Thursday, July 26, 2012

Tickled Pink With Friends!

So...have you been wondering where I've been?  I've been here,  just too busy to post lately.  I haven't had time for e-mailing or blogging, but I have been stitching!  So what have I been up to you ask?

Well, I was busy cleaning my house, because I wanted to invite some friends over for a stitch day!  I invited quite a few but only three were able to make it.  Sonya, Alice and Astrid. It was a great combination and it was a great way to spend a day without the boys around.  Both DS and DH were out of town, so what a perfect time to have the ladies over for an entire day.  Thank you, ladies, for keeping me company and for stitching with me!  And thank you Alice for the amazing desert!!


And thank you, Sonya for the lovely flowers!!


I've finished another crazy...Winter Forest by LHN.  This makes crazy number 10 I think.  This is the last of the little ones, my progress will really slow down now, but it feels good to have a third of my crazies done.



I've also been working on the two Angie Designer pieces, Sweet Flowers and Lavender Blue.  They were due on August 25th but they are ready now...so I will have time to work on my crazies now.  So here is Sweet Flowers




And Lavender Blue.



I had a lovely visit from a former college roommate who was driving by on her way to drop off her son for a summer program.  It's been quite some time since I've seen her, and she never changes!  Thanks for the visit, Ellie and Jeff!  I hope we can have a little more time next time! (I have to say, one of our lab instructors called us the gruesome twosome because we were always goofing off, and very nearly set a science hall on fire one day...thankfully our lab instructor was a volunteer fireman!)  Ellie was also a bridesmaid in my wedding 28 years ago next month!






I had a lovely surprise in the mail today...Mouse sent me a letter, and she has made an amazing discovery!  She found my marbles!  She tied them up in a little pouch and sent them back to me.  So I decided that I would hang them near the pendibles I've been given in the hopes that I'll be able to keep my eye on them and they won't go straying again!  Thank you, Mouse, for returning them!  Aren't they beautiful?





My next project I'm going to work on is One Nation.  Astrid and I were going to have a SAL and for one reason or another it kept being put on the back burner.  Last week Astrid brought hers along to work on and I've been inspired. I've decided  it will be the next one I concentrate on and hope to finish it next.





And here are a few pictures of my house, proof positive that I do clean my house!  I've made DH and DS promise to help me keep it this way!  LOL






And that's all the news that's fit to print!    The next couple of weeks will be busy, but I'll try to get on and update you soon.  Take care!

 

Tuesday, July 10, 2012

Fireworks and Vacation Bible School

Hi there!  It's been a busy time at the old homestead these days.  We had just a little over a week to enjoy DS being home from Mexico when we reentered the rat race by volunteering at VBS (vacation Bible school) at our old church.  




DS is a crew guide, with 5 kids in his group, he directs them from station to station, repeating the theme for the day as well as any Bible verses they are learning.  He's so good with the kids, I'm so very proud of him!  I'm part of the "snack crew" as well as the video lady for the opening and closing segments of the day.  I mostly click on whatever videos they are supposed to run.  Let me tell you, I'm busy the entire 5 hours I'm there!  You can tell the adults who are there to work, they are wearing the dark blue t-shirts in the pictures.  The front of the shirt says "Flight Crew" and the back of the shirts say "Everything is possible with God."  It really is more than I thought it would be, but it's also a lot of fun.  There are over 360 kids attending, and over 150 adults helping...so when they are all in the gym, there are over 500 bodies singing, dancing and repeating Bible verses and daily themes.  It's awesome to hear over 500 people shouting out "Trust God", it gives me goosebumps every time I hear it!  I must say, I am totally wiped at the end of the day. 


I haven't had much time to stitch, but I was able to finish up this little beauty...Pirouette in Purple from the Sweetheart Tree.  The picture doesn't to it justice, it's hard to see the many beads and little flowers that are in this piece, but it was fun to stitch.  The frogs visited many times and I thought I would never finish.  If you consider how many times I yanked out threads and put them back in I probably stitched this at least twice!  So that makes number 9 out of my crazies that I've finished.  I probably won't finish all 31, but I'm whittling them down, one at a time.


We have been having quite high temperatures here with relatively high humidity...which was a challenge for me.  I worked a couple of days in the heat and it was difficult to say the least.  Then on the Fourth, the guys decided to attend a Bowie Baysox game (they are the farm team for the Baltimore Orioles) and we watched the fireworks from there afterward.  They always have a pretty nice show, the seats are already provided and the games are usually fun to watch.  I got a few cool shots of fireworks too!  Hope you had a very happy and safe Fourth of July!





I'm nearly finished with another crazy, so watch this space.  I'll be back to post after I finish the next one.   Till then, keep smiling!  *Hugs*

Monday, July 2, 2012

Jiggity Jog...

When I was a kid and we traveled anywhere with my Grandmother, she would always sing this song...

To market to market to buy a fat pig,
Home again home again jiggity jig.
To market to market to buy a fat hog,
Home again home again jiggity jog.

I find myself singing the same song when I'm returning home from a trip.  Memories...

So before I get to the trip, I have to show you what was waiting in the mail for me when I arrived home.  Some time ago I won a contest on Mouse's blog for a PIF.  She was to stitch something for me, and I would stitch something for someone else to Pay it Forward.  Her stitched picture arrived in the mail while I was away but I have since picked it up at the post office and here it is in all it's glory...



I will be framing this soon, can't wait to hang it on my wall.  Anyone who has been to my house knows I adore lighthouses, and this one is so beautifully stitched.  I love it, thank you so much Mouse, from the bottom of my heart!!

I was also able to finish another of the crazies, and here it is.  It is Winter from Filigram.  I just love the birds in this pattern!



So...about that trip...
Last year around this time, my DH surprised me with a short getaway while our son was on a church youth group trip.  He had so much fun last year, he decided to surprise me again this year with a trip to Lancaster, Pennsylvania.  He told me where I was going (ok, truth is I guessed and he confirmed) but didn't tell me the plans he had made.  We stayed in the most divine Bed and Breakfast called the Apple Bin Inn.  Jamie and Steve, who owned the place, were charming hosts and Jamie is an excellent cook.  The accommodations were wonderful, so comfortable and charming, I just can't say enough good things about this place.  I hope we are able to go back again and see Jamie and Steve.  They made arrangements for us to have dinner with an Amish family, as well as point out some places of interest.   Thank you so much, Jamie and Steve, for making our trip so memorable.  We met some nice people each morning at breakfast, a lovely couple from Australia, some ladies from Boston who were administrators of the youth soccer league there, and a couple with their granddaughter who made breakfast conversation lively and fun.  And I can't forget Steve's knock knock jokes and his moo mixer.







We were able to take a drive to see some covered bridges...




Took a ghost tour of Lancaster (just to clarify...we have fun on these tours because in reality we usually learn a lot of the history but also personal stories of real people who lived there that you don't always hear on a regular tour of the city) and met a lovely lady who knew so much history, she was so charming...



We had dinner at an Amish farm, and got to see a baby calf only a couple of hours old, but I hesitated to take pictures because they don't like to be photographed...
We toured Landis Farm Museum where we watched a lady do some spinning...
 

We took a segway tour too, but I couldn't hear the tour guide too well through the ear piece they gave me, and besides I was concentrating on driving the thing to really hear what she was saying.  I have to say, it was intimidating at first but so much fun once we learned the nuances of how to steer it.  It's really quite easy, and I hope we can take our son back sometime to have another go at them!!





We went to visit Wheatland, the home of former President Buchanan....



We also ate at Bube's Brewery, it was one of the last remaining standing breweries from the 1700's that was converted into a tavern, a very charming place and the food was pretty good too! 






Of course no trip is complete without a trip to a cross stitch store!  We were driving through Strausburg and DH made a sudden stop.  He called it an emergency stop, and I'm so thankful he did.  We met the owner and she was quite accommodating.  If you have a chance you have to stop at her store!  It's called Hodge Podge and is on the main street.



My most favorite thing of being there was going to the Sight and Sound theater to see Jonah.  Thankfully DH had made reservations months in advance as well as reservations for a back stage tour.  We got to meet two of the actors, and recite a line from the play on stage...so we can say we acted on the Sight and Sound Theater stage...LOL  My line?  "He's gone!!"






We made it home from our trip just in time to dump our suitcases at home then run to the airport to pick up our son from his missions trip to Mexico.  Seems the crew had a blast, though the accommodations down there were not the most comfortable.  They did some painting, some cleaning, made friends with some kids in the park, took a dip in the ocean and just grew in the Lord.  When he came home, I was impressed with his new hair do...I thought he had learned to spike his hair, but what I later learned was that with the low pressure shower he wasn't able to wash all the shampoo/sand/sweat out of his hair, so sleeping on one side and then the other, he wound up with a perfectly spiked hairdo.  LOL  I don't recommend you try this at home!



So that's all the news that's fit to print!  Now it's back to the old grindstone, with doctor's appointments and squeezing in work here and there....but next week I'll be helping out with Vacation Bible School so that should be fun/exhausting!  Don't you just love summer?