Painting, working, and remodeling (another catch-all post)

Once again I have neglected my poor blog.

I've been working at the Tulsa City-County Libraries, though, so I have a good excuse! I've also been busy quilting, and the kids have been home sick a LOT in the past two weeks (which means I get very, very little done).

I've been volunteering at the South Broken Arrow library for around three years now, I think. Over the summer I trained as a substitute, and I've had an absolute blast going between the two Broken Arrow libraries. They've called me a few times for some of the other ones but I'm very intimidated by Hardesty so I've turned those down. It's a huge regional library and I'm not quite confident enough of my knowledge to tackle that one, but I will once I get a little more experience.

The bad part is that my stack of books to read is now almost three feet tall. That's not a bad thing except that I'm frantically trying to catch up on my quilting. I'm about six months behind on posting customer quilt pictures, but hopefully I'll get my act together soon.



Last weekend we decided to finally tackle the utility room, which has bugged us since we moved in seven years ago.

Here's how it looked after we moved the washer and dryer out and Greg took out the baseboards. (They'd been butted together instead of installed properly, so that had to go!)

 
Yes, the walls really WERE that dark. They'd been painted with a flat paint that came off when rubbed with a damp paper towel, so that was pretty bad.

Greg repaired some damage and sprayed a new texture, and then Gillian and I sanded it down and she vacuumed. Greg got a drywall mud that claimed to be less dusty, and I think it actually was--more seemed to end up on the floor than in the air, which is a very good thing.

Here's Gillian, being a HUGE help:



The previous owners have done all kinds of head-scratch-worthy things, such as painting the smoke detector in place, as well as just painting the wallpaper. Sigh.

Luckily the wall paper was only on one wall and seems to be *very* well adhered, so we went ahead and put the texture on over it.




Here (below) you can see Greg taking off the trim around the door--it had been installed rather horribly and had all kinds of caulk in the corners--the top was sucked into the wall while the sides weren't, so there was about a 1/8" depth difference among the three pieces. It looks SO much better now.

And you have to notice the wallpaper that's underneath the current stuff (be sure to enlarge so you can see it in all its glory):



We've been talking about redoing parts of the kitchen (taking out the drop ceiling, among other things) but knowing that there's *another* layer of wallpaper is a little disheartening.

Back to the good stuff. Here's the final paint on the walls:




Doesn't that color look so much better than the old, dark color? It's absolutely amazing what a difference new texture and color have made in that space.


At this point I'm incredibly behind on my quilting, especially since I've spent the last 11 hours in bed, shivering and trying not to throw up. I'd *so* hoped that what the kids had was going to pass me by, but no such luck.

My family is coming here for Thanksgiving, and I need to finish ALL of my customer quilts before they get here since we're putting my sister in the quilt room. I hope I'm over this illness in the morning so that I can quilt like a mad woman over the next six days!

I hope all of you are having a great weekend, and be sure to wash your hands properly and often! There's lots of icky stuff going around.

Busy busy busy

Today was supposed to be a day to recover after a long week, but I'm still exhausted. LOL!

Gillian started soccer on Tuesday and I think it's going to be fun for her. That meant that on Monday we went out and got her new soccer shoes and shin guards. Now we just need new socks (the old ones don't cover the pads all the way up her shins) and a new ball since her old one is too small. Ryan also got a new bike since his old one is waaay too small for him. His new bike is the same size as Gillian's current bike, although the lowest seat height on his bike is the same as the highest on Gillian's bike. I suspect she'll be getting a new, bigger bike for her birthday in May.

Wednesday was bowling (I didn't do well, but that's all right), with knitting that evening.

Thursday was supposed to be soccer again but it rained so the field was too muddy. The task of the afternoon was making the entries for the Twinkie Decorating Contest for the school carnival. The kids quickly decided that they'd rather eat the frosting than really work on their entries, and I did my damndest to be a good Mom and not do their entries for them. ;-)

Friday was the school carnival, and once again I'd drafted Greg into helping me run the Twinkie Contest room. It's the best job of the whole carnival because it means I set up the tables with the Twinkies on them, help judge, then sit in the room during the carnival and make sure no one touches the entries. Very cushy job! We didn't have as many entries this year as last year, but then we only got the notices out a week before since we had two weeks out of school due to weather.

The kids totally wore themselves out at the carnival and were asleep within minutes of their heads hitting their pillows. (Yay!)

Today I did a few things around the house, and Greg continued working on the awesome shelves in the garage:


He's going to make cabinet doors to go on those and it's going to be *fabulous.* The main purpose of the shelves is to get the luscious wood up off the garage floor, and I think Greg was a little surprised that the storage area at the top is already full of wood.


While he was working on that I ran the Bag A Nut (yep, that's its actual name) and picked up the old, bad pecans in the front. I picked up about 50 pounds of them, I think, and I'm tired now. I found three (yes, THREE) good nuts. I hate pecan weevils. There are still a whole bunch of bad nuts on the trees, unfortunately. It's been a strange year weather wise and I think it's bothered the pecan trees.

I hope you all are having a great weekend!

Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween, everyone!

While my Mom was here we went to a pumpkin patch and got pumpkins, then carved them the next day.

They had some really unique pumpkins!

Gillian almost went for this one but changed her mind.

Due to the magic of Photoshop, I got all of us in one photo:



Saturday morning we carved the pumpkins. I think Grandma did the majority of the work.





We finished them up after we dropped off Grandma at the airport, so at least the kids had a little something to look forward to. They did a great job!

And the late-evening shot:


The sunset was pretty amazing that night, too:




We had an eventful evening of Trick-or-Treating at the Night Out on Crime on Main Street tonight (Halloween) and the kids came home with quite a haul of candy!

Here are the kids before we left:

Ryan didn't want to wear his mask so at the last minute we used some of Gillian's face paint and made an attempt to add Optimus Prime type markings to his face. [Look at that beautiful, freshly-mown lawn!]

Here's Gillian's haul, just after she dumped out her bucket. (It promptly got spread out all over!)

And Ryan, showing off his candy:

Halloween was very successful all the way around this year. Greg stayed home to greet any trick or treaters, and when the kids rang the bell after we got home he said that our own kids were the only trick or treaters all night!

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The lastest home improvement project has been replacing the back door, and it's made a HUGE difference.

Here's the door as it is now:

Last weekend Greg mudded it in and it is *fabulous.* We need to repaint the header (and the rest of the exterior) but that's going to take a lot of work and replacing of wood, so that's probably not going to happen until at least spring.

Here's the old door:



And here's the rotted section:

While the wood was pretty, it was warped at the top and let in a ton of air, not to mention the rotting sections of wood! I also really, really didn't like the divided light aspect of it. It visually closed off that area. I LOVE the new door and how open it makes the room feel.

I also don't notice the huge temperature difference between that room and the rest of the house any more. It's been such a wonderful improvement in so many ways!


I hope all of you are having a great weekend, too!

Happy Halloween!

Thank you, everyone, for the wonderful birthday wishes!

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I'm slowly becoming human again after a bit more illness. Blah blah blah, I'm tired of being sick and I might be human again by the end of the weekend!

I did manage to make a costume for Ryan out of this:


We got an ear-and-tail set for each kid at Walgreens a few weeks ago, and Gillian had black clothes to be a black cat but Ryan didn't have anything tiger-ish, so this is what I came up with:

The pants are way short because I ran out of fabric and had to piece the bottoms, but I think it came out all right.

Here they are in cat mode:




For Halloween at school Ryan got a goody bag, and it had some vampire teeth:


He'd never seen them before so he had a great time. He'd put them in and giggle. Four-year-olds are fun!

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Greg has done a tremendous amount of work on the fence:

There will be a big gate in that space. I think it looks great! It changes that space so much, and I love it already. I didn't like weeding that back flower bed because I always felt like I was on display--especially with my rump in the air pulling weeds! It's going to be so nice to have it more private. That section of yard was in very public view from five different houses so it's really going to be nice to have it fenced!

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Birthday gifts have been arriving, including this wonderful magnet from Aunt Louise:

She always finds the neatest things!


These beautiful earrings are from my wonderful Mother-in-Law, Vickey:

I tried to get a better picture but that was the best I could do at the moment. I'll have to try again later (when the kids are at school!).

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I hope that everyone had a good, safe Halloween!

House Projects and A New Grill

We've been really busy around here. Actually, Greg has been really busy--I've pretty much not helped at all.

Here's what he's been doing:

He formed and poured a curb, emptied out the area between the house and the curb, and now it's ready for stone! The plan is to put down weed cloth (leaning up against the house), then the stone will be delivered on Tuesday. We ordered Oklahoma River Rock to go in that space and it should be gorgeous!

The big pile of dirt is going to get redistributed around the yard.

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Greg needed a new grill and I talked him into getting a new one.

Here's the old one:

Those are the second set of grills and once again they're totally rusted.

Here's the new grill:

And the very happy hubby:

Today was his 37th birthday so he cooked sweet potatoes and incredibly yummy steaks. We got him a chocolate truffle cake and everyone was very happy!

He says he had a really good birthday, although he's exhausted. He did a ton of work around the house so that's not surprising. He also pulled out the 10' of chain link on the side of the house as well as the concrete slab that was behind it (we can't figure out why it was there, although Greg thought maybe it was to prevent dogs from digging under the fence). It already looks better, and it's going to be even nicer with a 6' privacy fence across it.

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I hope everyone had a great weekend, and have a great week ahead!

Illness, New Windows, and Yarn!

Yeah, another not-very-creative blog title.

It's been a long stretch of illness around here. Late Friday night/early Saturday morning DD had some tummy issues (nausea, vomiting), but was all right by Saturday afternoon. Sunday I spent most of the day in the bathroom, Monday DS had the sickness, and Tuesday it was DH's turn. Yesterday and this morning it was my turn again, but I did manage to avoid throwing up. Yay for small mercies!

Enough of that!!


Today the windows are being installed and I'm just thrilled! Here are some pictures:




NO MORE GRIDS! It's so nice not to have those in the windows. It's already a HUGE improvement over the windows that were in there.

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Here's some of my recent spinning:


It's100% Targhee that was FULL of noils so I knew I wasn't going to end up with a smooth, even yarn. I'm pretty please with how it turned out though!

It's 200 yards (give or take a few) from 3 ounces, which makes it around a worsted weight. I Navajo plied it for a three-ply yarn.

I dyed it a while back, and then I decided to run it through the drum carder I'm borrowing, since it was already full of noils and I figured I wouldn't ruin the fiber any more by playing.

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This is one of my Mom's quilts that I just finished quilting. I'm trying to get hers done so that I can take them to her on Wednesday, but we'll see. Two more to go, although they're small.


More stuff later!

Disappointment

I'm horribly disappointed. I spent much of yesterday getting ready to have five of the nine windows in the house replaced (removing window treatments and blinds, moving furniture, etc) and it started raining last night, so now we've had to reschedule for Thursday and HOPE that the weather doesn't continue to be stormy and icky.

The guy from the window company said that they could come out and do a partial installation, but they wouldn't be able to do the mortar work until it stops raining for a while. Then I thought about the mud outside both windows and the fact that the installers will be going in and out, and decided that waiting will be better in the long run.

How disappointing!!! I was really looking forward to new windows, not to mention that I'm not going to put the blinds back up for three days, so we'll deal with no blinds for a little while. Sigh.

I just had to vent a little bit.

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Here, look at a sock progress picture, but don't look at the funky sandal tan.

I start these last weekend and haven't touched them for a few days, but I'd promised a picture a while back so here it is.

The yarn is Plymouth's Happy Feet, and it's not as contrast-y in person as it is in the picture. The lace pattern is slightly more obvious in real life. I'm doing them two at a time, toe up, using magic loop.

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I've been doing a little bit of spinning, trying to get the rest of that noil-y Targhee roving spun up that I dyed and re-carded. It's totally full of noils which is really disappointing (it came full of noils, which is why I dyed it—I figured it would be a good first roving to dye since if I felted it, it wouldn't be a great tragedy), but I'm going ahead and spinning it thick and thin. I'm planning to navajo ply it. Not sure what weight it'll come out, but possibly heavy sport to DK.

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And now it's storming again so I'm going to shut down the computer and go clean out the sewing room so that I can actually work in there, and I might just sulk a little, too. ;-)

Ryan's Room is now Blue!

The tan color is gone, and it's now quite blue. We were joking around that it doesn't look like a spare bedroom any more.

Now we need to paint the doors and trim, and it'll be ready to move Ryan's stuff back in place.

The real challenge of this project has been the "help" from the kids. They want to help so badly, but they're just not quite to the ages that they can be helpful for very long.

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Yesterday we decided to have a little outing for a treat, and we went to Wendy's and then saw an IMAX film in 3D, Dolphins and Whales. Gillian, Greg, and I really enjoyed it but Ryan didn't like the 3D glasses. It was a short film, which was one of the reasons we decided to go, knowing that Ryan has a hard time sitting through more than about 35 minutes. Heck, he's four, so I think he's doing pretty well. I thought the film was good, although it got a little preachy (they hit you over the head again and again with the conservation/protection of the "tribes" but I know that's important), and Daryll Hannah wouldn't have been my choice for narrator. It was good overall though!

Back to painting....

One down, nine to go....

I've been piecing and quilting up a storm, and I finally have a little to show for it.

On April 28 I took a quilt class at a local quilt shop, Sew Flakes, (a HORRIBLE name, but that's what the new owner decided on), formerly Cyrilla's. The quilt is called Simple Simon and it uses the Quilt in a Day Flying Geese ruler. That ruler totally rocks!

This is how my Simple Simon quilt looked last week:

Today I finished the binding and here it is:



I used Hobbs Wool batting, which I'm totally in love with. I hope to nap under this quilt this afternoon/evening and really test it out before I take it over to the shop to hang in their "Stash Buster Series" trunk show. I wish I'd known about those classes earlier because I would've taken more of them.

All of these fabrics came from various fabric stores around San Diego. I had such a good time shopping for all of them, and this quilt barely made a dent in my homespun fabrics stash. When time is less of an issue I'm tempted to make another one, maybe larger. Who knows....

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On the knitting front, I finished a hat (picture later, maybe) and I've gotten the sleeves and waistband done on Ryan's newest Wallaby.

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Greg has been doing all kinds of house projects, including replacing the door between the house and the garage (there was NO insulation around it!!!) and taking out the in-wall ironing board and house monitor in Ryan's room. Today he got the wall textured so we're pretty much ready for paint. Hopefully I'll have a bunch of pictures in the next week or so.

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Have a great rest-of-the-weekend!

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