Happy New Year

Well it's here... 2008... seems like only yesterday we were in New York for our summer holiday, how time flies.

This year will be one of the most... erm.... adventurous.... challenging & hectic that I believe we'll have.
The flat it up for sale & we are desperate to move, the sign is still well & truely planted in the front garden so long may it continue. Fingers crossed we'll be inundated with phone calls from our agent with potential purchasers lining up to get a view at our spacious rooms & tranquil garden enterance.
The shop is still an enormour thorn in my side at the moment. The property has been available for a bit & while we currently have one potentially interested party (for the business too) we are still hopeful of more interest.. you can never have too many people interested! Back to the business sale, we are waiting on the accountant (still) & this is most frustrating. Without that information our buyer is unable to progress with either the business purchase or building signing.

Random comment: I love my new mouse mat & wrist rest :-)

Work in the new year is going to become increasingly difficult for me. I am already larger than the average pregnant person at my stage & it seems that this isn't going to slow down.. good for babies... tiring for me!! I have already reduced my working hours from when I start back on Thursday. I will open from 10am to 4.30pm with the shop closed all day on Weds & Sundays. It takes me longer to do anything at the moment & I am finding that I am breathless quite often, thi is something I've never had to deal with in my life so it's a bit of a change. There will also come a time when I am unable to serve my customers adequately by going up & down a ladder (something which many think I should have stopped already!) but then the bags would just be all over the place & thats not my idea of a tidy shop. When running down my endless list of hospital appointments I also noted that with so many & on a weekly basis sometimes the shop will start to spend more time closed than it does open..... I only hope we get progress on the sale before too much longer.

We've been discussing now for quite some time if we should find out what "flavours" we'll be having when it comes to our babies. The answer to that changes on a daily basis. With one baby we certainly didn't wish to know until it was born so that we had a delightful surprise, well hey ho... surprise... it's two babies. We've had the biggest surprise of all so would it now be more prudent for us to find out what exactly we're having so that we are better equipped to plan what we'll need to purchase (apart from house & car!) to accomodate our little brood? Sometimes yes, we'd love to know... other days we just aren't sure we'd like to know. The likelyhood is that we will eventually find out because I have another 4 scans booked so it'll become almost impossible to miss. I wouldn't want to tell anyone though.... i'd still like it to be a surprise for everyone else but when you know something that everyone else wants to know it can be difficult to keep it to yourself......... a dilemma which will no doubt continue until the morning of the scan... 7th Feb!

I've started my 2008 Stitching Challenge for the group. I designated two designs, both nice & new. One is Under The Arch by John Clayton, reminds me heavily of Pride & Prejudice so I can't wait to get that one stitched up... thats on 28 count evenweave. My second choice is to be a new kit that the parents bought me.. Street by Michael Powell, it has to be my favourite design of his & I think all of his designs are either love it or hate it, you either like the style or you don't, I like some of them but this is my fav.. it's on 14 count aida (annoyingly it comes with Anchor threads & I hate them but I really can't be bothered to switch them to DMC's as I have to make some progress on it today for it to qualify for the challenge)
My UFO challenge pieces are Welcome House by Cinnamon Cat.. I know this was last years design but I just didn't get it finished so here it is again. The second here will be Who's Watching Whom by Dimensions which it works out was started & shelved in 1999 so it'll be good to make some further progress on this long awaited design.

Enough for now I think.... need a cuppa!!!!