A Quote To Ponder.....

"Keep doin it. Don't stop. Human beings are lazy by nature so if you keep going, everybody else quits 'cause they're lazy, so you'll win by default." -Jennifer Nettles, Sugarland

I got a kick out of this quote...love it! And I think it speaks to the down-to-earth-ness of Sugarland. Yes, I'm a big fan...and, as big fans do after the release of a new CD, I'm obsessing. Just a little bit though :-P

My Week, In Pictures

Yep, I'm feeling pretty ambitious tonight, and thought I'd throw some pics into the mix! Not that I don't usually have pictures...um.....anyways......ack it's been a long day :-)

Last Thursday I embarked upon a very long journey....to London (Ontario) to visit my best friend Erin. I wasn't looking forward to the long, lonely 6 hour drive....but as luck would have it, Sugarland's new CD came out, so I had 2 wonderful companions with me on my drive....Jennifer Nettles and Kristian Bush! It was pretty awesome....until the SNOW hit! Yep....between Arthur and Listowel, it was blizzarding. Thank goodness it eventually stopped, I wasn't impressed! The windshield wiper on my side isn't working very well, and I have yet to purchase snow tires for my new car :-S

Anyways, I eventually arrived safe and sound, and we had a GREAT 6 day Frienaissance! LOL!

Erin bought some really tasty treats....like these chocolate covered blueberry and acai berries.....

And she cooked a Rachael Ray recipe....and if you know me, you know that I absolutely LOVE anything to do with Rachael Ray....it was called "Chicken Noodle Hold the Soup" and it was so so so good. I highly reccommend it- here's the link

http://www.rachaelrayshow.com/food/recipes/chicken-noodle-hold-soup/

 It looked like this:

Annnnd we walked around downtown, which is one of my favourite things to do in London. I can't pinpoint what exactly I love about it, but it has a great atmosphere. It has the excitement of Toronto without the extreme busy-ness. It rained during our walk, but it was actually a nice rain!

Oh, and we had a sushi feast! This is Erin enjoying a roll of some sort...we lost track of what all we were eating.

Now...onto the good stuff.......

London has an awesome cross stitch store called the Thread and Eye. They have a fantastic selection of patterns, floss, and other supplies and I look forward to this part of every trip I take to London. Here's what I bought...

Equally exciting is the fact that the store inspired Erin to learn to cross stitch! This is proof that if you drag a non-stitchy friend along to enough stitchy stores, they'll eventually cave and ask you to teach them...here she is with the project she picked up....

And finally......here's the little piece I've been working on lately.....

I'm home now, and sad to have left Erin behind....but I'm settling back into my routine of work, schoolwork, running, and the museum. There was WAY more time to stitch in London, since it was sort of like a holiday, than back here in boring old reality LOL!

Have a great weekend!!

I'm Alive!

Yep, you read right! I braved the 8am, -1 degree (with windchill), frigid cold and extremely HILLY 10 kilometer race through Cavan Hills! I've heard many horror stories about this race. One friend was passed by a very slow moving tractor during a trial run, another had to stop halfway through due to extreme leg pain caused by insane and constant hills. One reported a squirrel falling out of a tree right infront of her, landing on the road dead.

It wasn't quite as bad as all of the stories tell, but it WAS hard! It became much faster to walk the hills rather than try to run them, and once I figured this out I passed a lot of people and ended up having a pretty good time of 1 hour, 9 minutes! My normal 10k time is around 1 hour, 6 minutes so all things considered, I'm impressed! Especially since my whole group chickened out and left me to run it alone, and since through the first 3k I thought I was going to have to stop to treat my hands, which appeared to be frost-bitten! There were awesome snacks at the end too!



Here I am about to cross the finish line



And even more exciting than crossing the finish line: Tims coffee in hand, about to hit the snack table!



In stitchy news- I've started a new piece! I decided to stitch the logo, or my adaptation of it anyways, of my friend and my favourite show. We've spent many years watching it together, discussing it, and even obsessing about it at times. It's provided many, many hours of entertainment to us and I think I owe it to the show to stitch it to be kept forever! LOL, I'm a dork, I know! So anyways, I'm going to attempt to make it into a pillow when it's finished, for Erin. Here's the picture I'm basing my design on, and my progress to date:





A Finish

Well, here it is! My second finish of 2010! What can I say? It's been a slow year for finishes. But I'm super excited to have finished this, and am hoping to squeeze in a couple more before the year's over. This is "Little Cups of Friendship" by Lizzie Kate.

 

Today I started to stitch what I'm hoping will eventually be a pillow to give to a friend as a gift. I had a "vision" and sketched it out on graph paper. It looks pretty good so far...I thinking it'll only take a couple weeks.

I had a great relaxing/working weekend. I had turkey dinner with my parents after work on Saturday, and turkey dinner with my "second family" at their cottage after work on Sunday. It was a beautiful drive up to Apsley- the leaves were breathtaking...but so was the traffic. Today I slept in, then went back to my parent's house to hang out. I stitched all day, and had some mroe pumpkin pie, of course! Here's a pic for you to ponder:

Yep, there's a turkey under that pile of romaine! My Mom's friend swears that covering your left-over turked in lettuce leaves keeps it fresh and juicy. Imagine that!

I Smell Pumpkin Pie!!!

Who would have ever thought that one could use pumpkin pie as a torture technique? For future reference...oh yes, you can!

My employer has become a master-mind of pumpkin pie proportions! You see, fellow stitchers, I work in a salad bar...a cave, if you will, located deep in the dark corners of a grocery store, and Thanksgiving just happens to be one of our busiest weekends! So I spent my afternoon making millions of fruit and veggie trays in preperation......

So, where does the torture come in, you ask? It just so happens that the bakery's oven is built into the back of the wall that my counter is bolted to, and let me tell ya, that oven has one powerful ventilation system, sending the sweet, delicious scent of baking pumpkin pie at me in powerful waves all day long! And no! This isn't all! They also ran out of room in their cooler and had to use mine to store the pies after they had been baked. So alas, there was no escape for me!

And yes...I did resort to saying to the bakery manager, out of desperation of course, "so...I accidentally licked one of the pies. Do you think I should just eat it now?" He thought this was hilarious. I was only half-joking.

In stitchy news........

I'm almost finished stitching "Little Cups of Friendship." It's going great, and has been a really quick and easy pattern! I picked up the last colour I need this afternoon and, as soon as this post is posted, I plan to use said colour to finish it off! I also picked up a piece of BLACK aida cloth for a project I'm planning to start next week. I'm not sure how it'll go...I've never stitched on black before...you know, that darn fear of the unknown! And I don't really have a set pattern either. My brain knows what it should look like, so I plan to grab a piece of graph paper, sketch it out, and just....GO! 

Well, I'm scheduled for 2 days of work and 3 Thanksgiving dinners this weekend, so I better go get some stitching done now before all that turkey and pumpkin pie takes over my life!

A very happy (Canadian) Thanksgiving to you all!! See ya next week!

Wine, Sushi and Stitching!

That pretty much sums up my weekend! Let's start with a stitchy update. I've started working on the Tea Crazy collection by Lizzie Kate. I love these patterns! I bought them a while ago on a trip to visit my best friend in London and they've been sitting here, begging to be stitched, ever since! So here's my progress on Little Cups of Friendship:

This one is stitching up really quickly and I'm loving the colours!

Well, my weekend involved a lot of social type activities and not nearly enough homework or housework related activities...but I think that's okay once in a while!

On Friday a friend and I went to a winery in Buckhorn and did a little wine tasting! Among my favourites were Frosted Pumpkin wine, seasonal of course, Apple, Peach, and Apricot. Very, very good wine. The place was called Kawartha Country Winery- highly reccommend it!

On Saturday after work, Holly, Cait and I drove out to Burleigh Falls to look at the pretty fall foliage, have some lunch and ice cream, and walk around in the woods. Sunday after work the older couple who live upstairs took me out for a delicious sushi lunch...YUM! And today I visited my parents, where I accomplished a great deal of stitching! So...back to work tomorrow for a busy, busy Thanksgiving week!!

Thanks for stopping by :-)

Douglas

I wanted to share with you all a picture my cousin Caroline drew last weekend... because I think it's amazing.

She named him Douglas, and drew him from a random picture of a bald eagle she found.

Caroline is only 18, and to draw something so life-like and detailed is so impressive, I'm very proud of her and her talents!

She's a wonderful artist and I can't wait to see what she draws next: owls, I think :-)