Viva Mexico!

Happy Monday to All!
Some of you may have wondered where I have been hiding the last few days? No posts and no comments on any of your goodies... Well, I do have a perfectly reasonable excuse; DH and I sneaked off to Mexico for a week. We got back in town yesterday night, the laundry is done, the pets have been cuddled with, and it's back to work tomorrow. All is good.

I did finally receive my iPad2 a day before we left and thought in my naivety that internet would now be set for the week in Mexico - finally, I would be able to catch up on my blog reading (I think that I am 2 weeks behind now and I have a feeling that I may never catch up!). Not so much... The iPad-net works great at home, but DH explained to me that it's because he set it up to work here. So that is great, but still not parade.... You know what I am saying, right?
Today, he added Netflix so that I can watch movies and stuff, which is cool, but the more suspicious part of me feels that this may be DH's strategy to keep me off the TV now when the football and basket ball seasons are starting back up again (at least I believe that they are, hmmm?)
Anyway, here is a photo of the "cool toy" and some of the fabric that I grabbed off Etsy so that I can finish my Hidden Nine Patch runner some day. I am thinking that I will try to use the newspaper print as the border and the green flower prints for the backing.

I hope that I will have time to write more about Mexico later this week, but in the meantime, here are some pics showing the stitching that got done on the plane rides/while slouching by the pool.
I did pack a huge bag of kits. (As in "a hugely optimistic bag" - funny, I am generally so realistic that some claim that I am a pessimist. They ought to see my stitch-n-go bags... no pessimism there, I promise!)
The bag (this is not even all of it - one kit was too large to get into the bag...):

Here is a quickly finished Wobble Gobble by Bent Creek (this is a pretty big piece, since it is stitched on a low count linen with perle cotton):

A patriotic design, also by Bent Creek (Patriotic Coins, I think it's called. Note how I ran out of the border color? I hate when that happens - just 20 more stitches and it would have been a "finish" rather than a WIP... aaargh!);

The one that didn't get quite finished was Bountiful by Trilogy. It showed up that the colors used for the turkey's body and his head were pretty much almost exactly the same in my kit. That was a big turn-off and I was not real keen on whipping him out after that. I will root through the over-dyed floss box here at home and see if I can find some better colors, so that there is a bit of contrast between his body parts (white and dark meat, you know...). This one should finish up in no time too, theoretically. There really is less left to do than it looks. And I do have about one year left until he will go on display too...

Another very fun and creative exercise, that DH and I did together during this trip, was pottery paining. A lady had a well-packed booth down on the beach which contained all kinds of unpainted pottery. You get to pick whatever piece you would like to decorate (she has vases, plates, ash-trays, piggy-banks in all shapes, candle holders, flower pots - you name it!), sit down at a table with probably 20 different paint colors, paint-brushes, water, and wipe cloths. Then, paint your little heart out! The designs have already been outlined on the pottery, so that you can simply fill in the fields. She has a bunch of finished pottery too, that you can draw inspiration from. After you are finished, she adds the finishing touches and fixes any messes, so in the end everything looks amazing! After that, she lacquers and dries the pieces and they are ready to pick up the next day. We had so much fun and look how cool the pieces ended up being:

Let me be rather obnoxious and brag a bit here - the only details that she added on my turtle were the black rings around his eyes and the blue lines on the bottom of his shell. I spent a good 2-3 hrs on him and I had decided not to leave until I was satisfied, so I was happy when it came back pretty much in the same state as I turned him in (yes, I know that I sound smug, but keep in mind that I burned my back while working on him - oh, the pain of the creative process! LOL)! I had so much fun and so did DH and it was great to do something like this together. He was much more clever that I was and painted the inside of his piece yellow. It looks really warm and pretty when there is a burning candle in it! (We tried them out the same night that we came home...) My dark-blue inside swallows all the light up and makes the turtle look like a dark blob sitting on the coffee table. Lesson learned!

Before skipping off to bed, let me show you the three awesome non-stash finds I happened about on this trip. I love all of them!
My silver earrings (they are HUGE!) in the shape of magnolias, I think. They are a gorgeous design by a local artist. Sorry about the fuzzy pic.

The monarch butterfly scarf was purchased on the Cozumel airport on the way home. I almost fell over backwards when I spotted it! A few months ago, I saw someone on TV wearing this scarf and I found it breathtaking. I searched on-line like a desperate person but had to give up after many fruitless hours of scrolling through irrelevant photos and trying out any potential key word that I could come up with. I even e-mailed one of those women's fashion magazine columns where they tell you where stars get their stuff, but my subscription ran out, so I don't even know if I ever got an answer. Here we are sitting at Cozumel's tiny airport, we have 2 hrs to kill before the plane leaves, and I see the very same scarf!!! I love it.

My absolute favorite find - a sugar skull purse from Loungefly. I already have some very ambitions (and probably not so realistic) plans to stitch up a matching sugar skull fob, just for fun. (Here is another cool one and a "cranky Bubba" fob here.)

Once I came home, I confirmed that the purchases were not financial finds as much as "lucky to find" items. The bag is already sold out on-line (I searched a bit to compare prices - did I get taken for a ride or not? LOL), the scarf was pretty much identical to what it would have been here in the US assuming that shipping would be ~$10, and the silver earrings may have been a slight bit cheaper in Mexico than here, but not by a lot. I am happy with all of them and can't wait to "grow up" so that I can be a lady that wears silk scarfs... :-)

Finally, here is a picture showing Bubba and Princess. They are still very weary of each other and we don't let them close to each other without supervision. Look how huge Princess is! She gained probably 50% in weight and it shows. She is a big girl now. Still cute and active as ever, but she does not fir in anyone's hand anymore. Henny is pleased - back to being the smallest body with the biggest personality!

I'll leave you for tonight with a photo showing a stunning sunset on the Eastern side of Cozumel on Friday night. Note the tiny light-house in the middle of the photo!

Take care, Happy Stitching and I promise to come by and visit your blogs soon!

Another One Bites the Dust

A quick happy post before I get started on finishing up the next project in line.  Here it is; the Quaker Sampler Pocket from Goode Huswife in all it's brown and tan glory.  Check!  :-)

Note my matching nail-polish...  It is that new (?) "gel" stuff that is dried through UV light curing and it's the first time I try it.  It is supposed to last for 2-3 weeks and so far I am impressed.  Today was the big weekly bird-cage wash and living room clean-up.  If it can stand that test, it can get through anything.
Since I am on my "go bold and don't be scared of color" kick, I picked this deep brown-red color, something that I have never been brave enough to try before.  I was contemplating the choice for a long time; I have a vendor meeting on Tuesday with a Japanese group and I wasn't sure if this is real appropriate in an engineering meeting.  Now it kinda' has to be...
Of course DH told me that he wasn't crazy about this color pick.  Oh well, he'll have to deal with it for a few more weeks.

Tomorrow evening, June-bug and I are going to get pampered in the massage parlor.  It is the second time I go to get a massage.  The first time I got a professional massage was when DH and I went on our very belated "Honey moon" (after being married for 6 years...) to Cancun in Mexico.  Let me tell you, if you want a great time in Cancun, no masses of people to fight over food, drinks, and space with, go over Thanksgiving - it was great!  Anyway, we were getting this romantic massage out on a deck right by the ocean.  We were lying next to each other and you could hear the ocean waves, smell the saltiness of the air, and feel the warmth from the sun and the cool of the sea breeze.  After about half an hour we were commanded to flip over from lying on our stomachs to lying on our backs.  Well, the lady that took care of me didn't pay attention to the fact that the sea breeze had picked up and so my towel blew off me.  I was totally flashing the rest of the beach!  I told DH afterward, whereon he responds: "Oh, that's why all those persons were standing on the balconies looking down at us".  That man truly knows how to make a girl feel...  um.. well... special... 
By the way, it always cracks me up when they ask if you want a "deep-tissue" or a "Swedish" massage.  The latter one sounds a bit kinky and I say that being a Swede... 

Well, off to the next project!
Happy Stitching and talk with you in a bit!