1, 2, 3 and go!

Wow! The last couple weeks have been so busy and also incredibly productive! I'm very proud of how much I have accomplished in the last couple weeks, our family went and picked apples, I've done a ton of baking and I've finished 3 more cross-stitch pieces! Who would have thought I'd get going so well?

Admittedly, two of them were small pieces, but they've been on my WIP list for so long I started to wonder if I'd ever finish them.

My ACNL addiction has waned some (thank god, it's been 4 months of steady gameplay - I need a video game break to let my hands take a break). I still play everyday but it's down from the 8 hours per day plus 3 hours at night, bug-catching on the island. I'm very glad because that has been a huge time drain on me, especially on my stitching time.

Two of the finished patterns are from the Canadian Sewing and Needlework Festival from 2010, which means I've been sitting on them for 2+ years! Crazy

One is the pattern I showed last time, "Treasure them now"

And the other is Jennifer Aikman-Smith's "Cookie Dragon"

And finally, this one is a gift for my mom for Halloween (my favourite holiday!)
"Candy Corn Buddy" from Stoney Creek's Halloween Collection - Fall 2011. So glad to have them off my list!

I'm looking so forward to Halloween this year, L & G have been taught from birth not to fear the ghosts and skeletons, etc. that appear in our house décor for this month. I have a new friend I got from Costco last week - a poseable skeleton who's been sitting in our front hall. G wants him to come with us on Halloween and "protect him". I can't wait to put up our decorations and make our house all spooky. J's job allows us some leeway in decorations and in the past years, had a full light show, and fog machines. I like to move things around so I'm not sure how I'm going to lay everything out this year yet. I was thinking of having my new friend lounging out with a Starbucks coffee after loading a body into a wheelbarrow... :)

Another thing I did last year, is on my Facebook, I did a movie review blog about horror movies, I'd review 1 - 2 movies per day. I have a very LARGE! collection of horror films - over 100 films at last count. Some are recent, some date back to the 50s. I prefer the more recent because the imagery tends to be scarier, but anything from the 80's up is good. I was contemplating doing the same again on here, but I'm not sure - it's a lot of work!

I've been also trying to finish off a piece that's been on my list for years now, "Earth Dragon" by Cross-My-Heart. It's a huge piece, part of a set of four different dragons. Luckily I collected all the patterns before they went out of business (too bad, I loved their designs), but this one's been sitting 1/2 done for years. It takes 74 different thread colours, and each 10x10 square could have up to 20 colours in it. It's a very intensive piece but I'm nearly done!!! I got the bottom of the piece (the top 3/4s has been done for the last 6 months) just last Monday and I'm excited to finally cross it off my WIP list too. It's only been on there for, hmmm, 10 years? That's not that long, is it? :) Hopefully I can post a finished photo soon!