March Goals~

Going to try this monthly goal thinga majigger.

Start and Finish Eevee
Finish Pinkie Pie
Work on Follow Me
Finish my take-along project that I work on on Saturdays which is a Dinky Dyes pattern that came with a thread pack I bought.
Mail everything that needs to be mailed after the 23rd but before April 1st, which includes Paladin, all the Pokemon, Pinkie Pie, and all the threads for Sunflower Fairy which I am sending off to a stitching pal of mine.

I'm going to try and keep it manageable, so that's all I'm putting on there. :) Lets see how it goes!

yo

Thanks to SUE, I did indeed order Mirabilia's Christmas Fairy and Halloween Fairy kits and Easter Fairy. Ok so Easter wasn't on the list, but I had my Mom looking at the kits and she liked that one lol.

My weekend went by at a leisurely pace. I managed to not go ANYWHERE, which was the plan! Never really feels like a weekend to me if I leave the house. I did do some stitching, but not on Pony OR Eevee. I was so over pokemon and pink ponies that I stuffed them in the drawer and pulled out Follow Me. I finished the skull and started on the left wing. It was nice to get back into working on something for myself.

I have a long day at work this evening with 6.5 hours of clients. I'm looking forward to my last client of the evening because I bought her some lotion/body butter from The Body Shop last week. Last year I bought some of their christmas body butter in spiced vanilla. (I should have sniffed it in the store but I figured it was vanilla and I like vanilla.) well I didn't like it when I got it home. I took it over to a client of mine and she loved it and has been using it all year, but she's running out of it. She really can't get to the mall, or even buy the stuff because it's sort of on the expensive side, so I decided to go to the body shop and see if they have any on sale again this year!

Of course they did, so I bought her another body butter, and 2 of the pump lotions in spiced vanilla. She is going to be so excited, which in turn is making me all happy to be giving them lol. I also purchased their almond hand and nail butter. I tend to buy a lot of hand creams. During one night of work, I end up washing my hands upwards of 15 times. Usually 2 times at each client's house, sometimes more if I have to glove up. Most client's also don't have nice soaps, and we end up having to use dishsoap.

So far my three fav hand creams are LUSH handy Gurugu, Aveeno Intense Relief Hand Cream  and now The Body Shop's Almond Hand and Nail Butter.

Handy Gurugu is super thick, and smells like grandma. I think it's from the rose water, but you do get that grandma smell going on. I don't mind it too much haha. If you use too much you do get a sort of stickiness going on, so I apply it sparingly.

Aveeno made a really good product with their intense relief. what's great about it is that it's non greasy, which is super important when I'm at work or need something to throw on my hands before stitching. They also claim it lasts 24 hours and through handwashings, but like I said, I have to wash my hands so much that I'm reapplying throughout the day. It also doesn't really have a scent which is important if you are allergic/work around others. I can't be all smelly around my clients. 

The almond butter is really nice, and it's also great for nails. I don't even have hangnails anymore and I've only been using it 6 days! They also claim it lasts through 5 handwashings. I use it before I go to bed as it can be sort of greasy, but I also use a lot of it. It has a light scent, sort of reminds me of the word pretty.

I can't believe I just wrote all that about hand creams LOL.

I'm kicking myself right now over a pattern. For ages I've wanted to get Bothy Threads Follow Me 2. it's an Orange tabby (love my orange tabbies) walking down a path of blue flowers. I had no idea that Bothy was going to stop selling just the chart of instead sell kits. I found one retailer with just the chart, but with shipping it will cost me about 27 dollars. This isn't a HAED size chart. It's actually not that large. The kit which is now being sold is 50 dollars+whatever shipping will be on that. I don't want the kit. :(

I don't use ebay/etsy so I guess I'm out of luck, and I'll keep it in mind later that if I really really want something, I'm going to have to get it when I can!

Espeon Finish and Pony update!

I got Espeon finished yesterday! When stitching these, the colours look really out of whack, but then I have my nose right in it. Looking at it from a distance they look okay.

With that said, I'm not sure I like the colour choices on this one, but it's done and as long as my friend likes it, I'm going to leave it as is. Only Eevee left to go now! HOME STRETCH!

All this pink on Pinkie Pie is going to be the death of me!

She looks cute, but really, she's trying to kill me. 

And I still have her tail to stitch in as well. :( My friend Ryan streamed Bioshock while I stitched on Pony, so that's how much I got done from the beginning of the game to the end. I think tomorrow he's going to start Bioshock 2. Tim (who I am making the pokemanz for) is streaming Darksiders for me while I work on his stitching. After Darksiders he has Batman Arkham Asylum and Silent Hill to play for me.

I sure have them trained well! :) And that is it for now! Looking forward to my 2 days off, just need to get through today!

Back to work with me~

Busy day today, but I don't start til 3:30~ and go til 10pm tonight. I still have a few hours to get some stitching in! Today it's Pony. I can't wait to finish the pony and 2 pokemon and get back to my regular stitching plans!

I ordered something a couple weeks ago when I was looking at puzzles for my Brother's GF on the Mary Maxim site. It's a knitting pattern holder. Looked neat and was only 16 dollars. My ~big plan~ this year is to get out more with my stitching and this looked like something cool to keep my pattern in while I was out. I'll let the pictures do the talking!

I am pleasantly surprised with this. It's a little heavier than I thought it would be, but that shouldn't have been a shock because well, it IS a magnet board in there. The magnets are super strong which I really like. Nothing worse than weak magnets. I didn't know it had a pocket OR a pen holder when I ordered it, but I like those too. Overall, it was a great purchase for those stitchers on the GO! Which I hope to be this year. lol.

So my birthday is coming up in a couple weeks and I'm trying to decide what to get myself. My original plan was to just get stuff from Amazon.ca. Books and movies/tv shows. Then I made the mistake of looking at a stitching shop online and now I sort of want the limited edition Miribilia fairy kits, Christmas Fairy and Halloween Fairy. They are 40 dollars each, which isn't TOO bad considering kitting it myself would probably cost way more. I DO want to stitch them, and it probably won't be this year, but they're limited and that's what is bugging me. If I don't do it, I'll regret it when I can't get them anymore, right?

I'm totally justifying this right now hahaha. What would you guys do?

I guess I need to stop wasting time and get stitching! I hope everyone is having a great day!

This is my weekend

Yahooo! After 5 episodes of the Tudors and one episode of Hoarders, I finished Flareon!

2 more to go! Going to start on Espeon tomorrow I think. For the rest of the night I am going to work on Pinkie Pie and watch more Hoarders haha. :)

Happy Friday!

I guess technically today is my "hump day", rather than Wednesday since this is the middle of my week as far as work goes.

Here is some progress on Pinkie Pie, she looks a lot less creepy now that she has her eyes! Still not looking forward to filling in all that pink, though :)

 Next up, I received some mail this week from Evalina! I won one of her 12 days of Christmas giveaways. I can't tell you how much of a winner I feel right now hahaha.

Best part is I love chickadeeees!


Ok so, I love chocolate. LOVE. I can't express how much I LOVE chocolate. But my love of chocolate isn't so great that I will stand by and let the chocolate industry use child slaves to farm it. That is not cool. The World Cocoa Foundation isn't doing enough. We as consumers are not doing enough. Big companies have had over 10 years to fix this problem and yet nothing has been done. That left a bitter taste in my mouth.
Normally I don't join crusades, but this is really bothering me how we as consumers keep buying from these multi million dollar companies while they profit off the backs of child slavery. (Yes I know other industries also do the same, and I'll weed those ones out of my life as soon as I do more research!)


So anyway, what could I do? For one I stopped buying chocolate.


.... and I lasted about 3 weeks before I was dying. This has to be a real medical problem. Actually I think it had more to do with PMS from hell coming back haha.


And then I went to the internets! Fair trade can't be that hard to find, can it? Turns out it is closer than I thought! Here are some handy links for those interested in sticking it to the man and buying fair trade!
Divine Chocolate For USA/UK/world
For those in Canada, Camino and Ten Thousand Villages


I went to Ten Thousand Villages in town and was pleasantly surprised. They carry both brands of chocolate. I also bought Camino hot chocolate which I haven't tried yet BUT I WILL SOON! The Divine chocolate is very very good. Okay so they do cost a bit more. For a comparison, a Hershey bar of the same size as a Divine bar costs about 1.50-1.90, Divine costs 4.90. Camino hot chocolate is 7.00 a tin, for the same size in another brand about 4-5 dollars.

But for me, the increased cost is worth it. :)
Ok going to get off my soapbox now! :D I hope everyone has a great weekend! :)

Busy busy busy

I have a full day of clients today which makes me very happy! So what has happened since I last checked in?

I've been working slowly on Flareon. I need to pick up the pace on these but since I tend to stitch them while watching Tim stream, lately it's been sloooooow. He's playing Kingdoms of Amalur, and while it looks like a really fun game to play, it's not so much fun to watch. Here is what I've done at any rate:

It has that angry rabbit look right now

I started Pinkie Pie this week while my other friend Ryan plays Bioshock 1. Sometimes I spend way more time watching games being played than playing them myself. :D

I may or may not get sick of the colour pink

Once I get the outline done I can mindlessly fill in the rest. It's reminding me of a paint by number or colouring book right now, and I like it! Using a Monaco fabric that I picked up at Michaels. It's a bit stiffer than what I'm used to, but it's still nice.

When my mom said she had a thrush, I thought she needed me to take her to the doctor. Apparently it's also a type of bird and we have a couple hanging out around our bird feeders this year! I've never seen them around before, and they sound sort of pretty.

Hi I'm a Varied Thrush and I've come to eat your seeds!

I've ordered my cats a new scratching post. Instead of you know, saving the excess money I made the last couple weeks, I've decided to spend it on the brats instead. There's a very local carpenter that makes them to order. Once I get paid he'll deliver it and the pet stairs I ordered for the dog. Emma is having problems getting on to the bed so I'm having him make her some stairs to help.

It's huggggggge! (that's what she said) and 120 bucks is a steal for one that big. In stores I'd be paying double or more for the same thing. I did have some changes made to it, like sisal on the front legs instead of carpet, no dangle toys, and the top bed was to be made bigger since I have two cats that would probably fight over who got to sleep there. now they both can! Pretty excited about it and I know my boys will love it. :)

That is it for now! Happy Stitching! :)

Whew!

I've had one busy week so far. I do believe I've been watching one too many Hoarders episodes and decided that unless I purged NOW, I was on my way to being on an episode. I might have been over exaggerating all this in my head, but I couldn't take the risk. I ended up tossing and donating at least 50% of my things. I have only what I wear in my closet, purged the linens, and got rid of all the junk in the junk drawers. The spare room is now empty. From having 5+ storage boxes filled with THINGS, I'm down to 2. It's oddly satisfying. I loaded up Mom's vehicle today with everything and we took it all down to Value Village. ALL GONE!

Work has been oddly busy too the past couple weeks. I guess one of the workers is sick with some illness, and another broke her ankle? Whatever it is, I am really glad for all the extra work. I feel sort of bad that I'm only getting work because of their misfortune, but that's the nature of this business for us casuals. We are like vultures circling around waiting for someone to get sick or hurt, and we profit off it.

I found a cross stitch I did ages ago and Mom wanted me to frame it and send it to family on Vancouver Island, but after I washed it and framed it, I couldn't part with it LOL. I really like it, and can't believe I forgot about it!

Yeah.. couldn't send it lol. So cute!

I sent all the pictures I had on my walls to Value Village, so now I have room for my cross stitch!

My friend Tim is streaming Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning which looks pretty good so far, and I'm plugging along on his Pokemon while I watch. Here is the WIP of Flareon:

No progress on Follow Me this week, or Cougar. :( Priority right now is Pokemon/My Little Pony/Follow Me/Cougar in that order!

Anyway that's it for now. I'm off to work soon! :) Take care!

Ah another Saturday!

I haven't been too productive this week, mostly due to playing too many games *cough Minecraft and WoW* I did do a bit on Follow Me though!

I really really like working with that Belle Soie silk. It's so nice and barely tangles at all. I also got my order from 123 Stitch that Tim put in for me, so I guess I better curb the gaming and get the other 3 Pokemon done for him.

Paladin is heading off to California when I finally get my stuff together. I'm also sending a cross stitch buddy the remainder of my Valdani threads that I used for Sunflower Fairy so she can do her own. There's enough left to do another!

Work has been keeping me a bit busy too this week. I had a couple new clients which is always sends my anxiety in a spin lol. Most of it's from not knowing exactly where they live. I use google maps and street view to help me prepare for the trip so I have some idea of what I'm looking for. Of course, trying to find people's houses in the dark makes it a bit more difficult.  So small tip to everyone - have your address out where people can see it clearly! :)

Pinkie Pie is also on my list now to do, once I figure out the colours. There are 5 shades of pink that I need to figure out. The rest of the colours are easy. Last time I was at Michael's I grabbed a whole bunch of pinks in different shades to try and match with the pattern I have lol.

Totally just went off my To-Do list already haha. I like stitching for other people I guess!

Anyway that's about it for now. I leave you with a picture of Emma doing what I want to be doing right now, but I have work soon and can't!