Might Make It By Halloween!

 STITCHING UPDATE

It is the 10th and I am rapidly approaching the finish of the Halloween Cubes by Primitive Hare.  H-A-L-L-O-W are all complete and I started on the first E last night.  It is moving along very quickly.  I'm finding it kind of funny how when I'm stitching some of the letters they are relating to things in my life.  This "E" I'm working on right now has an owl in it.  Funny that the night before I started stitching it two owls came to sit in the trees out back and hooted all evening long.  The face in the tree on the letter "A".....

Well I have a tree that has a face as well.  Stares at you whenever you are on the front porch.  I've been thinking about painting parts of the eyes with glow in the dark paint to freak out the trick or treaters.

I'm currently thinking about how I'm going to finish these letters and have a couple few ideas in mind.  Decisions, decisions.

My bestie, Harriet had a picture of a design she was trying to find the designer or design name for as she is interested in stitching it.  She knows me well as I love the hunt for those things we can't find.  As it happens, I knew that I recognized the style but could not think of the designer right away.  It was such a coincidence that a WIP that I haven't picked up in awhile has been on my mind the past several days.  Guess what?  Yep, same designer. 

Day 38 - 2 hrs 40 min 

Thanks to Harriet's inquiry I am going to pull out Peacock by Courtney Collection and my hope is to finish it this year.  

Back in 2010 I posted about how many friends/family often ask me how long it takes to stitch a particular project and I can only give them a general a couple days for this, a week for that, 3 months for this.  I've never been one to keep track of how much actual time stitching is in a project.  This is the project I decided to keep an actual log of actual time stitching on a project.  Each and every time I work on this project at the end of stitching for that session I snap a photo and enter the Day Number and amount of stitching time for this photo.  You will notice this photo is Day 38 and I stitched 2 hours and 40 minutes that day.

To date I have worked on this project on 38 different days for a total of 56 1/2 hours of actual stitching time.  It will be fun to have a truly accurate number to give this time.  However, this will be the project that no one will ask the question - LOL!

PLANNED PARENTHOOD BOOK SALE

Today I popped into our local Planned Parenthood book sale and scored some patterns to add to my stash.  There are 2 from Told in a Garden and 1 from Lavender and Lace.  Each cost me 75 cents which was a total bargain.  It looked like someone had donated their entire collection of Told in a Garden and Lavender and Lace as there were about 20 patterns there.

At same book sale I scored 2 books on my wish list to read.

I also picked up a couple of fun recipe card books for the holidays.  The Nestle ones have some ideas for "In a Jar" gifts.  

READING

I did finish Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn.  I was a good read but I knew where it was heading very early in the book.  Still as I didn't know all the details of the how it was still a good read for me.

I Race.....

RACE FOR CURE

I race...in memory of my mom who was the bravest, strongest woman I've ever known.

I race...in honor of mom's best friend (Betty) who is a 30+ year survivor.

I race...in hopes that a cure will be found so this race will no longer be necessary.

Yesterday was the annual Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure held in Des Moines.  It was a chilly downright cold morning with a temperature of 29 degrees with windchill.  So much for moving it ahead a couple of weeks to hopefully have warmer weather.  Thankfully the sun was shining brightly instead of the foggy damp weather we had been experiencing.  

This is a cause I am passionate about.  I have been participating in the fundraising portion of this race for 14 years (right after mom's first diagnosis with breast cancer) but this was my 6th year walking it.  I started walking this race when my mom was re-diagnosed with breast cancer.  Sadly she lost her battle just 8 months later.  There is not a day that goes by that I don't miss my mom's wisdom,  sense of humor and her ability take you worst day and have you laughing about it by the end of the conversation.  Oh the laughs we have had together!

As it happens, mom and I had lots of conversations during those last 8 months and during one such conversation I promised mom I would continue my endeavors to live a healthier lifestyle.  I even went to far as to tell her I would be running this race one day for her.  To this day I'm not sure what I was thinking when I uttered those words.

I really had no intention for that day to be yesterday.  I had not been training to run at all.  Just doing my usual walking and classes at the Y.  Okay so I found it easier to jog the hills on the trails in the park but would not classify it in any way as training.  It just seems like the stars had aligned for it to be yesterday.  

When we lined up to start, it ended up when they closed the gap between walkers and runners before the starting gun I was in those 2 rows where walkers and runners are shoulder to shoulder.   Well when the gun went off I thought why not see how far I could go totally expecting to go no farther than the first block down the hill.  Imagine my surprise to be all the way to the bottom of the hill and around the corner and still running.  It gave me the encouragement to keep running and managed to run all the way to the halfway point which is where my brother and sister-in-law were providing security (local Harley group provides security along the entire route).  Stopped for my hugs, encouragement and photo with my brother and off I went again still running.  

After making the next turn into the 20 mph winds I ended up alternating walking/running as running into the winds made it hard to breathe.  By the time we reach the last 1/2 mile everyone was walking as we met up with 1 mile walkers and it was just curb to curb people and no way to run through the crowd.  Not to mention the band at the corner many people were stopping at to dance and sing clogging up the street.

I know I did not run the entire 5K but there are some promises that don't have to be kept to the nth degree.    Mom would have considered this a done deal and promise kept as I ran most of the race.

STITCHING

I am continuing to make excellent progress on Halloween Cubes by Primitive Hare.  I am currently on the Letter O and expect to see a finish on it today and a start on W.  It is going to be tight getting them done for display this year but all other stitching projects have been set aside in hopes I will get there sooner than later.

READING

I have also set all other reading aside except for my recent start of Gone Girl by by Gillian Flynn.  I know the movie is set to be released this week and we have date night on Friday night and suspect this will be the movie my husband wants to see.  I want to have the book finished before then.  This also will be a small miracle considering how busy my week is this week.

GRASS IS GROWING

Remember this from 2 weeks ago where we were leveling up the yard and reseeding?

This is what it looks like today.  I am amazed at how quickly it has filled in over the past week.