Stitching along

This is this weeks progress on Bent Creek's Quaker Star.  I only have a few little motifs to go before I can call this one complete. I managed to fix all my mistakes on the outer star border without having to frog anything yet. For the motif on the left point though I will have to rip out a few stitches since the red goes into the border a bit there. I even bought a cute square frame for this yesterday. It is an unfinished wood, so now I am debating what color to paint it. I was thinking either a red or a navy blue. Any opinions? 

I would show my progress on Mirabilia's Santa but it has all been beard stitching in lots of shades of light grey. BORING, plus it doesn't show up very well in the pictures.

And this is my next project waiting in the wings. Actually it is waiting for more than me to finish the Bent Creek Star, I am using it as weight loss bribery. I kitted it all up with the linen and threads (I even dyed the linen that you see under the chart myself) and gave it to DH with the instructions not to give it back to me until I have lost 10 more pounds of baby weight. While I have been good about getting back to exercising after baby I still am bigger than I would like to be. So I thought using a reward system for every 10 pounds lost would be added motivation (and a good excuse for more cross stitch projects). I love Cricket Collection, and all things fall/Autumn, and this one though it's hard to see from my photo has the cutest little pumpkin patch in front of the house. I promise better pictures of it once I actually start on it (hopefully sooner than later only 8 more pounds to go....)

Speaking of getting back to exercising last weekend our whole family did a 5K fun run. My oldest daughter asked to start running with me, and at first I thought "uggh she's going to slow me down and that's my only alone/me time away from the kids". Turns out ten year old's are pretty fast, and she has done really well running the whole 2 miles with me on my nightly runs. Plus its nice just to have one on one time with her before the dreaded teenage years hit. She has her eye on the cross country team at school next year, and I told her if she keeps up the running she will be the fastest one on the team come fall. As you can see I have my laptop back up and working, so was able to organize my pictures a little better this post.

What I'm Reading this Week: Such a Pretty Fat by Jen Lancaster

What I'm Watching this Week: Rizzoli and Isles, Warm Bodies, Six Days and Seven Nights

Miles Ran this Year: 73.99 miles