vacationTag Archives

Cute Little Bunnies & More

I haven’t gotten around to uploading and posting pics of my vacation … yet. I will get to it eventually. I promise. In the meantime, until that actually happens, I wanted to share another vacation-related pic.

During the whole Michigan road trip extravaganza, one of the stops we made was in Holland, MI. There was a little fair trade store there called The Bridge that had the cutest stuff. As soon as I saw this little set of whitewashed terra cotta bunnies, I knew I had to have them. Aren’t they just adorable?!!

They are made in Bangladesh and are distributed by Ten Thousand Villages. They came in a little jute bag which I plan to put to use in the future in an exchange or as perhaps a little gift bag. I know it’s difficult to tell what size they are from the photo, so I took another photo which included a US quarter for scale. You can see that photo here if you are interested.

If any of the other bunny lovers out there are interested, the set is available via the TTV website. Here is the direct link to the bunny set.

I also picked up this Inspirational Paperweight they had in the store. These are made in India and are also distributed by Ten Thousand Villages. I got the word Strength as a reminder to myself that I AM a strong woman and can do anything to which I set my mind.

They sold them individually at the store, but they are available as a set via the TTV website at this direct link. The set includes stones with the following six words: joy, strength, hope, wisdom, love and peace.

In stitching news, I do have a finish but can’t share the photo yet. It’s for the summer round of the Fair & Square exchange. I still need to stitch the second square with my name before I can mail it off to April. Once that’s done and she receives it, I’ll post a pic.

Lastly, I’m doing pretty well getting myself back on track at Weight Watchers following my vacation. I went several weeks without going to a meeting and it definitely showed when I got back home. I picked myself up, dusted myself off, and got myself back on track though. At my weigh in on Sunday, I was down 4 pounds.

Lastly, as I know many of you are aware based on the emails I’ve received, I’m still having issues with my online photo albums. I did manage to get about 90+% of the photos restored, but there is still clearly some sort of corruption going on with the database. Rather than continuing to try and troubleshoot the problem, I decided this is definitely the time to take advantage of moving everything over to my thedailymel.com domain as I’d been planning to do anyway. It’s definitely going to take some time, so the old albums won’t be going anywhere anytime soon. From this point forward though, all the photos I upload in the future will be going into the new albums. Here is the link for that:

http://www.thedailymel.com/pics

Oh, and this would be the perfect time to remind others to do as I say and not as I do. Back up your files … OFTEN! My last backup of my photo albums was late February of this year. Accordingly, all of the photos I had uploaded since that time had to be recreated. Please don’t make my same mistake. kthx!

I guess that’s it for now. Until next time …

21 July 2009

Misc., Stitching, Travel

3 comments

bunnies, Cross Stitch, Exchanges, Fair & Square, Geeky, knick knacks, Michigan, vacation, weigh in results, Weight Watchers

Updating on the Run

Sorry for not posting in a while. I left last Thursday afternoon and was out of town for nearly a week visiting my friend Tracy up in eastern Washington. Even though she was feeling a bit under the weather, we still had a great visit.

On Friday, we headed over to Pasco for the day. I had an appointment with her brother Kevin to get another tattoo. I had him do a piece in memory of my beloved grandmother. She grew beautiful irises and loved hummingbirds, so that was the inspiration for the design. Lastly, I had him add in “Gran” in a nice script since that’s what I always called her. Here’s a pic of the finish product taken immediately after he finished it:

The colors are a bit softer now that it’s healed for a little over a week. I’ll take another photo to post once the healing process is completed. I know you can’t really tell from the pic, but it’s on the side of my right thigh about halfway up. As a size reference, it’s probably about 6″ across at the widest part.

On Saturday we just kind of hung around at Tracy’s house. I got in quite a bit of good stitching time on Moonlit Garden. It’s the Loose Feathers #22 design from Blackbird Designs. Here’s my latest WIP photo of this design:

Design: Moonlit Garden (Loose Feathers #22)
Designer: Blackbird Designs
Fabric: 30-count Broomstick Brown from R&R Reproductions
Fibers: Weeks Dye Works
Progress as of June 23, 2009

On Sunday, we headed over to Seattle. Her dad was riding in the 100-mile Livestrong Challenge, so we went over to be his cheerleaders. Even though he had to ride through some rain and a bit of hail at one point, he still finished the full 100-mile ride and raised nearly $1000, too! WTG Jim!! Here’s a photo I snapped of him right after he finished the ride:

Monday was my last full day in Washington. We just kind of took is easy most of the day. We did head over to Moses Lake mid-afternoon to take in a movie. We went to see “The Proposal” and had a great time. It was a really fun chick-flick to see together. Of course, it didn’t hurt that it starred hunky Ryan Reynolds either. Oh yeah, Sandra Bullock was in it, too. The main cast was rounded out with Craig T. Nelson, Mary Steenburgen, and Betty White (who was hilarious!). In an ironic twist of art imitating life, Reynolds is actually a Canadian married to an American (Scarlett Johansson).

After the movie, we headed back over to Tracy’s place and spent the rest of the day just hanging out and watching TV. We both did a bit of stitching, too. Tracy spent some time working on Psalm 145 from Little House Needleworks. Instead of working on Moonlit Garden again, I did a bit of guest stitcher work on her Sistine Chapel project. I’m still amazed she decided to undertake this project, but I must admit that it was kind of cool to put some stitches in it. Here’s a photo of me working on it with the full 2.5 yards of linen sitting in my lap. Following that is a photo showing what I stitched on the piece.

That’s pretty much it for the photos from my trip that I’m going to post to my blog. If you want to see more, you can find them here.

I’m also nearly a week late posting my monthly photo for the Totally Useless SAL. The new moon fell on June 22, but I was still out of town at the time. I actually haven’t had much time for stitching since I got home, so even though it’s nearly a week late, it’s still pretty accurate.

In this photo, I temporarily set my ort bucket on my canvas WIP of Plum Blossom Kimono by Margaret Bendig. This is a class that I’m taking through my LNS, and I’m behind on my stitching right now due to my vacations. Canvas projects just don’t travel as compactly as cross stitching projects. You might also notice the quarter on the canvas. It’s not actually sitting on the canvas. It’s a needle park that was given to me by my friend Cindi. It’s a California state quarter mounted to a rare earth magnet. She gave one to my BSF Darla, too. You can see a better photo of it here.

Now that I’ve rambled on so much, I thought I should finally explain why I used “Updating on the Run” as the subject for this post. Even though I was on vacation last week, I’m heading out again tonight. I have an all-day class with Ellen Chester at the LNS today, but then I’ll be catching the red-eye to Detroit tonight to spend some time with my friend Nick. I’ll be there for nine days, and I’m not sure how much time I’ll have for updating my blog while I’m gone. If you want to know what’s going on with me, the best option would be to follow my Twitter feed (info in the side bar on the right).

Well, that’s it for now. I desperately need to get into bed since I have such a long day tomorrow. I still need to finish packing, too. Eek!

Until next time …

28 June 2009

Cross Stitch, Travel

6 comments

Blackbird Designs, Class, Darla, Ellen Chester, Moonlit Garden, Nick, Totally Useless SAL, Tracy, vacation

I was RAK’d!

Yes, I was giddy when I opened my mailbox today and realized that I was the recipient of a RAK (Random Act of Kindness). Knowing my love of bunnies, my BSF (best stitching friend) Darla RAK’d me with an absolutely adorable bunny chart. It’s called “If I Can’t Stitch” by The Sunflower Seed. Here’s a pic from their website:

It looks like it should be a fairly quick stitch, too. I just need to figure out how to work it into my rotation. Yes, I know I just use a screaming rotation, but I still have to figure out time to work on everything at some point.

I have a couple of other pics I need to share, but that will have to wait until tomorrow or Friday. The rest of tonight will be spent stitching and watching a couple of shows off my DVR (Top Chef Masters and So You Think You Can Dance).

Speaking of DVR … only 4 more days until the new season of True Blood starts on HBO. Yes, it’s definitely going on my DVR schedule. I’ll be out of town on vacation for three consecutive Sundays after the season premiere, so I’ll have lots of catching up to do when I get back home.