A Little Shopping, Some Food, and Lots of Fun!

My niece, who lives in Ohio (where I'm from originally), has been coming here to Virginia (where I now live) around twice a year. Amazingly enough, the man she married, has family living here - about 20 minutes away from me. So when they come to see them, I get to see her! We always spend a day in the quaint little town of Occoquan to do some shopping. Yesterday, we did just that! We didn't even let a steady downpour of rain stop us! She got lots of nice little goodies to take back with her. I found a couple things, but kept my purchases to around $10.00. Not bad - usually I do more damage than that - LOL! We had some lunch and talked a lot about this and that. She drove back to my house with me and we spent some time trying to fix the punch needle design she has been working on. With the help of a better punch needle that I gave her and a few little updates on how to do it, it is looking much better. Around 5:30, we grabbed my husband and went off to meet up with her husband and son for a delicious dinner. Soon, we had to say good-bye - for this time. That is always the hard part. But hopefully she will get back in the fall!

Then today, it was back to work after being off for two weeks! I got my job back and that is a "good thing", as Martha would say.

Good Things....

Getting my job back - yippeeee!

Getting to have a day out with my husband earlier this week for breakfast, shopping, and a stop at Starbucks

Seeing a mourning dove with her baby curled up against her

Watching traffic stop today to let some geese walk across the road (they were sort of in the cross-walk too - LOL!)

New cross-stitch "stash"!

Finding two tops that look halfway decent on me - plus they were on sale!
(I wanted something new to wear for my first week back)

A nice cold bottle of water on a too hot day

Air conditioning!

My Sort of Two Week "Vacation"....

Well, Friday was my last day at work. We had an involuntary "letting go" of all the people who shelve books at the various libraries in my county. We are all going to be able to reapply this week (well, those that want to). And hopefully, I will be one of the ones hired back! I've been working there for almost seven years (wish me luck). It feels quite odd to not be going in there this week. I keep telling myself to pretend I'm on a real "my choice" vacation and just enjoy this time. But that little voice in my mind keeps telling me - NO you FOOL, you have no job right now - LOLL!!

I had some money set aside to do various things this week and next week. Well, after two days, I've almost spent all of it - tee hee! I went to one needlework shop yesterday and got some fabric and a chart or two. Also spent a long time just looking at various threads and doing some conversions to the less expensive ones. Maybe one of these days I'll spring for some of those luscious NPS that feel like you are stitching with butter! Then today I went over to my favorite needlework shop that is closing down at the end of June. It is beyond sad. That was my favorite place to hang out and chat and look and chat some more.... She is having a good sale on everything. So I picked up a huge piece of fabric I need for Shores by CHS. It isn't the autumn gold shade which I would have liked to have gotten. But it is a nice linen and will do just fine. I figure most of the fabric will be covered with stitching anyway! And I got another tiny piece of PTP in a shade called "Chime". I'm going to use it for one of the Plum Street charts. Wish they would have had another piece, for the other one I want to do, but alas they didn't!

I will have to figure out some things to do with the rest of my time off. My husband will be off tomorrow afternoon, so we are going to have lunch after my interview. And I will stay home a few days and actually start stitching some of the things I've been buying lately!

And do some reading, get out for some walks. Just try and really enjoy this time off. Because if I do get hired back, it will be awhile before I get to take off again!!

I Love New Stash!!

These are all my new goodies! I can't wait to get linen and start each and every one of them!! I told my sister about them on Sunday. She said, if you never bought another thing from now on, how long would it be before you ran out? I told her a long long time, but that isn't going to keep me from buying more charts that I fall in love with. She said, but you don't need any more. Silly silly girl....

Monday thoughts....

Hmm, I like rain, but maybe six straight days of it IS a bit much....
Hmmm, weather report predicting another week of rain to come....
Note to self - start building ark....
Last week of work before losing job...
Yesterday - day full of phone calls... sister, Mom, Aunt....nice to hear from all
Weekend filled with some reading and stitching and knitting...
Need to prepare self for re-interviewing for said lost job...
Good thoughts needed that I will be rehired....
Want to shop want to shop....
Have to hang onto cash have to hang onto cash...
Looking forward to two weeks off while I wait to see if get said job back...
Bad, sad news that my favorite LNS is closing....
Want to shop want to shop want to shop....
Mutter mutter mutter....