sailing along...

A little more progress on my Sail Away SAL piece....



still need to put some initials and the heart charm in that flower wreath, but will save that for last.

Also finished up my Finch Song....



which was a joy to stitch!










On a non-stitchy note, we had a little, well, big actually, health scare with my hubby, but after visiting the cardiologist and then the family physician today, we got news that it wasn't anything serious. Still have some blood work results to look at, but so far, so good! Hubby's health is always an issue around here, guess when you have heart problems, that's to be expected, but sometimes even small things get magnified out of fear it could be something serious. At least now he goes in when I force the subject. Back in the 80's when he was sick with his thyroid (to the point of being hospitalized), I'd told him then, for months before the hospital trip, that something was seriously wrong. I just knew it! He wouldn't go. Turns out he had Graves disease, with all sorts of complications, you can't imagine. Then again in '97 when he had the heart attack, he didn't listen again and wouldn't go to the doctor, kept saying it was just indigestion, etc. Didn't go until three days later! The serious damage from that one he lives with EVERY DAY! But, ever since then, when I say "you're going", he doesn't argue! MEN! Gosh, it takes soooooo long to train them!

best time of the year...

There really is something about that first bit of crisp air we get here in Texas...where the big sky is the most perfect shade of blue than any other time of year...that sets my heart all "a flutter". Aw, Fall. It's what gets me through the summer. In my entire life, it's always been my favorite time of the year. Always. Fall knows me like no other season...

"Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it,

and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth
seeking the successive autumns."
- George Eliot


Good things happen in the fall, like back in October of 1984 when my son was born...
and some traumatic things have happened as well, like the worst automobile wreck of my life in November of '97 and two weeks later, in December of that year (which usually still feels like Fall instead of Winter), my husband having a heart attack and almost dying...
but even as I was leaving the hospital to go home and tend to our children, walking to the (new-ish) car (the replacement for the totalled one, see above)...somehow I knew everything would be OK. Those leaves crunching under my feet promised me hope, I can't explain it, but there it is...

anyway, now it's almost 11 years since all that happened and we've been through a lot since that time too. We're all the better for it. Some people find hope and promise in Spring, but for us, our hearts are saved by Fall....


and some Fall and "Halloweenie" stitching to share...

(again, with the craptastic pics, wish I had my old camera back!) sorry for the bad pictures...

This one is Trick or Treat by Shepherd's Bush




and this one is Pumpkin Hill...




also by Shepherd's Bush



There are some other fall finishes to share, hope to get a decent picture to post here soon.

In the meantime....enjoy the season and all it brings into our lives...we're so lucky to live in a free country, where we aren't forced to be one way or the other and we are free and ABLE to vote where our hearts lead us, and free to enjoy the people and places and things that mean the most to us...and know that they love us and enjoy us in return...

Godspeed my friends...

my sweeties

kid collage
Originally uploaded by Deep Fried Cupcake

This picture is from a few Christmas' ago, and has been on my Flickr stream for a while now, but I wanted to post it here, just because.

The loves of my life.

Even though they're all grown up now, still my babies.

I'm so blessed.

glimpses into my vacation, or parts of the story, or how to save a life

First off, there were to be no elaborate meals during vacation, so we started off with grilled cheese and pickles,



and I stitched on this, which is Willow House from Blackbird Designs,



and then this got pulled out when I was organizing the stash...my first patchwork quilt that i never finished the binding on, so I was working on that too....



and then we sorta hit a "bump" in the road, a "miscommunication" of sorts on the part of certain medical professionals and are ending the week with these little "life savers":




Nothing like finding out how close to a MAJOR F up (and by F up, I mean, serious consequences) for a certain cupcake's husband either having A) a major stroke or B) heart failure and possibly dying...nothing ahem, trivial to send your vacation to a grinding halt.

It's all good. I am staying close by...had plans for the quilt store with the sale and picking up the newest Loose Feathers at the not so local stitch store...and some other things, but nope. Not budging one inch. Silly girl, tricks are for kids.

meant to be

Lesson learned today:

when things don't go the way you want, or plan them to, sometimes it's for a very good reason.

Like a life and death reason.

I will try and blog about this later when I can write it all out in a comprehensive way, but let's just say right now, never trust what a doctor or nurse tells you if you feel in your heart that what they say is "questionable". And even if you do, get it in writing. Because even though I asked my husband's nurse FOUR TIMES if a certain thing was OK for him, and she ASSURED me, verbally, every single time that it was, it turned out to be NOT OK. Caught in time? They say so, but all I'm doing is praying, not trusting what they say again for a long, long time.

Yep, I do believe in angels. And divine intervention. Cause my DH was at a doctor's office today, where the mistake was caught, instead of at the airport, waiting for a delayed flight to arrive with me on it.

Still counting those blessings.

counting them twice

Finally able to get some pictures, although fourteen hundred skeeter bites were acquired in the process! All of this rain has not helped in keeping the mosquito population down.

Anyway...here's My Quaker Garden, by Blackbird Designs:

(all pictures are clickable for a larger image)




I was so happy that the frame for this was reasonable, after so many expensive choices I've made this year on other framed items. The molding is from Honeywood (not sure of the spelling), there were a lot to choose from, but I'm happy with this one.

A few months ago I sent a pile of stitched things to my friend Tobie, as she's been helping me finish things into pillows, etc. Well, imagine my surprise when, things I was expecting to pay her for, showed up in my mailbox with a sweet birthday card...she'd done the finishing as a present to me!!

She made this wonderful tuck pillow out of denim for my CHS "Land That I Love". It was hard to get a good shot and this one really shows that I need to press it better. It also doesn't show the wonderful cord hanger with bead accents that she made.



And this one she made for my Bent Creek's "Wahoo, Life is Good"....isn't the fabric perfect for it? I need to straighten the stitched piece up some as it's pretty crooked in this shot.



This one is a pillow and has a very pretty bow on the upper left hand corner but out of several shots I took of it, none of them show the bow! Dang it. The skeeter bites were starting to itch though so I had to hightail it inside, bow or not.



Tobie, thank you again! I love it all!

Today is a little (well, a lot to be honest) sad for me as I should be in New Jersey on the beach, visiting with friends from the ME group, but due some health issues (with me and my DH), I decided it was better to stay home. I'd already purchased the plane ticket and gotten other things for the trip, and really did want to go, so it surely wasn't an easy choice to make. I'd sorta like to cry again over the whole ordeal, but instead decided to just count my blessings.

Like this one:



A puppy who loves me so much my heart swells with joy. Not to mention my family, my good friends...being surrounded by people I love and things that make me happy like my stitching. Oh, and the fabric...let's not forget about that. There's a quilt store that's going out of business...you won't believe the amount of beautiful fabric that I got for half off! AND, my nearest quilt store, Suzy's, here in Garland, is having a sale this coming week...they have a lighted transfer thing that I need for another new hobby of mine (well, not new, but something I'm going back to doing), embroidery. I have Jenny Hart's book and lots of projects and ideas lined up.

Have a few days off from work coming up, that were originally scheduled for my trip, so I'm going ahead and taking them. Hope to use those days to organize my stash some and hang some samplers that have been needing a spot on the wall for months. Other than that, just stitching, quilting, and embroidering. Maybe some baking. Yes, anything under 90 degress this time of year is downright cool to me.

the longest week, ever

That's how this past week as felt to me.

Last Tuesday a co-worker was killed in an accident. There's a small article on what happened here.

I worked with Steve almost every night at my job and you just don't think about how much a fellow worker is a part of your life until they are gone.
Steve was the life of our workplace.
He would do anything for anyone at anytime, and that is no exaggeration.
If you said "Steve, I need you to give me the shirt off of your back", he would do it and not even ask why you needed it.
He was very knowledgeable about many different things and if a question would come up about something, the inevitable phrase you'd hear would be "Ask Steve".
We all would try and stump him with trivia questions, not an easy task, ha.
He loved to fish and hunt but he was a "catch and release" kind of guy and would not kill something just for sport.
He was a big fan of my baking and made it a joy to make something to take to work. He loved life, his family and his job.
I have determined in my heart to be more like him and do so in his memory.

So...on the stitching front, this is all I have finished lately:



It's a gift for a friend but is waiting for final finishing before I can send it to her. Meanwhile I am working on the newest Loose Feathers called "Their Song" and a Scarlet Letter sampler, "And All for an Appil" and of course, the Village. Hope to update here soon with more pictures.

Be safe.

we are tired

This puppy business is exhausting.


need. more. sleep.



#1 son with Astro


Kiss this face.


Love this pup.


Astro came home Saturday and it's been JUST like having a brand new baby at home. I am utterly exhausted. But what a great doggie, so worth it. And I will share more when I have more time. There are presents to wrap, more shopping to do, more cracker candy and sugared pecans to make, baking, candy making, leaves to rake or sweep up, floors to be cleaned, laundry, oh and a real job, the peeps, pups and bunny rabbits and OHMY....better get crackin!

must. keep. stitching.

The power went out last night. It was kinda nice at first, after the initial shock of it all, because we had about 20 candles going (we do have a thing for the Yankee Candle store and that was proof...DH opens linen closet where candles not in use are stashed and said "What you need here are a few more candles". He's got NO room to talk since he bought half of them himself....ANYway)....grown children emerged from their rooms waving PS handheld and cell phones, iPods too, showing that they too, can contribute to the lighting situation. However. It was not enough light to stitch by! Dang. My good stitching days are limited and yesterday was one of them, does Garland Power & Light not realize how huge my stash is and how much stitching I must accomplish before time runs out??!!! It was horribly cruel. And a wee bit funny to be honest...DH goes into hall bathroom, shuts the door and flips the light switch. DUH....no power! Um, yeah, no popcorn either(microwave), no hot chocolate (stove top), but we did listen to music on my laptop (battery powered) and laugh when, after the power flickered on and off for about the third time, DH joked that the Rapture had happened and we got left behind...funny but then we did check outside to see if the end of the world was at hand!

My recent finish, as seen above, was finished earlier in the week. It's a Blackbird Designs Loose Feathers called Garland Fair. Love what it says, wish it for my family.

random things

Everyone around here is sickly. It started with youngest daughter, moved to son and then to oldest daughter and husband. So far I've escaped but feel it lurking...hard to explain but things are a bit fuzzy and sore and just plain ol' yucky. Just praying it doesn't hit me full force until after work on Tuesday because that's a night that I can't miss. Meanwhile, I've made a few runs to the store for medicines, cough drops and kleenex and made some taco soup for dinner and sprayed Lysol on everything but the peoples and fur-babies.



Speaking of furbabies...we're quite possibly getting a new addition on December 5th, a Pug puppy who will be 6 weeks old on that day and ready for adoption. He's got all of his papers and will be quite expensive, at least for us, we've never paid very much for any of our precious pets, at least not at first, in the long run, thousands, of course. Anyway...we've been talking to Scooby and gearing him up for a little brother...so far he's all over the idea.



In October we went to the State Fair of Texas.


It was 94 degrees that day which is the hottest it's ever been when we've gone before. We passed out fairly often but the times in between were A-OK.

A few highlights for you.

Each year they have a "Butter Sculpture". It is OH so exciting, so much so that it actually makes the local news, the process of carving whatever it is they carve out of the huge chunk of butter. Do they do this in other state fairs or it is just a stupid Texas trick? (We have lots of those here, btw, and they usually always make NATIONAL news, just to show the rest of the world how dumb we all are, but I digress).

This years sculpture:





In case you can't make out what it is, it's Marilyn Monroe, naturally. We never could figure out who the guy standing beside her was, guess it was supposed to be her co-star in the movie that the scene is from...can't think of the name of the movie, sorry. Oh, Some Like It Hot? Yeah, that's probably it.

This picture made me smile:

That kitty and his owner deserved that blue ribbon for that pose, don't you think?

Two more that I loved:


sigh...I miss my kitty....

Well, no recent stitching pictures to share...got a new camera and haven't figured it out quite yet. So here's one of something I stitched several years ago.

It's a design by Twisted Threads and the whole bottom part is done over one, as is the lettering, and the acorn top is done in satin stitches. It's my husbands favorite fall thing that I bring out each year.

I'll be back soon with more pictures of recent finishing.

Happy Fall Y'all!