Long Live the Road Warrior!!!

Ready... Set... GO!

After work yesterday marked the beginning of my summer roadtrippin'!!! My poor little car, car, I hope its ready for a little abuse (good little car, car!). For me summer is a huge season to get out and about to visit my friends! Did I mention... stitching friends, that is a requirement by the way, to be my friend is you must stitch. I am happy to teach you!!! You can ask Christin and Claire they have been properly converted.

Sadly, poor Todd is being left alone at home this season. Silly, silly man isn't taking any summer holidays so instead of staying home to spend an evening with him where he'll fall asleep on the couch and I'll stitch I'm hitting the road!

This weekend : its a visit with Kathy on the shores of Lake Ontario! I'm looking forward to hearing the gentle lapping of the waves on the shore when I go to sleep at night. I know some of my other Brighton stitching friends will be popping by as well. So look for pictures Monday-ish of this adventure.

Next weekend : its the Holstien Rodeo with Ann & Dan!

The weekend after : Stitching weekend in Kingston!

The following weekend : I'm flying to Jacksonville, Fla. to check in on my best friend Claire

This brings us up to August 2nd when I return from Jacksonville. My Mum and I have talked about a few nights in Montreal the following week while I'm still on holidays. Nothing is decided at this point, we'll see how I'm feeling after all that mileage!

Happy Birthday Canada!

Here's a montage of pictures I've taken over the years that clearly represent Canada (well at least in my mind they do!)

Yo yo, Results, July Goals & PhotoHunt oh MY!

Yup I'm officially re-naming myself from TKDchick to Yo yo. Back up again at the scales... up one pound. Am I surprised, not really. Last week was incredibly chaotic for me, my days were all over the place, I didn't take a lunch three days in a row, I worked until 5:30 one night (I finish work at 3:30), then went in for 7am the next day, thus my stress level was up, my organization & planning went out the window. I packed chaotic lunches, I can assure it it wasn't balanced, it was more like throwing already packaged things in my lunch bag... yogurt, granola bars, apples, microwave popcorn, etc. Then there was end of year treats around, with my stress level being up, my resistance was down. One night I had a DQ Blizzard for dinner, the next day I had a cinnamon bun for breakfast (oh if they hadn't had those on the table I would of been okay), then another one for lunch. Then there was a small shared popcorn at the movies. So, as you can see it was all my own fault. But this is the start of a new week and I can focus on organization and better choices.

Today I had my appointment with the Internalist who sent me for cardiac testing about a month ago now. My testing has come back clean, so there are no concerns over my heart (remember my fainting episode?). He did receive a letter from my allergist and between the three of us we agreed to treat this as Exercise Induced Anaphalaxis.

Now onto the fun stuff!!! Stitching and goals! I had a little time with Todd's Stocking this afternoon... before another nap! This evening after Taekwon-Do I pulled out Art Deco Spirits. At the moment its white on white... oh yay!

June Goal - Recap

Finish Blackstone Fantasy Garden - Yeah baby!

Stitch Two Ornaments - Yuppers!

Work on Todd's Stocking - Yes, aren't I a good girl?

Work on Art Deco Spirits - For sure!

Not on the goal list, but I also pulled out Tour des Marques, and worked on it twice!

July Goals

Stitch Two Ornaments

Work on Todd's Stocking

Work on Art Deco Spirits

Work on Tour des Marques

Tomorrow is Canada Day! The forecast is kinda crappy so I suppose I'll be stitching, and if it does turn into a nice day I'll stitch on the deck at the cottage instead.

Finally another PhotoHunt to amuse you with. PhotoHunt #152 "Space"

This was a simple choice, one of my photos of the shuttle launch this past March. One of the most exhilarating experiences in my life!

An Evening With Tour & PhotoHunting

I really should of gone to TKD tonight, but when I got home this afternoon I laid down for a nap. I pretty much passed out for about four hours! I did get up in time to go to class, but Todd saw how groggy I was and suggested I take a rest night. I'll go to TKD tomorrow!

So I spent my evening with Tour des Marques instead! I don't know if you can see progress from my last post, but it did get a few hours attention tonight.

Now for some more PhotoHunting! Here's PhotoHunt #151 "Thankful"

I'm tankful for Mother Nature and her paintbrush! Giving me such fantastic scenes and colours to photograph!

Santa's Got a Brand New Bag

I might not of stitched much yesterday, but I did get to stitch today!

Todd was out of the house fishing today (I am a fishing widow on a regular basis), so it was a good chance to make progress on his Christmas Stocking. As you can see... Santa has his bag!

When Todd was around I worked on Art Deco Spirits, I'm still enjoying this piece.

Today I started the finishing on Flip Flops, but I don't have enough fabric for what I have in mind. So it'll be back to the quilt shop in the near future. I've got scraps of what I'd like to match tucked into my purse. Since I couldn't get that project wrapped up I did the finishing and put cord on my two ornaments from this month.

I think tomorrow when Todd's home I'll work on Tour des Marques.

PhotoHunt #150 "Warm"

I've not stitched much since my last post. I definitely did not stitch on Friday night, I pretty much crashed after a long week at work, one late day, one early day and three days of no lunch break! Today I met Christin at the movies to see the new Transformers movie (not bad), on my trip home I detoured by the gym, worked out, then took a nap during the early evening (I'm still tired from my week). I hope to shortly have a cup of tea and settle in to work on Art Deco Spirits this evening.

Since there's no stitching of worth to share with you here's a PhotoHunt instead.

PhotoHunt #150 "Warm"

There's nothing that says warm and cozy more than a wood stove in winter! This is Ann's wood stove which glows merrily all winter long!

Look Who Came Out of Hiding!

I have been stitching in fits and spurts this week... between coming home from the gym or going to Taekwon-Do (which I am proud to say I made it there three times again this week!).

Last night a project I started in 2006 ... really 2006??? It seems I also haven't worked on this piece since April of 2008. Really??? Well it came out of its little mesh bag and got worked on last night for a few hours.

Yes, folks Tour des Marques from The Silver Lining, stitched over one on 28ct. It really is a beautiful piece. I think I might alternate this piece with Art Deco Spirits when Todd is around.

The Prodigal Round Robin Returns

Well actually the round robin returned the weekend I met up with my stitching buds in Kingston, two weekends ago. I was kinda holding onto the picture of it for a blog entry when I didn't have a lot of progress on my own projects to show. I did work a bit more on Todd's Stocking between several naps on Sunday. So there's not as much progress to share as I hoped, we'll save a progress picture on that for another day. Since Todd and I had an evening at home last night I was able to work on Mirabilia's Art Deco Spirits. Boy, what a lovely piece, I'll save progress on that for another day too.

Without further ado, here's my Neighbourhood Round Robin complete, and home to stay! Once the official round robin was over I passed it onto my good friends Kathy and Beatrice to fill in the last two spaces. I just LOVE how this turned out! Thank you to everyone for working on it! Its truly a unique neighbourhood.

Onto some more good news! The SCALE was kind again!!! I've lost another pound this week. Which means all the bad I did at the beginning of June has been fixed. The 2.5lbs I put on during the first two weeks have been eradicated. Fingers crossed my body has shifted back to loosing and I'll be able to shed my LAST 8 POUNDS.

Some even more good news, well at Taekwon-Do tonight, I unofficially ended up teaching the class. I started out doing the warm-up when the instructor for the night wanted to work one on one with a WTF TKD student trying out ITF TKD. So he asked me to take over the class. Its amazing how rusty skills just kicked back in. I led the class in patterns, reviewed the 9 (sometimes 8) training secrets, and critiqued some patterns. It felt good to be at the front of the class again.

Final item on the good news agenda, well good news for me. After e-mailing back and forth with Claire's Mom and phone call/cry from Claire... it was so good to hear from Claire. It's been decided and its booked. I'll be going back down to Jacksonville, Florida July 24-Aug 2nd to give my best friend the biggest hug ever. I feel so much better knowing that I'm going down to see her in a few weeks. So strange, this March was my first trip to Florida ever, and here I am going back within the same year. But I need to see Claire.