Giveaway winner is..

Jo!  Congratulations.

Wow, thank you for all your comments and birthday wishes.  Welcome to my new followers.  My birthday was good, but busy.  I managed to finish page 2 on Hypnotic.

We had a big weekend with DD's activities - Saturday morning was an Eisteddfod while Sunday was spent at a netball carnival all day.  Back to the Eisteddfod again tonight. 
Next weekend DH and I have some child free time.  DD has a cub scout camp from Friday night to Sunday midday, DS has a scout camp from Saturday morning till Sunday afternoon.  I can see some stitching time coming up.  I'm working on page 3 of Hypnotic and I'll show a progress photo next week.

Giveaway

It's my 42nd birthday on August 3.
I'm giving away a $50 gift voucher to 123stitch, my favourite online store.
To make it simple all you have to do is leave a comment on this post to enter.
The closing date is Sunday, August 7 and I'll draw a name on August 8.

Snowman pattern goes to..

Nancy M. 

I will send you an email to get your snail mail address

OOPS...

Big car + tricky driveway + distracted driver (me) =

My 4 month old car

I didn't turn enough and hit the side of the garage entrance on Monday afternoon  after school pick up. The garage I've driven into thousands of times before, the garage I didn't drive into for a month after I got this vehicle because I was worried about fitting!
My first accident in 25 years driving, first insurance claim.  I took it to the assessors yesterday and it should be back with bumper and light all fixed on Tuesday. 

I thought I'd be more upset but it's only a car and can be fixed, no-one was hurt and nothing else was damaged, only my pride.  I have another car to drive and my insurance premium is not affected because I have a good driving record.  Compared to the bad news I'm getting about the health of people I know, it is nothing.

Other than this I had a great Monday.  DH arrived home in the morning and we both did school drop off, went out for lunch, then furniture shopping for side tables for the new lounge.  Found some we liked at 30% off.  We got 3 and they were delivered yesterday.  Photos later. 

Some Finishes and a Small Giveaway

I had a great weekend stitching and I have some finishes.

First, this is the Lizzie Kate piece I made for Lisa for the ILCS group exchange.  Lisa received this on Friday just as I was getting ready to make another as I thought the first was lost in the mail.  This was my first ornament finish.  Forgot to take a picture of the back.
 

LK exchange to Lisa

  This is what I received from Lisa


LK exchange from Lisa

  The kids had their winter school holidays recently.  We drove up to visit my Dad at Yeppoon in central Queensland.  It was a 9 hour drive up there, a bit shorter coming back as we had breakfast before leaving and only had to stop twice.  The weather was terrible - wet and windy so we didn't get to the beach, but we all enjoyed the break.
 
I took LK Snowman '10 to start while I was there and finished it the other day.
I haven't ironed it so it looks crooked.



LK Snowman '10

 I had a great stitchathon on Saturday.  DH was away, the kids both had byes for their respective sports and the weather was wet and cold.  I started stitching at 8am and went to bed at midnight and I had 11 hours stitching mostly on Rose Garden Mandala.  I did another few hours yesterday finishing backstitching and attaching beads and now I have another page finish.




Romantic Rose Garden Mandala 3rd page

All of it so far



I'm going to do some more on Hypnotic next.
I'll have to see if my floor stand works with the new lounge suite.
I forgot to put a picture up of it earlier.  Here it is.  5 of the 6 seats have recliners which we are all enjoying. 

We have attached the TV to the wall and DH still has to do some work to hide the antenna and cables.  Next we need to find some small tables to put between the chairs.

Thanks for reading this.

If anyone wants the Snowman '10 pattern leave a comment about it here and I'll pick a name on Friday if there is more than one entry.

It's my birthday next month so I'll be doing a bigger giveaway for that later.

Page 2 finished

This is the gate in the top row.

I've changed to smaller Q-snaps which is working much better for me.  I'm going to put this aside while I work on my Lizzie Kate piece for the ILCS yahoo group swap.  No pictures until the recipent has received it.

Family

We've had an interesting time with DD recently.  First, she was complaining sometimes of a sore arm after her flu vaccination.  After 2 weeks I took her to the doctor and discovered she had an abscess from the needle.  Started antibiotics.  Reminder to self - remember DD has a high pain threshold. 

Next, she fell and hurt her ankle/foot while playing netball, she kept playing and came off during the break.  First aid person said sprained ankle, so I strapped it up for a few days.  After 5 days she started limping again after playing sports at school so I took her to the physio.  Not a sprained ankle, she had a dislocated bone in the top of her foot.  Physio couldn't get it back in manually so taped it up and gave her exercises to do at home to loosen the ligaments, within a few days it was mostly back in alignment.  She had her birthday disco party while her foot was taped up and it didn't slow her down at all.  Reminder to self - DD ignores pain.

Then she got a gastro bug at school and gave it to all of us within 48 hours.  I had to call my fairy godmother DMIL for help on the Saturday night when DS and DH were sick and I couldn't get out of bed to help them.  She ended up sick as well.  I started feeling better on Thursday.

DD had a cub scout camp on the weekend.  I removed two ticks from her this morning.  I'm hoping she has no more incidents for a while.

DH is heading OS on Sunday for a week.  He has 3 days in Vancouver and the same in San Francisco.

Redecorating

I'm waiting for a new lounge suite to be delivered, was meant to be today but now will be Wednesday.  We ordered it in March.  Our old one was brought 2nd hand last century (1999) when DS was a toddler.  We've never had a new lounge suite before and we were looking for a few years before we brought.  The main problem was the room, but we are going to change everything around and move the TV and put the lounge against the wall in the corner.  The bookcase will go in another room.

TV room with new heater against wall



My stitching chair, meals area and kitchen.



I had to buy a new heater yesterday.  Our old 15yo one blew up last week - tripped the circut breaker and shot out flames when DH turned it on after getting it out of the garage.

We only have one heater in the house and turn it on during really cold nights for a few hours.  10C is really cold for us! 

Well, thanks for reading to the end.  I have to go to bed now to be up early for a breakfast at DS's school at 7am tomorrow.

Romantic Rose Garden Progress

It's been a while since I worked on this piece.

current page

Overall progress



I started doing this on Q-snaps 14 x 14 because I didn't want to have to move it around very much with the beads and I can't wash the fabric creases out afterwards with the silk threads.  But, it's too big and I can't reach the top easily, so I'm thinking of changing to 14 x 11.  The border won't fit now so I will have to move the q-snaps around whatever I do.  I love the portability of the Q-snaps and I already have hypnotic set up on my floor stand so I don't want to put this on scroll rods.  I have wool batting under the snaps to protect the fabric and I'm hoping the beads will be ok with this.  Am I worrying about this too much?  I am using 32ct linen.

What have others done in this case?  Any thoughts and ideas are welcome.

DD had a great day on Sunday and DH arrived home around 1pm, just a few hours late.