Hurricane Irma, Traveling, Needleminder Exchange, Sept 2017 GG

It has been a bit since I posted so this will be kind of a big post!

The reason for the lack of posting has been due to us being affected by Hurricane Irma and traveling for the better part of the last month. 

I must say that our daughter did awesome on all our different flights!

 At the end of August, we went to visit my dad in Michigan for 5 days, which included a day/night spent in Canada at Niagara Falls. It was absolutely beautiful!

 

                                      

After we returned from this trip, we had to focus on preparing for Hurricane Irma, which was obviously very stressful. Luckily, we only had a few fence panels that were blown down and we were able to get all the pieces and pop them back in afterwards and the fence is just fine. We were without power for 30.5 hours which is nothing compared to some other people who didn't get power back until a couple of days ago. We also completely lost cell service in our area because a tower was severely damaged and that took about 4 days to get fixed.

Luckily, they didn't cancel our flight for our next trip! From September 13-20, we took our first family vacation of just the 3 of us to the other side of the country and visited California: 3 days in San Diego, 2 days on a Disney cruise to Ensenada Mexico, 2 days in Anaheim staying at the Disneyland Hotel and going to Disneyland and California Adventure, and a day in Los Angeles! This was an amazing trip!

  

 

                        

                            

 After returning home and spending much of our first day back sleeping because we were exhausted, I checked the mail yesterday to find that my needleminder exchange gift had arrived! I absolutely love it! Thank you so much Justine (and yes it is absolutely nerdy enough for me)! I was definitely spoiled with all the goodies!

Lenore received my package early and said that she loved it! Yay!!

 I really enjoyed stitching this and participating in the exchange! Thank you Mii  so much for hosting this!

And the final part of this post if for my late addition to the September GG! I just have a little bit of progress to show on the Olde World Map but it is progress none the less! I am so close to finishing the 2nd page and will be starting page 3 soon! All I really have left is the little bit of border and the man's crown to finish off before starting the next page.

Sorry for the long post, but it has been a very eventful couple of weeks!

Needleminder Exchange Mailed!

This morning I mailed off my set of goodies for the Needleminder Exchange!

The requirements of the exchange was to send a needleminder, small stitched piece, and a skein of floss. I sent off a cute little purple/pink turtle needleminder, "Jewel Tone Geometric Pattern," 2 skeins (because I couldn't decide which one I wanted to send), and a little letter! Hopefully my recipient enjoys the package and hopefully it gets there before September 15th! *crosses fingers*

This was my first time participating in any sort of stitching exchange and I really did enjoy it! 

I can't wait to see what I receive from my mystery person and where it's coming from! 

August 2017 GG/WIP Wednesday

Today is a 2 for 1 posting: Gifted Gorgeousness and WIP Wednesday! 

The past week/weekend has been pretty busy for me but I have had time here and there to work on stitching. 

First, I worked more on the map! This satisfies GG and WIP!

Last week:

This week:

Much more border, the king on the horse, cornucopia, fish, and turtle all done. Just need to finish the rest of the border, another layer of color in North America, and then the words/banner are all that are left for this corner. I need to search for the last pages of the chart real soon so I can start working on the bottom half of the map! Yay for things getting misplaced a couple years ago when we were changing several rooms around in preparation for our baby girl being born.

Second, is also for GG and is the Jewel Tone Geometric Pattern, which I finished!

FINISHED! SeptemberLight's "Jewel Tone Geometric Pattern" 

This is will be sent to someone as part of Mii's Needleminder Exchange! I plan on shipping this out on Friday so it has enough time to get to it's recipient since it is actually going out of the country (hence the little USA) and will post all the goodies that I send probably on Friday as well. I truly enjoyed stitching this up and will more than likely stitch it again!

That's all for now!

WIP Wednesday

I am posting really late thanks to just getting home from work and picking up my daughter from the sitter's. However, I'm going to try to beat the clock to midnight to make sure this is still a Wednesday post! I have 30 mins :-P

First up is my usual, the map! Not too much progress this week thanks to being busy over the weekend and also stitching a couple other small things as well. 

Last week it looked like:

This week it looks like:

It's kind of hard to really notice a difference but the border is starting to be stitched and the horse has a mane, as well as some other little details starting to pop up. I hope to have much more progress on this by next Wednesday.

Next, I have 2 new small starts. The first is a jewel tone geometric pattern that I found on Etsy and I am absolutely loving how this is stitching up and is actually almost done after 1 day of stitching!

The second is a poinsettia that I am experimenting on plastic canvas with for the first time. If it works out then I would like to maybe make it into a magnet but we shall see. 

It is obviously not very far into the pattern but I hope to have this done in the next day or two, at least the stitching part that is. 

That's it for my WIP post and I beat the clock by about 15 minutes to still consider it WIP Wednesday! *does a happy dance*