WIP Wednesday 6/5/22

 Hello! Once again it has been a while since I have posted....I swear it seems like I blink and a month goes by and then another one and another!

Life has been keeping me quite busy as usual. My daughter finished kindergarten and I am so not ready to have a 1st grader (stop growing please!), I survived the Spring semester classes and have started my Summer semester, and it's Summer break which means we have some fun stuff planned! 

In between all this chaos, I was able to put in a little bit of stitching time on the Olde World Map!

Currently:

In February:

So quite a bit of progress has been made! I finished the bottom left quadrant back in February and have currently made it about a little less than half way through the bottom right by working on it here and there. 

I feel really motivated knowing that I am almost done with the main stitching but then I am slightly dreading the massive amounts of backstitching that needs to be done to the whole project. Then there's the beading to finish off the piece.

I hope every one is staying healthy and enjoying Summer far!

Happy Stitching

February 2022 Gifted Gorgeousness

Happy February everyone! My life is always on the go so it's once again bit a little since my last post 😆

I hope everyone has had a great start to the year and I can't believe February is basically done! With that being said,  it is time for Jo's February Gifted Gorgeousness Link-up and I'm able to participate this month!

First up is the one I am most proud of. My fully finished Magic Kingdom SAL that I gifted to my daughter for her 6th birthday! 

"Magic Kingdom SAL" - Cunning Cross Stitch FINISHED!

I cannot thank my Grandmother enough for helping me to finish this as a wall hanging! I absolutely love how it came out! My only request is to please ignore the wrinkles that my 2 year old personally added right before I hung it up.... I took the picture before I had fixed it and forgot to retake it 😝 This is hung above her bed next to a Disney Princess canvas piece that my Dad gave her for Christmas with a phrase that is so perfect for her.

Since I finished that piece, I started working again on the Olde World Map that is intended to be a gift for my Mom & Stepdad.

Currently:

July 2021:

As you can see, I made a decent amount of progress on it. I hadn't touched this one since July and picked it back up again last week. The only thing left in this quadrant now is to finish the one color left for the outside border. This is by far my oldest piece that I keep taking huge breaks on and the border is one of the main reasons why so hopefully I can fight through it.

My next GG entries are all mini block builds that I have finished. This first one was a gift for my birthday back in September. I had finished it back then but apparently forgot to post about it. It is a space shuttle launch site that was made up of 510 pieces. This had a couple significant meanings behind it. 1) we live about 30-45 minutes from the Kennedy Space Center and one of my favorite dates with my husband from before we were married was to go see a shuttle launch there and 2) when my daughter was in the hospital, one of the ways we motivated her to push through all the tests and therapies was by taking her for strolls in her wheelchair to areas of the hospital with good views for a few of the Space X launches from the Space Center. To this day, she still gets very excited for every launch and we have an amazing view of them from our house so always run out to watch them. 

"Space Center" - Nanoblock FINISHED!

The next building set was a gift from my Dad for Christmas. He knows I love dragons so he found me a 600 piece set. I finished this one in January.

"Animal Deluxe - Dragon" - Nanoblock FINISHED!

Next, I have been working had to be healthier overall and walk more and there's an app/program tied to my health insurance that gives you points for doing various healthy habits. I earned enough points to claim a large amount of Amazon gift cards and one of the things I got for myself with them was a 1,163 piece Maneki Neko (or Lucky Cat) set. If you'd like to learn more about the meaning behind Maneki Neko, this page is pretty informative!

"Fortune Cat" - Larcele FINISHED!

I also worked on another Dragon Ball Z character for my husband. This time it was Trunks, who is one of his favorite characters and I just discovered that there was a version of him available! He was 110 pieces and came out really cute. I especially liked the little sword attached to his back. 

"Trunks" - Nanoblock FINISHED!

And last but not least, a coworker who likes to watch me do all my crafts decided she wanted to try to do a gingerbread house set that she saw. She thought it would be regular sized Lego pieces but they ended up being mini sized and she became very frustrated and said she was going to throw out the set. I asked her if she wanted me to put it together for her instead. So I gifted my mini block building skills and time. It was actually a pretty challenging 788 piece set to put together that took me about 6 hours to finish. It was a very detail oriented set.

"Gingerbread House" - HMANE FINISHED!

I hope everyone has a great weekend and I look forward to checking out all of the other GG entries!

Happy Stitching!

Stitchy Finish & Happy New Year

HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE!

I hope everyone had a good New Year's Eve and that everyone will have a great New Year's Day and an even better year! 

I was unable to post yesterday for Finish Friday because I had to work and we were a little busy but I was able to stitch in between the busy spurts and finally finish the Magic Kingdom SAL and my additions to it!!! 

November's installment was Aladdin. The backstitching on this one really made the difference! When I was looking at the pattern for this portion, I thought it would be difficult for me to power through the huge blocks of each color but this one went surprisingly fast. 

November - Aladdin

As I posted on Wednesday, December's theme was from Tangled. I was able to finish stitching it on Thursday! The sun was the worst part to stitch and to backstitch but in the end it looks great!

December - Tangled

Yesterday, I spent the day adding some customizations the piece. I had to free hand them without any patterns but I did search the internet for inspiration. I decided to add "a dream is a wish your heart makes", a couple embroidered fireworks, and Tinkerbell. I also signed it differently than I usually do. Instead of my initials, this time I went with "Mom" since this is going to be a birthday gift for my daughter in about a week. I ended up just putting the year instead of my normal month/year that I finished the piece since this was completed throughout the year. 

Now, I just have to wash, iron, and fully finish it! My grandmother is going to help me to hopefully turn this into a wall hanging! This is my very first SAL that I completed the stitching within the year it actually happened! This was definitely a fun and interesting SAL to participate in and I look forward to more from the host, Cunning Cross Stitch! 

Thanks for stopping by, Happy New Year, and Happy Stitching!

WIP Wednesday 12/29/21

Hello All! 

I have everyone is having an amazing holiday season so far! 

Today's WIP is still from the Magic Kingdom SAL but I am finally working on December! This month features Tangled:

I must say the sun almost killed me.... so many fractional stitches.... I went cross eyed several times but managed to not mess up the counts! I'm hoping to have December done tomorrow, which means I would have successfully completed an SAL within the current year (despite not learning about it until 2.5 months in and have to take 6 months off from it)! I am still contemplating a few customizations but I haven't fully decided yet.

Thanks for stopping by!

Happy Stitching!

Finish Friday 12/17/21 & December Gifted Gorgeousness

Hello, All!

Today, for Finish Friday, I'll be featuring the small monthly installment finishes I've made on the Magic Kingdom SAL. As I mentioned in my post from Wednesday, I fell way behind on this mainly due to having a very stressful school course load this semester and various other reasons. Over the last couple weeks I have been able to stitch more here and there and was able to get caught up to November!

July - Emperor's New Groove

August - Peter Pan

September - Hercules

October - Sleeping Beauty

Up until the Hercules section, I didn't really have any issues with stitching. Somehow I managed to miscount which threw off quite a bit but I tried to do a little damage control with adjusting the picture because it was too far in to frog any of the problem area. Luckily, I don't think it will cause any big issues in the overall scheme of things. It did cause me to have to adjust the tiniest bit in the Sleeping Beauty part but again nothing that I think will cause a huge issue overall. 

Since it's after the 15th, it means it's time for Jo's Gifted Gorgeousness link up! I haven't been able to participate in a while so I'm glad I can again, even if it is only with this one piece. 

I've been working on this piece as a surprise for my daughter's birthday in January. She absolutely loves every thing Disney and Princess related, so I'm really hoping she loves this! Here is the whole picture so far (please ignore the wrinkles as I had just removed the q-snap):

If you haven't already, hop on over to Jo's page to see the rest of the wonderful GG entries!

Happy Stitching!

WIP Wednesday 12/15/21 & Catching up!

 Hello, All!

It's been just shy of 4 months since my last post 🤯 and as always a lot has happened! 

First, I'll start with my very tiny stitching update for WIP Wednesday. Unfortunately, since school was really demanding this semester, I had to put stitching on the back burner so I wasn't able to do much over the last 4 months. I have done a little bit over the last couple weeks as my classes started to finish up, which has been nice. The only piece I have worked on is the Magic Kingdom SAL because I fell way behind on it and really want to gift it to my daughter for her 6th birthday January, so this will be my focus piece for the next foreseeable future. 

Today:

June:

The last time I showed this piece, I was still on time and had just finished June's Princess and the Frog installment. Today, I am working on October's Sleeping Beauty portion. I did finish July-September over the last couple weeks but I will wait to show those on Finish Friday (mainly because I don't want to remove the Q-snap just yet 😝)! At this point, all of the months have been released and I've seen several finished pieces and it looks awesome! I can't wait to finally get mine caught up and I'm debating if I want to add any kind of customization to it or not. Once it's finally done, I will hopefully have it framed in time for her birthday.

That's it for the stitching update. Otherwise, in between family fun, work, and school, life has a way of finding extra stuff for us to deal with. Since August, we've had to deal with 2 funerals, 1 on my side and 1 on my husband's, that had us travel to New York and Indiana. 

Then there were birthday celebrations for me and my husband in September and our son in October. For my husband and I, our birthdays consisted of several dinner outings with our families but for our son's 2nd birthday, we celebrated with a dinosaur themed party. He absolutely loved it!   

                       

                       

                       

We did a few Fall things as well. We went to a Christmas tree farm that actually has a petting zoo and puts on a nice Fall event with pumpkins, pony rides, hay rides, and other activities for kids.

        

         

         

   

The funeral in Indiana happened the day before Halloween, so we drove up there starting the Wednesday before. We ended up stopping in Tennessee Wednesday night and got to Indiana on Thursday. We spent the next 2 days visiting family, the funeral was on Saturday, and then we trick or treated in the cold on Sunday. Before trick or treating we went to an apple orchard and fed some of the animals there as well. Even though we were visiting for a somber reason, the kids didn't really understand but their joy made it easier to handle. 

           

                     

  

   

We hosted our first Thanksgiving at our house for our immediate families. I was especially nervous because I have never actually cooked a turkey but everything came out great! Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures due to being too busy in the kitchen and then just enjoying our company. It was a nice day! 

After all those Fall activities, the Christmas activities have started! Every year I decorate the house with Christmas lights inside and outside for the kids and I try to add 1 to 2 new things each year. This year we added icicle lights along the gutters, a new flashy net light for the front bushes and a little outside tree with orange lights because my daughter's 2nd favorite holiday is Halloween. I sold my husband on this by saying it's in honor of the Nightmare Before Christmas movie too 😜.

               

      

   

This week, we decorated a gingerbread castle and visited the Give Kids the World Village Night of a Million Lights where the kids got to meet Santa! This made their day!!

   

We have plenty more holiday activities planned while both my daughter and I are on break from school! As always, thank you for sticking through the long update post!

🎄🎅I hope everyone is having a happy, healthy, and safe holiday season!🎅🎄