Dance of the Butterflies – 1st Project Update

23. January 2012 · 2 comments · Categories: Cross-Stitch

Over the past several weeks I have been experiencing the urge to cross-stitch again.  This past weekend, I finally acted on it.  Of course I did not choose the logical route and pick back up some of my multitude of Works in Progress — oh now– that’s too boring.

Instead, I decided to go to Barnes & Noble, browse their cross-stitch magazines, and see if anything appealed to me.  Leave it up to my favorite stitching magazine, Cross Stitch Gold, to delight.  It was the first magazine I picked up and lo and behold, what was on the cover?  A geisha!

In case you didn’t know, I love geishas.  This design is called Dance of the Butterflies and is created by Lesley Teare.  The stitch count is 140w x 166h and the finished design size will be 10 x 12 inches.  I was originally going for something smaller, but I could not pass this up.  Too much geisha love in my heart. :-)

So.. after working it over the weekend, here is my 1st progress picture.

Instead of black fabric, I elected to do mine on Tea colored fabric. I am not a fan of stitching on black and I wanted something other than white.  The Monaco is one of my 2nd-favorite fabric to stitch on (Lugana is first choice) , but it was all Hobby Lobby had in stock.

I’ll try to remember to post another update in a month. The plan is to work on this only for awhile, at least until I feel I am back in the swing of it. Of course, I’ll have to fit it in between my genealogy time, but this is such a great pasttime when watching television. Show of choice this weekend was the BBC Poirot series. I am a fan of the Hercule Poirot stories and have never seen them.  Season 1 is free on-demand for Amazon Prime members and I took full advantage of that!

 

 

Embroidery Work of Every Description

07. August 2011 · Write a comment · Categories: Hobbies

Oh my! Found this in the Internet Archive tonight and had to post.  Do I love the title of this book or what? This book, Embroidery Work of Every Description,  is a mail order catalog from Yokohama, Japan published in 1910.  Click on the image to see the whole catalog.

My ebook Bookmarks

16. March 2011 · Write a comment · Categories: Books

Received these today from Google ebooks and I love them! Wished they’d send me more :-)

Book About Hurricane Katrina

27. February 2011 · Write a comment · Categories: Books, Jihad

From Taneya:  I’ve created an account on the blog for Jihad now so he can be a guest author.  Below is his first post. :-)

I am reading a book called Ninth Ward.  It is about a girl named Lanesha who has a grandma named MaMa Ya-Ya.  Well Lanesha is a 12-year old girl that lives in New Orleans.  Lanesha has been seeing ghosts since she was an itty bitty baby.  But Lanesha has been having hard times at school because she has been seeing ghosts everywhere at her school.  She says they all look sad.  MaMA Ya-Ya is a very nice lady who raised Lanesha and took extra care of her.

The reason I am reading this book is because it is educational and tells you how bad Hurricane Katrina was when it hit New Orleans and how it killed a lot of people and flooded homes.  I am also reading this book cause when you read it it actually tells you in the book how people were in Hurricane Katrina and died or drowned.  My schoolteacher has the whole class reading this book because the author of the book, Jewell Parker Rhodes, is coming to our school, LEAD Academy, tomorrow to read to us and my teacher wants us to be prepared.

The book is great so far because I like how they descibe the ghost in the book cause I always wanted to know how ghost look.  I also think about this book so far how Lanesha survies Hurricane Katrina and saves Spot (the dog).


 

 

Digital Scrapbooking Can Start Again

26. November 2010 · 2 comments · Categories: Genealogy, Scrapbooking

I’m quite excited right now! I’ve just re-installed my favorite photo-editing software onto our desktop at home and am delighted to see that this new version works far better than the old version we had.  Back in May I had to restore the desktop back to factory settings and just hadn’t gotten around to getting my software back. I use Serif’s Photoplus SE (no affliation, just a happy user).  I’ve been using it for almost 7 years now and it works very similar to Adobe Photoshop.  Here’s to a night of digiscrapping!  I’ve started with this picture of my grandmother, Cora Mae Lawhorn Koonce (1932-2006).

The design is not mine; it’s a QuickPage by Lukasmummy from a blog train (several designers working collaboratively). It uses the Retail Therapy kit.

The Confession by John Grisham

10. November 2010 · Write a comment · Categories: Books

Last week I finished reading John Grisham’s latest book.  I reacted very emotionally to the story; can’t tell you how or it might give it away, but I could hardly put the book down.  One night I even stayed up until about 3 in the morning to get through a certain part.  Love John Grisham’s stuff – he’s an excellent storyteller.  This is the 2nd book I’ve read using my Kindle App on my phone.

The Confession
John Grisham; Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group 2010

Happy Birthday Jihad!

08. July 2010 · Write a comment · Categories: Jihad, Scrapbooking

Today is Jihad’s 12th birthday. Happy Birthday! Don’t worry – one more year you’ll be a teen in one year :-)

July 4th Fun

05. July 2009 · Write a comment · Categories: Family, Fun, Movies, Photos, Video

Yesterday was a very exciting July 4th! I took the kids downtown to join friends outside of the football stadium.  Fireworks were scheduled to begin at 9pm.  I’d not been to this before and was very much looking forward to it. Our friends set up a a tent outside the stadium and have food, games, fun, all kinds of stuff, for several hours before the show.  The tent we were in was pretty large, here is a view of just one side of it. There was room underneath for about 15 of us.

When we arrived at about 6pm, it was raining some, so we couldn’t sit out on the grass, but it did clear up for awhile. The kids all got goodies bags with things to keep them entertained, silly string, bubbles, confetti – they really enjoyed it. Here, Jihad checks out his goody bag.

At some point in between the rain, the fireworks crew set off some – our guess was to test the equipment but it was a fun teaser. I was talking through it in order to keep Kaleya excited; I didn’t want her to get too scared and she fortunately didn’t.

Then, after it was dark, it really started to rain again, so they started the fireworks early. It was so much fun! The finale was just crazy and I managed to get a clip of that:

We are all excited about going back next year. Then, today, we went to the movies to see Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian. That was entertaining, though, I don’t think it was as good as the first one.

Hope everyone also had a good weekend! The rest of our pictures are here.

Happy Father’s Day

21. June 2009 · Write a comment · Categories: Kalonji, Scrapbooking

Happy Father’s Day to al the father’s out there! I’ve just done this scrapbook page for Kalonji. :-)

From My Digital Scrapbook Layouts

This design was created by Just For You DigiScraps and the name of the layout is “Dear Old Dad”

Major Milestone Reached & DigiScrapping To Share

06. June 2009 · Write a comment · Categories: School, Scrapbooking

Over the past week I’ve been quite relaxed.  At the end of May I reached a milestone in my degree program when I finished the curriculum portion.  Now, I need to focus heavily on research, but I am no longer in class 3 hours every day and also have to balance homework, work, family and squeeze in some time for hobbies.  Also, I’m quite excited about the research project I’ll be undertaking, and this month I’ll be writing up the research protocol and preparing for the next 10 months of work.

In other news, I was able to finally finish my scrapbook for my mother of Kaleya’s second year of life.  She has not seen it yet – I need to mail it to her this week, but I’m very delighted with the results.  Here is a slideshow of the pages:

This weekend I’m still doing some catch up at home and w/ some projects, and am beginning scrapbook #3 for my mom – this next one will cover the calendar year of 2007.

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