Suffer for fifteen minutes!

I'm trying to get better organized and get things finished this year so I have a couple of projects that will likely be on-going for this entire year!  I've used what Gretchen Rubin calls the "Suffer for 15 minutes" plan before and it really does work!  I just spend 15 minutes doing those things that look like such an immense undertaking that they will never be finished.  I have two for this year.  First, inputing all the books in the house on the computer-then adding them to dropbox so I can check the list when I'm out  preventing my purchasing a book more than once!  If you had any idea how many books I own you'd know why this seems an insurmountable task! Second, scanning all the photos onto the computer and then creating photo albums-I have them all organized, using the 15 minute plan, but no one looks at them in the boxes I'm hoping that changes if they are in books.  I need to buy a huge external storage device first!

I've begun the books and it's actually going better than I thought it would.  I'm using a spreadsheet instead of a database and just inputing in alphabetical order by author, I'll only list the author of multiple books once so when I get to Nora Roberts/J D Robb that should fly!  I've made different sheets for different catagories so it will be easy to locate the cookbooks section, or the fiction.  Perhaps I should add a column with a Y/N for "have I read it?"

Yesterday I put together Pink Scrap Quilt One and today I'll put Pink Scrap Quilt Two together, when they are ironed I'll post a photo.  Both will be waiting for borders until I find just what I'll looking for in fabric.

Very cold this morning and snowing a bit.  We didn't get any of the snow yesterday the guessers said we would and they didn't mention snow this morning!  Shows what they know.  

Rain!

I woke to the blessed sound of rain this morning and it has been falling off and on all day.  We are still classified as in a drought so every drop is appreciated.

There's just one little problem.  I have a four footed child who was bred for the damp, cold Shetland Islands!  (Off the north east coast of Scotland, towards Norway!)  The problem with that is this:

Can you tell how wet she is?  She's been out there in the rain most of the day and likely never even felt wet against her skin, sigh.  You can't keep her in-she goes crazy!  What you can't see is the underside of her and all the mud she collected.  She, and I have both had showers now so she is even wetter.  She is also peeved with me!  I won't open the door for her to go back out!  She'll really be peeved when I don't let her sleep with me!

Cross Stitch Wednesday

So there's been some progress made on Bri's stocking:

Last week

This week

Hope to keep going and get this one done.  I have three more to make before I'm caught up!

Design Wall -or in my case pool table- Monday

I finished all the alternate blocks for this quilt yesterday.  Only made 30some more than I need so I guess this is the first of two pink and pastel quilts!  I only want to make it twin size as I intend it for Nora.  Hope to have these sewn up this week!

12th Night-the last Day of Christmas

The tree in my bedroom.

I love decorating for Christmas, hence the fact that I have 4 trees!  The top of my bookcases hold several North Pole Cottages and I drink my tea out of holiday mugs!  That said, tonight is the last night for the outside lights, tomorrow I will drag all the boxes down from the attic and begin packing everything up.  Sad.  The house always looks so bare when it's gone.  Then I will dig in and scrub the house back to normal, change out the few seasonal things I keep for winter and get on with it.  Until the Monday after Thanksgiving!

Cross-stitch update

I haven't posted a cross-stitch update for quite a while.  In fact, the last photo I could find was this one from MARCH:

 Compared to this one I took tonight.

I should be much further, in fact I should be finished.  All those weeks of not picking up a needle really hurt!  I'll be working on it some more in a little bit.

Yesterday, Rob and Tanya came to borrow my food saver and brought me these!

Aren't they beautiful?  I am loved.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!