Wonderful birthday today

Today was officially my birthday (the 16th), and I had a very very restful day … it was spent unexpectedly stitching with Mum, watching DVD’s and just generally relaxing – I now only have 15 beads left to go on part 1 of my Stitching Leporello … I was so hoping to have it finished today, but I ran out of time before we had to sprint out the door.  I have to say those little pieces are very deceiving – it’s taken me forever to finish that one square, but I did enjoy having a spot of selfish birthday stitching 😉

This afternoon we drove into Camberwell early to clear the PO Box of its contents, and do a bit of shopping to kill time before dinner at Cafe Platia (my favourite Greek & Mediterranean restaurant).  I bought about 12 big packets of chocolate bars (individual little Mars bars, Snickers, Malteser bags, Bounties etc) and took them into work for my work colleagues … they thought it was crazy me going into work on my annual leave just to bring them in choccies for my birthday when I’m not even there to share them, but I couldn’t wait until my return in a week and a half!  Fraze was almost in the dog-box when he rocked up to dinner well over an hour late, but he redeemed himself by bringing me a birthday card 😉  Mum and I shared a bottle of Yellow sparkling wine, and we stocked up at Dan Murphy’s for a day in tomorrow … with another two bottles of wine for me, and a “slab” of Victoria Bitter beer for Mum haha 😀

During the week I received some gorgeous birthday gifties from Katrina and KarenV – my sincere apologies to you both for the delay in posting my gift piccies … I meant to do it yesterday, then realised the piccies I’d taken weren’t very clear against the blue of the sofa, so I re-did them today against my turquoise pashmina.  I also received another beautiful gift from Nicki this afternoon, but the light is shocking in my flat in the evenings so I’ll have to wait until tomorrow to take a piccie.

The first piccie I have to share is of my gorgeous pillow from Katrina … it’s in the most scrummy blue colours, and I just adore the little tassels at the corners!  I feel very honoured to have this beautiful gift, it’s just sooooo lovely!  And to top it off Katrina also sent me a home-made birthday card too, which is just awesome 😀  I love everything Katrina, and feel very spoilt … and how perfect are those colours for me?  Yep, they’re definitely Annie colours! 😀 

Next up is a beautiful pillow from KarenV … it’s quite funny because I’d just sent Katrina an email asking if she would be willing to offer a tutorial in making one of these little flanged pillows for the new finishing blog, ‘cos I’d love to make one myself (and Katrina is the Queen of Pillows, not just Needlerolls!) – and here I have one in the flesh!  The first thing I did was to be nosey to work out how they’re made, and I think I finally have it worked out 🙂  I just adore the fabric and threads used (it’s my all-time favourite Anchor variegated thread), and the design is just so “me” 😀  I adore my little pillow, but to top it off Karen also sent one of the charts off my wishlist, Grandma’s Stitching Accessories, which I can’t wait to stitch (I’m already thinking about silk threads I can substitute for the Dinky Dyes ones) … but there was an added little extra that I truly LOVE – a little ducky keyring!!  How gorgeous and perfect is that??  I’ve been looking for years for a nice duck keyring, and now I have one.  I love everything, Karen, thanks again so much 😀 

I also have a couple of stitching updates for the week – it’s been a couple of weeks since I’ve shown my progress of the Macaw SAL with Carina … I can finally show some actual progress after this week’s stitching on Wednesday – it’s even starting to look like something more than a blob!  It’ll be a long long time before this one is finished though!

Next up is my progress on the Bordeaux Sampler – I did my stitching earlier in the week, and there’s not a great deal to show for it … I unpicked the errors I’d made in the previous band and restitched the leaves in green – probably no point showing a piccie, as it looks no different than last week really … aside from band 3’s leaves, I just added a bit more of the green grapevine ‘stems’ on the left-hand side.  Hopefully next week will show more progress on this one.  Carol has now almost caught me up … I told her it wouldn’t be too long before she’s overtaking me on this one, but she thought I was joking haha.

I was hoping to show my Leporello finish today, but that’ll have to wait until tomorrow now after I’ve attached those last 15 beads – then I can also unveil Nicki’s beautiful gift as well.  For now, though, I’m going to check out Healesville Sanctuary online, and see if it’s close enough to Lake Emerald to visit both in one day … as that’s possibly in the pipeline for tomorrow, if I can get out of bed early enough … especially seeing as it’s midnight already! 😉