Done Done

I finished up the quilting on Old Hurricane Road this weekend. This is my first experiment with sybolism in my quilting. The swirls in the pinwheel and four patch area represents hurricanes and the spikes in the bricks represent palm trees. I haven't had tons of time to work on it (work, kids, cleaning, laundry, meetings, girl scouts, LIFE) but I did manage to finish the last of the handstitching on the binding this afternoon.

I even got it put onto the bed in the study/guestbedroom/sewing room. It took a bit of reorganization to find the daybed in there under all of the fabric, but a little sorting and putting away made a big difference. It will all need to be cleared out in a couple of weeks when my mother-in-law comes to visit, so it's good to get a start on it. I love the way the big flying geese are flying around the edge. I think the daybed shows that off nicely.

Only 7 more school days until winter break. We are all feeling a little grumpy right about now so I hope the week off will restore our spirits! It may be just my imagination, but everyone seems to be a little stressed right now.

I spent a big chunk of the day shopping for new insurance. I had to get the new car added on, so I thought I'd go ahead and get some more quotes while I was at it. We've kept our car insurace with State Farm because they have our homeowners. They are now plannning to pull all of thier homeowners insurance out of the state of Florida, so I might as well shop around. Finding car insurance was pretty easy, but I'm struggling on the homeowners. Everyone seems to think our house is worth twice as much as we paid for it even though the market has seriously crashed and we'd be very lucky to be able to sell it for what we owe right now. There are 13 houses for sale on our block, 5 of them are short sales, and then there are three forclosures that I know of that haven't come back up for sale yet. I guess I'll keep shopping, it's still a long time before hurricane season comes again.

Weekend Fun

Boy does buying a new car take a long time! It's not like you can just walk into the dealer and say, "Give me one of these in blue, I'll take it to go." It took two days of driving and testing and debating, but in the end, I got a new Kia in blue. I got everything squared away yesterday and just had to send Kurt in today to sign so his name could be on the title too. It had 14 miles on it, but then I used it today and it is already at 34 miles. I'm sure eventually I'll stop checking. I haven't got everything all set up yet, but there is a plug for my I-pod and plenty of nooks and crannies for things to fit in. I did some cleaning and organizing in the garage today to make sure it doesn't get dinged up when people get in and out.

Yesterday morning was the Girl Scout rock climbing. The bigger girls seemed to spend more time worrying about whether or not they could do it than the little ones on Wednesday. They started with a lot of being scared, but soon got over that and worked on getting up the walls. I saw one of my girls this morning already and she couldn't wait to tell me how much fun she had and that she wants to go again.

Today was spent trying to get the house recovered from me being gone the past two weekends. Kurt did a good job trying to stay caught up with everything, but it was feeling a little neglected from the general activity level lately. One of my cleaning tasks was getting OHR finished so that I could get it up off the floor and turn the dining room back into a dining room again. I got carried away with car shopping yesterday and missed my January deadline by one day. It is almost done now though. The binding is on and ready to get some hand stitching during the superbowl tonight.
I need to find the list of my UFO's so I can pick a project for February. I also need to get a border for Double Delight and for The Inaguration Quilt.
The kitchen got a little extra attention this month, although I still have couple of small projects I'd like to take on as time allows. I think the garage will be the room of the month for February. We are in need of a garage sale followed by a trip to goodwill. I've amassed quite a collection of stuff, and I don't care what happens to it, as long as it can disappear. I'll also have to spend some time turning the study back into a guest bedroom before my mother-in-law shows up in two weeks. The Old Hurricane Road quilt is meant for that bed, so that works out well.

Running Update for February:
Miles this week: 16.5
Miles this year: 80.92
Average per week: 16.2
One week to the marathon

Car Shopping

Kurt and I managed to wrangle some time off yesterday without the kids and used it to go new car shopping. I love my Honda CRV, but it is 11 years old with 119,000 miles and is getting a little tired. There are times when I need to pick up a few extra kids, so I was looking for a car with a third row seat, but I don't like driving a big car. The first car we drove was a Kia Rhondo. It is called a mini mini SUV and drives like a car. It has a third row of seats though and can fit 7. They still have 2008's left over so we could get a good deal on it. I liked driving it and it seemed to be a good size . The interior is a little utilitarian, but it still had all the basic features I need. They even had an all decked out one with leather and a sun roof.

Another car I liked was the Toyota RAV4. I almost got one when I bought my Honda years ago, but went the other way. It is more expensive, but also has a nicer interior and more substantial feel. The last row of seats is a bit cramped, but the middle row will fit 3 comfortably.
I'd love to get a hybrid, but the only options there are bigger cars, and they start getting expensive in a real hurry. I did the math and it would take 20 years to make up the price difference with the savings in gas.
I slept on it last night thinking I'd reach some conclusion in the morning, but nothing has come to me yet. I've got rock climbing again this morning, this time for my Girl Scout troop. Maybe I'll think about cars again after that.