well, hello!

Anyone still out there? Hello! It's me, Andrea, and yep, I'm still kickin', chickens! Not sure how time flies by so quickly and how four months have passed since I made a decent post here! Yesterday I was at my eye doctor, getting my annual exam for contacts. Except that it had been TWO years since I'd been there. NO WAY! She showed me my chart as proof, since I didn't believe her, lol! Why is it, the older we get, the faster time flies? Oh well. You know that expression...time flies, whether you're having fun or not!

Anyway. I'm blessed that even when my life gets busy and hectic, I am still able to stitch. So I have lots of stitching to share, almost too much! My plan is to break it up into several posts. Also been doing a LOT of cooking and baking...if I'm on your list on Facebook, you already know this, lol! Sometimes I think I post too much about food. But it's a passion, as well as my stitching.

This is a little something that I stitched a long time ago and sent out for finishing. Love what she did with it!



Love is All You Need
Freebie by Bent Creek

Will be back with more that I've done, but for now, I must share a couple of gifts I'd received for Christmas.

Becky sent me this adorable little cupcake pincushion she made.



I think the design is from Blackbird Designs, but not 100% sure. It's just the cutest bitty thing you've ever seen! Thank you so much Becky, sorry to be so late in posting about it!

From my dear friend Patti:



Design by Carriage House Samplings. Filled with crushed walnut shells and also finished by (?), isn't it beautiful?



OK, one more from me ;-)



Bent Creek Winter Snapperland
I'd stitched this one a while back and sent to my sweet friend Tobie, to do her magic on it. I LOVE what she did :)




The fabrics she used couldn't have been more perfect! I have more Tobie finishing to share with you later :)



That's all for now. If you're still around after all these months, thank you from the bottom of my heart. I promise to come out and play more often ;)
xoxo

a few more flags

It is so dang hot here today...hubby was helping me move some of these things out into the sun room so I could get pics, and about halfway through, about to faint, we gave up! So while this is not all of the rest of my patriotic stitching, it is a little more, for your viewing pleasure ;-)



as you can see, a lot of it is not "finished"...need to work on that!



Looking at the picture below, here's some information, from left to right in each row
back row:Blackbird Designs Home of the Brave , Carriage House Samplings Long May She Wave;
2nd row: Shepherd's Bush Olde Glory, Birds of a Feather Land I Love, Blackbird Designs Stars & Stripes
3rd row: Handwork America Pillow, Shepherd's Bush Peace for All
4th row: Blackbird Designs Union Forever, Ewe & Eye & Friends Liberty Days




and a few of the framed ones....



On the left, in the back, is Lizzie Kate's Land I Love, and all the rest are from Bent Creek kits, except for the bottom left one, which is from Chessie & Me and is called Love Liberty.



All of the links I've posted are just convenient ones I found online, for easy reference, I am not affiliated with any one of them, or promoting their website :)




Thanks for visiting. I appreciate each and every one of you, especially the sweetie-pies that leave comments ;-)

I leave you today with some fat pug legs, these belonging to Muttley...



Smile!

no good, rotten frame of mind

Such happy title, dontcha think? Makes you want to run away from here quick like, right?
Oy. But it's true and I'm sorry, I have to vent! Here's my day, in no particular order....
**my shoulder hurts like h*ll and I haven't even stitched in four days.
not. one. stitch.
**took my 30% off everything coupon to Kohls, prepared to do major damage, but discovered, much to my horror, that absolutely everything I tried on was just wrong. Horribly, horribly wrong. Who designs clothes for "full figured", (ok, FAT), women anyway? (Someday I hope they pay). Meanwhile, I brought home three things, two of which are questionable.
**some gal waltzed out of the dressing room I was using (in between taking things back and forth), leaving both things she tried on LAYING THE FLOOR!! And the hangers on the hook, empty. I was again, horrified...
**someone pooped outside the front door of my workplace. Yes, pooped. And no, it wasn't doggie poo. Guess they couldn't hold it any longer?
**a rookie coworker thinks they know more than everyone there and yet, she makes the same stupid mistakes over and over again and admits, "every day is a new day" to her...so why the constant arguing???
** edited **


OK, rant over, sorry about that...here's something cute....



It's an old Bent Creek kit that I stitched forever ago and just needed to sew the buttons on the corners. Not sure it was done right, but I got tired of seeing it in the closet, waiting, so there it is :-)

Thanks for your thoughts on the angel Hornbook. Found a cute easel at the WalMarts yesterday that I'm going to put her on!

wednesday's child

Remember that old nursery rhyme?

Monday's child is fair of face.
Tuesday's child is full of grace.
Wednesday's child is full of woe.
Thursday's child has far to go.
Friday's child is loving and giving.
Saturday's child works hard for a living,
But the child who is born on the Sabbath Day
Is bonny and blithe and good and gay.

(Don't ask me why I think of this stuff, it always happens when I try to think of a title for a post)
How true does this ring with you or with your family members? I'd have to say, in our family, it's pretty accurate. Strange, huh?

Anyhoo, there's a box I finally got unpacked today and in it, I found this...




It's a little Bent Creek freebie from years and years ago (I don't have it any longer), didn't know what to do with it, so the finisher made it into a scissor keep for me.

Meanwhile, back in blog-blog land, Siobhan gave me this little award
(thanks gf!)



I'm supposed to list five addictions, so here goes

1. All things stitching related (that's a given, right?)
2. Lotions and hand creams.
3. Starbucks Carmel Frapps.
4. Internet (stitching, and foodie blogs).
5. All things Pug.

I'm not tagging anyone else since I am usually so bad about playing along myself....I've enjoyed reading these on various blogs though :-)

The ice is melting around here...it wasn't too bad last night while at work, but the pugs were none too happy about the melting part this morning...



(note on the mop bucket...it's not ours, it was back there when we moved in, we just haven't gotten rid of it yet. I should be embarrassed, but actually, it's kind of appropriate considering the melting ice and the pugs who hate wet feet, lol!)

winter snapperland

After seeing a friend stitch this a while back, I fell in love with it. It wasn't just the whole design, but the fabric she was using, that did it for me. So with her permission, I copied her choice...



Bent Creek Winter Snapperland series stitched on 32 ct. Raw Opalescent fabric with recommended threads....



too bad you really can't see in these pics, how sparkly the fabric is...




I only used one of the "snaps", the black one, on the horse, wasn't too fond of the other ones...




an enjoyable stitch, although it did take me a loooooooooong time to finally finish it....



the big plan is for a pillow of some sort and some Pugs that will be good and not slobber on it for me ;-)

counting them twice

Finally able to get some pictures, although fourteen hundred skeeter bites were acquired in the process! All of this rain has not helped in keeping the mosquito population down.

Anyway...here's My Quaker Garden, by Blackbird Designs:

(all pictures are clickable for a larger image)




I was so happy that the frame for this was reasonable, after so many expensive choices I've made this year on other framed items. The molding is from Honeywood (not sure of the spelling), there were a lot to choose from, but I'm happy with this one.

A few months ago I sent a pile of stitched things to my friend Tobie, as she's been helping me finish things into pillows, etc. Well, imagine my surprise when, things I was expecting to pay her for, showed up in my mailbox with a sweet birthday card...she'd done the finishing as a present to me!!

She made this wonderful tuck pillow out of denim for my CHS "Land That I Love". It was hard to get a good shot and this one really shows that I need to press it better. It also doesn't show the wonderful cord hanger with bead accents that she made.



And this one she made for my Bent Creek's "Wahoo, Life is Good"....isn't the fabric perfect for it? I need to straighten the stitched piece up some as it's pretty crooked in this shot.



This one is a pillow and has a very pretty bow on the upper left hand corner but out of several shots I took of it, none of them show the bow! Dang it. The skeeter bites were starting to itch though so I had to hightail it inside, bow or not.



Tobie, thank you again! I love it all!

Today is a little (well, a lot to be honest) sad for me as I should be in New Jersey on the beach, visiting with friends from the ME group, but due some health issues (with me and my DH), I decided it was better to stay home. I'd already purchased the plane ticket and gotten other things for the trip, and really did want to go, so it surely wasn't an easy choice to make. I'd sorta like to cry again over the whole ordeal, but instead decided to just count my blessings.

Like this one:



A puppy who loves me so much my heart swells with joy. Not to mention my family, my good friends...being surrounded by people I love and things that make me happy like my stitching. Oh, and the fabric...let's not forget about that. There's a quilt store that's going out of business...you won't believe the amount of beautiful fabric that I got for half off! AND, my nearest quilt store, Suzy's, here in Garland, is having a sale this coming week...they have a lighted transfer thing that I need for another new hobby of mine (well, not new, but something I'm going back to doing), embroidery. I have Jenny Hart's book and lots of projects and ideas lined up.

Have a few days off from work coming up, that were originally scheduled for my trip, so I'm going ahead and taking them. Hope to use those days to organize my stash some and hang some samplers that have been needing a spot on the wall for months. Other than that, just stitching, quilting, and embroidering. Maybe some baking. Yes, anything under 90 degress this time of year is downright cool to me.