's great for that and so easy to share ideas with family and friends!

I was woefully behind on blog reading, but am now caught up! (What better use of a snow day??). You have all been busy out there doing some beautiful work! I am just about finished with Love by Cricket. Just the back stitching remains.



I elected to stitch the L the right way instead of the backwards L on the chart cover. I used the graph on the back of the leaflet that charted it correctly. I don't know if it looks right? I can't decide. The colors are very pretty and I like my pale green linen choice. I may have to take another look at the chart, but I don't want to have to rip out the L and do it over. After looking at the picture I think the L looks lower than it should be.

Well, after finishing this yesterday, I wasn't in the mood to Backstitch, so I went looking for another project to start.... I will share a picture even though it doesn't look like much yet.



While I went back to my stitching bag to pull this out for a picture, I took another look at the Love chart.... Not good news to report. I did a major goof, I will have to rip out the heart and the L... The heart should have been up higher. I know where I went astray. I stitched the heart from the chart printed inside, then flipped the chart closed to stitch the alternate L on the chart on the back of the leaflet, not realizing the heart had been repositioned as well. Crap, crap, crap! *sigh. Looks like I have ripping in my future. I'm glad I took a picture for this post, otherwise the back stitching may have been done as well before I realized something was 'off'.

Well so much for nearly having that piece done.

The flu has hit the library staff hard this past week, both of my full time staffers have been off from work with it. So, I have been doing some extra duty as well as my part time person. Luckily we have both avoided it. I had a dream the other night that we had it as well, and I had to post a closed due to illness sign... Not good. To compound things one of my flu sufferers fell putting up her Christmas tree and did a nasty job of breaking her wrist. So, the poor thing not only has the flu but a broken wrist as well. Then, I pulled a muscle in my leg and side, so I've been limping around, smelling like icy hot pain rub. Fun stuff....Not. I'm off to the chiropractor for first time ever to see if he can help. I've been feeling like I'm 100 years old lately. Yuck.

That's about all I know from this neck of the woods for now. Hopefully things will improve around here.

Hope you are staying warm and having some quality stitching time!