New Stash and a Question

Hey everyone I got some new stash today.

Can you guess what project this is for?  ;). Surprisingly I had all the other colors I needed so I only needed about 15.  I got the fabric as well it's 28 ct white lugana 20x24.  If I calculated right the design should be 14x18 leaving plenty of room.  The best part is I had a gift card still so it doesn't count for sfs.  

Now the question I have is what color/s should I dye the fabric?  I was thinking mottled gray maybe with a tint of purple. The colors are so bright I don't want to take away from them with a bright color.  I considered blue but I'm sick of stitching on blue.  So what do you guys think?  A lime green might be cool.  

I Was a Very Bad Girl

I purchased my very first HAED chart.  Since I already made my SFS for March I'm counting this in April.  My birthday is in April so I may count this as a birthday spend if I get any money.  If not no biggie since I have $75 left :)  For those of you who don't read my comments, Megan correctly guessed the right phrase.  It's "Smell the sea and feel the sky, let your soul and spirit fly".  Congrats Megan!  I went ahead and sent her an HAED since that's what she chose so I decided hey since I'm already going through all of the work of putting in my credit card info I may as well buy myself one too ;)  They're currently having a 25% off coupon which is good through the 6th. 

Since I hadn't really started the contest yet she decided to have a giveaway on her blog as well.  She was planning on having one anyway so the timing worked well :)  Head on over and check it out: The Girl That Stitches

So I'm sure none of you want to see what I chose :D well too bad I'm showing you anyway

I love Disney and this one spoke to me.  I love a lot of the Annya Kai designs and I wanted something brighter than Maleficent although she's also on my list.  I like her Little Mermaid as well but HAED hasn't charted that one up yet unfortunately.  I don't know how long I'll be able to wait to start her but I only need 17 threads I don't already have.  See you soon!

SFS March

Money earned: $25

Money spent: $0

Carryover for the year: $75

Hello again stitchers you've seen me s lot lately.  This time it's for my stitch from stash report for March hosted by Mel from epicstitching.  I did spend some money on a new stitching frame but it doesn't count.  I usually stitch in hand but this project is so long that it was starting to hurt the hand holding the fabric and I'm not even halfway yet so I decided to try a frame and stitch two handed.  It's going slower but hurts less. I still have to figure out how to hold the frame so my non dominant hand doesn't cramp.  

Here's my set up.  The lamp is attached to the frame.  The scroll rods aren't quite big enough for the fabric but rather than buying new ones I just folded the fabric.  I know I'll have to do some major ironing  but this should be my largest project so I'm okay with that.  The best part?  The whole frame was only $15 and it works well.  It sags a bit in the middle but that's because I folded the fabric in the rods.  I'm only using the paper for the couple of pages I printed for my cruise.  After I stitch through them im going back to reading my pattern on the computer.  

There's a better pic on where I am.  I'm proud of my spending so far!  Question:  if we buy a pattern as a giveaway does it count toward stash?

See you later everyone!

Disney Cruise Day 5

The last day of our cruise was also at my favorite place castaway cay.  It is disneys private island and it's one place we don't have to tender to.

We've always wanted to snorkel here but I'm not a very strong swimmer and not good with snorkeling.  Still I gave it a go.  I didn't make it far though before I had to go back.  I didn't even see any of the good stuff.  DH saw a turtle while he was out there though.  Disney sank some statues and stuff way far out but I only made it halfway.  Maybe next year :)

After snorkeling we headed over to serenity bay which is the adult beach.  Disney is very good with having a lot of areas only for adults. This is my favorite part of the whole island.

There are loungers and enough umbrellas for everyone which is a blessing for people like me who burn easy.  They also have waiters constantly coming by to take drink orders.  If you ever come here you have to order a konk kooler.  So yummy.  And who should stumble on our little slice of paradise?

Yep captain jack sparrow himself.  It's always nice to see him because there aren't swarms of kids to deal with and to me makes it s little more magical. I like when characters can just walk around where they choose and interact with guests.  At disneyworld they must go to their designated spot where there's already a line to meet them and it's just like "hi picture bye" so not fun.

We left our stuff there and grabbed some lunch.  Since it's their island it's included in the cruise cost which is great.  You can also use your room key for charging everything there.  Just my little slice of heaven.  We played in the water a bit and saw fish and starfish and kept some pretty pink and white shells.  Not really sure what I'll use them for but we'll see.  There's a large sand bar that's in the middle of the swimming area so we made it out there and chilled for a bit.

As you can tell I had problems with flying skirts all trip.  At least this time I had on my swimsuit underneath.

We decided to head back about an hour or two before all aboard and use the other day of the rainforest.  We weren't there long. Been we first got there it was completely empty but then got busier as more people came back from the island. Then it was time for dinner.  Our show this night was dreams which is about Peter Pan and the blue fairy teaming up to help a girl discover the magic in herself to learn to fly before 6am.  This was a good show.  A little corny but hey that's disney.  Dinner that night was at tritons which is a french seafood place.  Unfortunately we didn't get their real menu as it was the final night menu instead.  We were supposed to have the real menu the first night when we were at palo.  We got to go right after dinner though for a special surprise.  We had a note in our room when we got back from the island that got us a special meet and greet with the characters from the shows.  Only like 5 families are invited and pretty much everyone was there.  Remember I told you DH met his friend in pirate night?  Yep he got us the invite!

The last one is our benefactor :)

After the meet and greet it was time for the characters to say their last goodbyes :'(

We headed for one of the clubs for an 80s music trivia thing.

These were our hosts (the girl dressed as Madonna was there too).  We had to get in 3 groups and guess the song they played and then had to do a theme dance as a group.  We lost but only because we were judged unfairly.  They would give them multiples of five and us only like an extra 2 when we won.  So unfair lol.  I got some pictures of artwork I would love to stitch.

Artist is Lisa Keene.  Unfortunately I didn't see these charted anywhere.

We made one last little friend that night before going back to the real world.

It's a shy bunny.  We had to pack our bags and put them outside of the door before dinner so the next morning we only had our carry ons to take to breakfast.  We said our goodbyes and left the ship but had one last little surprise.  Turns out the cheapest car to rent for the way back was my dream car.

Yep 2015 mustang convertible.  The only part that sucked was it rained so we didn't put the top down.

It was a great trip and I can't wait to go again.  Hopefully soon.  We're going to denver and la in May so probably not but we'll see :)

Thanks for sticking with me I hope you enjoyed :). Now it's way past my bedtime.  Catch you next time with my SFS report!

Disney Cruise Day 4

Ahh day 5.  It was so nice and relaxing.  It was another day at sea and one I could actually enjoy :). We slept in late because of the time change and missed breakfast but that's okay because we could get lunch.  We got some coffee at the cove cafe and sat for a few hours in the cafe mostly reading and doing homework.  After we got bored we headed up to the pool and managed to grab a couple of loungechairs.  I'm not really a pool person so I just lounged.

I did get up a little later to make the long trek to the pool bar (like 10 feet away) and drink it with my toes in the water.  Which in turn washed off my sunscreen and I ended up burning the tops of my feet.  Painful but I've had much worse burns.  This trip I was really diligent with my sunscreen.  I learned my lesson.  Now I'm addicted to spray on sunscreen because I hate the feel of the lotion kind. It's so much faster to apply as well.  After a few more hours DMIL and I headed to the spa again.  I had bought two days worth of passes to the rainforest room. On this ship it's all inside with 4 heated loungers and 3 steam rooms with 4 showers with different rain settings.  Set up as a Tuscan style room with a big tiled mosaic of Dolphins.  They give you a salt scrub of your choice and after you apply it you switch from the steam rooms to the showers for the experience.  My favorite steam room was the second because it was aromatherapy.  My scrub was tangerine and DMIL got lavender.  They also had a chocolate mint.  We liked ours do much we bought some to take home and I just used some tonight :). The experience was okay.  I love the rainforest room on their bigger ships.  The dream has 3 steam rooms and 4 showers as well but the showers are an actual experience.  The showers are scented and gave different light shows and rain settings to give the impressions of thunderstorms or icy mist or whichever you pick.  Each shower has 3-4 different experiences for a total of like 12 different experiences.  Also the dream has one steam room that has a window to look out and the ten heated loungers all look out over the water.  They also have 2 private hot tubs only for rainforest guests that look out over the water. Next time I'm on the dream I'm getting a week pass there.  The passes for both ships are only $16 a day.

After  that we headed down to get ready for dinner.  It was semi formal night and I had bought a new dress. The show was the golden mickeys which is an award show about different movies and the stage hand who has to realize her potential and be a host.  The best part of this show by far is Tarzan who is this really ripped long haired guy in nothing but a loincloth who does some cool spinning stuff on vines.  Be still my aching ummm heart.  Yeah heart.  He was so hot :D

I forgot to mention that DH ran into someone he used to work with on pirate night so we saw him again and said hi.  We had dinner that night in parrot cay which was fine.  I didn't like the appetizer choices so they brought me yet another helping of the truffle pursettes.  I have to mention I loved our waitstaff. Our main server was jojo and our assistant server was shoot I can't remember.  They were both amazing though.  They would keep making puzzles out of crayons for us to solve and do magic tricks.  Very entertaining.  Also helped us to break the ice with our table mates.  

We had a beautiful sunset this night and another friend.

I had never seen a frog done before.  He was cool.

DH worked on his project done more while we enjoyed some wine we brought and some cheese we had delivered.  

Only one day left :(

Disney Cruise Day 3

Hello again :) I'm hoping to get all my days posted tonight.  That wasn't my original plan but I'm not really feeling up to stitching right now.  But I'm posting each day separate do that you can read at your leisure :)

So day 3 was interesting.  The time was supposed to change the night before but grand cayman doesn't recognize daylight savings so the ship decided to skip that night and observe it the night after.  We didn't have any set plans or excursion times so we decided to grab some breakfast before heading down to the tenders.  It was a nice day out.  I think it was mid 80s with a nice breeze.  We got off the ship at around 10:30.  We were the last group that had to be taken as a group.  Right after we heard them make the announcement that everybody could just head down to the tenders on their own.  Oh well it was easy.  It was all of our first time in grand cayman so we were kind of lost.  We took a shuttle to the turtle farm and ended up meeting Simone my DH worked at disney with and also found at ready sitting next to me also worked at Seaworld.  I knew she looked familiar.  She works in health services and they come in to guest services a lot to take care of guests.  They got off before us at a private tiki beach.  I think next time we'll do that it looked really nice.  But we were bound to hold turtles which is something we can't do at Seaworld.  Apparently they have a whole theme park attached but we only wanted the turtle part so we got our wristbands and headed in.

Yes I'm wearing a Bahamas shirt in the Caribbean don't judge me ;)

Anyway this totally wasn't worth it in my opinion.  It was literally here's some turtles now hold the babies and done.  They did have free wifi though so we took some time to catch up on our emails/games.  When we left we realized we had no idea when our shuttle would be back or even if they would be so we were stranded.  Taxis only came if you called and there were none in the area and the city bus was very sporadic and Was more like a van.  So we ended up hitching a ride with one of the tours that was going back to the ship.  We did a little shopping while we were there.  DMIL hot done shirts and I got an ornament.  

They had some cute stuff.  We also had some good pics.

That night we had our first official show which was

It was okay.  Toy story isn't one of my favorites. But all of the shows are Broadway style so they have great entertainment value.  We had second seating which means we watch the shows first then go to dinner.  We had about fifteen minutes after the show and decided to spend it outside listening to the water.  Unfortunately it was windy and I was wearing a skirt so I ended up flashing a little boy looking out the window at the deck.  Oops sorry kid.  At least I was wearing something underneath LOL.  

Dinner that night was our first "official" dinner as well.  Each ship has 3 restaurants that you rotate through.  You keep your same table mates and wait staff at all meals.  Thus night was animators palate.  We were in the same restaurant the night before but we had the actual show that night.  The food was great.  My favorite was the truffle pursettes.  I actually had two helpings and didn't finish my entree lol.  Luckily my DH is my human garbage disposal lol.  This restaurant is my favorite because it starts off all black and white but as the meal progresses it gets slowly more colorful until dessert where the walls are totally colored in and the waitstaff comes out on a little parade with sorcerer Mickey and they're all colorful too.

After dinner it was time for bed again.  This time our friend stole a pair of DMIL's sunglasses.

Silly dog!  We also got reminded to change our clocks.  

Disney Cruise Day 2

Welcome back!

Day 2 started bright and early and pretty rocky.  We had our massages scheduled at 8 so we headed to the spa which was 5 floors above us on the opposite side of the ship.  I wore my wristbands but forgot my bonine which lead to disaster.  Immediately after my massage and seaweed wrap I had to run to the bathroom and got quite sick.  I think the combination of lying on my stomach plus the rocking of the ship is what did it.  We were going faster to make up for not leaving on time the day before.  Damn snow ;).  Don't worry I didn't take pics of my episode :D

The massage felt great though do it wasn't a total loss.  Well once I get sick I'm kind of useless for the rest of the day as all I want to do is sleep.

So my DH and DMIL got to spend some alone time together which was nice. They went and had breakfast and brought me toast.  I was able to eat that before sleeping again.  Unfortunately it's very hard for me to get real sleep when I get motion sickness.  I just doze off and on.  I was able to get up and get a lounge chair for about an hour but there was no shade which made things worse so after canceling our mixology class I went back to the room again to sleep.

It was a day at sea so I feel like I didn't miss much.  They mostly just hung out and ate.  But I was hell bent on going to pirate night that night.  We ladies wore our pirate costumes and DH dressed up as one of the lost boys from Peter Pan (the skunk who is toodles).  Basically he was lazy with a black shirt and a skunk hat we had whereas I went all out with a corset and everything.  I was really surprised people actually knew who he was.  He was the hit of the night.  

Sorry for the bad pic we only had our phones.  But we went to the pirate party before dinner and the ship got taken over!  Luckily captain Mickey was there to save the day!

After we won we celebrated by blowing off some fireworks.

Disney is the only cruise line that's allowed to do this.  They have to stop the ship so that helped my queasiness quite a bit.  And there was a pretty strong wind which helped a ton.  I was able to eat dinner at the restaurant which was a pirate menu.

I didn't like the desserts that night so I got a Mickey bar instead.

Mmmmm Mickey.

After dinner it was time again for bed.  I was still exhausted from being sick and we had an earlyish day again for grand cayman.  So when we arrived in the too we noticed this guy just hanging out.

Lol a monkey with a chocolate eye patch.

Join me again tomorrow for a day with the turtles!