My TTYL Surprise and Christmas in August

Can you believe it's Wednesday already?!?  Time flies even when you're not having fun.  It's still hot and I don't see much relief in sight.  You would think I would be used to these long hot summers since I was born and raised right where I live!

I'm still experimenting with nail polish.  Here is my story on China Glaze TTYL.  Was I ever shocked when I completed my latest mani and walked outside.  I had been doing my nails in a dimly lit room and thought, well, this is a pretty mundane pink with tan undertones.  I thought I could probably live with it a few days and figured I would never use this one again.  I even had to redo my thumb as it was going on rather thick and streaky.  Not a very good quality of polish, I thought.  Then I walked outside to take a picture and was I ever very completely shocked and even said OMG!  There were different shades of pink, some oranges and even golds along with a lot of shimmer!  It is gorgeous!!  What more can I say.  While talking to my daughter, Megan, I explained to her what happened and she said that this polish is from the OMG Collection and is a holo polish.  She had previously used a blue one (can't remember the name) from the same collection and showed it off on her blog.  I had loved the look but would never do blue (after all, I am a grandma!).  The only bad news is that is started chipping just after being worn for 24 hours :(  Guess we can't always have beauty and wear together.  I will use this polish again but will probably save it for more special occasions than just for wearing around the house.  Here are some pictures:

This is what I thought was a fairly boring color - poorly lit room (please ignore the ugly thumb)

Better here under florescent lighting

WOW!! It still doesn't show all of the colors that appear in sunshine

I thought I would share my current cross stitch project with you today.  I usually don't work from a kit, and this just reinforces that thought.  I prefer to have my charts done in black and white and not multi-colored like this one.  I also like the stitch indicators to be big enough to see easily, but every time I think there might be a change, I practically have to get my nose up to the chart to see what the little symbol is in the square.  This is a 14 count fabric, which is okay, but I much prefer to work on 18 count.  By now, I'm sure you are asking why I selected this one.  I am making it for my son-in-law, Ryan, and it was chosen by my daughter.  Poor Ryan had been using a store-bought red fuzzy stocking with puffy paint writing for his name each Christmas.  It looked rather out of place next to all of the rest of the family's stockings that have been stitched either by myself or my mother years ago.  So, I'm determined to finish this and my goal is to have it done by the end of the month.  Here are pictures:

Here's the kit I'm working on for Ryan's stocking

This is the kind of chart I hate - multiple colors and very tiny symbols

Work in progress in my cross stitch frame

That's it for this wacky Wednesday.  I'm off to work on my Hawaiian quilt pattern - I'm actually going to draw it out on the big paper instead of the tiny 8 1/2" square that I started with.  Wish me luck!!