Happy Thanksgiving :)

Happy Thanksgiving to all my friends south of me in the United States! If you have too much left over turkey and all the other goodies you are very welcome to send some over to me :) Since our Thanksgiving was over a month ago I can barely remember the delicious flavours LOL

For a day in between night shifts I was pretty energetic today. I had my booty workout right after work that put me into a nice deep sleep :) And I could even convince myself to go out for a run after I woke up - the hardest part was getting out of the door. Then it was really fun to run in the little bit of snow that is around. 

According to the weather forecast the temperatures are expected to warm up again to around freezig for at least the next 2 weeks!!!! I am getting even a tiny bit worried ... don't want to miss out on a white Christmas! But in the meantime I won't complain. :)

And then I go even a little bit of stitching in while I enjoyed my super yummy recovery smoothie. I see a finish coming up VERY SOON!!!!

Robin I am for sure not a big fan of spiders ;) but I am a sucker for the fake ones for Halloween - gives me just the right amount of shivers. Oh yeah....I am wondering if you have a blog as well. If so, would you please leave the address in the comments :) I would love to stop by for a visit.

Winter seems to finally have reached us . We were blessed with wonderful fall temperatures until the middle of November - no snow on Halloween ... YAY! Tuesday and Wednesday last week it we got some stormy winds and it was so strong that I decided not to run outside....it was kinda scary....but thanks to my belly and booty workout I still got some exercise. Some days I think that I almost see some changes already, maybe not really LOL
But I surely feel some differences when climbing the dreaded ladders to the different roof levels at work:

When the winds finally died down these 2 girls couldn't wait to get outside for a stroll :) The big one laced up her runners and the small one took her bike.
What is your approach to get in shape and be a healthier you? Or are you in the "planning and thinking about it" stage? I would love to hear from you!

Last night I finished "The Diva Runs Out of Thyme" by Krista Davis. It is the 1st one in the Domestic Diva Mystery series. It was already published in 2008 but so far I had never read one of her books. Wow, what a mistake!... It well deserves the good ratings it got on Goodreads. It never gets boring and there a lot of suspects. But they are so well described and introduced that I never had a problem to remember who is who. I am already looking to buy the next one in the series.

 My stitching doesn't show much progress...maybe I better stop talking and get back to it.

Wow! It has been almost 2 years since my last blogpost!!!

My little girl had her 11th birthday earlier this week. I can't believe how quick she is growing. It just seems like yesterday when she started school...soon she won't be interested in her Lego's anymore ...  :(

I have been stitching on an off , reading and running. Even though I have been running for about 2 years now and I am not overweight I still have quite a few "love handles", some belly fat and some extra fat at my thighs.
I made the decision to start eating clean and do some exercise to strengthen my core and fight the fat. It is definitely not getting prettier the older I get. LOL I thought it would be a good idea to post about my journey here for accountability and to keep track of the changes that I (hopefully) for sure will experience ;)
Here is a picture of me in the summer...you can clearly see my not so pretty belly :(

I started drinking Shakeology once a day to make sure I get all the nutrition my body needs and it also helps to keep the cravings for sweets at bay. I have started cutting back on fast food, frozen meals, sweets and other unhealthy foods. I am not completely there yet but step by step I am getting there. I have already dropped 7 pounds without any problems.

I am currently reading "Suede to Rest" the 1st book in the Material Witness mystery series. It introduces us to Poly (as in Polyester) Monroe. Poly has recently learned that she is the sole heir to her great aunt and uncle's estate. The estate consists of a run-down, closed for 10 years textile store, which has been in the family for decades. Now Poly has to decide if she wants to re-open the store or put it om the market. Making the decision even more difficult is the fact that not everyone wants Poly to stay in "their" town. Once things turn deadly, Poly is almost ready to pack her things and leave town.....

It is an excellent beginning to the series and it keeps me hooked since the first page....can't wait to get back to it. :)

Just before Halloween I started stitching Jack in the Hat by Threadwork Primitives. And this is where I am at now:

Better get some more stitching and reading in....see you soon again :)

Margret Cottham finished

A lot of time has passed since my last blogpost..... Even though I stitched a bit during all this time I never felt like blogging. Another thing that kept me busy is a terrible virus that caught the whole family....Minecraft! Everybody is playing by themselves or all together on our server. Who would have thought that a computer game would make us all go crazy. LOL

As you probably remember I took over Margret Cottham from Nicole last February. Here she finally is. Sorry had to take her off the wall. I just couldn't snap a good picture there. It was way too dark.




Please stay warm everyone.... Bine :)

Just in time for the snow to melt

I love the spring colours!
I have absolute no ideas how to finish it. I don't think I want it framed. Any ideas?

Mouton Printemps - Tralala

40ct natural ??? Stitched with DMC and Fil Atalie cotton

85x85 stitches

21 hours

2013-03-04 - 2013-04-09

And off to enjoy another wonderful stitching day.... Bine :)

These 2 wonderful cuts of 45ct Gander linen showed up in my mail box yesterday. I have never stitched on higher than 40ct before and can't wait to give it a try. They were nicely wrapped up in little baggies and hand labelled. Don't you just love it if you get your supplies lovely packaged?




Here is my progress on Mouton Printemps. It should be finished soon....



And my new start on Sara's Mystery Sal.


And off to enjoy another wonderful stitching day.... Bine :)

Mystery SAL

I would like to thank you for your encouraging words. They made such a difference and I proceeded stitching Mouton Printemps.

I also got weak and signed up for Sara's mystery SAL that starts on April 1st.
It will be a winter sampler when finished.

She already released the other 3 season samplers. The spring sampler was a mystery SAL too and just ended in February or March 2013. Isn't is so beautiful?:

 

I just love them all.  If you click here, you can see them all on her website.  :)

And my progress on Margret so far:


And off to enjoy another wonderful stitching day.... Bine :)

Loss of motivation

I got struck by a loss of motivation when discovering that i missed to leave a space of two fabric threads between the pink border and the brown border. I thought about frogging but then I would have to order more of the pink floss from France but I am pretty sure that I can make the border work without taking I out and doing it all over. But it would for sure look better if there was a space between those two borders.... :(




And off to enjoy another wonderful stitching day.... Bine :)

Long time no see....

Slowly I am getting used to my new job and work schedule. I am now working 2 days, 2 nights and then I am 4 days off. That makes the work week so much shorter and I only get to spend one half of the year at work and the other half at home...lol
Working as an engineer in a skating and event arena is so much different to what I have done before. But it is quite the fun environment too. Most of the time we have several skating and curling and agricultural arenas and a few event rooms. Now for the Royal Manitoba Winterfair all the ice came out and dirt was put in everywhere for horse jumping and rodeos etc. Lots and lots of stables were built too and when all that is over the ice comes back in until the Mötley Crüe concert. Just too bad that that isn't gonna happen on one of my nights....lol

Made a bit of progress on Margaret Cottham. Sorry, I didn't take it out of the Q-snap for the picture....didn't want to waste stitching time :)
I changed the last row of numbers up a little bit so that I can add my finishing year next to Margaret's. And I decided to wait with adding the date until I am close to actually finishing it.....you never know...sometimes things tend to take longer around here. LOL




After finishing Hare's Lucky Day I started Mouton Printemps by Tralala. I just love to stitch the flowery colours even though we still have a pile of snow outside and -15 Celsius (1 Fahrenheit) plus windchill. But the forecast says only 2 more weeks then we will be having above freezing temps. So soon bye bye to the winter. See you again in a few months. :)
And here it is after 11 hours of stitching (as well still in the Q-snap):



And off to enjoy another wonderful stitching day.... Bine :)

Hare's Lucky Day

It was such a fun stitch. The big challenge is now to finish it into something before St. Patrick's Day.



Hares' Lucky Day - Plum Street Sampler Freebie
77 x 74 stitches
DMC on 40ct. Cream - HDF
2013-02-22 - 2013-03-03
And off to enjoy another wonderful stitching day.... Bine :)

Stash in the mail

When we came home from our trip there was a little brown envelope waiting in the mailbox, containing this:




The reason for my order was the little thread bag with the aquamarine, dark and purple thread. I didn't have enough of them to finish a project I started a couple years ago. Somehow I ended up ordering only part of the silks needed?!! Must have had a sleepy moment.

The little bag on the left are threads needed for 2 future projects. And Celeste I had to order to make shipping from France worth while. LOL

You will be seeing more of La Vie en Bleu soon, now that I have all the threads needed:




And off to enjoy another wonderful stitching day.... Bine :)

The Nordic Needle

Is an amazing store! It seems like there is no kind of thread that they don't carry. Just wandering through the isles of wonderful cottons and silks is stunning. Everybody was so friendly and helpful. Just great service!
My stash buying didn't go over board since the biggest temptation for me is always the fabric but they didn't have any 40ct in stock.
What made it home with me is "Winter Holiday Sampler" by Victoria Sampler with accessory pack and the white Mori silk to go with it. Then "Snowy Nights" by Prairie Schooler, some Whisper thread which I always wanted to try for Santa beards and sheep. I picked 3 different kinds of red to chose frame for "Christmas at Hollyberry Farm". I ordered the chart and threads a while ago but I don't like the Mulberry. It seems way too dark. So hopefully one of these reds will look nice.
The lady that rang in my goodies put a set of needles and a needle threaded in my bag....so nice! I will for sure make good use of them.

I did get a start on Lucky and am working on it this weekend.

And off to enjoy another wonderful stitching day.... Bine :)

Road Trip

My new job will start on Friday and Greg came off his set of night shifts yesterday morning. By the time he arrived at home I had everything packed up for a road trip to North Dakota. So he got in the passenger seat and off we went.

Devils Lake was where we were headed yesterday. We stayed the night at the Spirit Lake Casino Resort and had a nice suite overlooking the lake....we will definitely have to come back in the summer time to enjoy the view with water:



Here a different direction with cottages and RV park, also a part of the casino resort



Luckily gambling isn't for us. Since being in a casino we hat to at least give it a try but 10 minutes were enough for us so we just went to enjoy the food and the whirlpool.

Today we're probably heading to Fargo.....do I need to tell you guys what's on my list of things to do there? Of course my first ever visit to the Nordic Needle. I am so excited! I got their catalogs in the mail when I still lived in Germany and now I will actually get to go there. Hope there will still be enough funds for a hotel room on my credit card when I walk out of the store. LOL

And off to enjoy another wonderful stitching day.... Bine :)

Being a bad girl....

I figured I deserved to pamper myself today after all those tears on my last day at work yesterday. So Lisa and I went to the mall to buy a nice little top for me to wear tomorrow night when we go out for my send off :)
...hmmmm of course I ended off buying 2 tops. One I would have chosen in a different colour since I have never bought anything purple, but the nice lady in the store (talked me into) convinced me that the purple looks great on me... I decided to give it a try and of course I couldn't leave this oh so sweet black little top hanging there ;) guess I will have to decide last minute tomorrow which one actually to wear....
Blog surfing I realized that it is soon St. Patricks day. Thank you Paulette for the cute St. Patricks freebie! It is printed and the floss is picked. So here I go:

And off to enjoy another wonderful stitching evening.... Bine :)

Last day

Tomorrow will be my last day in my current job and even though I am excited to start something new I am very sad to leave the company I worked for during the last 4 1/2 years. The whole department will be going out for my good-bye lunch tomorrow, so everybody will be having a loooong lunch break :) And we will be going out for drinks on Saturday evening. Usually it is getting a little crazy when we are going out together....which used to happen about once a year.
A little progress on Margaret:



And off to enjoy another wonderful stitching evening.... Bine :)

Louis Riel Day = holiday = more stitching time :)

Thanks to the nice quiet long weekend I am getting quite some stitching time in and Margret is growing nicely.

This morning I spent playing and baking with Lisa. We made a yummy Babana-Nutella-Loaf for a late breakfast.

I found the recipe on Pinterest: http://pinterest.com/pin/392798398719764697/
And off to enjoy another wonderful stitching holiday.... Bine :)

Back to Margaret

I hope everybody had a wonderful Valentine's Day. Greg and I had a fantastic dinner at a nice restaurant. He's laughing about me because I am ALWAYS thinking about food - I can't help it, I just love good food! LOL

This is how far I got on Margaret:




And off to enjoy another wonderful stitching day.... Bine :)

All You Need Is Love

This sweet little freebie by Drawn Thread was on my to-do-list for quite a while. In January I thought if I start now I might actually have it finished up in time for Valentine's Day....since that was the plan I kicked my own butt today after work and finally made this little pillow of it. I even had to make a quick run to fabric land to buy the filling and made it there 5 minutes before they closed. :)

But at least (just) in time for Valentine's Day:




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Kindle Keyboard

For quite a while now I have thought about purchasing a Kindle Keyboard because of its read-to-me feature. So if my hands are busy stitching or cooking it will read the book to me. Once I finally made the decision to buy one they were suddenly not available in Canada and amazon.com wouldn't ship them here. So I waited and waited because I thought they would come out with a new model but nothing happened so I finally bought a used one on eBay yesterday. I just hope it works..... It is even supposed to be here this week, can't wait to try it!

And a little update on Margaret Cottham:




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Margaret Cottham

A little while ago Nicole put her started Margaret Cottham up for sale. So I gave her a new home.



I have never stitched a "pre-owned" project since I always thought it wouldn't really feel like being "mine". Luckily I was wrong. :)













- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad