Long Time....

It's been a long, hot summer filled with boxes and more boxes. When I last posted, way back in April we were counting down to our big move to central Washington. Well, the movers showed up right on schedule and with an efficiency I could only dream of possessing, had us packed and loaded into the moving van in two days.


Upon arrival at the new house they were none too pleased to see all the stairs they had to traverse to bring my fabric up to its new home in my lovely new studio, above somebody's ginormous garage. The guys decided they needed to start a new reality show, "Fabric Wars."

It has taken me most of the long, hot summer to get things unpacked and organized. There are still a few miscellaneous boxes left to sort through, but I'm getting there, ever so slowly.


In between all that I've been trying to get some plant life into our barren yard and make it look a little more inviting. Not an easy feat when the temps were over 90 for most of the summer. Now that fall is around the corner, we are looking at getting some trees planted. This black fabric was removed and we covered the yard in bark since its too steep to plant and tend grass. The rock from the terrace level is slowly being moved to the lowest part of the slope that is too steep for bark.






The Spotted One made the transition to the new house surprisingly well. Mr. Heat Lover actually discovered that the patio gets way too hot to sunbathe.....he also rediscovered his fear of thunderstorms. He's decided that any overcast after days of sunshine mean thunderstorms are on the way and he MUST climb onto my lap and pant and shake....


I've also thoroughly enjoyed the benefits of living smack dab in the center of fruit country. First we started with cherry season where I discovered sweet, dark cherries at a local farm stand, can you say yum....the better part of 20 lbs. were pitted and frozen. From cherries we moved on to apricots and now peaches and nectarines. I'm looking forward to apple season. My dehydrator has been humming along all summer.


A little quilting has been accomplished, but more just scattered sewing of rediscovered UFO's. I do believe I need to sit down and start tackling some of them.......

Counting Down

Well, the countdown has begun. 3 weeks from today the movers will arrive to start packing us up. We're taking bets on how long it will take them to pack my sewing room, even though half of it is already still in boxes from our move to the rental.

We were scheduled to go over to talk to the landscaper on Saturday but, as luck would have it, the Bearded One ended up down for the count with the nasty stomach virus that had been going through his co-workers. So, I plugged in my trusty iPod, cranked up my audio book and headed over the mountains.

First thing on my list was checking out the new retaining walls and the fence, then we discussed landscaping and irrigation (nothing grows in central Washington unless you have irrigation -- average annual rainfall is about 9"!) Finally, I was able to go inside to see the cabinets, counters etc. Alas, the painters were finishing up the trim so everything was covered in paper or plastic. I was able to get a peek at the cabinets and backsplash while we discussed where I wanted the knobs and drawer pulls. Then there were the samples of blinds and sun shades to go through and decide upon. Sigh, yet more decisions. I never realized how many decisions you have to make when you build a house.



On the quilting front, my ADQD (Attention Deficit Quilting Disorder) is in full swing. I've started yet another new project along with finishing up one of my class projects from Block Party. Sadly, with no design wall and a sick quilt holder, there will be no pictures of the flimsy. But, I can show you these lovelies.


I've been collecting forest greens to make a green log cabin since there will be very little green on the other side of the mountains. The QB's supplemented my green stash for my birthday this year so what else is a girl to do but start cutting them up and sewing them back together again. Here's the tentative setting plan, only a mere 90 blocks, each with 23 pieces....yeah, go ahead and do the math, just don't tell me!


I'm toying with making that brown border out of string pieced triangles. We'll see how sick I am of little pieces when I get to that stage. I really do need to start concentrating on finishing up some UFO's--perhaps after I get all moved and settled in I will think about that.....

Almost There

Well, the house is nearly complete. Here it is before the garage doors and front door have been painted. The garage doors will be the same lighter gray that's in the peaks. The front door will be a nice dark wine red. At least that's what the color chip looked like that I passed along to the builder.

The interior is being worked on now. We haven't been over to actually see the house in a few weeks but have been told the cabinets are in and the granite counters were supposed to be going in this week or next.

Our next big expense is outside. We had to have retaining walls built between our home and the property next door as the builder had to dig down more than he anticipated. This left a 5 ft. difference in elevation between the two lots. We needed the retaining walls before we could install the fence to contain a certain Spotted One.




The wall between our house and the neighbor to our north. The property line is above the wall.


The wall wraps around to the back with a second one helping out the steepest portion of the backyard slope. Between the retaining walls and the fence which is next up, we are now calling the Spotted One our $13k dog.

I'm eagerly looking forward to getting over there in a couple weeks to see everything for myself. The sewing room floor is done but the pictures that were sent to me aren't worth sharing.

Our actual move is scheduled for the week of April 22nd. I'm SO looking forward to finally being able to unpack and get settled for good.

M.I.A.

Well, once again it's been way too long since this blog was updated. But, fear not, I have a good  reason. After working all summer to get our home ready to sell, we finally put it on the market and it sold in 19 days. This meant we had to scramble to find a short term rental.

We found a rental a mere 2-1/2 miles away and moved most of the contents of our home, one carload at a time. We did have a U-Haul for the big stuff but, since we will be moving again in a few months we didn't want to box everything. We used plastic storage bins for all the everyday stuff. Let me just say, this is NOT the way you want to move. It took us 16 days and countless trips back and forth.

I have taken over the living/dining room for my temporary sewing room. Unfortunately there just isn't enough room for the HandiQuilter to be assembled. All of my shelving units for my stash had to be disassembled in order to be moved. They are now assembled and the stash is almost all put away.

There are still a few empty cubicles but fear not, there are still several garbage bags of fabric still waiting to be emptied. Maybe by the time we are ready to move again I will have it all put away....

Meanwhile, my sewing table is still in pieces as we have temporarily misplaced the hardware to put it back together. I'm currently using a small, portable folding table from Costco for my sewing machine and actually did some sewing yesterday -- yeah!

On the house front -- things are moving along quicker than we had expected. We will be heading over next week to talk about extra electrical pulls, those all important additional outlets in my sewing room, built in sound system and even picking out cabinets.

This is the garage end -- my room will be above the garage. The Bearded One is ecstatic, he's getting a 10ft door for the bus! The garage will also 12 ft. ceilings so he can even open the top while parked inside in order to dry out the canvas. He's a happy camper. 

This is the other half of the house, downstairs will be a great room with the bedrooms upstairs. It doesn't look like much now but I understand the roof should be on by now. I've suddenly become a big fan of HGTV and all the home shows. My head is swimming with all kinds of ideas, that's a good thing, right?

Hopefully life will be a little more settled now, even if it's only temporary. The good thing is, real movers will be moving us the next time.

Wishing you all a very Merry Christmas and a happy, healthy New Year.

Long Time

Wow--it's been 2-1/2 months since I last posted. A lot has been going on since then. Our dilemma has been solved and now the fun begins.

First of all, these lovelies showed up at my door today.


A big thank you to Rita of Red Pepper Quilts and Julie from The Intrepid Thread. I won the giveaway. Unfortunately, they will be put in a box until next spring, sigh.

After visiting the house in question from my last post, we decided that as wonderful as the house is, we can't get past the 8 ft. retaining wall right outside the back door. But, it was suggested to us that perhaps we would like to build the same house on a different lot.


So, this is now the future site of our new home. We will be putting this house on the lot, but flipping it so the garage is on the other side.


See that window above the double garage door? That is my future sewing room.


This is from the doorway. You can't really get a good perspective of the size but this room and the portion directly ahead total about 536 sq ft. The window above the garage is just to the right side of this picture. I debated about dividing the room or not like this one is and finally decided that I need to do so because the room has dormer walls and this wall will give me a place for a design wall. I will put a nice comfy chair, a daybed and all my quilting books in there.

This is pretty much what the view from my window will be.


The Bearded one is happy because not only will the bus fit in the garage, but the ceilings are 11 ft and he will be able to open the pop top to dry the canvas.

The Spotted One isn't so happy. Now that the house is on the market, his little hideaway cave in the guest room is no longer cavelike. Once the rains and stormy weather returned a couple weeks ago he was most unhappy. One sleepless, stormy nite I got up and couldn't find him anywhere! On the second circuit through the house I looked on the far side of my cutting table. I found him, curled as tight as possible in my scrap basket.



What a goofball.

So, that's all my news. After 4 months of painting and getting the house ready to sell, I am finally able to relax a little and do some sewing, in between house showings, ugh.

Keep your fingers crossed for me that the house sells quickly. But then, if it does, we will have to find a short term rental......

Dilemma

I haven't been blogging lately because I don't have anything to share. I'm quite sure I'd bore you to tears in no time flat discussing, ad nauseum, all the things we are doing to get the house ready to sell. Suffice it to say, we're not quite there, YET.....I cannot believe just how much stuff two people can accumulate in 22 years. Then there are all the projects that we've been meaning to do and never managed to start until now. Too bad I won't be able to enjoy the walls my laundry finally has, or all the nice, freshly painted white doors, windowsills, baseboards etc. After 22 years of 1980 dark, faux wood grain doors, everything has been freshened and lightened up.

We're almost there. The 10' x 10' storage unit is getting pretty full. The wonderful young EMT who moonlights doing yard work is almost done with the yard and it looks amazing. All that's left are a few odds and ends, the guest room needs to be painted -- it's still the same color it was when we moved in, Pepto Bismal pink! And, the carpet needs to be replaced. I think we will be carpet shopping next week.

Now for the dilemma, we've found a house in Wenatchee that is exactly what we want, complete with three car garage that are all tall enough for the bus to fit in with a bonus room above for my sewing room. The house also has a wonderful view of the Columbia River and the Wenatchee valley which is a big thing for me since there really isn't much over there besides brown. The house has just started construction and is due to be completed mid-late November. However, the latest word on the opening of the data center, which is where The Bearded One will be working, has been slid from April to August. Yes, NEXT August as in 2013.

So, do we go ahead and put this house on the market as planned by Labor Day. If so, and if it sells, I will be moving to Wenatchee with the Spotted One while the Bearded One stays here. And then there's the problem, where would he stay? As I said, this house is absolutely perfect. It's the only thing we've found that has everything we want. So, it's hard to pass up something so perfect. There's also the little fact that interest rates are really low right now. What to do, what to do. That is our dilemma. Meanwhile, we will continue to finish up what needs to be done here and figure out what our next step will be.

I will leave you with a picture of the Spotted One from our camping trip to the coast last weekend. It was a beautiful weekend and it was nice to get away and not do anything. Of course, when we got home, one of the hottest days of the summer, the air conditioning decided to break down.....


And yes, that is my pillow he's resting his Spotted little head on......