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 …

Write a quick comment

I’m still loving working on my M fairy. I realized looking at the chart last night just how big her wings are. If I’m going to finish her before I go back to work on Tuesday, I’m really going to have to push things into high gear and pretty much not do anything but stitch over the next day and a half. Oh darn, I guess that means the housework will just have to wait until some other time.

Here’s my progress as of last night:

Letters from Nora – Madeline Melissa
Designer: Nora Corbett
Fabric: 32-count Waterlily
Fibers: Crescent Colors, Treasure Braid
Stitched 2 over 2 except braid which is 1 over 2

Oh, and I had an awesome time at the Jen Lancaster book signing on Friday night. She encouraged everyone to come out in their totally 80′s finest. Here was my final look for the evening. ;)

What isn’t visible in that pic are the navy plaid shorts I wore. I was also wearing a pair of white Keds, without socks naturally. ;) If you want to see more pics, you can find them here.

Until next time …

Write a quick comment | View 1 more comment(s).

I realize that weigh in results the first week of starting a diet plan are distorted due to weight weight, etc. That having been said, it was still a great boost to me mentally to see such a big chunk go the first week. It will definitely help keep the motivation high to keep going, too.

One of my big areas of weakness is partaking of the goodies my boss often brings in to the office. Our building is located right next to an Entenmann’s outlet. He is notorious for going over there a few times per week and picking up cookies, coffee cakes, etc. and bringing them in for everyone to eat. In an effort to help me not partake, I picked up one of the little WW Hungry plushies they are selling now to help remind me to stay out of the goodies!

If you aren’t familiar with Hungry, here’s a video of one of the commercials so you can see him in action. ;)

Yes, I know I still need to post the previously mentioned stitching photos. I promise to get to them later today. I just wanted to post my good news from my weight loss while I was still so excited.

Until later ….

Write a quick comment | View 8 more comment(s).