...and more money out of the bank

Bought a fridge today. Bit the bullet and did it.

There is nothing wrong with our 11 yr old fridge other than it is now just too small. We have had to face facts and deal with it. But it feels weird to replace something that expensive when it's not broken.

As our current fridge is a small one (it was bought, at the time, to fit the gap available), when we built our present house, we made sure that the fridge space was bigger than the current fridge, knowing that we would have to upsize one day. However we found to our horror when out looking at all the whiteware stores, that new fridges now tend to be bigger than the gap in our kitchen! eeek!

Fortunately, our home grown appliance maker, Fisher&Paykel, still have a model that fits our gap AND it is a model that I like. Honestly, some of the fridges out there have so much internal plastic and do dads that there is no room for the actual food.

School holidays are fast approaching, with the end of Term 1 being next Thursday April 5.

Tamsin appears to have coped ok with her first term of school - she certainly runs into her classroom every morning quite happily. And at home all she does is practise writing her letters and numbers, which can't be a bad thing. Her "s" is now around the right way every time. Her "8" is still wonky, but I remember not being able to do those properly until my second year at school.

No more progress on the stitching :(

Last day of March tomorrow so I'd better get a move on if I'm to squeeze in a finish for the month.

That said, I'd better be off to bed as another busy Saturday coming up: housework, ballet, cheer fundraiser, gymnastics, grocery shopping - that covers 7.30am till 4pm non-stop. Sunday not much better, LOL. Go to work Monday for a rest, I think :)

Another day, another dollar... spent

The cheque account is going to be very battered and bruised by the end of the week. Everything seems to be falling due at once: ballet holiday class and exam fees; gym class and holiday course fees and the next installment of the cheerleading trip to the Australian competition. I knew it was all coming so had the budget in place but it still knocks the bank account around alarmingly!

So here I am at the end of Tuesday having done the Tamsin to ballet, then Jessica to gymnastics trek. Tomorrow is Jessica to ballet followed by cheerleading class. Thursday is just Jessica to gymnastics. Friday is a free afternoon (yay!), then Saturday with Jessica to ballet, then get Tamsin to beginners gymnastics followed by Jessica's gymnastics class. Thank heavens for fabulous DH who gets dinner ready every week night.

When I'm "good" I actually get some stitching done, but mostly I just play Sudoku (I have a travel set). I have to admit the Sudoku has been good for my math/ logic. And it means I don't watch Jess too much and do the evil gym mom act. I can tune her out even better if I have a good book along. Tamsin is getting very bored with all of the tagging along to Jess' activities hence the starting her on ballet this term, and adding beginners gymnastics next term. But to be fair, she does behave very well during the 14 hours Jess is at classes per week. Actually, Jess behaves very well for that time too! In fact, the only time Jess throws a hissy is when I threaten to drop one of the classes cos I'm sick of the travelling etc involved.

Next year something is going to have to be dropped - just for the budget's sake, never mind that Jess' gym coach is getting to the end of his patience with "other than gym activities", and wants her to really focus on gymnastics now.

No stitching tonight, but I did do some last night - yay!

Made a start on the backstitching on the Forever Friends piece from Quick&Easy. Note to self: aim to get it done on Friday to be my finish for March. Then I must get going on Penguin #17.

Cooper's birth sampler was my Feb finish, and these two were my January finishes.

My goal this year is to finish something every month. So far, so good!

What did I achieve today...

I wrote a to do list this morning to organise my thoughts and to make sure I didn't waste the afternoon (Monday being one of two week days without afterschool activities).

Well, I managed to get to the bank, yay. And as the walk from the bank back to the car happened to take us past my framers, we popped in to say hi and see if my last finish was ready to be picked up. It was, great. So now it's ready to be handed over at Cooper's birthday party during Easter weekend.

Then we carried on over to a local gym club to check out enrolling my youngest, 5yr old Tamsin, in general gym class for next term (thank you Lisa for indirectly reminding me I needed to do that!).

Then home again to play on the internet. Hopefully I'll get back to stitching soon. In a bit of a slump and haven't touched any WIPs for nearly two weeks now, since finishing #15 & 16 on Penguins on Ice. I really should as I'm nearly done on a freebie chart from Quick&Easy - just the backstitching to go...

I wish I could stitch faster! Just half the speed that ole Smokey manages would be fab.

Oh well. To paraphrase Dory from Finding Nemo: keep on stitching, keep on stitching

:)

Let's have a go at blogging

Having lurked on the edges, reading fellow cross stitchers' blogs, I've decided to "give it a go".
So please bear with me while I learn how to blog with humour, without rambling too much or whingeing!
Also bear with my 3 main loves in life: my girls, my cats and cross stitch (not always in that order). I have a fabulous DH too, without which the 3 three things just mentioned wouldn't be possible.

Happy stitching!