A couple of finished projects!!!

I am on a roll!! I guess seeing how much stitchy type work I have in front of me for the next year really lit a fire under me, because I have just been stitching like crazy:)


I got 'Christmas Wishes' by Beehive Needleworks done a couple days ago. I actually just started this one the end of Nov or beginning of Dec because one of my stitchy groups started a 'Deer SAL' for the month and I had this on hand:) Otherwise it would have probably become one of my 2012 Crazy Stitching projects. I chose a darker fabric for this and instead of making french knot berries around the boarder I chose to make x's over one with 2 threads. It looks almost the same and kept me from pulling my hair out!! :)
I finished LK's Work,Pray,Trust early this morning. I changed the floss colors on this one, but only so that I could use what I had. I used very similar colors, just not exact. I had been carrying this one around with me in my purse to do while I wasn't at home because it was such a nice small project and fit well:)
I was wrong about the Friday Night Sew In being every Friday night this month. It seems like the next one isn't until Jan 20th. I am going to try and keep sewing on Friday's though because it tends to be the only way I get any sewing done:) I thought I'd go back to working on the small quilt that I had started, but I may work on making these two stitchy projects into something. I know that I want Christmas Wishes to become a pouch that I can put greenery and berries into and hang up for Christmas. Not sure what I want to do with 'Work, Pray, Trust' yet. I had wanted it to be a bookmark, but I think it may be a little too wide for that. I will have to think on it for a few days.

I can already mark off 'Work, Pray, Trust' from my 2012 WIP list and am hoping to be able to mark off another one or two before the end of the year. It would be great to have just under 20 WIPs!!! LOL

Well, I'm off to eat lunch and then have a wrapping 'party' with my dd. Then maybe I'll get to do a little stitching as well:)

I actually got something done yesterday!! Well, almost done, I didn't finish the project, but at least I got it started:)

Here is a pic of the mess I started with. I was trying to make some bird ornies. I got the free pattern for it here.

And here is my 'helper'. He was trying to make sure the birds didn't fly away (and my scissors, pincushion, tape measure, etc) :) Lots of help!!

This is as far as I got. I only had a little over an hour to get everything out, work on it and clean things back up. Would be great if I had a sewing/craft room, but the living room has to be it for now, so some of my time gets spent just getting set up and cleaned up afterward. That's okay though since all I have left is a little stuffing and sewing the tails closed. Should get that done this weekend and I'll post a pic of the finished piece then.
And here is the link to the finished project on the origanal blog.
Now to get back to my stitching:)

FNSI

Well, I didn't get to this last Friday as my hubby took dd and I out to dinner that night and then we did some grocery shopping. By the time we got home, I just didn't care about sewing anymore:) I'm thinking that I will probably need this to be more of a 'Friday afternoon sew in' instead of it being at night. When hubby gets home, it's family time and I usually don't get much else done.

These are usually scheduled for once a month (I believe the blog says the 3rd Friday of the month). However, with the Christmas holiday upon us, they have decided to do it every week (I think). So I'm going to give it another try this Friday. Still won't be able to do it at night, as my dd has youth group so we won't be home. Hopefully I'll find time during the day. I was going to work on a small quilt, and I still may, but I'm just about finished with a small stitching project that I'd like to make into a pouch to hold greenery. And I have a pattern to make some really cute little bird ornies that I would like to do. So I'm not sure what I'll work on.

I have just about gotten my Crazy Challenge pieces figured out now. I still need two projects, but I usually do a little stitching shopping just after Christmas and I think my SIL is getting me something stitchy as well, so I'll see what I can add to my list:) I also will need to get a few supplies to kit up a few of the ones I have so they will all be ready. I think this is my favorite part of the SAL!!!

New Challenges/Wips/ SALs. Oh, My!!!

Well, I'm officially off my rocker:) I signed up for several new challenges and SALs, and there is NO WAY I can finish all of them, but it is fun anyway. And I don't want my stitching to turn into work, it needs to stay fun:)

Here is what I've signed up for:

The 2012 Crazy Stitching Challenge!! I wasn't sure I wanted to do this one as I didn't finish most of what I started last year:) However, as I was digging into what I never did start from last year (I still have 7 that are new and kitted) and several more that are ornie size that I'd like to do, I figure that I can go ahead and get them started.(This is set up as a Yahoo group this year).

The WIPocalyps SAL:) Okay this one is really needed!! Basically the rules are to post an update of all WIP progress made for the year and post a pic on my blog on every full moon. For this one, I hope to get a lot done.

The LHN ornie SAL. I have several of the LHN ornies that I've wanted to do, so this will work along-side the Crazy Challenge.

TUSAL - which stands for 'Totally Useless SAL'. This one is easy and fun:) I just have to collect my extra threads, pieces of fabric cuttings and broken needles into a glass jar and put a pic up on my blog on every new moon (not to be confused with the full moon:).

Friday Night Sew In - I'd also like to do this as well. I have lots of other sewing that I actually NEED to work on:) Looks like there is one of these scheduled for tomorrow, so I will try to work on a small quilt that I've been putting off.

I will no doubt have a SAL or two (or three) on the Yahoo stitching boards that I follow as well.

I have a little prep work to do before all this starts. I have 8 projects that I need to pick out, buy, and/or kit up for the Crazy Challenge. I also want to do a little clean up and rearranging of my sideboard on this blog to keep everything organized. So there will be lots and lots of posts in the near future of all my stitching. Now to get to work:)

Monday Blessings 9/26/11

I've been writing some of these on paper, so the numbers don't match up to what I had been doing before on the blog. I'll get them together at some point and have the numbering right:)

17. A sink full of dirty dishes. Shows that I've been able to feed my family and that I've been busy with more important things (like spending time with them) than to clean those dishes:)

18. Beautiful weather, so that my dd can get her wiggles out in the wide open instead of the small inclosed!!!

19. Kitty friends. Close compainions for my only child:)

20. A creative mind in my dd that never stops coming up with the next 'big idea'.

Back to blogging?

It's been a long time!! I tend to turn into an introvert during the summer. All the school-year activities blessedly come to an end and I just want to hide for a while:) I don't even get much stitching done during the summer. Anyway, we are now a month and a half back into the school year and the activities are in full swing and I'm ready for the winter break already!!! :)

So with all the other business around here, I thought I'd give blogging a try again and we'll see how it goes. A little update about our lives...

-Garden flopped this year. I'm not real good about taking care of it anyway, and with the lack of rain this year and the extreem heat, not much got done with it. In fact we haven't even pulled it out yet. It's still just a enormous weed patch:)

-DD started 7th grade this year and we can both feel the effects of a longer and a little harder school day!!!

-I volunteered for more than I think I can handle this year, LOL!! :) I am now the community leader for dd's 4-H club and also volunteered to help with the Secret Sister group that her home school group does. It's fun though and I think if I can just get through the next month with 4-H then then amount of work for it will lessen too.

-Cats, cats and more cats!!! We had several more batches of kittens born this summer, sadly not all of them lived. However one batch, whos momma ran off when they were about 3 weeks old, did make it and they are our favorites. They really think I'm their momma:) They are around 4 months old now, so are taking care of themselves, but come running to me when I'm outside and will play around my feet (and try climbing my legs, which is fine if I'm wearing jeans, not so much when I have a skirt on!!!). Here is a pic of most of them, though my babies aren't in this one (they hadn't been let out of the barn yet).

Hoping to put up some pics of the little bit of stitching that I did get to in the next day or two. Maybe someone still reads here? :)

Animal Babies

We finally got the last of our animal babies for this spring!!! The only other animal we might get are calves, but it isn't looking promising right now. The cattle market is crazy high right now, and it just doesn't make any sence to raise up our own when we can buy grass fed beef for about $3.00lb. Usually we can do our own for less, but not sure about that right now.

These girls are for my dd's 4-H project. The two on the outside are Kikos while the middle one is a Boar goat. All are in the meat goat class. Sadly the middle one died last week. We only had it a little less than two weeks and the last couple days we noticed that she wasn't eating as much and was laying down more than the others. She had a little bit of a clear runny nose, but they all did in the morning, and that was all that I could tell that was wrong. Until her last day, when her nose looked gunky and she had a bit of a cough. So I called the vet who wanted me to bring her in, but the trip did her in and by the time we got there, she had died. The vet said it was fast acting pneumonia.

Dd was really upset, but that is part of raising animals, so we just go on. We started watching the other two really carefully and sure enough, they had it too. So they both got shots (actually I've given them both two shot now, and they seem a lot better, so hopefully we have this beat). I really hate giving animals shots!!! I've had to do it with sheep (we had a long time ago), calves and now goats. But the goats are the worst because they cry and scream!!! Makes me feel horrible, but I know they need it, so I guess I have to do it.These little ones are Rhode Island Reds and we have a mixture of male and female. Around 25 in all. I was only going to buy female this year, but then made the mistake of reading about how chicken that you buy at the store are usually raised and slaughtered (though I know there are exeptions) and well, now we are planning to send some of the males off to be slaughtered locally so we can have chicken meat in the freezer:) We'll keep a couple of the males so that we can raise more babies later on.

And these are the first born of the spring kittens. They are 6 weeks old today!!! They were born in the barn wall, but we got them out a couple weeks ago and put them in this box. Momma is still kinda taking care of them, so we started feeding them just a little and giving them water. However, they are already starting to excape the box, so hopefully momma will keep an eye out for them so they don't get lost:) Yes, one of them has a yucky eye that just won't get better. Another one had a yucky eye too, but it cleared up. I may have to call the vet to see about some eye drops if it doesn't clear up soon. UPDATE: They are now out of the box and thankfully their momma is watching over them:)

And this batch was just born on Monday. I really didn't think this momma would take care of them at all as this is her first batch, she was hand raised (her momma disapeared when she was 2 weeks old), and she is under a year old. We haven't had good luck with the really young mommas, but she hasn't hardly left these kitten alone and is being a really good momma!!! And I'm so happy too, because so many of our cats are gray and white, but she has one down in that pile that is almost all orange with just a bit of white:)

There was one more batch of kittens, but they didn't make it. This was that momma's 2nd batch and she hasn't been interested in taking care of them yet. She's kind of a runty cat, so I'm wondering if that isn't the problem. She did start out pretty good as she at least birthed them all in one place this time, but then didn't feed them for more than a day or two. We usually try to keep them alive (though other than the 3 that were two weeks old we've never been able to get them to live). This batch was in part of the barn wall that we couldn't get to though, so sadly they all died (which they probably would have anyway, but we like to at least try).

Well, I think that is all of the new animal news around here for a while. They are all sure cute, but going to keep us a bit busy!!!

I hope to have a small spring-time stitchy finish to show off by the end of this weekend, so I'll update with some pics then:) And we are hoping to get most of the garden in this weekend, so I may have a few pics of that too. Busy, busy around here!! :)