And Then There Was Tuesday

I'm a born-again daily blogger. Or close to it. After being on sabbatical/unintentionally retired for the past 20 months (yes, it's been that long). I've learned the importance of making sure each day counts for something, somehow. I've struggled with how to blog about that because I feel like the Head Chief Manager of the Department of Redundancy Department. In other words, my days look a lot alike. At least from the outside looking in they do.

I know each day is a special snowflake unique in its' own way. For instance... yesterday morning I had hot apple cider for my morning beverage. Today it's English breakfast tea. So there's that. Yesterday I took a shower and did an abbreviated glam routine - no makeup, dried hair but didn't flat iron it, brushed the cat's hair. Today I just put on clean clothes and fixed a ponytail. Yesterday my parents went to see my nieces play basketball so I had some Oscar bonding time - like this

but this was taken the last time I doggie-sat Oscar. 

I watch tv every day but yesterday was different because I watched a Kate Plus 8 marathon. She was even more mentally ill and hateful than I remembered. That woman. I mean, I know people hated Here Comes Honey BooBoo and ultimately Mama June was exposed as the grifter she is but at least she wasn't out and out rude to people. Kate has no clue how to play nice. None. 

I watched my favorite vlogs yesterday and found out my two favorite couples are rooming together at Play List Live - this big vlogger conference. Vlogging is like blogging but it's video instead of words and pictures. I can't vlog because I don't have those kind of skills nor do I have any interest in actually putting on makeup every day. If you're wanting to dip your toes in the world of Vlogging, my two favorites are Cullen and Katie who live in Alabama with their baby Macey Gaines and Jared and Ellie who live in Utah with their son Jackson. All are very light, little drama much happy cute kids and fun parents. Jared and Ellie are Mormon and have the whole Donnie and Marie always happy thing going on. Cullen is a stay at home dad married to a clinical child psychologist who goes to Target every day and creates things out of Target balls. Google targetballing. It's hilarious. Cullen's Mom, Grandberry does a weekly video and she is HUH-larious! Here's an example of Grandberry's work. I catch up on my vlogs during the time of day when there is nothing worth watching on tv and I just want to veg out and stare at a screen instead of reading. 

I spent an unbelievable amount of time yesterday trying to decide how to finish my current cross-stitch project and which project to start next. Talk about Analysis Paralysis! Maybe you guys can help... here's what I'm deciding between:

I've made what will probably be a pillow for Cosette with animals in blocks like this purty yella giraffe. I'm having time deciding what format to use for her name. Do I want to do letters in blocks like the animals so the whole pillow looks like a pile of blocks? Do I want to use these safari printed letters like this: 

  Think about doing Cosette Camille in these letters... Cosette would end in black orange orange black which doesn't feel baby-ish.  I'm considering just doing these letters in bright colors:

But are they fat enough? Would I want something bigger?

Likewise I've been brooding over how to finish Ryan's Christmas present. It's an FSU theme and I've toyed with the idea of spelling his name (or BooBoo, which is what we all call him) with these Indian Native American letters but I can't decide if that's charming or too babyish for a 28 year old man. (Yes, I am a parent to a 28 year old human.) 
Also... for Christmas I made Marquee a Mickey for her bathroom but the Minnie I made to go along with it didn't match it like I wanted. The Mickey didn't have outline but the Minnie did. I found this Minnie that I think is a better match and could do that for Marquee's birthday/to celebrate second trimester.

But I will have to research to find out if this is the same size as the Mickey I used for Christmas. And would she rather have both Mickey and Minnie for her Mickey themed bathroom... or would she rather I go ahead and make something for Baby Peanut's Classic Pooh nursery - like this:  By the way... there are not a lot of classic Pooh patterns available on the interwebs so I'm going to have to find a picture and turn it into a pattern which I can do... but it is a bit of work. And I should really finish Ryan's Christmas and Cosette's pillow first. Except Marquee's birthday is coming before Cosette's shower. See what I mean? And honestly, I really want to do a project that is more of a repeating pattern because that's easier to do, especially when I'm dealing with pain and having to take pain meds which makes me more likely to make mistakes. I'm considering one of these "easy" patterns.

 

 

With the floral ones I want to use a different color or flowers which means I have to pay attention to my substitutes. I'm also crazy about this pattern and think it would make a nice cheerful pillow:

I'm also wanting to do an Oscar themed project and I've narrowed it down to one of these: 

  but with the first one I would have to do another color substitution trick because our Oscar is cinnamon colored. And that pose is more of a Sammy pose - head tilt and all but Sammy is a long haired doxie so again, if I make it a Sammy I'll have to alter the pattern. And this is the reason I didn't sew a single stitch yesterday. Analysis Paralysis.

I did work for awhile on my family tree which is easy to do while dog sitting. Stitching while holding an animal is tricky and frustrating and messy.

SOooooo... what does today hold? I'll tell you about that tomorrow. Leave a comment here or on Facebook helping me make decisions on my cross stitch projects. Love and hugs, y'all! (and... btw... the evil gut pain is still loitering making me pretty insane... which also makes decisions difficult).