July and August Goals

It is so hard to believe that tomorrow is the last day of July. My summer has zipped by in a blink and there is so much I still need to do. AAHHHH! Well with the end of the month comes a review of goals.

July Goals:
1. Mail Seasonal Dragon RR-done
2. Finish and mail birthday exchange-done
3. Stitch and mail Neighborhood RR-done
4. Stitch on Bordeaux Sampler-done

WooHoo, I met all my goals. Now onto August:
1. Stitch Autumn Dragon for RR
2. Stitch on Chatelaine M9
3. Stitch on Stargazer
4. Make a small start on the next round of the Neighborhood RR.

I thought that in August I would try and get a bit done on some of my bigger WIPs before my belly starts getting in the way too much:)

Pregnant Leslie

Despite not being a big fan of having pictures taken of myself, here is a picture of pregnant me. Some days I feel huge, while on other I feel fine. I haven’t done too bad with my weight so far. I actually only gained 4-5 pounds during the first 17 weeks of the pregnancy. I then went and gained an additional 7-8 pounds by 21 weeks. The doctor was not too concerned due to the fact that it all appeared to be in my belly. I started out my pregnancy hypervigilant about not eating too much. I think over the last six weeks I have gotten a bit lax in that area and just need to tighten up and increase my exercise a bit while I still can.

23 weeks down, 17 to go!

If you don’t like pictures…

well you are out of luck because I have a ton of them today.

I have been busy this weekend stitching and finishing cross stitch projects. It was a blast! First, I finished up my portion of Nicole’s RR. I am very proud that I got it done in time for the maildate this time. I hate being late on things like this. I stitched the May house from this website.

It was a cute stitch. It is now packed up and ready to go out in the mail. I was going to go to the post office tomorrow, but then I realized I forgot to buy a card for the second package that I wanted to send out. They will both be ready to go out Tuesday and hopefully reach their destinations at the end of the week!

Today, I spent some time in my craft room doing the finishing on some completed pieces that have been sitting in my stitching drawer for months. I finished both pieces as wall hangingings using a tutorial by Heather that I found through the Focus on Finishing blog. I messed up the ribbon hangers on both pieces, but I think I improvised well. I like how they both turned out.

First is Just Nan’s Barnabee’s Quest.

And second is Mirabilia’s Christmas Elf Fairy

I have really been enjoying my stitching again, but one thing is getting in the way…my ever growing belly. It is quickly getting in the way of everything and I can’t sit as long in one place as a used to. Carol and my MIL asked for a pic, so I will have Allen take one when we get home from work tomorrow. Also on the baby front, Allen and I went to Babies R’ Us to start our baby registry and start formulating thoughts on what furniture we want to get. All I have to say is baby stores are increadibly overwhelming. It is so hard to know exactly what we need and what brands are good, etc.

And to end this lovely post, I will leave you with some pic of my furbabies. Allen hijacked Zoe from her chair in the living room (I swear she only leaves to eat and do her business) and plopped her down on the back of the couch. After two minutes she appeared to settle and even tucked her front paws under herself as if to say she was cool with sticking around. She sat on the couch for about 15 minutes, but the whole time her little ears were sending out ‘I hate you all’ vibes, especially after Cooper jumped up as well. Here are the two of them looking content (Zoe is on the right)
And here are Zoe’s “Angry Ears”

This week’s stitching

Well, it has been a very busy week in Leslie World! I have finally finished up conferencing for a few weeks and boy am I glad. I don’t think I could have taken another 7 hour day with minimal chances to get up without disturbing everyone. At least at the office I can get up to go to the bathroom or walk around any time I need to. I am definitly getting to the point in my pregnancy where I can’t sit in the same place too long and heaven forbid I drop anything on the floor…it is quite an amusing sight:) Other than that I am feeling good and looking forward to a quite week behind my desk in the office.

At home, Allen and I also had a busy weekend. We have been good little beavers and got a ton of stuff done around the house. I am very proud of us. We had beautiful weather and last night Allen hung out in our portable hammock and we started reading the new Harry Potter. The only problem with that scenario was that Allen fell asleep as I was finishing up chapter three. Oh well, he will just have to skim it tonight when he takes his turn reading aloud.

I am also proud of the stitching I have done this weekend. I started out working on Nicole’s neighborhood RR. I am very pleased that I will be more than on time this mailing. I am about two-thirds done with the block.

I really like how it is looking so far! I will probably pick it up again tomorrow and hope to have it done mid-week.

Over the last few days I have needed a break from the RR though. I decided to pull out my Bordeaux Wine Sampler. I have really missed stitching on this. Over the past three days, I was able to do the over one words a the bottom, add three giant sets of over one grapes and work on the border some. I will probably start on part four. I think I need to end my round with something other than over one grapes:)

Well, I should go if I want to have time to stitch and read with Allen before bed. Hope everyone had a wonderful week.

Building Houses

So over the last couple of days, I have been working on Nicole’s Neighborhood RR. I chose to do the May house of this site. It has a lot of really pretty free house and small sampler designs. I was drawn to the bright colors in this house. I will have to widen the lawn a little and add a bit to the sky. The pattern itself has some nice cloud/sky effect, but I think the house deserves a lovely bright sun to keep it warm.

So this is going to be an interesting weekend in our house. Because of Allen’s radiation treatment on Thursday, he and I can’t get too close together, sleep in the same room, use the same bathrooms, etc. It is amazing how much you can miss a person who is still in the same house as you:) We will have to see what we can do to keep ourselves busy without being tempted to cuddle up on the couch together. Poor Cooper is feeling pretty depressed too since he can’t spend much time with Allen either. The last thing I need is both a hubby and a kitty with thyroid problems. Hopefully, this treatment did its job and got rid of the last of his thyroid tissue. At this point there is almost zero concern about a reoccurance, but if there is zero thyroid left the doctors can evaluate for reoccurance signs with blood work only…no need for expensive and time consuming iodine scans. Yeah!

Well, off to be good and get some housework done. Have a fantastic weekend!

More of Baby Saunders

So, this morning I had my 20 week ultrasound. Our little one was EXTREMELY active this morning and the sonographer had a difficult time keeping up. Fortunately, baby was not shy so we were able to find out with as much certainly as is possible that we are expecting a little boy. Allen and I are very excited and looking forward to really getting down to names and baby gear. Based on the ultrasound, he looks healthy and has all the little parts that he should. Allen scanned in the pictures that they gave us.

I had a good chuckle with the pic on the bottom left. It started out as a profile image, but he seemed to know we were watching him and turned his face toward us. The moment I saw his little eyes, my first thought was “wow, his are huge and round like Zoe’s”! I really can’t wait to see him in the flesh in November:)

In stitching news, I got a good start on the next round of my neighborhood RR on Sunday. I am probably about a third of the way through. I really like what I chose, but I may have to find some more “stuff” to add to the sky. I have made a note to take a pic when I stop working on it tomorrow.

Dragon Stitching

Okay, here he is as promised, the summer dragon I stitched on Jenna’s RR. I really like the way it turned out. The greens are so vibrant. My only wish is that the backstitch(boy was there a ton) showed up a bit better. The tendrils between the leaves are particularly hard to see on the black. Now it is off to Outi in Finland. Next up in this RR is the fall dragon.

Here is a picture the two that have been stitched so far.

I have also finished about half of the stitching on the birthday exchange I am working on. I hope to have it done tonight or early tomorrow so I can get it out tomorrow. I am pleased with the amount of stitching I have been done lately. I have even picked out a pattern for the current round of my neighborhood RR. Yeah me!

July Goals

Since I havent done so in a while, I thought I would post a few goals for the month of July. I have been feeling much more stitchy lately eventhough I have really only had the opportunity to work on RRs and exchanges. I am hoping to get my obligation stitching done early and be able to stitch some for me too:) So here they are:

1. Mail Seasonal Dragon RR
2. Finish and mail birthday exchange
3. Stitch and mail Neighborhood RR
4. Stitch on Bordeaux Sampler

Hopefully I’ll make some good progress this month. Stay tuned later tonight for a picture of my finished Summer Dragon. Just some backstitch to go.