A Very Merry Lego Death Star Christmas

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas, or whatever holiday you celebrated! We sure did, with lots and lots of Legos. Luke got the Lego Death Star which he has been wanting ever since it came out. Yes, it’s beyond ridiculous…but it was a lot of fun to build. It took me, Tom and my brother Michael 9.5 hours (1.5 hours of sorting, 8 hours of non-stop building). the end result is amazing. The link with all of the pictures we took is here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jillejones/sets/72157611815472391/

And here are a couple of excerpts:

Follow the link for the rest of the pictures; it’s ridiculous.

I did manage to get a lot of stitching done the past week also. I’ve decided my goal for 2009 will be to finish Chatelaine’s “Japanese Garden” and “Hawaiian Garden” mandalas. Hawaiian is for my mom, and Japanese is for my brother and his wife. They teased me that they’ll get it in “2012″ so naturally I had to claim otherwise, and there you go. So, I guess there won’t be many new starts for me until those are done.

I haven’t worked on Japanese Garden in awhile, but I’ve been working on Hawaiian almost non-stop since my last post. Here is the current progress:

The picture is a little blurry, but you get the idea. This is a giant project!! I’ve brought my portable OTT light to my in-law’s house and have left it there, so anytime I’m there now I can pull it out and work on a Chatelaine instead of having to resort to an easier project. I *will* finish them in 2009, darn it!

Um, it’s been awhile…

Yeah, so I had intended to write a post a lot sooner. I never did get to Karen’s tag, did I? The month of December, so far, has been *insane*. I had the Yuletide concert at church the weekend of the 12th-14th, which was the same weekend as my company party. I also had adopt-a-family responsibilities, which far exceeded what I’ve done in years past. It was all good stuff, and very rewarding and important and all that, but boy am I exhausted. I finally got time to slow down, and woke up Saturday morning at 4am with the beginnings of a cold. At least it didn’t happen until after my commitments were completed! I have all of my Christmas shopping done, presents are all wrapped, and I just need to get through a couple more days of work. I think I just might survive!

I have three stitching pictures to share; the first is the “Welsh Dragon Coaster” by Textile Heritage that my brother brought back for me from his trip to England last summer:

Next are two needlepoint candies which I completed this weekend. The designer is Melissa Shirley; I finished “Green Tree White” and “Heath Bar Crunch”:

So, being sick isn’t all bad; I spent almost all day yesterday stitching. Well, when I wasn’t sleeping or blowing my nose. That brings my completed total to 19 for this year. I’m going to try and finish one more item to make it 20!

Hawaiian Garden part 1

This is a quick post; I know Karen tagged me and I’ll get to it soon. I had a pretty lazy Thanksgiving weekend, which is exactly what I needed! I did a ton of stitching and finished part 1 of Chatelaine’s “Hawaiian Garden Mandala”. Here it is:

That’s all for now; I’ll write more later! Hope everyone had a nice Thanksgiving (or weekend, for my non-US readers!).