Almost time to picnic...........

Last week in the middle of other things I finished sewing together the denim squares for our picnic blanket. It's a generous 76 x 76. Next up is to find a fun and very colorful backing fabric for it. It's so heavy that I won't be putting any batting in-between.  I'm pretty much set on tying it as machine quilting would be a challenge with the thick denim at the seams. I'm very pleased with it!  Soon we'll have to plan a picnic to try it out. As a reminder this is from a Bonnie Hunter of Quiltville Inn pattern - hers is for a throw size, I just added to it to make it bigger. 

Our back deck gets the hot sun until around 3pm so we splurged on a retractable awning. It was installed yesterday and we already love it. Now we can plan on eating breakfast and lunch out there sitting in the shade. 

Here's another view of it.  It does have a motor which is great but there is also a pole to do it by hand if the power happened to go out. There is a wind monitor so if the wind picks up and we don't notice it will automatically close it. (this pix was taken later in the afternoon so the deck was starting to get some natural shade on it by then)

 

Funky Fence

My funky fence is finished.  This is to keep Misty out of the side yard where the garden is, plum trees are and the grapes as we don't want her eating any of it and she most surely would. This is the recycled cedar decking from the old deck. All different widths, all different lengths.  Sam was hard at work with the table saw and chop saw this week and did a great job. He was having a hard time being so random but went with my idea and loves the result.  And yes, the apple tree is dropping apples, that's because I didn't thin them back in the spring. I'm starting to pick them before more fall or Misty pulls more off to play with them......she's thrilled to have a tree that grows 'balls'.  Will be making apple pie filling for the freezer and dried apples, probably some applesauce too. 

Another project crossed off the list......

We've crossed another house remodel project off the very long to-do list. This room is actually kitchen dining nook but I've taken it over for my office, orchids and pottery......we have bar seating and a dining room, we don't need a third eating area. The before picture isn't the best since our old chair is right in the foreground, this pic was taken months ago...…...I didn't take it, I forgot to take a before picture so this is one Sam had taken early on.

See that drop tray ceiling?  It's a monstrosity. All the ceilings in the house are 11-12 foot except for here. What possessed the builder to put in that heavy drop ceiling???  We knew it had to come out.

Just a couple weeks ago Sam, a friend and my cousin took that drop ceiling out - it was built so well the house could have fallen down around it and it would have still been there. Here it is with new insulation before drywall and texturing. Unfortunately I didn't get an in process photo - plastic hanging down with around a foot of blown in insulation and drywall trash laying all around.

And here it is finished - it looks so much better. I have since put décor on the desk shelves, I decided it should be handmade baskets for the time being....not sure if that's what will stay. I even question if I want to keep the hutch on the desk or put art on the wall above the desk instead. I've also given thought to painting this furniture. No need to decide now.

Next project up - new gas fireplace and mantel. The old gas fireplace puts out 0 heat, zero, nada, nothing. This winter we'd love to swivel around in our recliners to read or knit (me) in front of a cozy fire.

MIA

Yes, I've been MIA for a bit - moving this time (buying, packing, moving, unpacking, selling) is horrible. I don't ever remember it being like this past moves. Anyhow 2 weeks ago it took the movers 2 days to get us moved. I'm still not unpacked, nowhere near unpacked but I just can't worry about it at the moment - I'm not running a race. In past moves within a week, 2 at the most, I was totally unpacked, house set up......not happening this time. 


We finally listed our other house, not much activity in a hot market, so I'm thinking it's listed too high.......like I said all along when our realtor gave us a price range to consider. We decided to give it some time - thinking time is up this week.........


Last Wednesday the AC went out in the new house and for some reason this house holds the heat. It's been unbearable inside the house, even with fans - it's been lovely outside in the shade.......so not as much unpacking getting done around here. Luckily our realtor got us a home warranty so it will be fixed but the soonest an HVAC company could come out is this Wednesday afternoon. I'm sure that will be to diagnose the issue, then we'll wait for the fix. At least we don't have humidity here on top of the heat..........


Since there's no unpacking happening in the loom or sewing/craft rooms right now I'll leave you with a few pix of the yard. For a small city lot we've got lots of fruit. I didn't take pictures of the 2 plum trees - not many plums on them and they're grossly in need of a manicure - so overgrown and thick. That will happen at the proper time and I will be getting guidance on how to trim fruit trees at that time.

One of the two apple trees.......

....a close up of the apples, we have no clue what type of apples on each tree......

.....blackberries coming over the fence from the cow pasture - they're along the entire back of the yard - I can see blackberry jam production here in August.........

.......one of two grape varieties.......we understand there are white grapes and red grapes - right now they're all green..........

.....and finally, my favorite color of rose, yellow - there are many rose bushes along the fence although not many roses at the moment since they were loaded with spent flowers when we moved in, I've trimmed them back and there are new buds coming out now.

New house

We have closed escrow on the new house closer to town, in a neighborhood, off acreage. We're almost ready to list our current house. We won't move to the new place for another few weeks. I have to admit I did have some second thoughts after we were into this purchase but after being over there without the former owner's things in it I can finally say it feels totally right. This home is going to be very comfortable and it feels good inside, nice and light and bright.  I'm still wondering where all our stuff is going to fit..........it's a tiny bit smaller than our current house but what that 3 car garage is missing is the huge storage rooms we have in our current 3 car garage. There was much donating and giving away of things we don't need this last month but I'm thinking as I unpack there will be a bit more........I've packed some things that I really question whether I need to keep storing them as I haven't even looked at them in 15 years. I can take my time unpacking and think on it........

This is the front of the house, front trees are all leafed out now. To the right side of the house is where I'll be planting some fig trees early next spring. I'm thinking I also need a gingko tree in that area. They're my favorite leaves and they do grow here so I'll have to search for a small tree this fall or next spring.

This is a view off the little back deck. There's a 5 acre parcel behind us complete with a few cows so even though we're on a city lot it feels like we still have some privacy out back rather than looking out at another privacy fence with a house behind it. If we look a bit to the right there's a view of the mountains.

You can't see them in this picture but there are 2 dwarf apple trees that are loaded with little apples. We were told there are 2 plum trees, we see some plums on one of them - I understand that plums got hit hard with cold weather in our area after flowering so that may be why we're not seeing much. There are some grape vines on the side yard, they're loaded with pinpoint little grape clusters. In front of the grapes there's an area where someone tried to put down a patch of sod, over gravel.....well, of course it didn't take. I'm thinking a raised bed strawberry patch would be perfect there. Along the fence on the other side of the yard there are lots of rose bushes totally covered with roses and tons of buds - looks like I'm going to have to learn about roses. There's a little corner where the previous owner had a garden - I'll be watching to see if it gets enough sun to determine if that's where I'll put some raised beds for veggies. If it doesn't get enough sun we can do something right along the white picket fence, it gets tons of sun.

So, right now rather than being over at the new house much we need to keep concentrating on getting this one listed and packed up. Life has been consumed for quite a while with house hunting/sorting/packing/getting a house ready to list - I'm more than ready to start nesting at the new place and get back to doing the things that I love like weaving, sewing, quilting, spinning, knitting, beading, etc, etc, etc. I don't ever remember this buying/selling process being so all time consuming in the past.