A Spring Exchange and Birthday Package

I received this Spring exchange from the Friends Stitching Through the Seasons blog. Michele sent me this wonderful package. She stitched Sew Red but made it green, since that is my new favorite color---by Carol R of iStitch. It was stitched with Belle Soie Creme De Menthe and made into a flat fold. I just love it. Michele also included 3 skeins of Belle Soie in green tones, some needles, a beaded fob a Blackbird Designs pattern and some fabric. Michele did a great job in her stitching and in the goodies she picked out for me.
Thank you Michele.

I also received this Birthday gift from Cathy B. She made me a wonderful Hardanger doily. Cathy also sent me the new Shepherd's Bush Fob kit.
Thank you Cathy. I love it all.

Now I am getting ready for my Birthday retreat weekend with some of my stitching buds. Have a great week and Happy Stitching:)

More pre-birthday gifts, finishes and WERE GOING HOME!!!

I am late in posting some of my pre-birthday goodies so without further ado here they are:

At the beginning of last week Jill sent me this package of floss bobbins and my favorite Laffy Taffy, which is banana. So now while I will be winding all of those DMC flosses I can enjoy some banana Laffy Taffy. Thank you Jill.

Here is the card Jill enclosed.


And again here is the reason I need all those floss bobbins--to fill this DMC floss cabinet. I ordered this cabinet from Herrschners. And right now they are on sale for $79. When I ordered mine they were $99 and I contacted them about the price change since it was only about a week from the time I ordered it and the price change and Herrschners refunded me the $20 difference. I thought that was great.

Then a day or so after my package from Jill I received this very cute flower frog from my hubby. He found it on Ebay and thought I should add it to my collection. Besides this he surprised me and signed my up for the Blackbird designs retreat that Stitchville, my LNS in Minnesota is hosting in April. I will be going to that with Cathy B. I just can't wait. He also gave me $50 to spend at my LNS when we went home again this last weekend.

So when we returned home last night from our quick trip back to MN I had another package waiting for me from my friend Jackie. She thought I should have this new Dinky Dyes scissors for a pre-birthday gift. Thank you Jackie. She even managed to make sure I received this while she and her family were in Hawaii for Spring break. I tell you I have GREAT friends!!!!

Now here are a couple of finishes. This first one is from Cherry Wood Designs called: Eat, Sleep and Stitch. I stitched it on 32 count line green with Cresent Colors.

My LHN He's a Flake ornament. He was stitched on 36ct crystal loch with DMC, I used DMC variations 4045 for the tree.

I really like the saying on this Sampler Girl design which is Northanger Abbey stitched on 32ct coffee dyed fabric with DMC threads. The saying is: Friendship is certainly the finest balm. Can't agree with that more.

With all of the great gifts I have received for my BIG birthday the best one is the news that my hubby received a job offer for us to move back to Minnesota. So we only have two more weeks left here in Aberdeen, South Dakota. We are both very happy to be moving back to our "real" life. So I have been doing the happy dance since last Friday.

I just want to say that life is good and I have the greatest family and friends in the world. I hope that they all know that.

Now I have my birthday retreat that starts on Thursday and goes through Sunday so I will have more birthday reports and pictures when I return from there.

It's MY Birthday!!!!

Thanks to everyone for wishing me a Happy Birthday!

Apparently it's my birthday month and a finish....

I have received the following birthday month goodies:

I received this card from Lori earlier in the week.

Here's what was on the inside.

Then today when I got home from work this was in the mail from Jackie. She knew, as did a couple of my other stitching buds that I got a new floss cabinet and now I need to wind all my DMC onto floss cards and get them in my cabinet.

Here is the inside of the card. So as you see my friends have had to put up with my month looooong birthday shenanigans before, and they play right into them. Got to love them:)

Now here is my newest finish. It is the fob that belongs to my new scissors bed. These scissors are one of the first Gingher designer series scissors---Gloriana.

Here they are together.

Thanks again for stopping by and Happy Stitching.

I've made my bed......

And now my scissors will sleep in it.

I decided to make my own scissors bed for this LHN design. I am happy with the results. I have put my Gingher Glorianna scissor in it's new bed. It is nice to have this project complete.


I have had a couple of people comment on the background of some pictures I took in which I used this tabletopper. Carol R asked that I post a picture of the whole design, so here it is. It is a pattern called Sampler Tabletopper by Dutch Treat Designs. I stitched this a couple of years ago.

Then I have added a couple more scissors to my collection. The top two are from Yuko's scissors blog. The small one is a Kelscott designs little gem--in brown new from market.

Now I have a BIG birthday coming up and I am not real excited about that, although it sure is better than the alternative!!!! All my friends know that I usually remind them weeks in advance that "My Birthday is coming", and they say it goes on forever, so with that being said I received this cute little card from my BFF Lori.

Here's what was on the inside. So my birthday has officially started:)
And I will be celebrating with the stitching girls with a 4 day birthday retreat starting March 25 and going until March 28. I can not wait. It will be a great time of stitching, laughing , eating and a massage!!!

And since I am having a BIG birthday I have always wanted a cabinet for my floss. So I told that to my DH and he said go ahead and order it. So here it is. Now I just need to get 454 floss tags wrapped. I will be working on that probably until my next birthday.

A Very Happy Weekend

We made another trip home to Minnesota this weekend, here are the results of being home:

Before we left for home my hubby gave me this to use at my LNS.

Here is the end results plus a few more $$$. I have enhanced my stash with a few new things.
I went to my LNS with Jill and Cathy B, we also met up with Judy a friend of Cathy's at Stitchville and had lunch with her. So now I have a new friend in the stitching world. It was good to meet and spend sometime with you Judy. Maybe you will be able to stitch with us in the future. Then we had plans to meet up with Jackie and Lori at Jackie's house for some food, fun and stitching. I had a really great day Saturday.
Before I left Minnesota I had this wonderful pinkeep hand delivered to me by Cathy B. as she had my name for the FTT pinkeep exchange. This design is from Carol R.--iStitch. It is Sew Patchwork. Cathy did a great job on her stitching and finishing. I just love it.
Thank you Cathy:)


On our way back to Aberdeen my hubby and I stopped at a couple of antique shops and of course I found some flower frogs. The yellow frog at the upper left is a "vaseline" glass frog and under black light it glows. Really pretty cool. The bottom frog is carnival glass.

I also found these jar lids and had to have them to make some pincushions. At least try my hand at it.

So all in all I had a great time back in Minnesota, but I am not back to the real world and off to work later on today.

Thanks for stopping by and Happy Stitching:)

Catching up

I have been meaning to post for at least the last week. Much has happened in the last week or two.

Here are some goodies I have gotten and a couple of things I have stitched.

The DH had two job interviews on February 4 and 5 and so we were back home in Minnesota and while I was home I went to my LNS and found this cute little design by The Sunflower Seed and of course it is called "Oh Stitch!". I stitched it on 32 count lambswool with DMC thread.

Before we left for Minnesota I stitched this Shepherd's Bush fob for the Roberta scissors.

Here is the back view of the fob. I received this fob kit from Cathy B for my birthday last year.
Thank you Cathy:)

I went to Joann Fabrics of course while I was home in MN, since I don't have access to a Joann's here in Aberdeen. In fact the closest one is about 2oo or so miles from here. Anyhow I found this pincushion that also holds a scissors. I thought this was the greatest thing. Had to have it!!

Yesterday the DH and I went to Watertown. It is about an hour and a half drive from Aberdeen. We went to just bum around a couple of antique/thrift shops and go to see what a shop called Expressions Frame shop and Knit Nook was about. The above picture shows the treasures I found. The books, thread and hoops came from the Knit Nook. I was happily surprised to find that they had quite a bit of cross stitch supplies. Not a lot of new designs, but they had a lot of the essentials, plus it is always fun to look through older books. Sometimes you find some older treasures and I did. A couple of older Prairie Schooler patterns and the 10th Anniversary JCS ornament book. Plus they had Sampler Threads and WDW. I bought the small hoops because I like to use them when doing one over one and I can't seem to find that particular kind of hoop anymore. I found two flower frogs at an antique shop and so I had to have them. The scissors in them are some scissors I have acquired in the last two weeks or so. The small gold Kelmscott Little Gems came from Linda from my last exchange, the three multi-colored ones came from one of my good stitching buds Jackie, and the bigger bronze colored one came from Yuko's scissors blog. I just don't seem to have enough scissors:)

Our trip to Watertown was also quite eventful in the fact that we were in a car accident. We are both fine, but our car was rear ended and it did not fair so well. We thankfully were able to drive it home and now this week the fun will begin with dealing with the insurance and repair shop. I just thank God that we were not hurt and neither was the person in the truck that hit us. So life goes on.
Thanks for stopping by and I hope everyone is having a wonderful VALENTINE'S DAY.