Grateful

2012 is starting out so much better than the last half of 2011.   Luck, generosity, karma, or a little bit of it all has really helped to give me a much more positive feeling.

Nancy over at Victorian Motto has been having a lot of giveaways throughout the season.  I've seen people using her trims on a lot of smalls, gorgeous floss colors, and some really cute finishes of her charts.  I was lucky enough to win one of the giveaways, to get a PDF chart of my choice!  Very hard decision, but I ended up choosing the Christmas Reindeer Chart.  I guess I was still in the Christmas mood.  Maybe I'll splurge a bit and order some of her floss to stitch the chart.

Then there was Becky's Christmas Ornament Challenge.  I thought it was enough of a win to actually have finished ornaments.  Not only ornaments I stitched this year finished and hanging on the tree, but ornaments I'd stitched in past years got finished as well!  Imagine my surprise, shock and happiness when I read I was one of the winners!  For now my plan is to save that gift certificate for when I need a bit of a pick-me-up, or if some super-duper new chart comes out I absolutely can't live without.  I've actually budgeted a small monthly allowance for "entertainment,"  but that has to cover all entertainment, not just stitching stuff.

On the stitching front, I've gotten a bit of Halloween Rules done, but no pictures.  Actually, no stitching at all today.  I must have done something to my back, it started bothering me last night, and all day today I've been moving like I'm 90 years old.  I'm hoping I just strained a muscle.  My fear is the bum ankle is causing the back pain.  Now you're asking how the heck a bum ankle would hurt my back.  Well, when you walk with an abnormal gait, that stresses your knee, hip and back.  It seems it might be a trade-off - increase my exercise to shed the pounds but cause pain.  I'll figure something out, might have to start riding the bike instead of walking.  Poor Annie, she loves the walks.

For all you Crazy January people, I'm having a blast seeing all the starts pop up on the blogs.  Its been hard, but so far I've resisted temptation to start something new.  I get the urge, then I think about my gargantuan list of WIPs.