Positive thought day 2

When we booked our Disney vacation in April 2013, our airline flew Thursdays and Saturdays to Orlando.  When we booked our airline tickets, they changed their days to fly to Orlando to Fridays and Saturdays which meant, we had to add another night to our trip.  We decided to move down to a value resort since they are cheaper than where we were staying.

Today I am thankful that our luggage made it from our previous hotel to our new hotel on time and with nothing broken!

Positive thought January 1

This year I want to try and be positive so I am going to try and post 1 positive thing a day.

I started my year at Magic Kingdom!!!

Last Post of 2013- Lots of finishes to show

I am off to Disney World tomorrow so I probably will not have time to post anything until I come home from my magical trip.  This has been a very interesting year.  The first part was better than the last where work is concerned.  I am looking forward to a new year.   I have set one goal for this year and it is for one project.  I am going to focus this entire year on my Sistine Chapel. It is such a huge project that I really want to see it finished.  There are 45 sections of this project, 347 pages and a total of 628,296  stitches.  This year, not really working on it but every few months I was able to finish 18 pages with 37,479 stitches for a total of 6.0%.  I have 44 sections to go!  I would like to complete 12 sections this year.  That is my goal, lets see if I can reach it!!

Christmas picture of me and my sweetie!!!  

12 days of Christmas exchange from my ILCS group- I received:  Package of paper bobbins, 3 skeins of Crescent colors thread, Disney Calendar, Package of needles, 2 packs of Mil Hill beads, Lindor truffles, Mill Hill Victorian Tree kit, Mickey stickers, 2 packages of tea, one stitching finishing tool, a hot air balloon bookmark.... Sandy really spoiled me!  Thank you Sandy!

 My final gift was this Beautiful 50th anniversary Disneyland ornament!  I love it!!!  It is now hanging on my Princess tree.

Close up!!

 I made my uncle an Eagle Rag quilt for Christmas.  He LOVED it.  My great-aunt tried to take it from her, but I promised I would make her one once I get back from my trip!

My local cross stitch group has a Christmas exchange and I drew Becki's name. Becki loves Halloween and I had a lot of Halloween fabric so I made her a rag quilt too.  She loved it!  

I finished the entire top row of my HEAD - A Wintery Heirloom.  I have to admit that I was a little worried that I might not have enough fabric at the edges but I did!!  This design is tucked away for a while.  

Close up of the page finished!!

I hope everyone has a wonderful and safe New Year!!!!  My next post will be in 2014 after my Magical Disney trip!!!  So excited!!!

Winter Storm = lots of crafts!

I have been housebound since Thursday Morning.  They predicted snow and ice for Thursday afternoon.  It hit and it hit hard.  School actually closed before it started because we do not need 4000 teenagers trying to get home in bad weather.  I went to Hobby Lobby Thursday morning because I needed a couple of things to finish projects.  Ice came on Thursday and it snowed all day Friday.   For the past 2 mornings, Mark has gotten in his car, backed out of the driveway, drove up the road and then came back home 4 minutes later.  The roads are terrible!  One good thing, we are cleaning out the fridge.  Our meals and snacks have become very interesting.  Not sure when we will be able to get to the store, hoping that by Tuesday the roads will somewhat safe to drive.  As you probably guessed, No school!

I found a personal shopper that goes to Disney World and will make purchases for you.  This is very dangerous I know, but i had her pick me up 2 Mickey Mouse Popcorn buckets.  One is my tree topper, the other is a Christmas gift.  One of my best friends sons calls me Mrs. Mickey (he can't say his V's) and he loves Mickey Mouse so I am filling his bucket with crayons and a new coloring book for Christmas.

Mickey Tree with a popcorn bucket topper

My online Cross stitch group ILCS - had an online retreat called Finishing Frenzy.  The goal was to dig out unfinished projects and finish them.   I pulled out my finished Mill Hill Christmas Village designs.  I used those 6 x 6 cake boards instead of having to cut out my own.  One thing about being housebound, you find things to use when you are finishing projects.  I bought silver cording and blue fabric at Hobby Lobby, used silver ribbon that I had in my stash as the hangers.  I love how they turned out. One thing I didn't like, was that the cording kept fraying and on a couple of them you can see the frayed part.

Mill Hill Christmas Village

I also dug out all my stitched Disney ornaments and finished them.  I bought the fabric at Joanns, then found the cording and the hangers in my ribbon stash.  Amazing what you can find when  you actually start looking. 

Love how they turned out!  

Disney ornaments

I decided to make a few Christmas Gifts this year.  One of the items I made was this beautiful pink/gray rag quilt. It is for my niece in Chicago.  I hope she likes the colors. 

Gibbs is trying to be very helpful when I am laying out the blocks!

This quilt is for a co-worker.  I have been involved in a secret Santa exchange.  I had most of this fabric in my stash.  I did have to buy the Black Polka Dotted fabric at Hobby Lobby on Thursday.

The boys LOVE the snow!!!!  it is deep as you can see...it is almost to Tusks Tummy.  

Patio table, you can tell just how deep it is.  Bert the cat kept going in the door and right back in.  He wasn't sure if liked the snow or didn't like.  When he did this, he kept the door open and air coming in.  So, we had to been mean parents . We took him down and placed him in the snow.  He HATED it...which is great because he hasn't been outside since Friday.  

Backyard ...so pretty!!

A Wintery Heirloom - HAED

My Thanksgiving break has been very restful.  I was able to get in a lot of stitching time.  I set to stitching goals for myself.  One was to finish Puppy Love and the other was to finish the tree on page 5 of my A Wintery Heirloom.   Last night or early this morning around 3:00 am I put the final stitch in on page 5.   This is my last HUGE tree on this project.   I have one more page on this row which is all sky!!!  

I have 19 pages to go on this design.  I just love it!!!  So happy that I have the majority of the confetti stitches completed.  

Puppy Love and Ornament Finish!!!

I set a goal to be finished with this by Sunday night and I met it!!!  I think I put the final stitch in sometime around 11 pm.  I just LOVE how it turned out!!!

Sunday was also our stitch party so I was able to finish my Thumper ornament.  This was my car project which is where I put one or two stitches in at stoplights.  I save the small stitches for our stitch parties.  Then I can put in the details and outlines.

So on my last post, I shared that I had ordered new Disney ornaments and some people wanted to see them.  My niece came over today to help me decorate my trees.  She took out all my ornaments and snapped pictures of them....Yes, I do have an ornament addiction!!!

Group 1

Group 2

Group 3 (start of my Cinderella Collection)

Group 7( rest of my Cinderella Collection)

All of them together!!

With these ornaments, I was able to have a 6 ft. Cinderella tree,  a 6.5 Fab Five tree(Mickey, Minnie, Donald, Pluto, Goofy plus chip/dale)  and finally a 7.5 tree with all my other characters.  I am addicted!!  

The thing is...I will probably go hit the Hallmark 90% sale in January and stock up on more ornaments!!

Puppy Love and new Rag quilt

This was a busy two weeks.  My DH went out of town and left me to my devices.  I have to say I enjoyed being single again.  It was nice that if I wanted popcorn for dinner, then I could have that and not worry about anyone else. Wednesday the UPS man stopped by and dropped off a box from the Disney Store.

As you can see even Disney boxes are magical when you open them up!!!

 Insides was my new Disney ornaments for my tree this year.  I ordered 16 of them!!!!  I usually buy a few GCs during the year so I can order my ornaments when they go on sale.  I opened all the boxes just to make sure they sent the right ornaments.  Last year, they sent 2 wrong ones and I had to return them...which I hate doing.

Mickey has a body and feet!!!!  I spent today stitching that can of worms.  Who knew that a can of worms would take as long as it did.  Moving over to work on Minnies Body this week.  My goal is to finish this by the end of this month.  I just have Minnie and then Pluto to stitch.

I started a new rag quilt for one of the ladies in my cross stitching group.  She wants a Fall and Winter theme.  I embroidered a few fall blocs last night.  

My ILCS yahoo group is planning to have an online Finishing retreat weekend.  I have been trying to figure out how I am going to finish my Mill Hill Victorian Village designs.  They require a 6 x 6 frames and you just cannot find those anywhere.  To custom order them would be too expensive.  I thought about making them into a wall hanging or a quilt, but since Mill Hill keeps coming out with different designs, it would never gt finished.  As I walked through Hobby Lobby this weekend, I saw these 6 x 6 cake boards in the Cake decorating aisle...Inspiration hit and I figured I could turn my MH designs into a wall hanging.  I can get 3 wall hangings out of each package!!!  Best part....I don't have to cut any cardboard on my own.  Since I can't cut a straight line...this is perfect for me!!!  Now to find the perfect fabric and ribbon for the backing.  I will probably have to buy 2 yards of fabric and multiple rolls of ribbon so they will all be alike when I finally get them stitched and finished.