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Smoothies, Cold Coffee, and Wip Progress

Happy Tuesday! How was your week?

Can you believe that it’s almost September? The end of Summer is right around the corner. The temperatures at the Castle, however, will stay pretty warm for a while, and we generally won’t start getting Fall weather until mid-November. But there is a subtle difference in the morning air, and I’d say that the day time temperatures are five degrees lower than a month ago. Not much, but it’s something!
One of the ways that I’ve been beating the heat is by drinking smoothies. It’s also a great way to get calcium, since I’ve never been one to drink a glass of milk. So far, these are my favorites (not arranged in order of tastiness!):
  • Banana Mango
  • Banana Guava
  • Peanut Butter and Banana
Can you tell that I love bananas? It’s overpowering, for sure, but it’s a great flavor in those smoothie combos. Once in a while, I’ll add some chocolate to the Peanut Butter and Banana smoothie. It’s delicious!
If you want to know how to make a Peanut Butter and Banana smoothie, here’s a link to a recipe.
A new-to-me beverage that I really like is Cold Coffee. It’s like a frothy, super cold iced coffee that you make in a blender. Here’s a recipe for Cold Coffee.
For those of you who now want to stitch a coffee themed cross stitch, I’ve got you covered with my Coffee Cross Stitch and more free eBook. Link is here.
Today's exciting WIP update news is the path that's appearing in the bottom right hand corner of Paris Market!

One more day of stitching that path, and it's mission accomplished for my September deadline! I'm so happy with how the flowers have turned out. As always with a full coverage chart, I have to look at it from afar to drink it in. The red flowers were fun to stitch, but it's a nice change to be working in grey, with brown half stitches too.

My current plan for September 1st, is to put away Paris Market, and Medieval Menagerie. Their replacements will be that alphabet chart I'm designing (more on that in just a moment) and Trick-Or-Treat Moon. Ideally, I'd like to finish the Moon before Halloween, but I won't be disappointed if I don't hit that goal. It does deserve a finish soon, though, as this will be year three of it lining up in my rotation.

The alphabet sampler is coming along nicely. I won't post a picture here, because a lot of the work I've done on it since last week have been minor changes. Edited a motif here, altered a letter there. That kind of stuff. This chart is going to be very fun to stitch! Each letter will feel like a mini finish. Of course, I'll post frequent WIP update pictures both here and on my Instagram. I'm of two minds about what color I should use. It's a choice between these two: 


Sorry about the lighting, it's a very overcast day. The fabric will most likely be Ivory aida. I'm leaning toward red, but that blue looks awfully pretty. Which floss do you think I should use?

Lastly, just want to give you all a heads up. Sometime this month, I'll be having a 25% off store wide sale in my shop. The fine details will be announced in my next post.

Happy stitching!

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