Life with PAG - Lazy Sundays and What's to Come

Happy December! I can now breathe a huge sigh of relief after my exam yesterday, just in time to enjoy one of my favorite months. The snow is glistening outside as I type and sip hot chocolate, the Christmas tree is up, and I'm enveloped in my cozy pink Snuggie as holiday treats are baking in the oven ... sigh, life is perfect!

I've been a little MIA with posts lately due to studying, but here's a little preview of what's coming up this week:

- 5 minute work-appropriate makeup tutorial
- American Eagle XXS purchases

Today I will just share some photos from my first day of "relaxation" in a long long time. We had a little snow last night (first "real" snowfall this year, I think) and it looked beautiful this morning. What better way to enjoy it than by strolling to Sunday brunch?

View from my window this morning

Click "Read More" for pics : )

There's this little neighborhood restaurant/bar that just opened up by my apartment, and I couldn't wait to give it a try. They have these bar tables for 2 right by the window, made for people-watching.

Strolling to brunch (sadly, snow was already melted!)

Gorgeous raised-velvet wallpaper in the restaurant

Pulled chicken, mozzarella, tomato and basil panini (left)
Steak w/ potatoes, toast and poached eggs (right)

My tree!

Enjoy the rest of this weekend, and stay tuned for upcoming posts!

Learning from a Defunct Challenge Piece

I originally wasn't planning on entering this months EBW challenge. There has just been so much going on this month and I didn't have any good ideas! Then I came up with a bead weaving idea while I was falling asleep and decided to go for it. I showed a picture of it from Monday in yesterdays post.

I've since decided that this piece is destined to be one of the unfinished ones. I'm not sure if I'll pull it apart to salvage the seed beads or not, but either way it's getting junked. Why? Well, I made the piece by printing up a peace sign and then tracing it onto a piece of fabric. I had a hard time tracing it and knew my tracing was slightly lopsided but I thought I could fix it as I beaded. Um. No.

As I filled in the sides at first I was happy. One side turned out great. I couldn't make the other side look right though. I thought it was still going to work until I started doing the outside circle, and then I knew for certain that it wasn't going to work out!

I'm sad, but I've thought about it and I showed my hubby and we talked about it, and I realized that while this project failed, I've learned from it, and that's a good thing.

On my own I realized that, while I thought this was going to be a relatively simple project, it was a lot more challenging than I initially expected. It was my hubby who pointed out what the problem was/is. It's a geometric shape. I should NOT be trying to do a geometric shape in bead embroidery. Brick stitch, peyote, sure. Embroidery, no. Maybe someday I'll have enough talent and experience, but not now! It's much trickier than it looks.

Lesson learned - moving on! And I'm looking forward to showing you all the wonderful pieces my team mates made, I don't know how I'm going to choose one!