Autumn is in the Air

So I thought over the next week or so I'd share a few Autumn/Halloween projects. Today's featured project is my first ever cross stitch RR. The theme was witches and I can't believe I haven't had it framed yet. It's one of my all time favorite pieces.



Speaking of RRs

Am I the only one that agonizes over stitching on someone else's piece? I have one now that I should have mailed out a while ago, but I'm afraid of it. The band I'm going to do is full of speciality stitches. Not difficult ones, satin stitch, rhodes stitch or eyelets, can't remember right now, anyway they are stitches I'm comfortable with on my own pieces but this is someone else's piece and I don't want to screw it up. Anyway, I need to get over myself and get it done. The stitching itself won't take more than an hour, maybe two, I just need to feel the fear and do it anyway. The diagrams are great but I have found whenever I do satin stitches the diagrams always seem to show more threads over than one actually stitches on the piece. I've never understood this since the diagram appears to go with the specific cross stitch chart but I always seem to be off by a thread or two. Very frustrating.

The Year of the Norman Rockwell Holidays

Here's a little secret:

In the area of housekeeping I suck. There I've said it. Don't misunderstand, we all sleep in clean beds, I'm totally down with laundry, it's the other stuff that drives me crazy, like putting the laundry away. I think we all need about 3 huge walk in closets a piece. There's not room for all the dressers and chest of drawers we could realistically use. I do the laundry and then it tends to hang out on the dining table or in laundry baskets or when things get really desperate, all the baskets get dumped out on my bedroom floor and we just sift through the piles. I go through phases when I'm really good about putting all the clothes away and others where it just sits on the dining table for weeks. What does this have to do with Norman Rockwell Holidays? Well I also suck in the area of family holidays. You know Halloween for example, the outside is usually decorated ok, but the inside, what a mess. Christmas, I manage to get the lights up outside, a tree up inside but it's never special you know? When you walk in my house you don't get all warm and fuzzy, well maybe you do it but it's probably from the cat hair on the couch.

I want this to be the warm and fuzzy year. I want my kids to carry in their hearts one season of holidays when mom managed to get it right from decorating to presents to food.

I'm on a mission and hopefully I will succeed. It's 5 weeks until Halloween, surely I can get my house ready for some kind of kiddie/neighbor open house by then. I have a gazillion ideas, I'm the idea chick, it's bringing them to fruition that usually brings me down. Then after Halloween there's another 9 weeks or so until Christmas. Halloween and Thanksgiving are kind of there together so the decorating can cross over a bit. Anyway I want to do the holidays right this year.

Week after next I start the big Christmas layaway strategy. I have got to get a headstart on the shopping this year and should have been buying stuff all summer but nope, I wait until it's almost time to open presents to even start an attempt at buying gifts. Not this year. Yes, famous last words, I know.