Collecting Shells and an apple crumble

Here is she again. What you see done outside her is what i have done over the last 2 days. There is so much to do above her I truly wonder if this will be finished in 2008 or if it will be a 2009 finish. I am guessing more like 2009 unless I ONLY work on this for the remainder of the year.

Here is the Southern Apple crumble I made last night for dessert. This is a huge hit with everyone so I felt I had to finally share it with you all. :) Mine also has chocolate chips because it calls for an oatmeal cookie mix and the only one we have at the PX comes with chocolate chips and I never feel like picking them out, besides a little chocolate never hurt anyone right? The recipe is here. I always add extra nuts too as I love that crunch they give mixed with the warm gooey apples.

I'm back! Warning: Lots of pictures!

So here are the puppies they are mini dachshunds. Mine is the black one with red cheeks and the other black one is flying here as well for my friend. There was one girl in the litter that went to the owners of the father. anyway their about 6 weeks old now. Hopefully within the next week I will know exactly when to expect my lil pup. we're naming him Oskar (i.e. Oskar Meyer wieners)
Here is the Fair and Square exchange I received the one I did and sent is farther down in the pictures. The pics didn't want to move after getting loaded and I don't feel like fighting with blogger today. I also completed my Peacock Stitching chair about August 9th I believe. And I worked on my collecting shells WIP too. Plus it was my birthday on August 12th too and I received a few gifts as you see below. Please forgive me if I don't go into detail on everything but I am coming down with something dreadful and I just want to go to bed right now. I am currently trying to get stitched my F&S Exchange round 9 and the Halloween round as they are both due out at the end of the month. I have one down and one to go but the motivation to stitch has seriously been lacking.







I apologize for my extremely long absence. My ISP quit completely and believe me it really took this long to get it fixed completely. But now everything is good. So what have I been up to? Umm, stitching and trying to get my newborn puppy from the states to here which he still isn't.

Collecting Shells and Fair and Square Round 6

I completed my Towel Exchange this morning and so I decided its time to try and get back into my rotation. So I pulled out Collecting Shells and worked on her dress. I'm not sure if you can see it but I did a lot of white and a little bit of purple and blues too. Saturday we found a place in the Atrium that would pierce your childs ears as long as they were 3 so we paid 6 Euros and had them pirce Kileys ears. She picked out some little pink stoned ones, I'll try and snap a picture later to show you.

And I just found out today that Laura M. has received the my Fair and Square Round 6 squares and they went off with a hit! I am so glad you liked them Laura. :)
And finally my younger sister sent me this photo of my only nephew Rowan. He is in headstart this year and so this is his yearly picture and next year he will be in Kindergarten. I am not sure why one of his ears is darker than the other though....

Collecting Shells and TOL sampler

Okay so here is my progress on Colecting Shells, its not much since I couldn't stitch while I babysat of course, but I got in a few hours and then had to frog about 20 stitches and then I redid what I ripped out. Please forgive the hoop marks as I don't like having to iron it each week before taking a picture though I promise to iron it before I take the final picture.

And as I was putting up collecting Shells for the night I realized that my TOL Sampler had not been completed, so this will be my Sunday project until its completed, maybe another 1 to 2 weeks I think as I completed part 7 and about 1/3 of Part 8 completed too. There are 10 parts to this sampler.

OH! My new Monday project is going to be EMS 2008 Rose Sampler, she releases a new part each month I believe as there is already 3 parts out. So now I have to play catch up, lol.

Anonymous in my last comments - About the lettuce, I called the vet before giving him any and the vet told me anything green and leafy was good for him but that anything orange was bad for him.

Collecting Shells

Okay so here she is after a few hours of working on her. Saturday I couldn't get anything stitched up and most of my Sunday was used up too. I had a busy weekend between the kids, DH and the housework. So I did manage though to get in some stitching time on her. I received the color I needed to fill in some spaces from my floss mom and then at the top, I am not sure how well you can see it but I did up a lot of the white.

Our family also adopted a bunny. They had him named cocoa but I am not sure if that is going to stay or not. Bunnies in Germany are considered exotic, which to me is strange to hear because in the states all pet shops have them. Anyway Cocoa is 4 years old I believe but his family wasn't able to take him when they left so i adopted him. I am owner number 3 for this little guy. His original owner had dogs that barked at him and pawed at him through the cage so he is skittish right now. I can hold him a little and pet him some but I am going to have to work with him to get him completely domesticated again.

Stitching, Crocheting, and life

Here is the blanket I have been working on. Its a little over 1/4 completed. So maybe by winter 2008 it will be finished?And here is the set of Fingerless Mittens I made in this super soft pink yarn Dawn had sent to me but it had no wrapper on it so I don't know what kind of yarn it was.
And here is the little bit of stitching I was able to do. Her hair is complete and I am now working on her dress. The empty squares you see currently through her dress is a DMC color I don't have and when I purchased the floss for this chart using the color list on the back, this color wasn't there so it had a misprint which I now have to order.

And in my life:

I apologize for being gone so long. My DH and I had decided on a divorce and then with me being upset and all we were pulled into his 1st SGT's office and I found out my DH was on leave for a month and for 2 weeks had been lying to me about it. He claims he spent his days at the CAC center and working on his car. Anyway with all this I was ready to pull Destiny out of school and move back home ASAP. But after the meeting with his 1st SGT we sat down and talked and he actually told me how he was feeling and all and I got the truth from him. And then we figured out it was all a misunderstanding and so now we are no longer divorcing. So we spent these last 2 weeks of his vacation working things out and re discovering our love for each other. DH also went to do a bowling tournament and won! He won $98 and a 3 day trip for 2 to Switzerland and Austria! I'm excited. He has to get his passport first before we can go but then we are going to get a babysitter and go. We also are going to a marriage retreat sometime in the beginning of February. Children can go and daycare is free and thats also for 3 days. So it looked like everything was smoothing back out again. On this past Wednesday DH and I went to the Klinikum to schedule my surgery to remove all the metal from my leg from when i broke it in 3 places in July 2006 when we get a phone call from Social Services saying they want to see us Friday as there is a complaint I don't give Destiny her insulin in the mornings before school. So I spent the rest of the week too angry to do any craft let alone sit down for 5 minutes. We spoke with the principal at the school and the nurse, turns out it was her teacher who called because my daughter who hates to wear socks showed up a few times without them and a few times she hadn't eaten breakfast. And instead of coming to us with her problems Destiny's teacher immediately called Social services which she told us she does not need to go through the parents for any problems. And her TA tony said he would report any problems for any child to SS so I asked him do you ask every child if they have eaten breakfast? Do you check every child to make sure they have socks on too? He refused to answer me but stated he wasn't prejudice against my family though everyone says this sure looks to be prejudice against us. So Friday at 1400 we showed up and I filled out a huge stack of repitive paperwork and after Mrs Kelly spoke with each of us alone she came to the conclusion that the accussation was false and we told her what the teacher said and she wants to have a meeting with the principal and this teacher as she even believes all problems should go to the parents first. We meet with her one more time this Friday to hand her paperwork stating the days and times we have seen her off post Dr for the last 3 months and for him to put Destiny is doing good. The lack of insulin claim was immediately tossed into the waste basket. Also my DH's 1st SGT advised us to report this teacher and TA to DODDs, ICE, and the Garrison commander. We plan too. :)

Kiley went to Audiology today and has something green like a bead stuck in her ear so an ENT has to remove it. And then she goes to get retested. The initial test was her left ear passed barely and the one with the bead in it, well the Dr couldn't get that eardrum to even move but said it could be because of the bead. So tomorrow I make the appointment with the off post ENT and then she can go back to the Audiology Dr and hopefully we get good news but for now we get a lot of "huh?" "What?" from poor little Kiley.

Now since DH and the kids are out bowling for another 2 hours, I am going to try and catch up on all your blogs

Sweater Completed and Collecting Shells WIP

Okay on Friday night I could proudly say I finished Kileys hoodie sweater so now both girls have matching outfits. You can also see Ruby had to watch the girls pose for the picture too, lol. Take a look:



So then after a week of crocheting I really needed to do some cross stitching and so I went and dug into my stash to see what inspired me. I felt like working on Collecting Shells and so I worked on her hair, none of it was done except maybe 2 or 3 stitches of her hair and so here is what I completed over Saturday and Sunday. This is also the one I chose for the TOl challenge which was to complete 1 WIP or UFO at least a year old. Well I started this one when Destiny was only a few months old which makes it 6 years old.

Happy Birthday and Stitching

First I have to say a huge Happy Birthday to my nephew Rowan! He turns 4 today. I'm sorry I cannot be there today.

And I put down my chinese goddess of mercy over the weekend and ppicked up one of my old UFO's called collecting shells. Now the first picture is before the weekend and the second picture is my progress from Saturday through Monday: