Completed Christmas

Merry Belated Christmas and Happy Early New Year!  I had a really lovely Christmas day.  My sister and I pretty much puttered around the house, watched a lot of Top Gear off of Netflix and ate way too much.  It was about as close to perfect as one can get in a day.  Since it was just the two of us, there wasn't any rush to get up and get going.  We woke up when we woke up and made breakfast.  It was one of those times when the menu gets longer and longer as you go along and by the time everything is cooked, there is just too much stuff!

We started with Gingerbread pancakes, Scrambled eggs with cheese and bacon, Sausages, Hashbrowns, Biscuits, Orange Juice, Cinnamon Rolls and Chocolate milk.  Since breakfast happened around 10 am, we were mostly done with food for the rest of the day.  We did bake up a couple of Costco take-and-bake pizza's for dinner.  Yummy!  Calorific, but yummy.

I have to back up just a bit here... on Christmas Eve, my sister and I headed out to the stores to find some last minute presents.  We were on a mission.  Our dear SIL-A, who is 8 months pregnant, had a bit of a crying jag on Sunday because she felt like she didn't have any cute clothing to wear.  Well, that was something L and I could fix.  (And we did find SIL a couple of darling tops and a cute pair of red ballet flats.  She'll be cute for church today!)  But, since we were shopping, and the sales were good, we also found ourselves some nice gifts.

I just fell in love with the hounds tooth check skirt.  It was at Costco (of all places)!  And then at Downeast Outfitters they were having a major clearance sale and I picked up the white t-shirt with rose embellishments and the lilac cardigan for $10 each.  Steal!

For Christmas, my sister gave me the purple and silver scarf, the two nail stamping plates, and some white and black polish that is a bit thicker in formula and great to use with stamping.  I gave myself the UV light nail dryer and the gloves to minimize the exposure of the UV rays to my hands.  Yes, I've lost my mind.

And here I am, wearing my new skirt and a new blouse that I didn't picture above.  Yes, I have a glowy power source thingy just like Iron Man!  What's that you say? "It's just the flash from the camera?" Aww... I was hoping you'd buy the Iron Man excuse.

And without the flash a better look at the cute top I'm wearing.

I spent a lot of time on Christmas stitching away.  I made some good progress on Santa's Village by CCN... And then realized that I made a counting error in the pine bough at the bottom after I'd put all the green needles on.  So that had to come out.  The below picture is before I put the green bits in and figured out I needed to pull them out again.  I restitched the bough last night, but just now as I was looking at this picture I realized there's another miscount that I need to pull out.  Argh!

When I figured out I had a miscount (the first time around) I put Santa's Village aside and went back to work on Very Scary by Lizzie*Kate.  I finished up the grass, the purple stars, and a bunch of border stitching.  Here is where I left it:

Then on Saturday, I figured it was pretty close to being completed, so after I did the first round of frogging on Santa's Village I went back to work on Very Scary.  I finished up the last couple of bands and now just have the borders to finish up.  It bothers me the way she's just left the green bit as the bottom border without the saw tooth band going across the bottom.  So I've decided that I need to do something more across the bottom, but since I hate the saw tooth design, I'm thinking on doing something different.  I liked the acorn bit that was on part two of the design, so I'm going to see if I can turn that around and have it go across the bottom.  It might work.  It might be a total disaster.  Who knows!

I want to say I'm really hopeful about getting this one done by the end of the year.  Or on the 1st of the new year.  But I'm afraid to set a goal like that for fear that something will come up (and something almost always does) so I won't be able to finish it off.  I am very very close, though.

Now I need to take some time and update the buttons there on the left to point towards the SAL's that I'm going to do in 2013.  I'm keeping with the TUSAL, the WIPocalypse, and International Hermit and Stitch Weekend.  I'm thinking about joining BAP Attacks Turtle Trot (since most of my WIPocalypse pieces will double for that SAL) and then there is It's Geek to Me's Themalicious which was fun to read all the entries for last year.  (She even has a subcategory for ornament stitches!)  And lastly there is a SAL for 12 Christmas ornaments and 12 Halloween ornaments.  That one is a great temptation, but I really need to be realistic about what I can stitch in a year.

And then there's the goal to lose another 30 lbs this year with the Lose to Cruise group.  I did make it this year!  I'm proud to say that while I haven't lost much weight since November, I haven't gained any weight either.  So there's another page that needs to be updated or changed around.

Good luck with all of your resolutions and goals in 2013!

Hugs and Stitches,

Kay