Starting a New Project

I have recently picked up a new cross stitch kit that I'd never seen before.  I'm well behind the times, I'm sure.  I have picked up "Bambi's First Year" which is a Thomas Kinkade piece.  It's a very beautiful cross stitch kit and when I saw it at Hobby Lobby, I knew I had to pick it up and stitch it for my son's room.  I have a random WIP of this one (as I've started it about 3 or 4 days ago) so I'm going to upload it.

Forgive the poor quality, my phone has been acting strange since my toddler got a hold of it and I have no other camera.  The color is a lot off as well, for some reason---it appears very dark.

Not much else has been going on in my life.  My puppy that I got is all grown up and is now a full sized German Shepherd, my pug hates her guts, my son is getting big, and I'm about a month away from giving birth to my daughter.  My daughter's birth was the reason I needed to make sure Chibi Moon was finished.  She's to be cleaned, pressed, and framed to go above her crib.

I leave you with that random WIP and my ramblings.  Have a fantastic day :)

The Thief's Account Has Been Suspended

Yes, the title says it all!  Yesterday I posted about a woman stealing patterns from many people and now her account (the website where she sells "her" works) is suspended.  In other words, "WE'RE WINNING."  This girl had some serious balls thinking she could get away with it!  Thank God everyone else got involved, too!  Fantastic.  I love it.  Her website is suspended and it's all because everyone knew their legal rights and went through the proper channels.  Just let the DMCA take care of it :)

Anyway, I haven't been stitching the last couple days because I got into this book I'm reading and so now I keep getting kind of...torn between the two.  I'm reading The Legend of Sigmar.  My husband got me the three Omnibus Edition books from the series (The Legend of Sigmar, The Rise of Nagash, and The Sundering) for Valentine's Day.  I read a lot of fantasy and medieval war novels, and these are kind of a mix of both, I guess.  I've got a lot of reading ahead of me though because each one of those books is over a thousand pages long.

Maybe I'll alternate days.  Today I'll read, tomorrow I'll stitch.  I don't know, I'm just too happy about that woman's site being taken down lol.  Fantastic work, everyone who got involved (not like anyone reads my blog anyway!  haha).

Thievery is a really unbecoming action

So I'm part of a forum that exchanges cross stitching patterns and we help each other out with advice and tips.  Well, some woman named Dixie Champoux decided that she would take it upon herself to make money off everyone's patterns and ideas, you know, since we weren't willing to make money on them.  She didn't ask permission, she didn't credit, and she's making at least 5 bucks off each pattern.  I only have 2 on her site, but several people have many patterns.  Our efforts to try to shut her down have deleted her facebook, her pinterest, and her etsy account.  I'm not sure what else we've dug our claws into, but as long as we can deter traffic from her site until she either gives us credit or removes our artwork, I'm happy with the progress.  One of the patterns on her site that she took from me was one that I had featured on here even!  You know, the Sailor Chibi Moon I've been working on forever?  Yeah, that one.  Every time I post to her site, "This is my artwork, please take it down," she removes it and ignores it.  It's only a matter of time, though.  I've filed copyright complaints with Google already because she has a Google+ account and she links to my artwork that she's selling illegally.

On another note (enough about thieving wieners), I finally finished Sailor Chibi Moon, but...I finished her almost a week ago lol.  I've already started my Bambi's First Year kit.  It's funny because I'm very much a novice when it comes to cross stitching and I decided, "All THAT out the window, let's do the biggest, hardest kit I can find!"  But I'm crazy like that :)  Anyway, a much awaited finished product of MY Sailor Chibi Moon pattern that SOME WIENER STOLE FROM ME AND IS SELLING WITHOUT MY PERMISSION!

And the back of it:

Well, she took forever, but she looks really good.  All I have to do is clean and press her and then frame her for my daughter's nursery :)  I'm in the middle of creating a custom Sailor Ophelia for when she's here so that she has a sailor scout that's completely original and just for her.  No one else will have her unless some WIENER STEALS MY PATTERN AGAIN!  I'm creating a watermark that I'm going to start adding to my PDF's before I post them for everyone to use.  I figure it's hard to remove a watermark from the artwork and it makes it so that if someone else uses it, it's a lot easier to identify.  With that, I'm going to bed. 

Note:  IF THE WIENER IS READING THIS, I'VE REPORTED EVERY SINGLE ONE OF YOUR PAGES, INCLUDING YOUR BUSINESS.

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas to anyone who reads this!  And happy holidays to everyone who doesn't celebrate Christmas!  I hope your year has been merry as it's soon coming to a close!  Welcome, 2013!

Phew, okay, that's done.

So...my son had a great Christmas.  We Skyped with the family back home so they could see him opening Christmas gifts and basically have it like we were all together even though it was over the internet.  I only have one complaint about the day:  My father-in-law gave us the silent treatment.  Not uncommon, but he's a self proclaimed God fearing Christian and gave his family the silent treatment on Christmas...so...there's that.

I think it irritates me more than it does anyone else because I don't understand the pettiness of it.  I don't care if he doesn't talk to me.  I don't care if he doesn't talk to my husband.  What I care about is the fact that he gave a ONE year old the silent treatment.  Never once said, "Hi."  Never even acknowledged his grandson.  I don't get it.  So because this is a common thing that happens, I figure that I'm done trying to go out of my way to talk to this man.  I even went so far as to delete him from Facebook and I made it so he can't see any of my posts from now on.  If he wants to be a part of my son's life, then he can stop being petty.  I'm not putting up with it anymore.

Anyway, my mom worked today, so we Skyped last night and my son opened her gifts then so that she could see.  He got a Furby and a LOT of clothing from her.  He loves his Furby...Mommy and Daddy not so much.

This morning we Skyped with the rest of the family and my son got from Hubby and me a Batman flip couch.  From MIL he got a toddler basketball hoop, the one that is adjustable height-wise so it grows with the child.  From my ex-stepfather, he got a t-shirt from when they vacationed in Montana and a pack of "soap crayons" so he can color in the bathtub (pretty cool, I didn't know things like that existed).  From my father, he got $500 for his savings account.  From Santa, he got The Grinch (the Jim Carrey one) on blue ray, The Brave Little Toaster, 3 coloring books, a brand new pack of Crayolas, a 5-pack of Hotwheels cars, and a stocking full of candy.  The thing he plays with most?  The bows from the presents!

My son got like a hundred books for Christmas, too, but they weren't really from anyone, they were from the Dolly Parton imagination Library.  They weren't wrapped, they were just kind of given to him.    We had story time and then he took the book from me and attempted to read it to me, which really just consisted of him pointing and talking in his baby language that I don't quite understand, but it was cute anyway.  Okay...bedtime now.  I was supposed to clean the house before bed, but I don't have the energy because I was on my feet all day cooking.

Feeling defeated...

I am so exhausted all because of something my husband did today.  He didn't mean anything by it, I don't think, but it still struck a chord and beat me down.  He said, "Was there anything you had wanted to do before we got married but you didn't?"  Which wasn't the thing that he said that made me frustrated.  When I answered that I wanted to have gone to and finished school, he then said, "Okay, and what would you do after that?"  He wouldn't leave the subject alone.

He kept asking me, "And then what?  And then what would you have done?"  And the tone was like he was angry with me, but in my head I'm going, "I KNOW I'VE FAILED AND DIDN'T DO WHAT I SAID I WAS GOING TO DO."

I dropped out of college so that I could work.  I was told either work or go to school (by my boss) and I needed the money because I needed money to go to school.  It was a lose lose situation and there isn't a day that goes by that I don't go, "Wow, I wish I were still in school."  But being reminded and having someone sit there and drill you doesn't help.  At all.

Trust me.  It's so beyond frustrating because I would have been able to go to school and work had I not needed to move out.  Keep drilling it, I already feel like crap over this and you're not helping by continuing to bring it up.

What one year old has his own blog?

Mine does.  My one year old has his own blog.  He somehow, while I was in the bathroom, logged out of my blog and had used autofill to fill in all my information on a "sign up" thing for blogger.  So, I figured that he must want his own blog.  I filled in all the missing information and signed him up with his own little baby blog.

I filled in his profile and everything.  He seems to really enjoy typing, even though you can't understand what he's saying.  Not an important thing, and it's really a rather pointless post, but it made my son happy, so it made me happy.

My whole family is sick right now.  We had someone out to work on the pipes for my building and now all of the family is sick.  My neighbor is too.  We're all taking a trip to the ER soon because we can't stop getting sick.  My poor dogs and cat can't go to the vet until the morning because I can't find an emergency vet.

Time for me to go take care of my son before we go to the ER because he's soiled his diaper AGAIN.

Been gone for a while

Not like anyone reads this anyway lol

Anyway, I have set aside my Sailor Chibi Moon cross stitching so that I may get my ornaments out of the way.  I'm making a stocking ornament with an Xbox controller top.  I got the idea from Think Geek's 8-bit controller stocking that they are selling, but I tweaked it a bit to make an ornament for my little brother.  I ordered him an Airzooka for Christmas and figured I'd give him the ornament too.  My sister is getting a brain candle.  She loves candles and she is going to school for neuroscience, so I figured why not?

My mother is getting a Walmart gift card because every time I ask her what she wants, she tells me, "Nothing, don't worry about it."  So I figured since she is always there, why not that?  That and she's next to IMPOSSIBLE to shop for.  My mother's boyfriend is getting a Texas Roadhouse gift card because that's where he and his son always go when he gets visitation, so I figured that would be good for the both of them.  My father and brother are splitting a gift card to Cabella's because we're giving them a little bit higher an amount and we're doing what we could afford for them.

My MIL is getting a camera lens coffee mug because she's a photographer and as soon as I saw it, I immediately thought of her and my husband said it is an awesome idea and that she'll really like it.  My FIL is getting a Sears card so that he can buy tools because I have NO idea what I'm looking for lol.  My SIL is getting a Walmart card because she loves gift cards.  Like...she LOVES them.  So why not?

My husband is getting...I have no idea yet.  I have the money set aside and I know what he wants, but I haven't been able to find it for a decent price and I'm sorry but $100 for a video game is WAY too much.  My son is getting three coloring books, some matchbox cars, and some candy from Santa.  He's getting a toddler flip couch from my husband and I and he's getting a toddler basketball hoop from his grandparents (husband's side).  No word on what he's getting from my side of the family except from my dad (he's giving him $500 for his savings account).

OKAY...now that I've talked about everyone's Christmas gifts that no one cares about, ON to what I've been doing that has made me go on hiatus again!

I have been cooking.  A lot.  I've been experimenting with recipes and I've been making and trying things I've never had before.  Can you believe I had a turnip for the first time this week?  I'm 24 years old and have never even SEEN a turnip let alone eaten one.  I only ate it because they were in a pasty recipe that I found.  If you've never had a pasty, I advise you to try them, the recipe I used is here:

http://www.tasteofhome.com/Recipes/Upper-Peninsula-Pasties

I used to eat them when I was little, but I had it with rutabaga.  Unfortunately, I had to substitute that with turnip because my commissary doesn't carry rutabaga.  Hmm...what else?  Oh yes, I've been making a lot of sweets.  Again, a lot.  The sweets I've only been making because it's close to the holiday season.  So I've got this battery of fudges, cookies, and cakes that I've been making one right after the other.  My husband thinks I'm trying to fatten him up, but that's just not the case...I just like sweets.

Big news (which should have been the first thing I talked about), we finally found out what we're having!  I'm having a little girl and we've decided on the name Ophelia Marie.  I wanted a boy and everyone kept saying, "What are you going to do if it's a girl?"  I used to tell people I was going to give her back if she couldn't grow a wiener lol.  Duh, she's my child!  I'm going to love her no matter how she cooks in there!  I really just care that she's healthy!

Okay, enough, I am going to go finish cooking my peanut butter fudge :)  Happy holidays (and if I may be so bold, Merry Christmas) to everyone!