Stella Arrives Texas Just in Time...

to bring in the New Year with us.

Some of you already know about Stella, but many of you who read my blog might not. The idea of Stitching Stella was created by Lindsay-ann and Lorrie. Stella is to visit as many locations around the world as possible in exactly one year. It's a really neat idea and I am so happy to be a part of this and show Stella just a tad bit here in Texas.

Stella started her journey with Lindsay-ann in England. She then travelled on to North Carolina to meet Lorrie and spend a few days there. During the Christmas holiday, she was visiting April in Georgia. These wonderful ladies have really shown Stella a great time so far. I hope that she doesn't get too bored during her visit with us. lol!

I had mentioned to my family a few days ago that we would be having a visitor. Dirk thought this was a neat idea. However, my girls thought that I had fallen off my rocker. lol! They totally don't understand how I can be having this much fun in "blogland". However, when Dirk brought the package in to me yesterday, Jae was right by my side with excitement (like me) as I was opening up the package.

We filled Stella in on our plans for New Year's Eve, which, by the way, weren't big plans. We didn't know anyone who was having a New Year's party. Or maybe they were and we just weren't invited. lol! Anyhow, we just planned on staying home and having our own little party....just the four of us (Morgan was invited to a friend's house for a party, so the four of us included Dirk, myself, Jae and my niece, Mackenzie).

We had a BIG menu for our party. We had Rotel dip, chips, Lil' Smokies and soft drinks. Later, we tried out our new fondue machine, which turned out to be a bit of a disaster. During the Christmas holidays, we attended a couple of parties where they had the chocolate fondue fountain. I soooooooo fell in love with dipping strawberries, bananas and marshmallows into chocolate. So, we bought an electric fondue pot. We figured that we would get more use out of ours if we just bought the pot instead of the big ole' fountain machine. Anyhow, I didn't think that melting a bag of chocolate would be so complicated. I am guessing at this point, since our bag of chocolate turned into a big slab of thick mess, that there's a certain type of chocolate you must use for a fondue pot. I'm telling ya, it was melted alright....but it was not the same smooth, rich-looking chocolate that anyone could just dip their whatever in. It was thick and almost dough-like. In fact, we had to use a spoon to pick up each bite. Meaning....take a bite of strawberry then a spoon of chocolate. After doing this about three times, I lost interest. I plan on asking my expert friends today, who have their own machine, what kind of chocolate we're supposed to use. If you know, please let me know.

Sorry, I tend to ramble once I get started on something. Now back to Stella's arrival.

I do believe that Stella was happy that we weren't going out for the evening. She hung out with us a little while in the kitchen and checked out the few decorations that we had.

I told you it was just a few!

Anyhow, she tried taking Gucci's bed for the night, but Gucci (in a nice way) told her that he didn't think so. Look at the expression on his face.


Stella finally took a seat in the living room where Dirk gladly showed her the remote in order to relax.

This is fun! Well, it is for me so far. We'll see how much fun Stella has while visiting us. Don't forget to go check out the other blogs, Lindsay-ann, Lorrie and April to read up on Stella's travelling adventure.

I pray that you all are enjoying this new day of the year. May God continue to bless each of you in 2009!