What a wonderful weekend!!

(Well, with the exception of the clogged toilet this afternoon....yuck!! Especially bad when you have only one toilet in the house and your husband doesn't feel compelled to fix it ASAP. Grrrr.)

Friday night I cleaned up around the house a bit - since my parents were coming Saturday - and then I did a bit of finishing so I'd have a stitched doo-dad to display in my "new" bedroom. Here is Lanarte's "Classic Woman," finished as a little flanged pillow.

I did this with fabrics I picked up eons ago in the remnant bin at Wal-Mart...let's just say that I learned WHY they were less than $1/yard. They are truly cheap fabrics, and my sewing skills aren't good enough to compensate for the cheapness. I had some real problems getting everything to behave nicely. Even ironing this stuff -- specifically the burgundy, which was a sheer synthetic blend fabric -- was frustrating. I DO think the finished product is cute, but I freely admit that I need more practice! It wasn't supposed to look quite so "ruffly".....

The visit with Mom and Dad was great. They arrived around 10 AM, and then Mom and I headed to the LNS!!! She brought a piece I stitched for them several years ago because she wanted it reframed. The original framing was done at Michael's, and the oval mat that was used was 1) too big and 2) not quite the right color (it was a speckled blue, and the piece was stitched on blue fiddler's cloth aida). At the LNS, we decided on a rectangular double mat in shades of green. I'll definitely post a picture when I get it back, and in the meantime I'll try to find a "before" pic, too (I'm sure I have one in a folder around here somewhere!).
Mom also treated me to some framing of my own pieces, too!! I tried -- albeit a bit half-heartedly! -- to talk her out of it, but she was adamant that my pretty stitching should be displayed. Soooooo....the Woodland Sampler that I finished last summer and the Old Books sampler that I did earlier this year will both be on my walls soon! AND Mom bought me some patterns from the 50%-off bins. I told her about the Neighborhood Round Robin project I'll be embarking on in July, and casually mentioned (hehehe) that I didn't have a lot of house patterns in my stash (well, that's NOT a lie!). So we found The Trilogy's "Cottage in the Meadow" and Hillside Samplings "House Samplings" that could have potential.
Mom, Dad, DH and I had lunch at a great little Irish restaurant and pub, then went back to our place to relax. Dad went over some investment possibilities for us to consider, then he took a nap while DH and I demonstrated the Nintendo Wii to my mom. Dad woke up in time to see some Wii bowling, and then got completely into the whole thing -- I was floored!!! (My dad has always insisted that video games are a giant time waster.)
We did end up going to Pizza Hut for dinner - DH could eat a slice or 2 of pizza, as long as he cut it up into little bits first and chewed carefully. Then Mom and Dad headed home.

Today I did some of my typical "ADD stitching" -- where I switch projects so often in one day that any progress I make is difficult to see. Here is Just Nan's "Wintry Mix" (most of the stitching on this one was done Thursday at the oral surgeon's office).

And here is more on the Neverending Knotwork wedding gift. More backstitching, and I worked down the left-hand side a little bit.