Some updates!

Anyone need any books covered - LOL?!! I spent all day in the school library on Wednesday helping to cover books - going to be an expert by the time we are done with them all :)

In other news, the mailman has been very kind to me this week!



On Saturday I received the above from Karen at Dragonfly Dreams - one of many parcels I have received from Karen since moving to Dubai! The threads and beads are for a couple of Chatelaine designs I am in the process of kitting up - Watergarden and Mini Mandalas II. The charts are M Designs - Merry Christmas and Rose Mosaic Needle Rolls. I don't usually stitch gifts for people but I thought these might come in handy to make up for teacher gifts this year.

On Sunday I received the chart and treasures pack for Mirabilia's Mermaids of the Deep from Naomi at Stitches & Spice :



This is a beautiful design and I have plans to start this next year (if I can hold out that long) or after I finish Emerald Mermaid ... whichever occurs first :) I have a piece of Ocean Custom Sparkles from Linda at Country Stitch set aside for this project. I also have a piece of Ocean Waves from Stitches & Spice which I could use for this design as well, but I have allocated that to Mirabilia's Shimmering Mermaid already :)

Speaking of Linda and Country Stitch, on Wednesday I received two packages from her (again a couple of many I have received from her since moving here!). One had three Kiwi Pearls that I'd ordered and the other contained a piece that Linda very kindly custom dyed for me for an Heaven & Earth Designs chart that I'm planning to start next month.



Aren't they yummy?! The fabric on top of the pile to the right is the custom dyed one. The design planned for this is Nouveau Mermaid Earth, one of a series of four, by Selina Fenech.

(Blogger photos is not being co-operative today so I've had to host these images at Photobucket)

I still have one more order to come in from Wyndham Needleworks but that will probably be another week or two. I ordered An Open Heart from Drawn Thread plus the silks, two Long Dog Samplers - Rosemarkie and St Georges, and a couple of the Tree Ornaments from M Designs, oh and a couple of the ornament issues of Just Cross Stitch magazine. I'm not really into Christmas designs but they may be useful to have on hand just in case :)

I have been happily stitching away on Merrick - I'm not sure that I'm going to get the dolphin finished by the end of October but I still have a few more days yet :). I still have not yet worked on QS Snowflake or Egyptian Garden though as I'd hoped to this month. Maybe I should just put a few stitches in on each of them and at least that way they will have seen some action this month!

The kids get an extra day off this weekend and have tomorrow off because of Parent/Teacher conferences. Back home we scheduled these appointments before or after school but here they close the school down for the day and you just turn up at your allotted time. I hear they do this in the States as well? I guess it gets them all over and done with pretty quickly this way :)

Ramadan is almost over as well which means half term break which coincides with the Eid Al Fitr holiday from 4th November. If DH can manage to get a few days off we are hoping to go away for a few days - not far - maybe to Fujairah or perhaps Muscat. The kids get just over a week off and I think it will do them good to have a break. I kept DS home an extra day earlier this week as his throat was still quite painful. He seems to have made a full recovery now though.

Wednesday nights are movie nights in our house :) This week we had home made pizzas for tea and then the kids chose a movie. This week it was Jumanji :) Last night DH and I watched Kung Fu Hustle - let's just say it was very weird - funny, but very weird - lol!

Well, that's pretty much all for today - have been on this machine for a fair portion of the day so I'm going to gather the family and go for a walk!