Happy Friday!

And happy-start-of-the-long-weekend to my fellow Canadians!!! HURRAY! 

I am pleased to report that winter has, at least temporarily, been kicked out of my neck of the woods. HURRAY AGAIN! With the weather forecasters predicting 17C this afternoon and double digit temps all weekend I truly hope I don't have to share any more depressing icy pics with you until November. Hope I'm not getting too optimistic here...

Now if I could just kick this little cold my brother kindly gave me, I might just be able to get out for a weekend hike and (dare I say it) enjoy the weather????

I do plan to spend some quality stitching time on Santa this weekend as well. Yup, we're taking a much needed break from home construction. We may be thhhhhhissssss close to finishing but boy are we ever burnt out. 

So just because I am committed to putting in a TON of work in on Santa I thought it would be a great idea to show you how far along I am right now. 

I'd say I'm a little better than 1/3 of the way through on this chart so far. The really difficult parts are now coming up. I'm also leaving all the beading until last because BOY is there ever a lot of it. I figure the glass beads and my q-snaps may not make a lovely combo. 

This will be my first time ever really beading. YIKES! I'm actually kind of scared because not only have I never really done it before, but I have also never seen it done before. Sure, I see lots of lovely pictures out there with cross stitch and beading wonderfully mixed, but it's not really helping me with HOW I go about beading.

Some burning questions I have are:

• What kind of floss do I use to bead? 
• Do I even use floss?
• Will the bead cover-up the fabric so it's not visible so that the design will look complete and not "holey". 
• Am I suppose to cross stitch the spots where the bead is suppose to go in a similar colour floss to prevent "holeyness"?
• Do I attach a bead and then tie off or do I do bead after bead?

So please, my dear stitchers, if you have any tips you want to share please leave a comment! I need your help :)

Wish me luck!

Have a great weekend,

Melissa