Fun stitching day!

I had a fun day today! I met Melissa, Amanda, and Michelle at Ginger's for an impromptu day of stitching and chatting. I always enjoy these opportunities to talk to other stitchers so much. They speak my language!

I brought my Victoria Sampler gingerbread house to work on, and Amanda mentioned that Thea had another piece to go with it, a Christmas tree that she was teaching in a cyberclass. For $200. Ouch. I hemmed and hawed and did it. It's something I really want, even though I don't have the money with Matt being unemployed. But I'll try to be good in other areas to make up for it. I'm going to cancel my subscription to City of Heroes, which I don't play anymore (I love the game, but I've run out of things to do).

No work on the backstitching of Maggie yet. Soon!

Books: Amazon has a bunch of free books for the Kindle, which I discovered with Carol's help. I found a lot that I think I will like. That should help the pocketbook some. (To find them, check Amazon Popular Classics and Promos, and then sort by price. Be careful because not all are free.)

Maggie update

I finally finished all the stitching! Now I need to do the part I've dreaded, the backstitching. After reading the instructions, it's not as bad as I thought, but there's a lot of it. Hopefully the next update will show it completed!

My mom offered to get a piece framed for me, so I've decided to send Jill Rensel my TW Castle Sampler to get framed. I may also send The Awakening, my big HAED piece, and pay for that myself. I'm terrified of mailing them, but Jill does such great work at affordable prices that I just need to do it.

Good news: My husband passed the FE exam, which is a precursor to becoming a PE, a professional engineer (the rest includes working with a PE for five years and then taking the PE test). I am so proud of him.

Maggie the Messmaker update

According to my records, I didn't work on this piece at all in 2010, even though it was one of my goals. Time just got away from me, I guess. I put this one back to work after my last exchange piece was done and after I ran out of floss for Victoria Sampler's gingerbread house (I now have the floss, but I think I'll keep working on Maggie for now). I've made pretty good progress on it, and I may actually finish the cross stitching this month. I'm dreading the backstitching because it's a Dimensions Gold kit and has very complicated instructions. And they say Teresa Wentzler pieces are tough! I'd prefer that any day.

Diet: My weight loss stopped completely after our vacation last summer. I went back on the carbs, and they were my downfall, even with Lap-Band surgery. And for those who don't know, you still have to diet with the Lap-Band. It's supposed to take care of the hunger, but it's not working for me right now. I need to go in this month and get the band tightened.

The potty-training saga: We were so frustrated with Logan's lack of interest in potty training. We tried M&Ms as a reward. Nope. Then we tried giving him a car when he pooped in the potty. Bingo! It took him about two weeks to figure it out. Now he's wearing underwear and going to the potty by himself. Heaven! He still has occasional accidents and has to wear pull-ups at night, but we're so happy that light switch finally turned on. Now we're trying to ween him from getting cars every day....