Excuses, excuses.... (and TUSAL update)

Hi Everyone!  Thanks so much for all your comments on my posts.  I forget to thank you way too often, but I just wanted to let you know that I really enjoy hearing from you!

I have nothing real stitchy to show, even though I am dutifully stitching on the Richmond sampler, one over-one letter at the time.  I have a feeling that I will run out of floss for the letters here soon, so that will give me a break...
I have stitched up more than 50% of the Lucet piece.  I may still tweak the personalized pocket a bit, but I see the light at the end of the tunnel for this one!  One more over-one carnation and then the finishing party will begin!

I also have to confess that I pulled this vintage Fremme kit out and was just about to find the center of the linen, when a nap caught me square in the eye.  Saved by the bell!  Maybe some other day...

The Memorial Day weekend was great.  I took Friday off from work to spend time with my feather-rats and clean up the house.  We had people over for a BBQ on Saturday, so the house needed to be spotless.  Yep, a BBQ is generally located in the back yard, but I can't very well forbid people from using the wash-room, which means that the entire house needed a big wipe down...  We had a grand time and the house still looks clean, so that is nice!
It is so much fun to see that the birds get very eager to take baths when we are in the cleaning mode.  Here are Pixie and Henny taking turns in their water dish:

 

On Sunday, DH and I took a trip over to IKEA.  The reason why was this mess (I know that I have showed it to you before.  Trust me, I do organize everything between shots, but the war against the stash is something that I seem to be loosing...):

So this is what was done:
1)  Assemble

2)  Move around (You should have seen our expressions when we realized that the assembled cabinets may not fit around the corners or in through the stitch-room door!)

3)  Sort, stash, step back and admire - Voila!

 

Note my TUSAL jar that has now been hidden on top of one of the new cabinets.  The reason why is that someone found out that it is a lot of fun to munch on the label.  (I am pretty sure that it was 

Rusty, but he just looks at me with big eyes when I ask him....) 

Good that we got organized too, since I got some really cool stash in the mail:

Did you know that Kari Meng of French General makes jewellery kits as well as publish books, designs fabrics, and quilts?  I had no idea, but once I found out, I had to get some kits to try out.  I'll let you know how they turn out (I am completely new to this craft, so no high expectations, please.  ;-))  I had a lot of fun browsing the web-site!  The only thing that seems a bit odd is that the kits don't come with a photo of a model or something.  I had to print out the very tiny pics posted on Kari's web-site.

Well, I am trying to be good with getting to bed in a reasonable hour.  Plus Anne Maria is calling my name - have to spend some time with her and a nice cup of tea!

Have a great evening & Happy Stitching!