Late night stitching update

Boy its been a while since I posted! Its late here, so this will just be a quickie!

I've been working on my canvas/beadwork project as I was a bit behind since I missed one of the classes while I was away in Hungary and I'm basically caught up if not a little ahead so here it is:

the whole thing:

close up of box 1 - I'm missing stitches in the middle but I don't have that thread yet, it was on order, and is in, I just need to go and pick it up (I will this weekend), and a close up of box 2 - again I stopped on just the border as I need that missing thread to continue...

I also want to show off a gift I got from one of my stitching buddies - its one of those beautiful and practical Kelscot needle minders! I just love it!!

Right now I'm working on another gift, can't say or show a progress picture as the recipient is another regular reader of my blog. But I do have pictures of some of the other gifts that have been recieved already. The wedding piece is on hold till my beads arrive, and then once they do, I'm off to finish that one, I really need to get that done. And then to finish off my peonies!

I've decided to join in a SAL with some of my fellow online hungarian stitching friends and it starts May 1st - we will be using the freebie monthly little house patterns from here. I still need to figure out what I want to do with them, do I want to do them all on one piece of fabric or separately - some of the ladies are doing them as separate squares and will be making quilts out of them. I was thinking more along the lines of small little ornament type things but then what would I do with them... also as a single piece what would I do with them?? I'm still up in the air, but thank goodness the first square doesn't need to be done till the end of May - so I still have time to decide and finish up a couple of things to make room in my rotation for it!