11/30/12 Friday Progress Teacups 6th Finish!

Happy Friday everyone!  This has been a great week for me.  I completed my 6th finish for the year my teacup quilt square for World of Charity Stitching just in time to send it back to the US to hopefully arrive before its deadline :) 

Below is the finished piece that came together pretty well.  I am not 100% satisfied with all of the colors.  There was a little confusion when I tried to translate Anchor colors into DMC but all in all I think it looks great and hopefully some deserving person or organization will appreciate it when it is made into the final
Quilt.

This week I have also been trying to perfect my Christmas Card design and I plan to work on that while my baby naps today.  It has also been a great week for Craft companies showing their wonderful customer service but I will write more about that tomorrow.

Happy Weekend and Happy Stitching!

Happy Belated Thanksgiving and Black Friday!

A big belated Happy Thanksgiving to all of my friends and family in the US that celebrate this wonderful holiday!  We got to celebrate the feast twice this year which makes me so happy since Thanksgiving is one of my favorite American holidays.  I LOVE it because all of my favorite foods are served, turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, cranberries, and pumpkin pie to name a few traditional dishes!

Here is a picture from our office celebration...the pink and white bit at the bottom right is my daughter's foot that somehow snuck into the photo ;)

For the actual Thanksgiving dinner yesterday we spent it with some good friends.  My husband and I attempted to make our first ever Cheesecake and it turned out great!  I also made some other dishes that turned out well too.  This year was special too because for once I wasn't sad to celebrate the holiday overseas.  Normally this is hard because to me the whole point of Thanksgiving is to gather together with your family which is usually not possible when we are living outside of America.  Maybe it was seeing the traditions anew through my daughter that helped me keep a happy heart this year, but I am really looking forward to next year when she can try more of the special holiday foods!

Also I want to wish a happy Black Friday to all of you American Shoppers out there!  I only went out on Black Friday once in my life back in 2008 but I got some great deals so good luck everyone!  I can't wait for Cyber Monday which I can participate in, but I'm not sure what I will buy.  This year I had started to shop a bit early for Christmas but we will see if something tempts me this coming Monday...

11/23 Progress Photos Stockings, Tea Cups...

Hello out there and welcome to some new followers!  Yikes I can't believe I missed last week's posting.  Well it has been busy lately at my house.  My baby finally got her top tooth in, but now its partner in crime is trying to make its appearance.  Also I had been trying to get ready for the Thanksgiving holiday but more about that later...

Last Friday I didn't have too much progress to show.  I had finally picked out the fabric to use to make my family's Christmas Stockings this year from some of the beautiful Woodin Fabric I had purchased in Congo.

Also last week I finished the Saxony Santa Ornament..

On Thursday there was our community montly Craft meeting and the hostess was teaching a very cute woven Reindeer ornament.  Unfortunately I had my hands full with my little one so I couldn't make it but everyone else's turned out really cute!  And also on Sunday I met up with some card making friends to work on our Christmas card designs and enjoy a nice Ladies night dinner.  My Christmas card for this year is mostly set but I will wait to share the design with you.

Also last week I had finally joined the World of Charity Stitching group after seeing so many fellow bloggers stitch cute pieces I decided to join the group and try to complete a square for a quilt to be donated to a charitable organization/individual.  I was inspired to go through all of my old Cross Stitch magazines to find a lighthouse design but I did stumble upon a great teacup design for that theme.

Here is the image from the April 2008 Issue of Cross Stitch Gold Magazine.  I used to subscribe to this wonderful mag from England and lately I have been tempted to resubscribe...

This design is called Anchor Tea Sampler and I am focusing on just a small part of the stacked tea cups for my contribution.  I haven't quite signed up with the group yet on this piece because I am hoping (but I'm not sure) that I can meet the December 15th deadline to have it mailed back to the US so it can become part of a quilt.

Here is the chart image...really amazing and easy to read compared with my experience with a recent project chart.

And here is how far I am as of today with the stitching...

I really hope that I can finish it in time, but this has been another fun little distraction from the backstitching on Christ at Heart's Door.  Happy Friday Everyone and I can't wait to share with you my progress next week...hopefully I will be done stitching on this piece!

 

5th Finish of 2012!

I am so happy to show you my finished Saxony Santa Ornament from Mill Hill Designs Medieval Santas!  I finished it on Sunday but I finally made it to the computer today to write it up.

Here he is completely stitched!

I really enjoyed doing this small colorful kit in between working on a few larger designs.  Even sorting out the bead colors was fun and I was proud that I learned a few new techniques such as sewing on the Holly to give a 3d look and adding the beard on Santa's face.  I decided to finish it a little different than the picture below shows but now I just need to find some fabric from my stash for the back and then he can hang from our Christmas tree as soon as I put it up in the next few weeks!

Happy Veterans Day!

In honor of the US Holiday Veterans Day I am posting a pic of this beautiful ornament that is on my list to start hopefully sometime next year. 

It is so very true..."we live in the land of the free because of the brave"

This design is by The Sweetheart Tree and titled "In The Land of The Free".

Thank you to all of the men and women of the Armed Services past, present, and future!

11/9 Progress Photos Saxony Santa

Happy Friday!  This week has flown by for me and it was a productive crafty week for me.

First from my last post I completed my Thanksgiving Cards and they are off in the mail today for our immediate family.  Making the cards was really fun and made me want to create some more new designs!

Also this week I have been working on a very beautiful ornament.  It is in the Medieval Santa series by Mill Hill and it is the Saxony Santa. 

This was a very generous gift from my pal Meg at Committed Stitcher from her stash when I needed a needle because the kit I had brought with me was unfortunately missing its needle.  Anyways I am grateful that she donated this kit to me and it is so pretty!  There is quite a bit of beading on this design and for it being so small I have made some major mistakes that I have had to take out but I have really enjoyed stitching it.

Here is where I was when I stopped working on it sometime in January...

It is my first project stitching on a paper backing but so far so good.  And here is where I am today on the design...

I just have a few more colors of beading to add and then his beard which looks a little tricky, and then I can finish it and add it to our tree this Christmas!  This year I am already looking forward to the Holiday Season probably because we have snow already, and I am excited to make and get gifts together, and to see the joy of the season through my little girl's eyes.

Happy Crafting!

My card mojo is back!

Before I hosted a craft get together at my place in September it had been probably about a year since I had last done any cardmaking.  Seeing my old example of a Thanksgiving Day card I found when getting ready for the event sparked something in me to get to work creating cards.  Yesterday I searched high and low for the example but I couldn't find it!  So at nap time today I got to work trying to recreate it and I think they turned out well.

Here is the front of the card...

 And the inside...

And I always like to use my custom stamp with my name on it to finish off the backs of my cards.

I used all Stampin' Up stamps to create this card.  If you are curious about the sets let me know...

Happy Wednesday!

November Crafty Goals!

Ok so last week was a really tough week for me...so I was a bit more negative in my last post than I meant to be.  First of all, I really am not a horrible mother for complaining of my lack of sleep when my baby is teething because she hasn't been in any pain like some babies experience when teething.  The only way we can tell she is teething is because she drools so much and likes to put all of her toys in her mouth.  I think I solved the problem why she was waking up so much and that was because her room was a bit on the cool side.  So problem mostly solved I have gotten a bit more sleep lately and feel like more of a human being again!

Also I am really happy because later in the afternoon on Friday I finally called customer service on a Crafty issue I have been having and they were wonderfully helpful and the problem should be solved with them mailing me a replacement!!  I will give you the details of the amazing company once everything arrives.

So I really can't believe we are in November already.  In Oslo, Norway that means that the daylight is already gone at about 16:30 and as we approach the solstice in December the sun will go down by 14:30pm!  To cope a little better with the loss of light my hubby bought me some cool LED color lights and a few other lamps so that our apartment is brighter and I can actually see what I am stitching!

Here are some images of the color effects...

Ok back to the title of this post.  I am going to write down my crafty goals for the month here:

1.  Finish our family Christmas stockings.
2.  Finish Santa Ornament.
3.  Send Thanksgiving Day cards to immediate family members.
4.  Start Christmas Cards.
5.  Start community Stockings.
6.  Start Page 8 on Girl with a Pearl Earring.

I hope I can accomplish all of those goals this month but let's see!

Right now it is snowing outside and the biggest, most beautiful snowflakes are gently falling from the sky.  You can't see the flakes as well but here is what the peaceful scene looks like... Happy Tuesday!

P.S. If you can please take the time to go vote for a fellow Blogger site  go to http://thecutestblogontheblock.com/rate-my-blog and click the refresh button until the Blog "My Frozen Sunshine" comes up and vote for it.

11/2 Progress Photos Can you see any?

Wow is it really Friday already?  This week has been a little tough on me since my baby is teething again...It's been rare that she lets me sleep for more than 2 hours at a time each night, or else decides to forgo nap time during the day.  So I haven't made very much progress craft-wise this week.

I wanted to start making our family Christmas stockings and I did start them...but only got as far as cutting out the pattern.

I also thought I would easily finish an old WIP work in progress "Christ at Heart's Door".  Here is where I had left it from the last time I had worked on it over a year ago.

It is very close to being finished...or so I thought.  This really wasn't the most fun design to work on because it has so much blended colors, fractional stitches, you name it and this pattern has it. 

I thought that I quit working on it because it was so close to the end that I lost interest...but NO.  I started working on this again last week realizing that all I had to do was the backstitching and thought that would be no problem at all.

Boy was I wrong!  This is just a small part of the backstitching on maybe 1/6th of the chart.

And also you tell me if you can decipher the symbols on this legend?

Wait is that image not close enough for you hold on I'll zoom in...

Arg this makes me so mad that there is basically NO WAY to determine the different colors to use for backstitching on Janlynn's black and white chart!

But alas even though I have been completely frustrated I have been trying to plug along a bit when I get some time to myself and have made a tiny bit of progress but my picture came out way too blurry to share it. 

Here's hoping that next week I get a bit more sleep and can have more patience with this project to finally get the stitching finished on it.  Happy Weekend All!