Alright, I feel good today. Yesterday I got my small pincushion mailed out to Dawn so once she emails me saying she has received it then I will publish the post I had written about it when I was working on it, their all saved as drafts right now. I also mailed out a post card yesterday to a little boy in Flagstaff, AZ. I found out the family through the EMS board, his mom posted that she was teaching him about geography and so she asked if people would be willing to send a postcard to him about their area of the world. I found one with about 6 different places on it and the names of the places so thats the one I sent him. It made me think I should get a few for the family in Wyoming so they can see where their daughter/sister/aunt has been living. This is also the last weekend for Oktoberfest too. I didn't get here in time last yar to attend it and this year it would cost us over 100 Euros in gas just to get there so again I will hav to miss out on it. Perhaps next yearI can go....

The hubby arrived home yesterday evening and enjoyed his home cooked feast tremendously! LOL. And our one year old, Kiley, had attached herself to her daddy after dinner. She curled up in his lap with a blanket and stayed there until he had to eventually carry her to bed where she slept peacefully for the first time since he left. He hurt his back and his ankle while gone but refuses to go see a doctor about either one. He is so stubborn, anyone elses husbands this way too?

Okay stitch talk now....
Haunted house is still a work in progress, you can imagine not much got done last night, maybe about 10 stitches.....Sorry I have no updated pictures yet, and I have a lot to do this weekend too so I am not sure how much I will really get done on it, which irritates me cause I am eager to finish it.
The cross stitch halloween freebie is not started yet either but I plan to use the skein of glow in the dark floss I received months ago on the ghost and possibly the white parts of the border. I had forgotten that I had it and then when I was going through all my floss the other day there is was! I was thrilled to pieces! LOL
I also got in some size 10 crochet yarn to make this dress for a barbie that I plan to give my daughter for christmas. It only took an entire month to come in! But it was a fabulous deal so I am ok with waiting for it to get here, besides they sent it SAM so thats why it took so long.

Xmas funnies and scientific facts

Xmas Funnies

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Santa Claus - The Scientific Explanation

1. No known species of reindeer can fly. BUT there are 300,000 species of living organisms yet to be classified, and while most of these are insects and germs, this does not COMPLETELY rule out flying reindeer which only Santa has ever seen.

2. There are 2 billion children (persons under 18) in the world. BUT since Santa doesn't appear to handle the Muslim, Hindu, Jewish and Buddhist children, that reduces the workload to 15% of the total - 378 million according to Population Reference Bureau. At an average census rate of 3.5 children per household, that's 91.8 million homes. For the sake of our ensuing calculations, we will assume that there is at least one good child in each.

3. Santa has 31 hours of Christmas to work with, thanks to the different time zones and the rotation of the earth, assuming he travels east to west (which seems logical). This works out to 822.6 visits per second. This is to say that for each Christian household with good children, Santa has 1.2 milliseconds to park, hop out of the sleigh, jump down the chimney, fill the stockings, distribute the remaining presents under the tree, eat whatever snacks have been left, get back up the chimney, get back into the sleigh and move on to the next house. Assuming that each of these 91.8 million stops are evenly distributed around the earth (which, of course, we know to be false but for the purposes of our calculations we will accept), we are now talking about .78 miles per household, a total trip of 71.6 million miles, not counting stops to do what most of us must do at least once every 31 hours.

This means that Santa's sleigh is moving at appx 650 miles per second, 3,000 times the speed of sound. For purposes of comparison, the fastest man-made vehicle on earth, the Ulysses space probe, moves at a mere 27.4 miles per second - a conventional reindeer can run 15 miles per hour, unless being chased by a pack of wolves.

4. The payload on the sleigh adds another interesting element. Assuming that each child gets nothing more than a medium-sized lego set (2 pounds), the sleigh is carrying 321,300 tons, not counting Santa, who is invariably described as overweight. On land, conventional reindeer can pull no more than 300 pounds. Even granting that "flying reindeer" (see point #1) could pull TEN TIMES the normal amount, we cannot do the job with eight, or even nine. We need 214,200 reindeer. This increases the payload - not even counting the weight of the sleigh - to 353,430 tons. Again, for comparison-this is four times the weight of the Queen Elizabeth (the boat, not the person).

5. 353,000 tons travelling at 650 miles per second creates enormous air resistance - thus heating the chain in almost the same fashion as spacecraft re - -entering the earth's atmosphere. As a result of this friction, the lead pair of reindeer will absorb around 14.3 QUINTILLION joules of energy Per second. Each. In short, they will burst into flame almost instantaneously, exposing the reindeer behind them, and create deafening sonic booms in their wake. The entire reindeer team will be vaporised within 4.26 milliseconds. Santa, meanwhile, will be subjected to centrifugal forces 17,500 times greater than gravity. A 250-pound Santa (which seems ludicrously slim) would be pinned to the back of his sleigh by 4,315,015 pounds of force.

In conclusion - If Santa ever did deliver presents on Christmas Eve, he's dead now.

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Santa was very cross. It was Christmas Eve and NOTHING was going right. Mrs. Claus had burned all the cookies. The elves were complaining about not getting paid for the overtime they had while making the toys. The reindeer had been drinking all afternoon and were dead drunk. To make matters worse, they had taken the sleigh out for a spin earlier in the day and had crashed it into a tree.

Santa was furious. "I can't believe it! I've got to deliver millions of presents all over the world in just a few hours - all of my reindeer are drunk, the elves are on strike and I don't even have a Christmas tree! I sent that stupid Little Angel out HOURS ago to find a tree and he isn't even back yet! What am I going to do?"

Just then, the Little Angel opened the front door and stepped in from the snowy night, dragging a Christmas tree. He says "Yo, fat man! Where do you want me to stick the tree this year?"

And thus the tradition of angels atop the Christmas trees came to pass........

I have been working some more on my haunted house. All the small pieces are done and about 1/2 of the house is completed. I also got my exchange pin cushion finally sent out today, so keep an eye out for it Dawn.

The hubby is coming home today so I will be working on a big meal for him tonight since he has been eating military food all week. I am going to make a roast, mashed potatoes, salad, and biscuits for him. I also want the house to be perfect so my projects are on hold until this evening when he is full and falling asleep in his chair.

Ok so I was looking at blogs yesterday and saw that one of them was doing a Halloween freebie. I loved her orange background and the way the colors were just popping off the fabric! Though I don't have any orange fabric, so I am hoping I can find something equally as fascinating. I think I still have some hand dyed fabrics that might come in handy this time around. Thanks to Silkweaver I am part of their FOTM club and absolutely love it. So I am inspired to make that my next project and leave my UFO's for later. I plan to of course finish my haunted house and then start this but I wanted to post a picture of what I will do next.

My stitching is probably the only thing going ok right now. I have been fighting with one of my good friends, Chris, over some moral dilema of his since last night and I feel like it is destroying our relationship and everything we have built up the past several years.

I finally heard from my husband who had to travel 3 hours away from his camp grounds to call me. There was no signal there where he is for this week. Thankfully, he will be home early Friday afternoon. His first place to go will be a shower though. Cause where he is at, there are no showers and he is cleaning off with wet naps that he took with him. Now that I think of it I should have had him take the antibacterial wipes too. Oh well, too late now. He left at 5 am Monday and so I know he will be thankful for the shower friday afternoon. He has to go pick up Destiny's prescriptions at the Apotheke when he returns and go check the PO box too before he can come home and rest for the weekend.

Blogger has been a pain in the you know what today too. I tried to publish a new post this morning and after an hour it still hadn't published and it looks all jacked up so hopefully it will publish now.

Okay so its been about 2 days. On day one I did get all the pieces cut out. They didn't send me enough plastic canvas but luckily I still had some 7 count in my craft stash. I recounted the house several times before cutting it out to make sure I had counted correctly and I did. I also got all the shutters done on day one and on day two I got the roof piece, moon, door, and chimney done and then today so far just one little ghost. Kiley my little one year old baby has been sick and cuddling with me all day so that slowd me down but thats ok. I love cuddling with her. :-) Anyway, heres my updated picture, I placed each item where it will go when completed but I still have the entire house to stitch still. You can see the two ghosts I still have to complete before I start the house.

Haunted House

Well, in honor of Halloween being next month and me having absolutely no Halloween decorations I have decided to make this Haunted House in plastic canvas. It is actually quite large. But I am predicting completion in about a week. Today I am cutting out the pieces and possibly going to start it. The hubby will be gone out into the field for the week so it gives me a little more time to work on it. :-)

Its complete! I was able to get a lot of stitching in last night since the hubby was lat coming home, and then today we painted our oldest daughter destiny's room and once that was done I was able to finish it up. I still need to wash it though and press it flat. Not sure what got on it but this was a WIP and I never had it in a plastic baggy like I do all my others, guess I had run out and never got any new ones. Oh well, a little soap and cold water and it will come out. Now to find my next project....what has everyone else been working on?

Birth Announcement WIP

Well, here is my update on my birth annoncement. I normally would have a lot more done except my little ones are sick and now so is the hubby.

Well, I have completed the pin cushion and decided that this will be my next project, I had started it awhile back and have decided to finish it up. Its a small baby sampler for my youngest daughter.

Well, here is the finished product. I finally decided to put a leather backing and I happened to have some in blue leather in my sewing box. I like the outcome, though I may have over stuffed it a bit but It will go down some with time. What do you all think? I thought that a cording might be over kill on this project. Now its time to decide on the next project......

Pin Cushion

Well, here is the completed stitching. Tomorrow I will try and get the whole thing sewn together and completed. Then I will post another picture so you all can see what it looks like finished before I send it off in the mail. Of course none of these posts are going to show until I get an email confirming that my receiver has recieved the pin cushion. Sorry but I want it to be a surprise when she gets it.

EMS scissors Finder

Since I am doing the EMS SAL I felt the need to include a picture of the one I had completed a few months back. I really didn't do any stitching after that. Guess you could say I had lost my stitchy bug. :P

EMS Small Pincushion Update 2

Okay so here is WIP number 2, what do you guys think? Its getting there slowly but surely. I am hoping to be able to finish it up tonight, so if I do then I will post the final picture tomorrow. Comments are welcome as always.

Pincushion Update

Alright I have the entire center done of the small pincushion, I took a picture but do not want to post it and ruin the surprise for the gal I am sending it to so I will post them after she has received my package. :) Tonight I will work on the border since I will have plenty of time to stitch tonight. There's nothing else going on this evening. I am doing in 16 count Aida cloth in French lace and have decided to use 498, 517, and this medium pink that I had leftover from a kit I did awhile back. So here is the designed picture I am doing but of course I am changing the colors, just wanted to show you what I am working on without showing my actual piece and giving away the finished design.

Small Pincushion WIP

Okay everyone here is my progress on my EMS small pincushion. Its taking me a bit longer than I would like to considering its a small project but with my hectic life any stsitching I can get done is good.

Page update

I want to thank Dawn for helping me get my projects slide going and into the place I wanted it. I probably would have never figured it out. I am not really too good with html code and so its nice to have such good friends to help you out with these things.

New Blog

Okay so this is it, this is my new crafting blog.

Currently I am working on a small pincushion from EMS It's for a friend and we are going to trade pincushions when done. I am having fun on this project. I am doing it on 16 count like Ellen suggested to be used on her stitching toys, but it seems kinda big for a small pincushion. I am doing it on a cream Aida cloth in the colors of red, blue, and pink. Today I started thinking that it would have looked prettier on pink aida with the red and blue stitching but I have it almost complete and so I don't want to start over with it. I might put something small design wise on the back of the pincushion. Maybe her initial or a small picture. Or even finishing it up with a pretty material on the back instead of Aida cloth. And perhaps a cording around the outside too but I haven't completely decided on that one yet.