What a week!

Hi there!

Things have been a little crazyville for me!  I thought I should write down the highlights of late so we can all have a good laugh.

• One afternoon I heard the dog start barking like crazy in our backyard.  He really never barks unless someone is approaching the property, so I went out to check things out.  He had his nose in a bush and is darting in and out, growling and snapping and basically freaking out.  At first I thought it was a wild desert bunny (we do have those often around here) so I start poking at the bush a little with a pole.  Nooooo, definitely not a bunny.  It was a SNAKE.  For the love!!!  Need I remind you I have dealt with this before.  It darted under our trash cans, and I ran back in the house, put some boots on, and grabbed our shovel from the garage.  I knew I had no choice but to kill it.  Didn't WANT to, but I knew I couldn't let it harm my dog, or the neighbors' dogs, or kids outside playing, etc.  I was not going to simply chase it away, and NO WAY was I going to try to catch it to release somewhere else.  Uggggghhhhhhh.  My 13 yr old tipped back the garbage can and I froze in fear and guilt.  It was SO hard, but I finally whacked.  Several times.  I'll spare the details of its death but it was not as easy as I thought!  My heart pounded and I shook for a good 2 hours! YUCK.

• I cut all my hair off again!  

• I started a job!  (Well, some "independent contract work.")  I'm working for a very sweet lady who has invented an essential oil diffuser necklace, and I'm assembling necklaces at a ferocious rate.  I'm also doing any other odd jobs around her home office to keep the business organized and productive.  Right now that equals TAXES!  I'm having a great time with something to fill up my days!  This has been quite busy for me, and I'm having to adjust how to juggle everything else in my life, but it's a huge blessing nonetheless.  Why a blessing?...

• Because I'm going to HAWAII !!!!  What?  How?  I still can't believe it.  I've never been there before!  We are joining my sister and her husband on the mother of all double dates to Hawaii!  This new job has been the perfect way for me to save up some spending money as well as lessen the blow of the whole trip.  Wish me luck!
  
  

Scrappy Patchwork Quilt

This was my 2nd attempt at making a quilt without making any fabric purchases!!!  ALL SCRAPS BABY.

I'm really making a dent in my ridiculous drawer of leftover/not-very-cool fabric scraps.  And the result is always so pretty anyway - Yay!!!

(I did buy the red print for the back, the binding fabric, and the batting.  But I used a gift card that was a birthday present, so that makes this quilt FREE to me!  That is pretty fun.)

**WAIT - DON'T GO YET**

The best part is...

This quilt is for sale!!!  Yes it can be your very own... or a really amazing gift for someone you love.

It is 65" x 48" which is a generous throw size.  Perfect for anyone.

I'm asking $125 ...OBO.  I will ship it anywhere in the U.S.

Leave me a comment and it's yours.

Turning 39

In honor of my recent-ish birthday, here are 39 really scattered, big or small, things you might not have known about me!

1.  I like to eat wheat thins late at night.
2.  I must put my toaster strudel frosting on in a diagonal zig-zag pattern, just like in the commercials, because that's the way my brother did it.
3.  I take a bath every single night.  I rarely take showers.  This one is just like my mom.
4.  I have never flown in an airplane over water.  I'm really not looking forward to it.
5.  I have never broken a bone that needed to be cast, but I've worn a cast that wasn't for a broken bone.  (How weird is that?)
6.  I was a pretty bad sleepwalker as a kid.
7.  As a young girl, I was VERY afraid of dogs.
8.  I was permanently traumatized as a child by the movie Jaws and I still don't like the ocean because of it.
9.  I secretly want to be a celebrity SOLELY so that I can be a contestant on Dancing with the Stars.  Can't they do "Dancing with the Housewives?"
10.  I really don't like chewing gum.  Ever.
11.  I'm freakishly good at remembering numbers.
12.  My favorite ice cream hands-down is rainbow sherbet.
13.  I don't like anything "rustic" or the "shabby chic" trends, or anything like that.  OR BURLAP.
14.  I have dreams all. the. time. of my teeth falling out.
15.  I never ever cry at fictional movies.
16.  I cry about real life stuff a ton.
17.  I once hosted a local cable (think Wayne's World quality) teen call-in talk show.  My "15 minutes" of television fame.
18.  I once went on a date with a guy who didn't know he was on a date with me.  LOADS for the self-esteem.
19.  I really hate eating things that have gone cold from out of the toaster.  I like to have them right away, and hot!
20.  I dislike foods that are slimey.  This includes eggs, bananas, yogurt, oatmeal.
21.  The only food that I really cannot ever choke down is seafood.  Any type, any preparation.
22.  I do not know what "stereo" sounds like.  Surround sound holds no magic for me.
23.  I love to have my feet rubbed, or even tickled.
24.  I can't fall asleep if I'm even a little bit hungry.  So I'm a late-night eater.  I call it dinner #2!
25.  Sometimes I shiver when I'm nervous.  Teeth chattering and all.
26.  I have a really strange dent in the top/back of my head.  I would not be one of those cute bald women.
27.  When I feel like I don't want to compete with, or feel intimidated by people, I completely shut down.  One of the very rare times you will observe me as "quiet."
28.  I get motion sick so easily these days, not by travel, but by television and movies.  It's ridiculous and I hate it!
29.  I'm afraid of lightning (if it's close by.)
30.  I love to be warm, whether it's snuggled up in a quilt or out in the sun feeling just a little bit of burn on my skin.
31.  One of my favorite things is new socks right out of the package.  Even after you wash them, it's not the same.
32.  I love checklists, and notepads, and oooooh! magnetic notepads!
33.  I have never been pulled over by the police in my car.
34.  My first roommate looked exactly like a young brunette Meryl Streep.  And I'm pretty sure she didn't like me much.
35.  I've never been pregnant all the way to my due date.
36.  In college my brother punched me in the nose on the first day of school, AT school.  It was an accident, but still!
37.  Once upon a time I taught 9th grade.  Those students are 28-29 years old now.
38.  A 10th grader that same year at the same school was my future sister-in-law, although neither of us knew it, or each other.
39.  And finally... when I'm bored you will often find me baking treats!

Laundry Room Revamp

The first "big" project in our new house was the laundry room.  I use quotes around the word "big" because it is a laundry room after all.

This room was nothing remarkable.  It's not tiny, but not huge.  And yet the way the builder designed the shelving in there was a ridiculous waste.  Take a look at the before picture...

There you have it.  One tiny shelf with 24 inches of space (that I can actually reach) to put ALLLLLL my laundry and cleaning supplies on.  Then there's a hanging bar, which I suppose might be handy for some people, but I'm not a wet-laundry-onto-a-hanger person.  I would NEVER, ever use that.  Then there was one more teeny shelf above that but it was way up high and completely inconvenient for a shorty like me.

So we ripped it out!  Jason took care of the demo for me and patched the wall afterwards.  Here's how that looked:

Next I had to paint to cover up all the patching.  I normally wouldn't have cared what color such a small, insignificant room was, but we were not left any extra paint of the original beige, so I was forced to choose a new color and redo the whole thing.  I ended up going with this greyish/lavender.  Of course I was crazy-nervous at first, but now that it's completed I REALLY LOVE IT!

This is now officially the only square inch(es) of our home that aren't the exact same beige!  The previous owner slapped that same color evvvvvvvvvvverywhere.  SO much beige!  So this is very refreshing!

And finally, Jason installed the new shelving for me!!!  Take a look at all that!  What a difference!

Not only do I have MUCH more reach-able space right above the machines...

...but I have 6 (SIX!) more shelves utilizing that little bit of wall right next to the door.  

Yay for storage!  

The Feast

10 days after we moved into the new house it was... Thanksgiving!  It was really exciting to be able to host a big group, even if we just pushed some boxes into the corners.  The place wasn't perfect, but it didn't matter.
Jason took the boys to the park NEXT DOOR for some football, so I had some nice quiet time to get all set up...

  

This was the kids' table.  I covered it in brown paper and left them some crayons to color.  

Here you can get a nice view of my dining room.  

It's wonderful that it's got enough room for 2 tables (almost)

 but those huge empty walls still need some work!

Here was our delicious spread!  -- after we massacred it -- 

This might have been the yummiest Thanksgiving dinner I can remember!!!

I was in charge of mostly the turkey, which isn't really a lot of "work," but rather a lot of "worrying."  

Only my second turkey ever.  I'm glad to say both times were success! 

2 more crockpots of good stuff!

The happy family

The littlest dude

The kids

Oh yes, and I was there too.

Why are my selfie angles always so flattering?

And last but not least, we had 5 pie choices!

We were just a little bit spoiled.

CLOSED!

...and just like that, we finally got our new house!

Just kidding.  When does it ever happen "just like that"???  No, of course we had a million setbacks.  It was probably just a few, but felt like a million. Here's the short version of the story:

The Positives

• We only had to stay with my parents for a month.  When you move in for an undetermined amount of time, just a month is pretty dang good.
• Despite the inconvenience, I think my parents had it pretty good.  My mom joked that she had a personal chef.  They got hot dinner on the table every night!  I did my own laundry, dishes, vacuumed, cleaned bathrooms, even gave mom a manicure.  Plus we paid them some rent.  I tried very hard to lessen the blow, so to speak.
• The loan finally funded and closed the DAY BEFORE we had planned to move.  Just in the nick, what a huge relief.
• Moving day was BEAUUUUTIFUL.  We left all the doors open in the new house (as everyone was coming and going quite a bit) and a lovely breeze blew through the entire time.  We had lots of helpers, had muffins and water bottles for them, and it was pretty hard to hide the excitement that was oozing out of us.

The Negatives

• We were really squashed into mom & dad's house.  Mitch had to sleep out in the open where we threw down a mattress in the corner of the loft.  Noise from the entire house and evening activities made it hard for him to sleep.  We took up every square inch of their free space, messes and piles of our belongings everywhere.  Jason and I shared a full-size mattress that was 40 (?) years old.  Remember my husband?  Ohhhhh sleep was horrible.
• I had to drive the kids to their old schools but we were no longer living in the boundaries.  This would not be so bad except that they go to 2 different schools at 2 completely different times.  That equated to 4 passes each day and about 2+ hours in the car.  A small sacrifice to make, but seriously rough on this mom, and the gas tank!!!
• Right near the end of the whole buying process, the new house appraised too low.  As in, $7,000 too low.  It was a little scary when we heard that the sellers weren't going to budge on their price, but after an entire day of negotiations, we were able to split that amount.  Trouble was, we had to come up with the $3,500 in cash - not the loan.  We barely had enough to cover that, but ended up having to finance our new appliances instead to make it happen.  Another WHEW!
• On moving day, the appliance guys came to deliver and I asked them if they would hook the water line back up to the fridge for us.  (It was the ONE appliance we did not have to buy, but it seemed as if the seller had just shoved it into place and never really hooked it up.)  It was soon discovered that the water line was never correctly turned OFF when it was last disconnected, and it had sat back there dripping for months while the house had been unoccupied.  You know what that means... moldy wall.  Grrrrrrr.  Not the news you want to hear when you have been in the house for only, oh, 3 hours. 

So there you have it.  We are finally IN and it's OVER!  We are truly happy despite all else.  I'm doing my best to resist the urge to buy ALLLL new stuff and "use what we have" to decorate and get things all set up.  It will be a work in progress for quite some time :)

A most pleasant surprise?  I didn't realize how much I would love the open view I have out the back windows.  I can watch the sunrise each morning and the sunset each evening.  Both unobstructed... how cool is that?  

(some not-great-quality captures from my phone)

Jason got one of those UV blacklight flashlights for Christmas, so we took it out the other day to hunt for scorpions.  This is scary business.  I'd almost rather NOT know... because they are everywhere.  It's just a "given" for desert dwelling.  We searched high and low, through all the house, yard, landscaping, and surrounding walls.  Guess how many we found?  

Zero.

YAHOO!

Rylee's Quilt

The next quilt accomplishment was finished during our time at my parents' house.  My sister and I had been working on this one for MONNNNNTHS, but technically it was finally finished while I was in transition (or homeless, as I sometimes like to say!)  This was to be a bedspread-quilt for my cutie bug little niece, and it matched her very pink & green bedroom.  My sister picked the design style, all the fabric, and did all the cutting.  She helped with any labor possible, while I did the sewing!

A Quilt From The Past

Major sewing projects in the middle of moving... I wouldn't recommend it.

Nevertheless, there was one that I REALLY wanted to get done.  And I had a pretty big deadline.  This quilt was a complete secret from my mom, and once we sold our house we were going to temporarily live with my parents!  I kinda needed it finished before I couldn't hide it from her anymore.  Her birthday was also coming up, so that became my surprise occasion.

Let me rewind a little bit more.  My grandma (my mom's mom) passed away in January of 2011.  She was an excellent seamstress in her younger years.  I hadn't known her to sew anything for decades (my whole life, really) but especially not quilting.  It turns out that as her children were cleaning out some of her things earlier this year, they came upon a whole stack of quilt blocks that she had started but never put together.

They HAD to be from the 60's or 70's based on the style of fabric.  Pretty groovy.  To be honest, even grandma's "quilting" was not too hot.  She had simply been zig-zag applique-ing some shapes cut out of the fabric onto white backgrounds.  The white material was very crummy.  She had sandwiched some batting in there that was also total crap.  (Oops, did I just write that?)  Anyway... my mom gave me the blocks and asked if I wanted to use them for anything???  I was determined to finish grandma's work, and then my mom could have it as a memento.

I decided that I had to ditch the sandwiched layers and the batting.  I took the unfinished pieces and mimicked the zig-zagging that grandma had done until I had 20 decent squares.  About 12 of these are totally Grandma's and I made 8 more.  Then I bought more fabric that would somewhat coordinate with that *cough* VINTAGE style and assembled all the blocks.

I ended up choosing red as a sashing (fun!) between all those white backgrounds.  

Here's a close up so you can get a feel for those groovy old prints.

Here is the back!

And this one shows a close up of the print I found for the majority of the back.  

I love how it kept the calico vibe of her older fabrics.

And forgive me, but the gift opening pictures are too fun not to share.

People always get nervous when you whip out a camera right when they touch your present...

Then she recognizes it...

Then she looks at me...

Priceless!  A new "heirloom" quilt for my mommy.

The Winds of Change

So... guess what?  Just when I thought my life was a little bit busy, things suddenly kicked into hyperdrive.  You know in Star Wars when all of space suddenly turns into smeared lines and your head gets yanked back into your seat?  That would be my September.

First, we decided to sell our house.  There was lots of discussion and waiting and making decisions and waiting some more.  We've wanted to do it very seriously for 8 months or so.  Then very quickly the time was right.  Like BAM.  So we packed up some things to reduce the clutter and I began to clean like crazy.  I even hired a sweet friend of my sister's (who works as a housekeeper) to come do my floors and baseboards.  My back just wasn't going to handle all that squatting/bending work down low; I'm so glad I made that decision!

I dusted blinds, I took down curtains and sent them through the laundry, I gutted closets, we touch-up painted, Jason did small repairs, I scoured every single surface..... ohhhhhh so much work.  About 13 trips to Goodwill later (no joke) we listed the house.  It was so pretty!

We were nervous that the asking price would be a tad lofty.  Things in the area were beginning to rise, but maybe not quite there yet.  We immediately started getting calls for showings.  Luckily, with all the kids in school full-time, managing that part of it went pretty well.  By the end of day 2, we had an offer for FULL asking price.  They were the 2nd people to see the house.  Whoa!!!

With my head spinning from the hyperspeed launch, I began to pack.  Inspection went well, appraisal came through for the exact amount we need (hallelujah) and all that "pretty" house went bye bye.  It became a house of mass chaos.

We pushed all the living room furniture back and used our living room as the staging area.  

Here it is about half full:

And in a few more days it became VERY full:

Last Saturday Jason, his brother, and some friends helped us put all of that into storage.

And this week we are loading it back up AGAIN!

(There's soooo much more you can't see.)

My kids are sleeping on mattresses on the floor.  We are all living out of suitcases, and everything but the bare minimum is gone.  Into storage.

What I haven't mentioned yet is through ALL of that, for the past 2+ weeks of really intense packing, I caught a cold.  Then 2 of the kids got it.  Yayyyyyyyyy.  :(  So I'm basically dragging myself up each day, work, work, work, crash for an hour or 2.  Work, work, work, crash.  Work, work, fall into bed at night.  I just have no choice in the matter.  I am the ONLY one doing 98% of the packing, simply because I am home all day.  Jason does what he can in the evenings, but they are often taken up with other types of projects.

Then what I STILL haven't told you is that we found a new house.  Kinda caught us by surprise.  We weren't going to be able to make any offer on a new place until this one was fully "closed."  (Otherwise we would have had to financially qualify and potentially pay for both mortgages, which.... isn't going to happen.  OR, the new house would have to accept a contingency on the old house selling or all would fall through.  Most people really aren't accepting contingencies right now because the market is so hot, you'll simply get out-offered by someone who doesn't have one... make sense?)

So we were only BEGINNING to go look at some places, thinking "Oh, we won't be able to make a move for 2 more weeks until our place closes..." just casually looking.  Well, as luck would have it, we found a FABULOUS place and the seller was willing to accept a contingency.  HOT DANG, you'd better believe we made an offer.  So we literally have 2 houses pending at the same time, overlapping this whole process by 2 weeks.  We are right now in the middle of the whole inspection and appraisal crap over at the new place, crossing our fingers.

And yes, space is zooming by in blurred lines.

And I'm still blowing my nose like crazy.

And I'm so very very very tired.

But grateful.

I Have a Teenager... *gulp*

Mitchell's birthday is officially next week, but we needed to get his party out of the way before school started.  We lucked out by finding a family friendly improv comedy theater that did a $5 show on Thursday nights!!!  The birthday boy wanted a quick dinner and present opening at home, then we took off to the theater.  I have to say, it was a GREAT night for all of them.  Mitchell laughed and whooped so much that he lost his voice by the end of the show.

Here's our spread... as Mitchell requested... "boy food."

Chili dogs with all the condiments, chips, and soda.

This was his "cake" request (a repeat from last year.)

Cut up Swiss Roll Cakes on the outside, 2 kinds of ice cream 

and hot fudge on the inside.  YUMMMMM.

I love this one of them all below.  

Candid, where you can tell they were having such a good time.

When we got to the comedy place, they got to mingle with the performers

before the show began.

This guy had already won them over.

Happy Birthday Mitchell!