Goodbye easter, hello weekend at home ... halfway there ;)

Easter weekend was packed - my sister and her fiance came up on Saturday, my sister and I worked on invitations (wedding and shower invites). I've got the wedding invites all cut and folded to size, and then I rolled the swirly stamp in versamark on the front - that took a while but it's all done!

Sunday we went to my uncle's for a large family get together, it was fun but exhausting as usual, the little kids were tired and overly excited (when aren't they!) which made for some interesting moments and not a lot of happy pictures unfortunately.

This week has been crazy at work so far - monday was a very long day and each day feels long by lunch time.. is it only 10:20 now! Last night I punched holes in the centers of all my purple daisies for the invites and thank you notes. So that's one more step done on the invites! Next up is getting the embossing started - this coming weekend hopefully!

Lots to do this weekend since we're home... I have a lamb I need to finish by putting together :) And then some invites to work on.

Happy first day of Spring!!! I sure wish it wasn't cloudy out :(

I'm just exhausted - all this getting up early and going to work for a few days is too much for me :) I can't wait until the weekend - next week is going to be very rough on me! If only I could focus but all I want to do is sleep - not good!

No knitting last night as I fell asleep on the couch watching a movie. Tonight will most likely be similar, I haven't figured out if I'm working from home tomorrow or not yet, that will determine how much sleep I get.

Vacation is over! No more finishes towards the end of my vacation - the lamb I'm knitting is coming together and I hope to finish him tonight (minus the embroidered face since I forgot my black yarn). So maybe a picture on friday of him.. he's a little awkward looking but all I have left is to attach 1 ear and his legs.

So yesterday was going great, we went down to Medford to pick up a settlement check for our car, then out to lunch with the idea that we'd do some quick errands on the way home - well we get out of lunch and my fiance's car is leaking coolant - I haven't mentioned much about this but we just replaced the whole engine on his car so he was not happy! So we went home and I went out on errands myself :( Sure did ruin the rest of our day!

We continued watching Lost Season 3 though and I stitched a bit on my Celebrations project from my class last year - I wasn't in much of a stitching mood though so didn't make much progress.

And so the car is back at the repair place as of 7:30 this morning and I'm at work. Hopefully he can get it fixed by the end of today and it won't cost us too much.. so far the tally is ~$7300 on repairs for this stupid car! It's not like we're trying to get married and go on a honeymoon this year or anything! DOH!

Deb's RR Finished! This was fun - I've never stitched a Workbasket design. Here's my house in her neighborhood. I apologize for the picture qualities - It's sunny out and I had some shadows through the window.
And here's the cemetery (my addition is on the right):
And my little person at the top,
Vacation is so much fun! Today we went to the dump to get rid of the recyclables, then back home for a yummy lunch and then stitching while watching LOST and it's still sunny out!

Now it's time for some obligation knitting I need to finish up this vacation - a lamb for a coworker... If i get it finished tomorrow I'll post a picture - 3 legs yet to knit and then just stuffing and piecing!!

Flower Girl Dress #2.

This is for the 3rd flower girl - so it's in the style of the younger 3. The skirt will be cut and then hemmed closer to the wedding and being shorter will hang a little nicer over the netting but to be safe I kept it long (in case she grows a lot).
I added rick rack around the bodice bottom and ribbon for a bow in the back (mostly so it can be tightened if it's too large). This dress had some very difficult parts - mostly dealing with the underskirt of netting attached to lining. Then that also made adding the zipper a bit more difficult. After a bunch of ripping out stitches I think it came out well and I know my flower girl will love it!
The next flower girl dress will be the second Eyelet one (with purple lining) - I'm hoping to get a start on at least cutting the pattern and some of the fabric and lining and starting the basting process which takes quite a while!

Vacation!

My fiance and I decided to take a 4 day weekend off for our 8th anniversary this year so we're smack in the middle of our mini vacation home doing absolutely nothing! It's been great so far - here's a recap:

Friday night - Hit BJs to stock up on stuff we needed then I cleaned - the whole apartment top to bottom - it's nice to start vacation with a clean apartment! Then I stayed up late reading - finished my book actually!

Saturday: Hit the grocery store to stock up on good food for the weekend, then we did almost nothing except watch Dexter Season 2 and stitch! I've been working on Deb's NRR and it's coming right along! I'll have pictures after this weekend of stitching!

Sunday: A very productive day - I cooked - LOTS! Then I settled in to do some sewing (see next post for pictures) and finished the second flower girl dress! I even knitted a bit while we finished Dexter Season 2.

Hmm... after I finishing writing entries for my blogs I'm going to pick up Deb's RR while I continue listening to my audio book which I'm hoping to finish this weekend as well.

And still 2 more days to go!!! I have a long list of stuff I want to do - so hopefully I'll have lots more pictures in the coming days!!

Pictures Finally! The first Flower Girl Dress!!

Here are the pictures of the first dress I completed last month. It's a Girl's size 10 for my 8 yr. old cousin and it looks wonderful on her - a little big but that's room to grow and it has a tie if it's still too big in August.

Here's a picture of the back. The green bow is very large but mimics the bow that i have on my wedding gown which I love so I thought it would be cute if the two oldest flower girls had matching bows.
And here's a close up of hte top of the dress. The fabric is white eyelet with a green lining. This is going to be my favorite dress since green is my favorite color and I've always been partial to eyelet dresses!
I can't believe how long it took me to get pictures of this dress online -- I've already finished dress number 2 which I'll post next!

While I still don't have pictures to show of all my progress on projects I thought I would do this little reading meme. The pictures are now on my camera but haven't made it to my computer! Very soon I promise..

In the mean time here's a list of 100 books, I made the ones I've read bold and italicized the ones I'd like to read...

1. The Da Vinci Code (Dan Brown)
2. Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen)
3. To Kill A Mockingbird (Harper Lee)
4. Gone With The Wind (Margaret Mitchell)
5. The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (Tolkien)
6. The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring (Tolkien)
7. The Lord of the Rings: Two Towers (Tolkien)
8. Anne of Green Gables (L.M. Montgomery)
9. Outlander (Diana Gabaldon)
10. A Fine Balance (Rohinton Mistry)
11. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Rowling)
12. Angels and Demons (Dan Brown)
13. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Rowling)
14. A Prayer for Owen Meany (John Irving)
15. Memoirs of a Geisha (Arthur Golden)
16. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (Rowling)
17. Fall on Your Knees (Ann-Marie MacDonald)
18. The Stand (Stephen King)
19. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Rowling)
20. Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte)
21. The Hobbit (Tolkien)
22. The Catcher in the Rye (J.D. Salinger)
23. Little Women (Louisa May Alcott)
24. The Lovely Bones (Alice Sebold)
25 . Life of Pi (Yann Martel)
26. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams)
27. Wuthering Heights (Emily Bronte)
28. The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe (C. S. Lewis)
29. East of Eden (John Steinbeck)
30. Tuesdays with Morrie (Mitch Albom)
31. Dune (Frank Herbert)
32. The Notebook (Nicholas Sparks)
33. Atlas Shrugged (Ayn Rand)
34. 1984 (Orwell)
35. The Mists of Avalon (Marion Zimmer Bradley)
36. The Pillars of the Earth (Ken Follett)
37. The Power of One (Bryce Courtenay)
38. I Know This Much is True (Wally Lamb)
39. The Red Tent (Anita Diamant)
40. The Alchemist (Paulo Coelho)
41. The Clan of the Cave Bear (Jean M. Auel)
42. The Kite Runner (Khaled Hosseini)
43. Confessions of a Shopaholic (Sophie Kinsella)
44. The Five People You Meet In Heaven (Mitch Albom)
45. Bible
46. Anna Karenina (Tolstoy)
47. The Count of Monte Cristo (Alexandre Dumas)
48. Angela’s Ashes (Frank McCourt)
49. The Grapes of Wrath (John Steinbeck)
50. She’s Come Undone (Wally Lamb)
51. The Poisonwood Bible (Barbara Kingsolver)
52. A Tale of Two Cities (Dickens)
53. Ender’s Game (Orson Scott Card)
54. Great Expectations (Dickens)
55. The Great Gatsby (Fitzgerald)
56. The Stone Angel (Margaret Laurence)
57. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Rowling)
58. The Thorn Birds (Colleen McCullough)
59. The Handmaid’s Tale (Margaret Atwood)
60. The Time Traveller’s Wife (Audrey Niffenegger)
61. Crime and Punishment (Fyodor Dostoyevsky)
62. The Fountainhead (Ayn Rand)
63. War and Peace (Tolstoy)
64. Interview With The Vampire (Anne Rice)
65. Fifth Business (Robertson Davis)
66. One Hundred Years Of Solitude (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)
67. The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants (Ann Brashares)
68. Catch-22 (Joseph Heller)
69. Les Miserables (Hugo)
70. The Little Prince (Antoine de Saint-Exupery)
71. Bridget Jones’ Diary (Fielding)
72. Love in the Time of Cholera (Marquez)
73. Shogun (James Clavell)
74. The English Patient (Michael Ondaatje)
75. The Secret Garden (Frances Hodgson Burnett)
76. The Summer Tree (Guy Gavriel Kay)
77. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (Betty Smith)
78. The World According To Garp (John Irving)
79. The Diviners (Margaret Laurence)
80. Charlotte’s Web (E.B. White)
81. Not Wanted On The Voyage (Timothy Findley)
82. Of Mice And Men (Steinbeck)
83. Rebecca (Daphne DuMaurier)
84. Wizard’s First Rule (Terry Goodkind)
85. Emma (Jane Austen)
86. Watership Down(Richard Adams)
87. Brave New World (Aldous Huxley)
88. The Stone Diaries (Carol Shields)
89. Blindness (Jose Saramago)
90. Kane and Abel (Jeffrey Archer)
91. In The Skin Of A Lion (Ondaatje)
92. Lord of the Flies (Golding)
93. The Good Earth (Pearl S. Buck)
94. The Secret Life of Bees (Sue Monk Kidd)
95. The Bourne Identity (Robert Ludlum)
96. The Outsiders (S.E. Hinton)
97. White Oleander (Janet Fitch)
98. A Woman of Substance (Barbara Taylor Bradford)
99. The Celestine Prophecy (James Redfield)
100. Ulysses (James Joyce)

Feel free to join in :)

Some knitting ...

So we went to a Jodi Picoult book signing last night! You can read about it more at my book reading blog: http://nikkistitch-reading.blogspot.com/. Basically it was awesome but between the Q&A and the signing we had some time to kill so I worked on knitting the little lamb. So far I now have the body with the 2 sides of the head done and I've started the tail. I have the gusset and legs left! Not too shabby! I hope to work on him on Sunday in the car on our way out to dinner.

Let's see - nothing else new, I'm looking forward to some sewing this weekend, mostly cutting out patterns and fabric, not actually sewing but still. Next weekend is our 4 day "vacation" to stay home and I plan on working mainly on Deb's NRR while we watch Band of Brothers and other tv shows we have waiting - it will be a great vacation!!

For now, it's work work work and clean tomorrow and squeeze crafts between other commitments :) Fun!

March Goals:

Sewing:
1) Finish flower girl 3 dress
2) Start flower girl 4 dress
3) Cut pattern sizes for flower girl 2, 3 and 4
4) Get measurements for flower girl 5

Wedding:
1) Start invitations
- punch all flowers and holes in flowers
- start embossing
- finish at least 10 as models
2) Buy beads for veil
3) Cut veil piece for practice and practice beading
4) Start hardanger piece for ring bearer pillow

Stitching:
1) Finish Deb's NRR and mail by April 1st

Knitting:
1) Finish lamb for coworker