Sistine Chapel, Puppy Love and AWH updates!!

 Wow!!  I haven't posted since the 3rd of this month...this is going to be full of pictures.  First of all, I am having a Thirty-One bag party on Sept. 29 and it will close on the 30th (that is when payment will be processed.  In case you are in need of new stitching bags.  The special is if you spend $35 dollars then you can get the Large Organizing tote and Super Organizing tote for 1/2 price!  My Super Organizing Tote holds my entire Sistine Chapel project - a Jammer Box full of threads,  3 in Binder with my working copies, Extra bag with extra threads and small thread box for each scene.  Impressive!!!

These make EXCELLENT Gifts for Christmas!!!

If you are interested in ordering a tote....Click HERE and look under My parties..find My name and then start shopping or just looking.  Now on to stitching

Super Organizing Tote

Super Tote

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Inside Super Tote

Below, is my Keep it Caddy.  It is a very small tote with lots of pockets.  I use it for my car project and to keep ornaments in it.  Very handy little tote.

This is my Room For Two Utility Tote...yes, that is my dirty laundry in it because I use it as a laundry basket.  It has a zipper divider I could put up if I wanted to.  I think I may order another one to store wrapping papers in it.

Here is my puppy love project.  Love how it is turning out.  This is what I will be working on this week.  Hoping to finish Minnies ears this week;

I have put my A Wintery Heirloom back into my rotation....I am stitching another damn tree.  Yes I used a bad word because I am tired of these trees!!!!!

Here is this weeks progress..the tree is slowly taking shape.  I am happy to say this is the last BIG tree I will have to stitch.  After this page and another page of sky, I will finally be stitching the houses!

 The whole project so far....love how it is turning out.

Sistine Chapel....still working on it on Sundays.  This was last sunday's progress. Not much to show since I worked in my classroom for 5 hours last Sunday

Here is today's progress.  I finished another page.  Now I only have 332 pages to go!!!!

Just to get an idea of how big this project is...here is all my fabric stretched out on the floor and my little progress to date.  Bert was a little confused because he was taking a nap and I accidentally woke him up.

My little world:

School/Work - is not any better.  It seems that this is the murphy's law of school years.  That is all I am saying.  We did get the millage to pass so in 2 years we will have a second high school!!!!  Hopefully, I can make it 2 more years!  Last weekend I spent 14 hours grading papers and doing paperwork.  I am still not caught up.  This weekend, I said NO NO NO NO! I watched movies, read a book and just took some me time.  I am really behind, but I will worry about that tomorrow.

I am officially down to double digits on my Disney New Years Eve trip.  I have watched enough videos to have $500 extra spending money for this trip!!  If you are interested in watching videos and earning money by doing it....let me know.  

The furry children are doing well...only a lizard in the house this week. It has been a very tame week.  

A Wintery Heirloom Update and my life

I have picked up my A Wintery Heirloom off and on this summer.  Here is all my major progress.  I actually had to email HAED because Gibbs ate this page and I couldn't find my hard copy.  They were nice enough to send me a new copy of the chart.  Those of you who read this know that Gibbs likes to eat things.

This is what it looked like before I started working on it again.  

Around 4:00 am Sunday morning the dogs were sniffing around on the porch and looking under my comforter I forgot to bring in after washing it and hanging it out in the sun.  Under the comforter was a mid size Opossum (not this one...I borrowed this image from Google). If you are wondering what in the world I was doing up at 4:00 am. I was stitching and watching Lockup on MSNBC. It is my guilty shows I watch.  I am completely fascinated about peoples behaviors and why they do the things they do.  So I watch shows about people being locked up in prison. It is very interesting, scary and sad at the same time. My stitching piece that I was working on my Round Robin piece because I was behind and just felt like stitching.

So after dragging the dogs back inside, making sure Bert was in the house, I locked up the doggie door because I just knew that Bert would try and bring it in the house.  Wasn't sure what to do because the dogs were wanting outside and after carrying on a conversation with myself outloud in the kitchen, it woke Mark up.  I have such an awesome husband who got up, chased off the opossum, walked the boys outside to go potty and then he went back to bed.  The doggie door had to stay closed because the Opossum got in the yard somehow so Mark had to walk the fence line, find the hole, and then fix it.  All is well now.

About me:
I really have been in hiding the past month or so.  I am not sure if I have shared this with you but I do suffer from depression.  I have been battling this for the past 4 or 5 years now.  I do not take medication for it because the medicine makes me foggy.  I hate that feeling.   When I start getting overwhelmed, really stressed or anxious, I feel my depression creeping back.  This is what has been happening because of the start of school this year.  It really has me down.  I don't feel like I am doing a good job at work, and I am gaining weight because of the stress eating.  I have avoided my groups, posting on my blog.   I am really good at keeping up a great front at work or with my friends.

I do know that I am doing these things but it hard to get back in the swing of things.  That is what I am doing now.  I am trying to get back to my stitching. I am figuring out what I need to do to make school not so stressful and to leave work at work!    I am going to back to counting my calories and drinking my daily 8 glasses of water, and trying to hit my protein number of 88 grams.  I do work out 4 times a week still....that is one of the reason I haven't gained 10 lbs instead of the 3 lbs.    So hopefully you will see more posts from me instead of the one a month that has been happening!

Puppy Love and Back to School

WOW!  I am back to school and it has been the roughest start I have had in my entire 17 years of teaching.  Our high school comfortably holds 3,700 students and we have enrolled so far this year, 4,200.  Quite a big difference let me tell you.  Not only are we extremely packed for space, we have almost 300 teachers on our campus and 65 of those poor teachers are homeless.  They do not have a classroom and have to float into other teachers classrooms. They get a rolly cart to hold all their supplies and push it from class to class. So, on my prep period, I have to leave my room so another teacher and their class can be in my room.  I have to pack up everything I might need to get taken care of during my 90 minute prep.  I can't go back if I forget something, I  just have to make it work!   Think of it like this,  you are in your office space and someone comes to you and says "Vickie, you have to leave your office space now and you cannot come back for the next 90 minutes.  Gather up everything you may need and then go find yourself a new workspace that is not being used by anyone else.  However, if someone needs the space you find, you have to relocate again to a different space."  Imagine that, and then realize I do this every day!  It really stinks.   We are praying the public votes YES for a new high school to be built.  

My stitching has really suffered.  I have come home these past 2 weeks of organizing my room and then the first week back just exhausted.  I come home, sit down and then promptly fall asleep.  Last week was really rough because Mark went out of town Mon- Wed and it was just me and the critters.  I came home the first day to a dead mouse and a lizard tail.  Which meant there was a live lizard somewhere in my house.  Luckily I found it hiding under my vacuum cleaner.  It is now hopefully surviving outside and growing a new tail.  Mark was really sweet when he came home,  because he fixed dinner for me while I slept.   I have been worn out.  

Bert, the mighty hunter brought a chipmunk in the house sometime on Friday, because Mark found him in my tablecloth drawer. He jumped out and the chase was on!!  All 5 critters and 2 adults was on the hunt looking for the little rodent.  I found him today, dead, under my chaise lounge.  He is now out of my house and I have a very angry cat who really wants his chipmunk toy!!!

On to Stitching...Here is my Puppy Love progress....I love it on the purple sparkly fabric

This is another Disney design that I am doing. I can't tell you anything because it is a secret Round Robin design.  

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There is a lot more to say, but it is time to go to bed because I have to get up early and do my weigh in on my Biggest Loser game.   I did not lose a single pound over the Summer.  However, I did lose several inches so I am proud of that!!!

Puppy Love and Sistine Chapel update

Even though it is summer, I feel like I haven't had time for much. It isn't like I have had a job to go to or any major projects going. I have just gotten lazy because I get sucked into Facebook, Pinterest and this slot machine game I play.  That is my whole excuse.   August just snuck up on me and now I have been spending a few hours a day in my classroom.  

I did pull Sistine Chapel out this past weekend.  I am still on the on the third page of the second panel.  It is moving very slowly.

Several people asked about my Disney Table Runner and where I found the pattern.  I bought this Italian magazine off Ebay a couple of years ago.  

I pulled out my Puppy Love to work on and I just love this design.  Mickey's butt looks so cute!  

I have been working out at home 4 days a week.  Here is my obstacle course that I have to go through when I workout.  They just want to encourage me I know.   I have not lost any weight this summer.  I am still the same weight I started at however, I have lost several inches so I am proud of that.

Disney Table Runner Finish!!!!

I cannot believe I have not posted since the middle of July.   WOW!!!  I have been spending my time stitching, and working on school work.  There have been many hours since my last post of cutting and gluing math problems onto math task cards. Then I had to make an answer sheet for each set.  Sigh.....I have to go back to work officially on the 13th.  However, unofficially, I have already spent hours in my classroom just getting things set up.  My classroom is just about as big as my living room. That has to hold 15 to 20 students desks, 2 teacher desks, book cases and all the other goodies we need to survive.   It is like playing tetris in my room to make it where we aren't squished like sardines.  I have to do like Tim Gunn says off Project Runway  " Make it Work!!"....

I had hoped to finish this by the end of July. However, I kept having to frog something on EVERY set of characters.  Donalds Butt wasn't stitched right, Daisy's globes where wrong...I started Pluto 5 lines BELOW where I should have and had to restart that too....sigh... But it is finished!!!!! LOVE IT!!  Now to find the perfect fabric to go around it so it can be a fabulous table runner!!  

Living Room gets a new look

I can't believe it has been 7 years since I painted my living room a beautiful chocolate brown.  I fell in love with that color and it went so well  with my cream furniture.   Then my DH got the brilliant idea to buy new furniture 4 years ago....it was beautiful CHOCOLATE leather furniture.  He wanted that color over all the others.....well...it made my living room very depressing with the  blackout curtains drawn during the day.

Here are the windows in my living room...as you can see the suns shines very brightly in this room and it gets to be like a furnace in the summer time.  It is horrible!  That is why I have blackout curtains, to keep the heat out and the coolness inside.  Don't you just LOVE the Tour de France that is on the TV right now???

Chocolate walls around the fireplace.  

Chocolate walls with Chocolate furniture.....very depressing......

My goal was to pain the living room a new bright color.  I looked at several shades of greens, but my eyes kept going to the lavenders....so I painted my living room lavender!!! LOVE IT!!!  MY DH came in and went...dang, we are going to need sunglasses to sit in here now!!!    I bought Valspar Signature paint with primer at Lowes and it took 1//2 a gallon of paint with only one coat!!!!!  It took me a total of 2 hours to paint my room.   I repeat...I LOVE my new living room!!!!

Since I painted it so bright, you can see I have to paint the fireplace mantle.  The smoke stains really stand out next to the lavender.   I went to Walmart to buy white paint....do you know how many shades of white there are out there????  I had to bring home 10 different sample cards and I finally found the one!  My next two projects are to paint the fireplace mantle along with putting new shades on the windows.  

When I finished, the tour was over but the Scottish Open was on.  Gotta love men and their sports!!!!

Disney Stitching and Framed Summer Ball

While I on vacation this year, I took my Disney ornaments with me to stitch while we were in the car.  I took 8 ornaments with me since we were going to be gone 8 days.  My goal was to stitch one ornament a day.  I almost made it! However, when we were driving from Minneapolis, MN to Sheboygan, WI, the road was so bumpy that I couldn't stitch!!!   So I read a trashy novel instead!  When I got home, I had to order black and red seed beads for the eyes and buttons.  I can't make a french knot so I use beads instead.

Summer Ball is framed!!!  I took it to Hobby Lobby with me to look at the framing section.  I decided to look in the pre-framed area and found the perfect frame!!!  It was on sale for 50% off  so the frame cost me $25 and I chose to get a blue mat for it.  LOVE IT!!! hanging in my hallway now!!!!!

Brigen brought in a new friend Sunday night.  He found a turtle in the yard.  Not sure how it got in because we closed in all the holes after Berts incident (see below).  He was chewing on it trying to get it open.  Poor turtle!!  I rescued it and placed it in the yard.  Doesn't he look proud of his find????

Doesn't Bert look so sweet and innocent here???  He has been trying to give me a heart attack this past week!!!!

Last Sunday, I was getting ready to leave for my cross stitching group and did a fur baby count to make sure all were ok before I left.  Bert wasn't in the house, so I went and looked in the yard.  He wasn't there!!  I had a heart attack!!  I keep calling and looking for him and found nothing.  I called my husband 7 times since he was on the golf course and couldn't reach him.  I just wanted to know if he had seen him that morning.  Bert likes to get up early and go outside to lay under the shed.  DH didn't answer his phone, so I called the club to have him call me.  He hadn't seen him.  I was panicked!!!  I walked up all the streets calling his name and still didn't find him.  Finally around 5:00 pm, I went outside and called his name again.  I heard this faint meow in the woods behind our house.  I ran outside and there he was, crawling out of the woods looking scared.  He didn't come to me at first and finally when he realized who I was, he came running.  I brought him in the house.  He went straight to his food and water.  Once he was full, he went to find Gibbs for a nap.  

Mark and I had to walk the fence line to see where he was getting out.  There was a small gap in the gate and concrete that he could fit so we covered it with rocks and fire logs.  After we plugged that up, went to lowes to buy some plywood so he couldn't jump OVER the fence near the lower part of our deck.  We let him out of the house again.  He went straight to that gate and was looking at me when he realized he couldn't get out.   

So for the past week, when he goes out and is our for more than an hour, I go look for him.  Yes, I am crazy!!!!