Another Toby Post

Well, It's been awhile since I shared a picture of Toby.  Since it's been winter and way too cold to really get a good walk in outside, he's had to do his miles on the treadmill.  He doesn't really like the treadmill but he's gotten used to it, more or less.

Sunday morning my sister told Toby that it was treadmill time.  Toby ran and hid behind where he was sure would be a safe place... Me.  He was wrong.

We did get him out and on the treadmill.  We try to wear him out a bit so that he isn't making a pest of himself all afternoon.  It takes a bit of time to get him worn out, so we have him walk along for an hour or so.

Just look at that face, you know he is walking along and hating it. I don't blame him, I prefer to do my walking outside too.

I did take the treadmill pictures some time ago, back before there were inches of snow on the ground and when the sun did get out from behind the clouds. I, and Toby, are looking forward to warmer weather.

Hugs and Silly dogs,
Kay

Turtle Trot, Feburary 2013

Happy Wednesday, and happy Turtle Trot everyone.  Lets have a look at what I've managed to get done over the past week or so. 

We'll start off with Santa's Village, which I love working on.  I ordered the Post Office the other day form 123 Stitch and received it in the mail already.  I still have a lot to get done before starting on the next one.  Isn't that how it always is, ready for the next stitch before you're done with the current one and the current one isn't stitching up fast enough.  Buy the pattern, buy the dream.

The valentines day heart is coming right along.  I've finished off one side, except for the beads and backstitching, and just have a wee bit more to go on this side to finish up the main stitch.  And then it'll be time for that backstitching and beading.  I wonder what I've got in my bead stash and if I've got any beads that will work.

I finished up the second angel on the Heirloom Nativity and a good portion done on the third angel.  After I finish her, it's more snowflakes a bit of a gold star and that will be that for this band. Here's the whole thing so far for a bit of a refresher for you.

Happy Trotting!
Hugs and Stitches,
Kay

Cakebites? What?

In conjunction with the Really Big game, Mr. Trainer and I made a silly bet on the game.  Should the 49ers win, he declared he'd give me a free session.  If the Ravens won, I would have to bring him a chocolate milk and a bag of shelled pistachios.  As we know, the Ravens won so I had to pay up.  No biggies.  I maintain that the 49ers would have won had they decided to show up for the game in the first quarter instead of waiting for the fourth quarter.  But that's really neither here nor there.

Tuesday after the game, the first thing Mr. Trainer said when he collected me for our session was "I've got some candies for you, three or four flavors, but you have to promise to only eat one a day."  I said okay and didn't really think any more of it.  I figured it was a handful of jolly ranchers candies or some such.  It was near the end of the session when he ran over to the trainer session and brought out a long thin box.  I was a bit confused because it definitely wasn't jolly ranchers.

"I thought you'd be heart broken since your 49ers lost the Super Bowl" he said as he presented me what turned out to be a box of cakebites from The Sweet Tooth Fairy.  I had to laugh.  Sure I like football and I enjoy rooting for the 49ers, but my life doesn't live or die by how my team does.  I gave Mr. Trainer a bite and took a picture of the box before I left the gym.

And I did manage to eat one a day.  And they were delicious.  My team can loose all the time if I get a box of cakebites out of it.

The otherday I decided to put on the larger of my two goal dresses that I bought for stupid cheap.  It fit! Mostly.  So long as I don't sit down and don't eat anything.  I tried and tried to get a decent picture of me in the dress, but wasn't very successful.  (See the frown of concentration.)  However if you squint and use your imagination you'll see it's looking good.

One note about the dress, the company that makes it their sizing runs to the small side of things.  The dress is numbered as a 12, but it's a small 12 perhaps a large 10.  When I started this journey I was wearing a size 24.  I'm feeling pretty good about things.

Hugs and Cakebites,
Kay

Stripes, Dots, Hearts

With Singles Awareness Day fast approaching I've been a little inspired to use to colors and motifs of the season on my fingers.  I'd seen a lot of fun stripe themed nails in blogland and they looked easy enough to do, so I figured that would be my next attempt.

My base coat is 160 Shall We Dance by Sally Hansen on most of my fingers with the accent being done in 530 Back to the Fuchsia.  As I was gathering up my supplies and paint brush I noticed my dotting tools and so pulled them out and brought them along for the ride.

And once again, me + camera = fuzzy picture.  (I try, ladies, I really do to take clear pictures...)  Anyway, I used NYCs 134 French White Tip for the white dots and tip on the accent finger.  The white stripes were done with a wee bottle of something or other that had a really long striping brush.  I added a heart shaped rhinestone to the accent finger to finish that one off.  For the stripes and the dots, in addition to the white I used Sally Hansen 530 back to the Fuchsia and 470 Red My Lips.

What I learned from this endeavor is that I'm terrible at freehanding stripes and next time I will use tape to mask off different areas and then paint the colors on that I want.  The second thing I learned is that I love my dotting tools!  Love, love, love.  So much so that when everything started to peel I decided I would do a purple themed version of the dots as the next mani.  I even had the color palate all picked out:

More 134 French White Tip from NYC and then Sally Hansen's 370 I Lilac You for the base coat with dots of 409 Good to Grape and 470 Purple Pulse.  I got as far as getting the base coat on and then had to get on with my day and simply didn't get back to it.  When the base started to peel off and there was plenty of tip wear, I knew this one would have to wait because I had another something I wanted to try for Single Awareness Day.

This one is based, not so obviously, on those little conversation hearts.  This time I knew that trying to free hand QT Pie, and Txt me on my nails was not really an option, so I pulled out the stamping plates with the idea of stamping hearts on my nails.  This did not go as planned. 

I don't know what it is about me and stamping, but those little plates just laugh at me when I try to get the polish onto the stamper.  I managed to get a good stamp on my thumbs, and a mediocre stamp on my pointer fingers before giving it up.  In the end I attempted a few freehand hearts with a paint brush before getting my sister to do the rest of the hearts.  She used a dotting tool to push the red paint around until it was heart shaped.  The end result is the mish-mash you see above.  ... And I have got to learn how to clean up my fingers properly before taking pictures.

The color palate I used was Revlon 100 Buttercup, Essie 764 Bikini so Teeny, Sally Hansen 160 Shall We Dance, Sally Hansen 540 Jaded, and Sally Hansen 50 Whisper as the base colors. For the hearts is was back to Sally Hansen 470 Red My Lips.  I think I probably should have used a different pink and purple on this one as those colors are really quite pale.  I'll have to add a creme pink to the list for the next time I'm out and I think 370 I Lilac You would have been a better choice for the purple.

While out and about trying to track down a good yellow and pale blue for the conversation hearts idea I picked up a few other things that caught my interest.

On clearance at Target I picked up OPI's Congeniality is my middle name and Last Friday Night.  Congeniality has what looks like a red base with purple shimmer in it.  I'm looking forward to trying it on.  Last Friday Night is all glitter and I do love a glitter polish regardless of how hard it is to take off.  The shiny 004 Azure from the Sally Hansen Luster Shine also caught my eye.  I do hope they come out with something a little more purple in this line.  What's a girl to do with out her favorite color?

Next up is 260 Girly by Revlon.  Pink and glittery over all, but there are little bits of purple sparkle in there too.  And lastly a wee bottle of pink hued nail beads.  If the current conversation heart mani doesn't make it to Single Awareness Day I have a plan to use these little guys as an accent for a caviar style design.  Part of me hopes the conversation hearts don't last past Wednesday.  Not pictured is Fergie by Wet-n-Wild.  It's a polish with big glitter stars in a clear base. 100% fun!

So that's what I've been up to in the painting department.

Hugs and Polish,
Kay

Really Big Game Snack-a-thon

In the run up to the Really Big game, my sister and I prowled blogland and Pinterest in search of snacks and yummie things to cook up.  We had made our selections, had gone out shopping for the bits we needed, and were all ready to eat ourselves silly last week.  Then a neighbor and really good friend of the family called up and invited us over to dinner on game day.  Well that put a bit of a kink in our plans.  We of course accepted the invite to dinner and put on hold our snack-a-thon.

After the running around on Saturday, we decided it was time to eat.  And here is what we made:

From back to front we have Bacon wrapped Chicken with a Spicy Sweet glaze, Onion dip with Potato chips and Triscuts for dipping, Pretzel bites, and Pizza Wheels made up our selection of savory selection.

For sweets we made up a big batch of Muddy Buddies, and purchased some Loft House sugar cookies.  Oh yummy.

Since the Really Big Game was over with, we settled in and created a mini marathon of watching Top Gear off of Netflix.  The Chicken-Bacon was really, really good and really quite easy to put together.  I'm looking forward to eating some of the leftovers for lunches this week.  This is something we will make again.  Oh, and those British car guys are hilarious.

I'm really glad it's the end of the season of excuse eating.  Time to really focus in on the weight loss thing.  Since I haven't reported in on the 1000 mile cardio challenge in a couple of weeks, right now is a good time to do it.  Thus far I have covered 187.13 miles and have a mere 812.87 left to go.  Fun fun fun.

Hugs and Snackies,
Kay

Stitching Week

How was your stitching week?  Mine was a bit productive but as usual I didn't get as much time in to stitch as I would have liked. Isn't that just how it always is?

Santa's Village is coming along nicely.  I like having it at work and it's just so relaxing to get a few minutes of stitching in when the rest of the day has been crazy.  The house building is coming along quite nicely.  I'm stitching it over two on 32 count Heaven by Colorscapes.

I'm making good progress on the heart freebie from Tempting Tangles that is posted on the Welchet site.  I'm stitching it on a 32 count opalescent white linen with WDW's love floss.  It's pretty much what I stitch on on Satudays when I'm done doing my running around for the day.  I don't think I'll get it done by Valentines day, but that's okay.

And lastly, I'm plugging right along with the Heirloom Nativity Sampler.  I've nearly got two of the three angels done at the very top row.  I just need to finish them off and then it will be down to the bottom half of the project.  I keep thinking that I'm mostly done with it, but the truth is I'm just barely halfway done.  I'm such an optimist. This is on delft blue 32 count linen and I'm working over 2 with the called for flosses.

Now, here's a bit of a confession... These are all the pictures I should have shared with you last week when I didn't do a post.  But since the Turtle Trot report is due on Wednesday, I figured I'd show last weeks progress now, and you'll see this weeks progress then.  Tee hee hee.

Hugs and Stitches,
Kay

TUSAL, February 2013

Happy TUSAL everyone!  What's a TUSAL you ask?  It stands for the Totally Useless Stitch-a-Long, and consists of stitchers, knitters, quilters, crocheters, and tatters saving up their random ends and taking a picture of them each month.  Why do we do it? Because we're all a touch crazy.  Want to join?  Just click on the little TUSAL button there to the left.

Here's my vase surrounded by the collection of glass things on the window ledge.  I'm learning that it's hard to get a good picture of the vase with the sun shinning in from the back.  It's also a bit hard to tell what's new in the jar.  There are pink bits from the valentines heart I'm working on, Christmas colors from Santas Village, and more Christmas colors from the Heirloom Nativity Sampler.

Hope you've had an equally productive stitchy month!

Hugs and Stitches,
Kay