My Angel Came Home

I know that I've told this story before, but if you can just bear with me? Several years ago MJ's Aunt J gave me all of her stitching things. She was having trouble with her hands and her eyes were not as good as they used to be, all effects from the diabetes that she suffered from. When she gave me this big Rubbermaid container filled with stuff I started going through it immediately. I found in there a kit by Dimensions that she said was the one thing in the whole box she wished she had been able to finish.

I made it for her birthday in June, 2009 and she was very happy to have it. Sadly, Aunt J passed away last August. Aunt J had three sons, none of whom were very nice to her while she was alive, which made the ones who loved her angry. After her funeral I asked her oldest son if I could have the angel back. Truthfully, I didn't want her sons to have it. I know that's mean, but they would not have appreciated it anyway and I doubt that it would have brought them any comfort. This past weekend my MIL and FIL were away and they stopped at the son's house to pick up a box that they had for her. It was stuff from Aunt J's house that they wanted our family to have. In the box was my angel. I'm so glad that she came home to me and will now hang in my house as a reminder of Aunt J and all that she meant to us.

I think that we can move on to happier topics now, don't you? Stitching for the baby quilt goes on. I finished the second square yesterday:

I have Minnie, Donald, Daisy, and Pluto left to do. They are easy things to work on when I get tired of the HAED or the table runner.

Speaking if the HAED, that got a bit of attention, too, this week:

That big area that I'm working on all gets filled in with one color, that at least I'm doing an easy part that does not require a tremendous amount of concentration. One color easy. Love it!

This page is almost done, then there is one full page of sky and and another 1/3 of a page, and then I will be done with this row of pages. Slowly but surely, it's coming along. Blue skies smiling at me! Nothing but blue skies do I see! At least until I get to the bottom part where I'll be stitching nothing but green forest!

This is the last week of school here. M has a final today and tomorrow and then he's finished for the year. I was told by his school guidance counselor that he will be in all honors classes next year. While I know that school has never been M's problem, MJ and I are extremely proud of him. He worked very hard and he has something to show for it. Z's last day is not until Thursday. He's not happy that he will have to go to school for two days while his brother gets to stay home, but I told him that this is what happens when you get into middle school. He'll get his turn. He also did really well this year, as well. He was placed in the reading support group in the spring and the change in him is amazing. He also worked really hard and everyone can see great improvement both in his reading skills and his other school work as well. It made homework so much easier. It was becoming a battle because he was having trouble reading the work, but that has become much easier for him. Guess what Z gets to do this summer? Read, read, read!

I hope that everyone has a good week ahead of them. Happy stitching!

Mickey & Minnie Are Home

AC Moore called me late yesterday afternoon to tell me that my custom framing was in and ready for pick up:

I love when I get framed pieces home. They make me so happy.

A Date With My Little Man

I know that in many parts of the country school is already out for the year, but here on Long Island we have two weeks of school left. Obviously, the kids are ready for the beginning of summer and just trying to get them to pay attention can be pretty difficult. As this is M's first year in middle school it is also the first year that he has final exams his subjects to deal with. While he's looking forward to summer vacation, I think he wishes he could skip right to the vacation part without having to do the whole finals thing. However, he is a straight A student I have no doubt that the finals will be as easy for him as all of the other tests he taken this year.

For Z, today was one of the things that the kids look forward to all year: field day! They scheduled in on a half day, although why the kids need to have a half day of school this late in the school year is beyond me. Since he was going to be home, we made special mom and Z plans for the afternoon. We had an ice cream date. He got off the school bus, babbling a mile a minute about how much fun field day was, ate lunch, and then we went to get an icy, cool treat. When M starts finals next week he will have half days, so I promised him that I would take him for ice cream on one of his finals days, so I get to have another ice cream date, but I can't say that it will be with my "little" man. M is anything but little anymore, especially since he's almost as tall as me! Now that's scary!

After M got home from school this afternoon the house was quiet. I'm not sure why it was so quiet, but it was and I decided to take full advantage of the situation by working on the next square of the baby quilt:


Gawsh! It's Goofy!! I think I said that Donald Duck would be up next, but I went to Goofy instead. Considering that I only started it last night I got pretty far. That is the great thing about small pieces like this. The instant gratification of it. I can get a square done in a few days and feel like I got something accomplished.

I set a goal for myself today, and that was to finish the page of the Nativity table runner that I was on. I am very happy to report that I can say, "Mission accomplished!"


To be perfectly honest I only had a little bit of the top border left to do, so I knew my goal really could be reached with very little effort. The other night I went to visit a friend for a stitch night and at the end of the night I realized that I messed up the lettering on the top and had to rip some of them out. I hate frogging (don't we all?) but I suppose I should be glad that I realized after only two letters that they were not lining up correctly rather than stitching the rest of the letters on the page. Two is better than ten.

I managed to get a little work in on the pandas, too.

Not much, mostly because I wanted to work on the table runner. Now that my goal of finishing the table runner page has been met I think that my stitching plan will be to work on the quilt squares and the pandas for a while and see how far I can get.

It's a Friday night and that means baseball!! The Yankees, fresh from getting swept by the Boston Red Sox, are trying to light a fire under themselves against the Cleveland Indians. I think something got lit because both of the benched just cleared after Mark Teixeira just got hit by a nasty pitch (for the second time in a week) and was clearly not pleased. Hopefully, we can manage to win a game and not fall any further in the standings that we have fallen in the last three days. I hope so, anyway.

Progress On A Beautiful Sunday Afternoon

MJ's birthday was last week. Unfortunately, on his actual birthday we had lots of running around with the kids to do, so there was no birthday celebration on that day, but this weekend I had his parents, brother and sister-in-law over for a birthday barbecue.

One of the projects that I have undertaken in the last few months is to teach M how to cook. For the most part, it's been simple things so far: tacos, pasta, chili. Yesterday I had him helping me man the grill.

He looks pretty good standing there. He was happy to get to learn how to use the grill and to spend some time with me while we cooked his dad's birthday dinner. Luckily, it was a nice day for grilling! Hopefully, somewhere in my future a daughter-in-law will be happy with the lessons that I gave him all those years ago!

Other projects are getting some attention, too. I finished the first of the Disney squares for the baby quilt:

Mickey was supposed to have a pink border all around, but when I started it, I just was not happy with it, so I changed it to blue. Next up? Donald Duck!

From the quilt square I went to an oldie, but a goodie. The Nativity table runner got some attention, too.

I finished the shepard that I was working on and he now has a head. Very important if he wants to see what he travelled all that way for. I'm on the second to last page. I have to do the stars, the lettering at the top, and a sheep that is laying near him. At least I think it's a sheep.



A close up of the shepard:

I made some progress on the pandas, but I forgot to take a picture of it. I'll post that the next time.

I'm off to enjoy the beautiful Sunday weather that we have here today. Maybe I'll even get some stitching in.