ScrapHappy Saturday - Rush to the Finish

 

Anna graduated from college last night and will be off tomorrow to nanny for a new baby in New Hampshire before starting her graduate program in Neuroscience at Virginia Tech in the fall.   I was not there.  

Because Sydney was also graduating from high school.  She will be working this summer at Pac Sun before departing for the University of Florida in the fall.  

It has been quite a week!  I have been working diligently to move out of my classroom and begin preparations for my new job as a Career and College coach at the same school where I have been for the past 12 years.   The students seem excited to have someone available to guide them through the process and are already asking for help.   

And because nothing good ever happens in isolation, the movers are coming any minute to pick up the furniture we are having taken to the cabin in Virginia.  It would have been so much more efficient to just keep the furniture where it is and buy something new for up north, but I thought our existing stuff would fit better with the mountain vibe.   I am excited to pick something more beachy and less wood and leathery to live here.   We found something we liked looking online, but we will be sitting on lawn chairs until we get around to going and looking at it in person.   We have a day bed from Anna's room to sleep on, so if we can find a card table somewhere, all of our basic needs will be met.  

The green scraps are still sitting happily sorted and trimmed waiting for things to calm down for a hot minute.   Just to top off all the crazy, I have jury duty on Monday!  Life just keeps trucking along.  I hope you are having some nice calm sewing time though.  I will enjoy your progress and wait for the relative calm of summer break.  I will only be working two or three half days each week which should leave plenty of time to catch up on green and move on to the new color for June.  

ScrapHappy Saturday - Catching Up

 

"Life move pretty fast, if you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it"

My life has moved faster than usual in the past week.  I think it was last Thursday when they posted a new job opening at my school.  The district is creating a new position at all of the middle and high schools to have a new College and Career Counselor on staff.  I knew that they were going to be creating the job, but I assumed it would require counseling credentials.  When the announcement was finally made, it was listed as a "specialist" instead of a counselor and I met all of the requirements.   Thinking that this might just be the change that I need right now, I discussed with the family and eagerly applied.  Much drama ensued and the job description changed several times during the week, but in the end, it was a job that I wanted very much to do and it was offered to me!   

So now I need to move out of my classroom and get a new teacher ready to take over AP Biology, learn how to handle all the new job responsibilities, attend training sessions and planning meetings and move into an office.  I also need to wrap up the semester, submit final grades, pack and move furniture to the house in Virginia..... I am sure there is more, but right now I am just making lists and contemplating the future.  I did get to start in on the green scraps though.   I got all the ironing and trimming done.  I was just ready to start sewing blocks together when Anna declared that she was coming home for the weekend.  Most importantly though, I need to make some serious progress on Sydney's t-shirt quilt, because graduation is just 6 short days away.   

ScrapHappy Saturday - Rainy Day

The sun did not shine, it was too wet to play. Not an outside day, and the sewing room has been filled with everything that used to be in Ryan's room. On the up side though, Ryan is home for the summer!  We are all going to see the new Dr. Strange movie as a family and then I will tackle the sewing room and make some room to move out the green and sage for May.  Sydney's T-shirt quilt is first on the list.  Conveniently, she has requested sage and forest for her dorm room colors at the University of Florida next year.   Just 13 days until graduation, not that we are counting down of course!

 

Home Again

 

This was the before photo that I posted while we were away this weekend.  The sellers took care of quite a bit of cleanup before the closing, but we found plenty to keep us busy.  

It is amazing how relaxing hard work and fresh air can be.  We got half of one of the chicken coops taken down.   There was lots of wire and posts and mesh all intergrown with vines and roots and all sorts of fun.   I used the empty space in front to set up compost bins, so hopefully there will be some compost in progress the next time we are back.  

Kurt and I both took turns pressure washing.  I love to pressure wash, but there was also lots of random scrap lumber to be hauled to the fire pit and so many bags of mulch to be spread.  

The pressure washing made a huge difference.  The rubbish removal is an ongoing process.   There isn't trash pickup there, so we learned how to drop off at the local dump.  

New Month, New Color

 The colors for May will be sage and forest green. 

We got a lot done today.  Here are some before photos as we are not in a Wi-Fi rich zone here.  We cleared out lots of rubbish, though there is still lots to do.   We pressure washed and took down a chicken coop and spread lots of mulch.   

 We made a burn pit and had a huge fire, though there is still more to go.   It was wonderfully relaxing even though we are both tired and sore from hauling rocks and wood and random bits of everything.  We met our new neighbor and learned how to get to town and back.  Tomorrow is back to real life again, but it has been fun living in the mountains for the weekend.  

ScrapHappy Saturday - Late Start

 

Off to a super late start today.  We are at the new cabin for the first time after closing on Friday and I had to wait for Kurt to install an internet thing on the roof before I could get a signal to post.   The closing was super smooth, although we were all sweating a bit due to lack of communication ahead of time about the broken septic system.  It is all fixed now though and we are starting to settle in.   We walked around the property yesterday after closing and met a neighbor who drove us around the upper acreage that they seem to use mostly for hunting.   We are pressure washing this morning and clearing out rubbish.  I will be sure to post more photos when the internet is less sketchy.  

ScrapHappy Saturday - Transitions

 Every week, I keep thinking that things will calm down any day now.  Sometime soon it will be true.  The end of the school year is in full swing.  AP test prep, end of the year presentations, celebrations, awards.  All good, just as always, all at the same time.  

I do have time to sew this weekend though, after a couple of power grading sessions to get caught up.  Less than a month till graduation!   I guess I should get to work on Sydney's t-shirt quilt again.  Deep calming breaths.  All is well.  

ScrapHappy Saturday - Chaos

Its been crazy around here.

We started looking into having our townhouses painted a couple of years ago, but someone (my dear husband) talked everyone into second guessing the decision and it all fell apart.   Fast forward though and everyone is on board.  There are four units, and trying to get everyone in agreement on colors and placement has been a logistical challenge.  Everyone is so busy being flexible and friendly that nobody wants to decide.   I've been having a blast with the Sherwin William color visualizer tool and running in for paint chips.   The painter is coming this morning to take a look and then give us a start date.   

While all of that is going on, the pavers that we ordered months ago have arrived!  They started two days ago and have already made a lot of progress.  It looked like they ran out of fill late yesterday, but are back already this morning.  It will be nice to have some outside space on the ground level for chairs and maybe a fire pit.   

Despite all the upheaval though, the sunrise was a peaceful as ever.  A flock of gulls happened to fly by just as I was getting ready to take my daily photo.  I worked on my Blackford Beauty blocks yesterday, the chevrons are done, I just need to make a few more four patches.   The main project has been log cabin blocks. I am halfway to the 256 that I will need.  

I also did some touchup on the barn quilt yesterday and started the process of getting it sealed.   This is going to go on the shed at the cabin which is still scheduled to close at the end of the month.  We had a bit of a logjam over the septic, but it all seems to be back on track now.   

 

Scrap Happy Craziness

I was so busy sewing up more log cabin blocks that I was afraid I might run short of logs.   There is something so calming about trimming random scraps into nicely organized pieces ready to be used in blocks.  I should be good for a while now!  No photos the of the log cabin quilt progress because I filled both walls and started collecting blocks into groups of 10.  I need more than 200 blocks for the quilt that I want to make, so I will just keep plugging along.   

It is actually turning into a busy weekend.   A friend and her husband met us at date night last night to catch up and unwind before the end of the school year.   We are meeting an old school friend tonight for the symphony AND the school musical is this weekend so we will catch the matinee performance of that before heading to dinner before the music starts.   School is so crazy right now with end of the year festivities.   The kids are so appreciative of having all the old traditions back again.  Covid has taken a bit of a spike again, but nothing like the two earlier peaks this year, and so we keep moving forward.   Things seem to be on track with the new house after a bit of a hiccup over the septic inspection.   It should all work out in the end.   The closing is scheduled for April 29, assuming of course the sewage system is fully functional by then.   

 

Sunday Wrap Up

I've been adding blocks to the log cabin quilt.  

The pink bulls-eye blocks are also up on the wall.   As each of the colors is done, I free up those strips to make their way into the log cabin blocks.  

 During the evenings I have been diligently hand stitching at binding.  Thursday during the live stream of the awards ceremony for science fair, I put the last stitch into "Squared Away".  This was the Rainbow Scrap Challenge project from 2018.  It was a collaboration project with Mari, The Academic Quilter.   Directions are still available here and here.   

I put some orange peels into the  cornerstones and ribbon candy in the lattice strips.  The blocks themselves just got a smallish meander.   Is going straight into the wash with some color catchers now.   There was a bit of bleeding going on with the reds.   Hopefully I can clean that up. 

After getting back from science fair, Sydney had prom on Friday and grad bash on Saturday.  The seniors all get bused to Universal after close and ride all the rides until the wee hours.  I had to pick her up at school at 3:30 am.  She was one tired kid!

I am linking up today at Oh Scrap!  and Slow Stitching Sunday.