2012

This year started off with a round of redundancies at work, my husband unhappy with his job and lots of anxiety about not knowing what was going to happen.

This year ended pretty good. Both my husband and I got down to our goal weights (I lost twenty pounds!) though its shifted up a bit with all the Christmas food. Billy is happy with his job and no longer leaves a 6am and returns at 9pm as he did at his old job in London.

Here are the highlights of my year:

I stopped eatting meat for five months to make the most of our orgainic veg box and in the process started taking loads of vitamins that I still take. (That is always a new year's resolution that I forget to do). I'm now back to a carnavore.

In January we went to the Cotswolds to visit friends:

We took our annual May holiday in Copenhagen home to my great grandfather.

In July, Olympic fever took over and I got to follow the torch around England.

In August I got to fly over Suffolk in a helicopter which made a centre spread in my paper.

 In September we went home to Florida to see my family and had a few days to ourselves in Key West for our fourth wedding anniversary.

For Billy's birthday on December 23rd we went on the London Eye and ate Danish pancakes before meeting friends for bowling on Brick Lane.

It was a pretty good year and I hope next year is even better! Click here to see my work photos of the year.

Cross Stitch Project #2-5 / Embroidery Project #3

I've sorely neglected this blog in the last few months and now I have to play massive catch-up. I made these projects a few months ago and now they are hanging on my bedroom wall. My bedroom will be a post on its own as it is undergoing serious style refurbishment as it was also very neglected (see a theme here). I got bored with the cross stitching after awhile so I added in a little embroidered salsa lady that kind of reminds me of my sassy Mo'ma.

I really like embroidery but I feel like my cross stitch always looks better because I use the Aida fabric specifically made for the craft. I use left over fabric for embroidery (this one was a cotton sheet with fusible webbing to make it stronger) but I don't love it. I think if I bought linen I might like the results better.

I have red Aida fabric and was going to cross stitch some Christmas ornaments but I bought it off a roll and ended up getting the kind with smaller holes that are really hard to see and not very fun to work with so we'll see if I can handle it.

I 've also knitted myself a hat and a cowl, but that will wait for a future post. I am crocheting covers for stools we just bought to go with our new kitchen island. And lastly I finished the top of my quilt and have to wait until Christmas is over and I can afford the batting and back fabric.

So you see I haven't just been sitting here in the cold doing nothing!