Top Secret!

Thank you for the super nice comments on my last post.

Did your menfolk have a nice Father’s Day?  We did.  I feel so thankful that the boys and I are surrounded by wonderful men who love us and take good care of us. We are blessed x10.

The boys and I baked brownies with a secret ingredient. Are you ready for it?

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Black beans!

I was excited because the recipe uses no flour or butter. It has a lot of sugar (but we’ll ignore that for now).

It was quite an ordeal though because we baked a whole batch before I realized that we forgot to add eggs. Oops.

Then I baked a second batch (the boys abandoned me by this point).  The trick to these is to blend everything really well so that you don’t accidentally bite into a bean part.  Then, your ruse would be up!  Unfortunately, half way through, the blender started smoking and burned out!

I transferred everything to a big pot and used an immersion blender. MUST. COMPLETE. BROWNIES.

This is right before I spilled the vanilla EVERYWHERE.

I love my cute measuring cups.

Here are the brownies right before they went into the oven.

And after… they look like regular brownies, right?!!

Now all you have to do is gobble them up.

Speaking of gobbling, we ate SO MUCH this weekend. My diet (re)starts RIGHT NOW.

Oh, and how is my embroidering going you ask?

Super! Embroidery is so much faster than cross stitching.  It’s fun, but I do miss the precision of cross stitching. There’s just something about those little Xs.

Woe is me.

I try to stay pretty positive on here because it’s a cross stitch blog and who wants to visit a cross stitch blog and read about someone’s problems. But I guess somewhere along the line, my little cross stitch blog sorta became my “talk about all kinds of things in my life” blog, so there you go.

I’ve been struggling lately in my professional life and it’s really bringing me down. At first, it was just a bad day here and there and I was over it by the time I got home. But lately, bad days are the norm and I come home agitated, grumpy, depressed, you know… not a lot of fun. I’m trying to change things- my situation, my attitude, my goals. Tom and I talked about it last night and I feel a little better today, but it’s a slow process.  Too bad I can’t get a job as a professional cross stitcher. Now that would be the life.

In happier news, I started my embroidery project.

Here’s a look at the fabric and threads. I thought it would be pretty to embroider on a patterned fabric, albeit a very neutral one.

I carefully traced the pattern using my fancy dancy Micron pen.

All hooped up and ready to go!

Tonight is movie night at our house so I can’t wait to park myself on the couch under my new lamp and get lost in this.  If ever I needed some serious stitch therapy, it would be now!

Let there be light.

Oh boy… did I ever have a good shopping trip yesterday!

Not only did I get the supplies for my embroidery project, I got the deal of the century on 2 OTTlites. They were already on sale for 50% off, but I spied a few on the top shelf that were marked CLEARANCE.  You better believe that I marched to find the closest salesperson with a ladder.

I got this one for $20!

And this one for $25!

We assembled them last night. The light that they give off feels a little eerie-whitish-UFO landing to me, but I’m withholding judgement until I actually try stitching under them.  Hopefully they will help with the eye strain.

Today is the Kindergarten talent show.  Littlest Boy is doing a karate demonstration and breaking a board.  I’m glad that he is so into karate. It’s the first thing that he’s really been “into”, besides video games and watching too much TV.  Last night in class, they started learning to spar. How ridiculously cute do they look in their sparring gear?  Who knew that they even made equipment that tiny!

Cheater Cheater Pumpkin Eater.

I hate to say it, but I’m kinda tired of this project.

One can only stitch so many berries before it gets really old. This border goes ALL the way around three sides of the piece. Ugh.

I decided to start on the man in order to combat my boredom.

That cheered me up a little. I like his fancy coat and wait until you see the jaunty bow in his hair!

What I really should do is take a break from this project and work on something else, but that feels like cheating on a friend.

What I really want to do is try my hand at embroidery again. Then it wouldn’t technically be cheating, because I’d be EMBROIDERING not CROSS STITCHING. See how that works?

I really want to do this pattern.  It’s gorgeous and free! I love her work. Maybe this warrants a lunch time trip to pick up some supplies.  I feel a plan brewing!

Tiny trains and giant frogs.

I’m sitting here looking through the photos from the weekend. They make me happy.

The Arboretum has a outdoor model railroad display. The whole environment is made of natural materials; plants, twigs, rocks etc. You wouldn’t believe your eyes!

Seriously… made out of twigs!

I could stare at it for hours.

We also visited an old log cabin. It’s a real one from way back when. The boys call it the witch’s house. I’m not sure where they got that.

It’s so small and I like to imagine what it would’ve been like to fit a whole family in there. I guess they didn’t need media rooms back then or Expedit storage units from IKEA.

My inner Laura Ingalls Wilder was going crazy!

This lovely little brook was bubbling right outside the door. Can you imagine a more peaceful place?

Someone enjoyed tickling the giant frog statue.

I took 1,369,7664 photos of flowers. I won’t torture you with all of them.

I also took photos of cute boys when they weren’t looking.

Because God forbid I ask them to pose for a picture. This is what I get…

Have a happy day!

When life gives you lemons.

We made the best cookies this week!  Plain old unexciting oatmeal cookies, but they were so good!

The boys set up a lemonade stand on Saturday. Well, they both started to set it up but then had a business dispute over pricing.  Little Boy abandoned the venture and went to his friend’s house. Big Boy stuck it out.

Tom gave him a lesson about “assuming the sale”, as in asking “How many glasses would you like?” instead of “Would you like some lemonade?” He was a quick learner and an astute businessman. Here he is making his first sale (to Tom). It was my idea to put fresh lemons on the table to entice people even though we made lemonade from a mix. Haha! I’m tricky!

On Saturday night, we went on a date night.  A friend got us incredible tickets to see Kenny Chesney.  We were only about 10 feet from the stage.  Can you imagine?!  That close at a giant stadium concert!

I am clearly not made for the rock-n-roll (or country) lifestyle, because I felt completely overwhelmed by the noise and crowd so near the stage.  Can you say Lame-O? Luckily, my sweet guy did not grumble at all and happily moved me to calmer surroundings.  It was a really fun night out.

On Sunday, I dragged the boys back to the Arboretum for a train exhibit. I took a ton of pictures but they will have to wait for another day. Because the boys were good sports for going to the Arboretum, we spent the rest of the afternoon doing their activity of choice which was having a picnic and riding bikes at the playground.  It was fun and they are cute.

The artist formerly known as…

I have a confession to make.

I’ve been to see the crabby cross stitch lady two times recently and she wasn’t crabby at all. In fact, she was downright cheery!

Could it be that I was wrong? Was she nice all along? Could she have been going through a rough patch? Having a bad day? Did she just need time to warm up to me?  Will she be my new best friend?  I guess we’ll never know the answers behind the complex woman now known as the formerly crabby cross stitch lady.  I am just happy to now have a place to browse lovely cross stitch paraphernalia without getting the stink eye.

In other news, I just found this screenshot on my computer. I don’t know where it came from or why I even saved it. I don’t even like cats that much, but this guy is pretty cute. He looks pretty much like how I feel this week.

Catching up.

Last night’s school event was cancelled and I jumped for joy!

Tom worked late, so I fed the boys mac and cheese from a box and strawberries for dinner and sent them outside to play while I cleaned the house. It really needed it and I really needed a night to catch up.

Later, after everyone was bathed and pajama-ed, we cuddled on the couch and I got to stitch a few Xs. It was a good ending. Cross stitching really does make everything better.

Other things that make everything better:

• ice cream
• bear hugs
• a good nap
• the way that my guys smile at me when they come home.

Zzzzz…

Someone came into my office this morning and said “You really need to get more sleep.” Uh… really? How does one respond to that? “Thanks for telling me that I look like crap?” What is particularly annoying is that I have on a new skirt and actually thought that I looked better than usual. Le sigh. 

This week has been busy though and, yes, I do need more sleep. Little boy has started karate which means that two nights a week, I race home from work to get everyone fed and out the door in record time. Add Scouts and other random events to the mix and our schedule has been cuckoo.

No stitching. So sad. Must. Stitch. Soon. Or sleep. Or go to Target.

Friendly stitchin’.

Welcome to Monday.

It’s rainy today. I will try to look at the positives such as 1. it is good for the yard and 2. I get to wear my stylish rain boots.

This weekend was a little stressful due to things that I won’t write about here, (Don’t you hate it when bloggers say that? Sorry.) but we tried to make the best of it.

The boys had a great time on their overnight. One of them was kinda scared because the older kids were saying that the ship was haunted. I would’ve been scared too. Old sailor ghosts?!!! Possibly with wooden peg legs?!!!  Crrr…eee…py!

The best part of my weekend was that Stephanie and I had our first stitch-n-bitch! We drank wine, ate yummy munchies, and stitched away. I had such fun! It is unfortunate that she lives a whole hour away because if she were any closer, she would probably find me knocking on her door nightly with my wine glass and stitching supplies in hand.

I think that I may need this print (Darn! no longer available!) from onelittlebirdstudio on etsy.