Well, Hello!!

School is almost done for the year. Yes, it is summer already, so why are we still doing school?!?!? Dd decided this spring, when the weather was so nice, that we should have a 3 week spring break. It worked out really nice as the weather was perfect and we needed a break. But that meant that we would have to work a bit into the summer to finish up and that is what we've been doing. She has a couple more days of work left and then she's done for the year!!! I'm hoping that will give me a bit more time to stitch, craft and blog. We will have her 4-H county fair to get ready for too, but most of what she wants to do this year involves crafting as well - and a bit of baking which her father will help her with:)

I have managed to do some stitching since I last posted. These two blocks went off to Love Quilts USA to be used in a heart themed quilt for a child with either a severe disablity or illness. These blocks are fun to do and it's great that they will go for a good cause. I am still trying to get a frog themed block done too. It was due by July 1st, but I had to ask for it to be used in the wildlife theme instead as I keep having to pull out my stitches from mistakes I'm making - guess that's what I get for stitching frogs!! :) So it won't be due now until Sept 1st, that should help a lot:)


Not much more time this morning so I'll finish with a picture of the only other living thing in my home that is allowed to touch my stitching basket:) Well, he wasn't suppose to be in there, but I had to take a picture before I booted him out!!!
The picture also shows my progress on Prairie Schooler's 'Summer Ornie' that I'm just about done with now, so I'm hoping to have a post to show that finish by tomorrow!! Then it'll be back to the frogs for me!!!

Have a great day:)

March WIPocalypse

This is the 3rd WIPocalypse post for the year!!
Got some done this last month, but I was bad and started 2 new ones:) I'll start with those first. These two projects (actually there will be a third one as soon as I get floss for it) is for a group called Love Quilts. They sign up children who have severe illnesses or disablities, find out what theme they want (like frogs, princesses, etc) and then people like me (or you!!) stitch something within their guidelines and send it in. They then make a quilt out of the stitched pieces to give to the children. The fun part is to see pictures of the children with their new quilts:) I've been wanting to do something like this with my stitching and I really like that you can sign up for different projects when you have the time/interest so that you don't have to be stitching for them all the time if you don't want to.
So this is my first on for this group. Can you tell what it is? LOL This one will be for a young man who wanted realistic looking frogs. This project will have 5 rain forest type frogs on it in the end. I have a bit more done on it since I took the pic yesterday. I really like the bright colors in this which is a real change for me. I'm using X's and O's 'Frogs, Frogs, and More Frogs.'

This is another project for this group. This will be flowers/vines in the shape of a heart when it's done. The other project that I'm waiting on until I have the floss is another heart shaped one. These will be for 'non-specific' quilts. They are pre-done for children that may not have 6 months to wait for a custom quilt to be done for them. So they are taking as many heart themed blocks as they can get and will then make as many quilts out of that as possible. This chart (and the one I haven't started yet) are both freebies from
http://www.brigittedadaux.com/

I got a bit further along on my 'His Name Is Jesus' project. I was really hoping to have this finished, but I'm getting closer, maybe by next month it'll be done.

But I DID get this one done!!! This makes my 6th finish of the year!!! :) So this is 'Love One Another' from Little House Needleworks and was a part of my 2011 crazy challenge. It is so nice to be getting some of my older projects done!!

That is all for now, hope you are all having lovely, stitchy days!! :)

Time 4 Learning Review

First off, I have to post this disclosure...

I've been invited to try Time4Learning for a month in exchange for a candid review. Their online program can be used for homeschool, as an after school tutorial and for summer learning. My opinion will be my own, so come back and read about my experience. You can write your own curriculum review, too!
I've been invited to try Time4Learning in exchange for a candid review. My opinion will be entirely my own, so come back and read about my experiences. For more information, check out their online curriculum or learn how to write your own curriculum review.


Okay, now that that's done;), I'll explain. I've never done a review like this before, but I'm really interested in this website. Since my dd is on the older side, I've not wanted to pay for the membership since I was afraid that it would be too young for her (though they do go up to 8th grade and dd is in 7th). So I figure this will give me a good chance to check out this site to see if we can get some use out of it. And while I've seen many (very good) reviews for the younger grades, I haven't seen many for older children using this. So I'll be able to provide a review from that perspective. So come back in 30 days and I'll have my review posted!!

2012 Aspirations Update

Thought I'd document, for myself and others if you're interested, how my 'aspirations' for the year are going...

1. Weight loss - UGGG!!!! Okay, not that I *really* expected this year to be different from all the rest, but I was hopeful. I'm pretty sure I gained the 3 lbs I managed to lose (probably a bit more too), but at this point I'm back down those same 3 lbs. Not where I wanted to be, but it is still in the right direction, so I'm going to take it and keep going. Trying to get out of the 'all-or-nothing' mind set with this.

2. Reading Goals - I'm doing really well with this:) (hince the sitting on my hiney and not loosing the weight!! :) I started with the goal of 12 books for the year, then upped it to 24 and then upped it again to 30. I've read 7 of those books so far, everything from books I had to really push myself through to ones that took less than 24 hours to read -and yes, some of those hours *should* have been spent sleeping and a LOT of those hours should have been spent cleaning:).

3. Stitching goals - I'm doing well with this, though I haven't had any finishes for a while, I'm still stitching away. I was having some problems being able to focus on my projects so I got my eyes checked and for the first time in my life I'm now wearing glasses. A pretty minor prescription, but it really does help on the close up things that I do. So while I'm still stitching I've decided to lower my goal on this for the year. I was hoping for 30 projects by the end of the year and now I am going for 24. This is still quite a step up for me and I think very realistic. I completed 5 in January, so even with no finishes for the month of Feb, I'm still ahead of the game. And I have one that is real close to being done and another that is getting there, but still has some time left.

4. Organization/housework - I never did a post on this 'aspiration'. I just wasn't sure what my goal would be for this. Surely I want to get 'more' organized and do 'better' with the housework, but I couldn't find a concrete goal to work towards. One thing that I have done is to create a school planner of my own. I bought a very pretty one at the homeschool conference last year and I really wanted it to work for us. I used it for months, though there are lots of pages I never touched, but it just wasn't flowing well for me. I know the creator of that planner made it with larger families in mind, ones that might need more reminders or lots of room to write plans and activities down, but we have an only child we are working with, and it just was too much for me. So I made my own, adding pgs that are relevent to me and dd specifically, and had it bound (for $4!!!). I just picked it up on Friday and have been super busy since then, so haven't gotten around to using it much yet, but will start today with it:) I put it together rather quickly, so I'm sure that next year's will be a bit different, but I'm really excited about it. And it has my daily chores in it as well as a blogging/crafting calendar (these pages will be riped out at the end of the year to leave us with a record of dd's school year), so this should help with the organizing and the housework all in one:)

I do hope to get more into blogging as well (hince the blogging calendar) as I really like being able to read back and see my progress with different things. It's also a good reminder for those things that I said I want to do, but never got around to doing. So while this isn't really an 'aspriation', it is something I'm working towards as well.

Well, that's all for today. Got to get dd to finish up her work for today as she has a 'communication/speech' class with a 4-H group later today. This has been a real fun way to practice public speaking for her.

TUSAL #2

A day late for my TUSAL update #2, but at least I didn't completely forget. I've keep meaning to join in for the International Hermit Weekend and also the Friday Night Sew-In and it just sneaks up and by-passes me before I even know it!!! I really need to put these on my calendar I think!! :)

So here is a pic of my TUSAL jar with a peek at our new addition to the family (10 guppies:)!!

I've still been doing lots of stitching, reading and also trying to put together a planner that will work for us too. Hoping for a stitchy finish here soon!!!

WIPocalypse

Running a bit late on my 2nd WIPocalypse post!! I've been doing a fair bit of stitching still.. so here's what I've got done.
The picture above is one that I took before I started working on this again. I should be doing that with all the WIP's so I can track how far they are coming, but this is the only one I've done it to so far. Below is where I am on it right now. This is from my 2011 Crazy Challenge projects.

And below is 'His Name Is Jesus' freebie found here. I got the 'u and s' in Jesus done and 'of Jacob' in the lower left corner done. This is on 28 ct over one, so it is more stitching than it looks like:) This is a project I started almost 2 years ago.

This is an update on my HAED. Before it was less than 1in sq, and now it is almost 2in sq. Just over 1600 stitches done so far!!!

And here are a couple that I finished. This is 'He's a Flake' from LHN. This is from my 2012 Crazy Challenge.

And this one is also from my 2012 Crazy Challenge. This is January Wordplay from With thy Needle and Thread. I love this series and am hoping to do all 12 of them at some point. Really trying NOT to start any new ones this year (except maybe a small one or two for exchange projects). But I did go ahead and order the Feb Wordplay, so we will see if I can hold off or not:)

That is it for this month, I don't think I did too bad:) Hoping to get lots more done for my next post!!!

January's TUSAL

Well this is my first TUSAL post: Totally Useless SAL!! This is where you keep all your floss 'trash', broken needles and tiny scraps of fabric and place them in a pretty jar. Yep, totally useless:) I picked out a pretty green glass jar, but it is pretty small, so I'm not sure if I'll make it the whole year with this jar, but I still really like it:)
You can also see that I'm coming along with my January Wordplay too!! I'm hoping to finish it up tomorrow:) That'll be my 4th finish for the month!!!