Night at the Box

A night at the Box with my Dad and sister. The Box being Alex Box Stadium on LSU campus. That's right, it is baseball season! This season the LSU Tigers have a brand new stadium. My Dad took my sister and I there for the LSU - Southern game as we typically always go for my sister's birthday. Since she had been in town for mardi gras, we were able to continue the tradition this year. Here are some pics from the night:

Confessions of a Shopaholic

Today I stayed home from work because upon waking up, I had a migraine and my eyes were swollen shut! What a way to start off a Monday. So I got up and took some medication, laid back down and hoped that I felt better. 30 minutes later, I wasn't feeling any better. I called into work and went back to bed. I woke up around 10 and am feeling better but feel very very sore and there is no way I can get a pair of contacts in today!

I finished the book, Confessions of a Shopaholic this morning. Has anyone read this? I've been told by several people that this was a cute, fun read. Personally, I did not like it. I thought it silly and wanted to slap the heroine across the head several times. I don't believe that I will be reading any further in this series. I may go to see the movie though.

My next book to read is A Lion Among Men by Gregory Maguire. This is book 3 in the Wicked Series. It's about the Cowardly Lion of Wizard of Oz. I enjoyed the first book, Wicked, about the Wicked Witch of the East. It was a very interesting point of view. The second book, Son of the Witch, was not as good as the first. I'm hoping that this 3rd one goes back to the original storytelling of Wicked. There are rumors that with the success of this series that Maguire will be doing the Tin Man and Scarecrow's stories.

Now I am going to spend a relaxing afternoon stitching. I hope to get some progress on a few projects. Hopefully by this evening my head will no longer feel like a sledge hammer hit it!

Eeyore Update

I have been doing some stitching in the evenings. I am trying not to be lazy. Especially when I am so close to finishing and I have so many more waiting to be started! :)

Here's my update on the Eeyore:

Spanish Town Parade

Yesterday, my friends and I went to the Spanish Town Parade. This is a local parade for us. The theme was "Bayeux Bailout." This parade is a lot of fun to go to and very politically incorrect. But if you don't want to fight the crowds of New Orleans, it's a great alternative. Here are some pics of us from the day:

Stash and Valentine's Day

While I did not spend my Valentine's with that "Someone Special" I did have a good day. My daddy bought me a beautiful bouquet of flowers and then I indulged myself by buying myself a bouquet. I always like to have fresh flowers around and well, it's a luxury that I tend to have to live without. I had a wonderful lunch at a fancy french restaurant with my parents and then I headed off to see a movie.

On Valentine's Day, by myself, I saw.......Friday the 13th! Yes, on the day of love I went to see a horror movie! I LOVE horror movies. At times, I believe that they are so much better than a comedy. I can't tell you how many times I, and the audience, were laughing out loud! And proof that it isn't that bad of a movie, it was #1 this weekend!

I also did some indulging this weekend. I purchased the books, Night Huntress by Yasmine Galenorn and Confessions of a Shopaholic. I also purchased two cross stitch magazines. And the biggest indulgence of all, I purchased Nora Corbett's Holly pattern, some fabric from Silkweavers, and 2 HAED patterns: The Mad Hatter's Tea Party and Cinderella's Coach! I've already downloaded the 2 HAED patterns and will probably start kitting those up really soon. But I have to wait for the rest of my purchases to come in the mail! I'm very excited! Because what I need is one more project to work on! :)

Back to the Real World

I am back from New Orleans. The convention was a success. Few minor mishaps but nothing that the actual attendees saw. Just some "behind the scenes" stuff like me coming down with a 24 hour bug that kicked my butt! Nothing worse than being sick when away from home and having to work!!!! But overall everyone seemed satisfy. So I have a few more months to wrap up this one and begin working on the summer convention before worrying about next year's!

While I was gone my mom kept my baby. Part of the deal was that I would send him to the groomer for the day so she wouldn't have to spend too much time with him! LOL! He came back looking quite beautiful! At least to me he does! LOL!

My mom was also nice enough to come to my house and do some cleaning and stocking. I am totally overlooking the fact that my mom was looking into closets and cabinets in order to do this as I am eternally grateful for her picking up essentials like milk, bread, toilet paper, paper towels, etc. During convention time I tend to let everything slide and exist on the bare basics. She helped out a lot by restocking my pantry and bathroom. I think she even did some laundry.

Not much stitching happened the last week but I do have two progress photos that I had promised earlier on Buzz and Eeyore. I hope to get back into stitching as soon as I am rested. I took off today and have done very little of anything but doze on the couch!

And the winners are.....

In the Amore draw: Margie!!!!

In the Iris keeper draw: Lillian!!!!

If you send me your email address to mellee0525@yahoo.com I will gladly send you your new patterns!!!

Happy Stitching!

4th Page

I just finished the fourth page of Dragon Knot today! I wanted to get it posted before I headed to my parents for the Super Bowl. I will post other update photos on my other two projects but really wanted to get this one up! Only 12 more pages to go!

Long Week

This week has been a long one. I spent most of the working hours on my convention which will be next week. Although I only put in a little over 2.5 hours of overtime this week, I feel like it was so much more! I got a lot done but I still have a ton to do next week. Next week I will work approximately 70 hours between Monday and Saturday. Yikes!!! But I just keep telling myself, "Big Check". You have to love being paid hourly at times like these!

Because I have been coming home later than usual every night and tired, I haven't been cooking. So my evening meals have been terrible! Cereal, leftovers, anything I can scrounge up without too much effort. So tonight on the way home I stopped off at Whole Foods. For just over $10 I picked up fried chicken, twice baked potato and broccoli crunch. I also picked up dessert, a small cup of chocolate mousse.

I am now looking forward to a relaxing weekend. Stitching, crafting, catching up on soap operas (a dirty secret of mine!), and getting ready to be gone the latter half of next week!

I hope everyone survived this week!

The Spreader of Love Award

Margie over at It's All About Cross Stitch has kindly bestowed upon me the Spreader of Love Award because "your words of encouragement always keep me going." That is just too sweet for words!

The rules of the award are to select 5 people that I think deserve this award. No easy task. But here it goes:

Rene at Rene la Frog's Ramblings because she always has kind words for any project you are doing.

Noreen at Needle Caboodle because even though she isn't around the blogging world much these days, she does try to keep up with everyone and leave comments.

Chiloe at Chiloe's Corner because she always leaves her comments with such enthusiasm!

Meari at Meari's Musings because she is always encouraging and she comes up with the cutest dating stories (horrors) on her blog!

Terri at Threads Throughout Times for showing concern the other day on a statement made by me of receiving bad news!

There are my 5. (Deep breath!) That only took about 30 minutes to decide upon! LOL! That wore me out!

HAED Pattern Give Away

If you like HAED or have ever consider doing a HAED pattern, here's your chance. These two patterns are ones that I first started with to see if I would enjoy stitching these beautiful patterns. I was hooked. I have already stitched these patterns once and they were gifts so I have no intention of ever stitching again so I would love to give it to someone instead of deleting them! So just leave a comment on my blog and I will enter you in the drawing. Drawing will be held on Tuesday, February 3rd!

Amore:

Iris:

A new start!

Last night, while watching the Hallmark movie "Loving Leah" (which was a very good, down to earth romantic movie!), I started up on Parker's next gift, a Buzz Light Year photo album. You can tell by the picture (I apologize for it being so fuzzy) that I started on his face.

I still am currently working on 3 projects: Dragon Knot, Eeyore, and now Buzz. I'm going to try a rotation. I'm not going to designate days but I will try to work on Buzz, then Dragon Knot and then Eeyore. And because I am under a "deadline" to get Buzz and a new baby blanket done by April (which I haven't even started), I need to work as quickly and diligently as I can. Although my stitching right now may be sporadice because I am concentrating on a convention that I am prepping for. But it will be over next Sunday.

On a side note: Work is still kicking my butt and well, I got some news in my private life that threw me for a loop. But sometimes, you get news that makes you realize what is important and how strong you can be. And that's kind of what is happening now. So although it is bad news, it's good in a way. But the good news is that I slept 2 nights in a row! woo hoo! Now, tonight is a whole other story!

A finish!

I have finally finished Poppy! I am so happy to have finally finished this. It's been sitting around here for weeks with only the beading left. So I sat down last night and finally finished it out since I am wanting to start a new project! I do believe I will be framing this one and keeping it for myself. It will be the first one I have ever kept for myself!

The below photo is what I was able to complete on Dragon Knot. It's slow going on that one and sometimes because you work so much on just one color, I get bored with it! I'm really hoping this will be one that I finish this year though!

I also worked a little bit on the Eeyore blanket. I just don't like stamped cross stitch so this is another one that is going along very slowly.

Saturday Indulgence

Typically on the weekends I spend my time catching up on housework that I neglected throughout the week and stitching. Today I took some time for myself and indulged (meaning spent money) on myself!

I started off with a trip to Hobby Lobby where I purchased some material for a new project. I am going to make my nephew Parker a Buzz LightYear photo album. I thought this was really cute! So I checked my materials and I have all the DMC threads. Just needed the material!

Then I went and took a stroll around an open air shopping center in town. Went in a few shops, just browsed, got some home decorating ideas. Then went to the movies. I saw Underworld: Rise of the Lycans. Don't let the title fool you! There is actually a love story that runs through the whole movie. A tragic one that does not end happily but nevertheless a love story! I saw some pretty good previews also! There's this horror movie coming out soon "Haunting in Connecticut" that I can't wait to see! The preview alone made my skin crawl! I can't wait! (Yep, I'm a horror movie fan! Big time!)

Upon leaving the movie theatre, discovered that the temperature had dropped about 20 degrees! I was not prepared for that!!!! I had on jeans, t-shirt and flip flops! It was quite frigid and raining! The temperature dropped to 54 degrees! I ran across the street to California Pizza Kitchen where I had a yummy grilled vegetable foccacia sandwich for lunch! Then on to Barnes and Nobles were I browsed a little bit more!

On my way home I stopped at the convenience store for my lottery tickets (can't win if you don't buy!) and indulged some more by purchasing Ding Dongs! Yep! I haven't had one of those in years! It's been so long that I can't even remember the last time!

So overall, this Saturday has been very pleasant!!! And it is not over yet! I have plenty of hours to do some stitching and tonight I will watch the men's LSU basketball team play #15 Xavier on tv! Geaux Tigers!

TGIF

Thank goodness this week is over! I have 2 more weeks until my convention! And still a lot to be done. Especially this upcoming week when I have to have my materials to the printer! And the good/bad news is that my registration numbers are way up from previous years!!!!! I hope I am ordering enough!

With that being said, I am looking forward to a somewhat relaxing weekend. I stopped by the grocery store and picked up a 6 pack of Shiner Bock which I plan on enjoying throughout the weekend! It was a toss up between this and Blue Moon. Shiner won this weekend!

But before I did that I stopped at Hobby Lobby. I was looking for some cutesy Valentine crafty gifts for the nieces and nephew and ended up buying a Mardi Gras decoration for the door! With my 40% off coupon! I've been wanting something Mardi Gras for the door for years and I finally found something that I liked and was affordable!

I hope to get a lot of stitching accomplished this weekend (there's a possibility I could have a finish if I put my mind to it!) and also maybe see a movie. There are a few out right now that I would enoy seeing. Underworld: Rise of the Lycans and Revolutionary Road. I know, two very different movies but both interest me. It will depend on what mood I am in when I head to the theater.

Hopefully I will have some progress stitching pictures after this weekend!

Presents!

Just about everyone I know loves presents. Especially ones that are a suprise! I personally LOVE presents. It's not so much what the present is but just the fact that the person thought about me!

As most know who reads my blog, my Sailor is home after a 6 month tour. I believe that during his tour he visited Scotland, Norway, and Spain. Maybe some other places to but I'm not sure. Anyway, upon his return he told me that he bought me some presents! I love the presents he buys me. The man is quite skilled at it! I adore all the things that he bought me the last time he went overseas.

Anyway, the problem is that he hasn't sent them yet. I am going nuts wanting to see what he bought for me. What makes it even worse is the fact that he told me that in one stop he bought me some handmade jewelry. When I asked what kind of jewelry he said he didn't know because he's bad at that kind of thing. Are you kidding me? You don't tell a woman you bought her jewelry and then not tell her what it is and not send it!

The sad thing is that I can't even get mad at him for not sending it because he is so completely honest about it. He tells me he is lazy and doesn't want to go to the postoffice. He expects me to wait till March when he comes for a visit. Seriously? The man knows I have no patience. While I appreciate the fact that he would like to probably see me open these goodies, I have braved the post office more than a few times to send him things. And it's not an easy thing! It requires documentation for customs!

I'm hoping that the surprise will be that I will get them before March!

Tuesday Mumblings

Today was the inauguration of the 44th president. While I did have to work today, I was able to watch it over live feed. Thank goodness for double screens at work! One held the live video feed of the inauguration while the other screen held the document I was currently working on.

I spent 40 minutes at the post office today. 40 minutes. There was one person working. When I walked in, I was 15th in line. It took me 40 minutes to get served. The teller was nice and actually quite comical and kept us all entertained but when he mentioned that it is like that every afternoon at that same time, I began to wonder, why don't they staff it better then? I mean, seriously? You are going to leave one person working at a high traffic time? Not much sense in that!

Have you ever had those days where you feel like that no matter what you do, it just isn't good enough? Welcome to my life these days! I feel that I am continuously failing those that I care for. It's driving me slightly insane, in addition to the delirium caused by lack of sleep. And while I know it is ONLY the 20th day of the new year, I feel as though my goals are so far ahead of me. I have to keep reminding myself though that it is only the 20th day of the year!

I have been stitching up a storm though! I hope to have some good progress pictures at the end of the week! At least on Dragon Knot. Maybe even Eeyore will be even closer to being finished!

A friend called today to tell me about the new Christine Feehan book coming out in 2009 in her Dark series. This one will be Dark Slayer. After reading the synopsis for this book, I do believe that it is going to be a very intense and "dark" book. The synopsis alone gave me the chills! If you have never read a Christine Feehan book and you like vampires, you should check her out: www.christinefeehan.com.

Well, I am off to make some dinner and pay some bills! Ugh! Then I will watch some of the inaugural ball and stitch tonight!

Monday Madness

After another sleepless night and a very long day at work, I have come home to put on my favorite 80's music channel and am jamming to the music! I am singing my favorite songs out loud and dancing around the kitchen as I make homemade blueberry muffins!

This weekend the grocery store had blueberries on sale so I picked up a small box of them. Yesterday morning I made blueberry pancakes which were so very yummy! Tonight as I pondered what to do with the rest I thought of blueberry muffins! So I am trying a Bisquick recipe that I downloaded from their website, http://www.bisquick.com/.
Ok, so the picture really doesn't do it any justice but if you could smell how good they smell and see the blueberries popping open and their juices running out! I hope they taste as good as they smell and look! And they do! Yummy!




I also posted on my Facebook page my dilemma of not sleeping for 2 nights (now 3) in a row. My sister, being a smart butt, suggested drugs. However, a friend of mine suggested melatonin. It's supposed to be a supplement that you find on the vitamin aisle. I'd rather try that than the drugs option! And it's probably better than drinking a whole bottle of wine! So tomorrow I will go to the health food store and see if I can find it and what information I can find on it.



Now I am going to get ready for an evening of my three indulgences: stitching, The Bachelor and One Tree Hill! I get enough reality during the day time and at night when I can't sleep! LOL!

Weekend Update

While mentally I am not feeling any better, I did get some stitching done this weekend along with a little bit of shopping. In an effort to boost my spirits I went shopping and bought some new clothes, bought ingredients for a new recipe, and hung out at the bookstore. The clothes are nice, time at the bookstore was peaceful and the new recipe, well, it was a new recipe. Definite tweaks are needed for next time!

This week I stitched on Dragon Knot. I finished all stitching with DMC 168 on page 4. Then I got bored and put it down. LOL!

I then picked up Eeyore and completed the 2nd page. I'll be moving on to the 3rd and last page. I'm hoping to have this one done very soon so I can get it finished as a blanket and then shipped off!

It's also mardi gras time down here! Not sure if I will make it to New Orleans this year, although I certainly do need a good party, I did find this single serving size of King Cake. Original King Cake (no filling). I love King Cake but it always comes in the big rings. I found this little one at Fresh Market. Just the perfect size!

Fathers and Cars

My car is old. The poor thing. I do love my car but it is now 12 years old. The last week when I go to start it, it's been difficult. You have to be gentle and coax it to start. I just figured it was because of this extremely rare cold weather we were having. My dad told me to go and have it checked out. Now of course I had every intention of doing that but next week. Next week I would have gotten paid and if I had to get a new battery, I could do it.

Well, my car decided it had other ideas. This morning it decided to not start at all. It wanted to. You could tell. It tried it's hardest to start but just couldn't do it. So when I called to tell my Dad that the car had died, first question, "Did you have it checked?" "No, Dad. I didn't. I was waiting till next week when I got paid so I could do it." "Don't ever wait! Just call me and I'll take care of it." Yep, that's right. I got in trouble for NOT asking for money. Now had I called and asked for money I'd be getting in trouble for asking for money. Never ending.

I was lucky enough that a co-worker lives fairly close to me and I was able to get to work this morning for half a day so I could get some work done because I am swamped. My mom came and got me at lunch and we gave it a go to get the car running but no luck. And she was too chicken to jump the car off because my dad said we would blow it up. LOL So now I am waiting for my dad to come over. Last I talked to him he was not in a good mood! Ugh! But if I try to do anything on my own I'll just get into more trouble.

Does the overprotectiveness end once you get married? Or if I moved away? Or does it just get worse?

Note: The car has been resusciated! It was the battery just as I thought. As soon as he attached the jumper cables to the batteries, my car started up right away. Made it to the auto parts store and got a new battery installed! Thank goodness I won't feel stranded anymore!