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Happy Monday (I have 2 hrs left here...) too all blog-peeps out there!  I hope that you had a great weekend and that you had to clean a lesser amount of bird-cages that I did.  DH is out on business travels again, so I spent a long Sunday cleaning the house.  It was actually quite enjoyable and all the critters have had fun scrapping everything down while I was away at work today.  The state of our house strives towards entropy much faster than it does in the rest of the universe, I have noticed.  Well, enough with the cleaning monologue and the nerdy science jokes...

I almost fell off the couch today when I saw that I have 99 followers.  I am so glad and so humbled that 99 people have signed up to follow this adventure.  I truly appreciate it more than I can express.  

So.... I really should sit down and think about a fun give-away.  I will see what I can come up with.

I did also get my first ever blog award - I am thrilled!  Heather, from It's Geek To Me, e-mailed to let me know that she has given me the Liebster Blog Award!  Thanks so much Heather, this will be fun!

So now I have to do the following (shamelessly copying the fine-print directly from Heather's blog here):

"Liebster is a German word meaning favourite, dearest or beloved. The Liebster is awarded by bloggers to other new bloggers who have fewer than 200 followers, to help spread the word about their blogs and to help them gain wider recognition.

The Liebster award comes with four conditions that each recipient must satisfy when accepting.

1. Choose 5 up-and-coming blogs with less than 200 followers to award the Liebster to

2. Show your thanks to the blogger who gave you the award by linking back to them.

3. Post the award on your blog. List the bloggers you are giving the award to with links to their sites. Leave comments on their blog so they know about the award.

4. Share 5 random facts about yourself that people don't know about you.

So, here are 5 of my Fave-Under-200 blogs (Hmm, should I have checked that they will accept the award first maybe?  Dunno, I am new to this.  Well, I'll take the chance!)

Here they are, in no specific order:
-  Stitching with Kittens!  The blog title says it all!  LOL  She has stitched plenty of fabulous pieces - I can only dream to get pieces on this level of advancement accomplished one day.
-  Diane at Nan's Needlework Notions.  Diane is so talented - her finishes are absolutely perfect, not to mention that she has a knack for picking out the cutest designs.  Right now, she is showing off some Easter decorations that are to die for!  Nan is also the host of The All Year Long Christmas Stitch-A-Long.
-  Ruth of The Musing Badger.  Stitching and reading - can't get much better!  She is participating in the Pratchett Reading Challenge 2012 and check out her gorgeous Beatrix Potter - love those colors!
-  Marsha of Everybody Loved Clark.  She just came back from a trip to Arizona that looks fantastic AND she got to visit the Attic - lucky girl!  Absolutely beautiful stitching is not the only craft Marsha does, but she makes soaps too.  And she loves bees, which is why I usually refer to her as Bzz*Bzz*Bee...
-  Blue Star Stitcher shares photos of the neighbor wildlife (including love-birds!) and she has a huge heart that she opens for needlework that need an adoptive home.  Do you ever think about what will happen with your stash and finishes in the future?  We can only hope that there are more people like Blue Star out there.

Well, the next one is trickier.  5 random facts coming up:
1)  I love hot-dogs with mustard!  I don't really eat them especially often, but I love'em!
2)  I "almost" became a LNS owner a few years back.  My friend Pink tried to talk me into buying a store that was closing down with her.  Luckily, we decided not to and then the economy tanked, but it was a fun dream.
3)  I love opera - I wish I could sing like that.  When I was in high-school, I used to sing the aria of the Queen of the Night in the stair-wells while running between classes.  I was not half-bad... htne I became an engineer (read between the lines here).
4)  My dream house is a southern Victorian wood house with painted details, wood-work like an ice-cream cake, and a wrap-around porch.
5)   I miss the ocean pretty much daily!

So, I finally decided to start on a new "official" project and pulled the Shepherd and Shepherdess miniatures out of the stash.  I started with the tricky shepherd and his chubby dog - pony... ? .. you tell me!  The stitching is a bit slow, since it is over-one on a fairly larger count linen, but is does look sweet.  Not looking forward to the large, green hill though.  The chart is a bit tricky to read.  It is hand-drawn and the green and red in the honeysuckle border are a "V" and an up-side-down "V" respectively.  I am not a fan of ripping over-one... LOL I got a bit stitched, but then it got put away in a corner, so that I could spend some time on the EMS sampler before the April part would be published.

I did manage to get part 3 done; the left-hand side of the basket and the blue flower sprig were the assignments for last month.  Since this pic, I have down-loaded part 4 and the fun continues!

 

The is ending up much smaller than I had envisioned.  (I would recommend actually stitching this on a larger count, if you decide to work on this piece.)  It is petite, not a whole lot longer than 12 inches, but I love it!  Check out the crazy amount of colors that go into this beauty.  Piles and piles of DMC.  Luckily, I am stitching with one strand, so it is not too bad.  Yesterday I managed to finish the pretty little brown bird in the upper right corner and the upper flower border is finally done.  That little bird is too pretty!

Next part will be the one with the mushroom.  I am trying to come up with something else to stitch instead.  I mean, I like mushrooms and all, but maybe not in this sampler.  I think that I did find a nice butterfly that can come and live here instead.  any other suggestions would be of great interest too!

Since I am hopelessly behind in my photography, I can only show you this pic of the "half-baked" CRC carrot ornies.  I can report that all 12 motifs from the three booklets have been successfully stitched up and they are eagerly awaiting the finishing party.  There really are no excuses..  I have all the mat-board parts needed, I picked out my backing fabric..  I am still contemplating whether I should finish the edges with cording or with beads.  And am I efficient enough (read "lazy") to use the glue-gun instead of sewing each ornie together?  Plus, I do need to pick out a suitable ribbon somewhere.... decisions, decisions.  I am excited about adding all the beads and bling, though!  I guess that will be my carrot!  (Bad pun alert - heheheh.)

 

(Note how cheap I am with my linen - each precut from Silverneedle was meant for one ornament.  In other words, I have enough pieces to stitch each ornament at least one more time.  Maybe next year.. :-))

Here is an example of adventures waiting to happen when you live with a bunch of shredders.  This poor blue bird doesn't even know what hit it, while peacefully sitting on its nest.  The card-board, linen, floss, and the glass-beads (!) have all been eaten up by one or two of my little angles.  My reactions are surprising even to myself sometimes - I could tell that DH was so sorry when he fished it up from behind the couch and showed it to me, but I just shrugged and started thinking about possible way to salvage the piece.  Luckily, I generally enjoy the process of stitching and making more than decorating and displaying, if that makes sense.  Anyway, I am thinking about making one of those pretty little pin-pillows that are so in right now - you know the ones that have a piece of cotton sewn onto the linen on the front (yep, I know that my description totally blows, so check out these examples on Karen's Handiwork blog instead.)

 

I am very pleased to report that no angel has showed any sign of tummy aches after the disappearance of the glass-beads.

The spring bulbs are almost bloomed out in my garden now.  This pretty pink double-petaled tulip enjoys the mild spring, together with some neighboring fuchsia single-petals.

I managed to get all the pansies and the violets in the ground too.  the ones in the pots look fine, but the plants that I sat in the ground don't look pleased at all.  Life if tough, little violets!

Spring is in full swing indoors too.  The birds are getting anxious about building nests and they have started to court each other.  They strut about, fluff their neck feathers and bob back and forth - all to impress each other; scaring away the competition while impressing the potential partner across the room.  I know that they aim to look super cool and majestic, but mummy just laughs and thinks that they are the cutest little down-balls ever.  Mothers!  So they are absolutely adorable, but a great deal less easy to handle.  They get very territorial and aggressive during this time, so I have grown a good collection of bite-marks on my right index finger during the past couple of weeks.

Here they are - guarding their club house with talons and beaks... and dirty looks.

Well, it is bed-time yet again.  I will try to round up Bubba so that we all can go to bed.  (That sounds easier than it is - it generally takes flipping over both couches in the living room upside down while trying to herd her towards her room.  Well, I'd better stop talking about it and actually start doing it.)
Have a great week and Happy Stitching,