One Thing Leads to Another

Sydney wanted to have a sleepover last weekend.   The plan was to project movies outside and sleep on the trampoline.  After several tries, we ended up with an i-pad bungeed to the trampoline and a handful of tweens jumbled amongst stuffed animals and quilts all night long.  I wasn't sure that they were still there in the morning until I spied little toes poking out along the edges.  

 Somehow after all of that, I ended up with an empty house on Sunday.  Anna was with River helping him set up an aquarium, Ryan went from Robotics to the comic book store and Sydney was down south for a lacrosse game.  Feeling guilty about having gotten rid of everyone, I started in on the kitchen.  New caulk was followed by freshly painted baseboards, which led to a new coat of paint.  The old faded curtains came down to be replaced by some lightweight sheers.  All that is left is installation of some new tiebacks.  It looks so much better!
This week has been a busy one, with someone needing a ride to somewhere each evening and Kurt tied up with customers from out of town for work.  Hard to believe that another weekend has already arrived.  We are already off to a similar start with a Funtown skating trip and carpool plans already under negotiations.  There is a quilt show in town though, and I should be able to make a visit right after the morning robotics drop-off.  If I seem noticeably absent from quilting, it is just that time of year for teachers.  Testing season is already underway though teaching hasn't given up the ghost quite yet.  Just two more weeks until spring break when things will really get busy.

Miscellaneous Monday

 Everyone is pretty spent after the powerlifting tournament yesterday.  Here is Ryan with his deadlift.  His max was 105 I think, which is 1.5 times his body weight.

 And here is Anna in her squat.  She hit new personal records on all her lifts.  I guess if I was a good sports Mom I would have written it all down.  Never would have predicted that powerlifting would be the next sport in our family.  Even Kurt went with us this morning.

 I'm working two days this week at training to be a trainer.  Today is wide open though.  We lifted first thing this morning.  I haven't been out to run yet.  Jelly legs on squat days -- maybe an evening run tonight?  But check out my grout cleaning!  Here is the side I haven't done yet.

And here is the side I finished already.  I'm going for 80% better rather than for perfection.  Usually I try to clean the grout each summer, but last summer went awry and so I have two years of grime to scrub away.  I'm doing some cupboard reorganization too.  Anna's job is putting away dishes these days and sometimes she gets ---well -- creative.  This morning I found appliances, mixing bowls, baking dishes and Tupperware all in the same cabinet.  Heterogeneous storage scheme?  Maybe it will be a new thing!  

In Progress

I started several things today, but didn't manage to finish anything.  The power washer went kaput in the middle of the driveway.
  

I thought that was a sign to settle into a little quilting.  The first postage stamp block was almost done before it was time to go out for a girls night out.  I've been caught up with work and kids lately so it was nice to have some girl talk.
Tomorrow looks pretty calm.  Ryan has a few football games I think, and I have some school work to get caught up on.  It would be nice to take care of a few more purple scraps before the end of the month though.

Progress

 All the subunits are done for Smith Mountain!  I have them all counted and ready to go for the star blocks.  The center for the alternate blocks are set to go as well, and the logs are cut to length. 

As much as I would love to keep going while I am on a role, I am switching gears.  We ordered new patio furniture a couple of weeks ago, and it has started to arrive.  Cleaning and painting of the pool deck is on my summer list, and it would be nice to get it done in time for the new patio set.  So I'm off to pressure wash and acid etch.  I'm not sure we will be rain free for long enough to paint, but I'll get a start at least so I can feel like something has been accomplished. 

Nothing As Planned

I was thinking that I would have a nice quilty Saturday followed by the usual Sunday routine of cleaning up around the house.  I got a call from on old friend on Saturday though and ended up going off on a tangent for the rest of the day.  I did spend time this morning finishing up the tile in the entryway.  How do you like the before and after photo?  I stopped when I got to the hallway so I'll need to do that part at some time in the near future.  There were 60 tiles in the entry though, so scrubbing and polishing them one at time took up quite a bit of time.  Scrubbing floors is kind of meditative actually so I got to mull things over while I was working.  I've got some papers to grade this evening so I had better get started on that.  Maybe if I can get caught up on school work tonight I'll have some time during the week to get a little sewing done.  It sounds like a plan to me. 

New Washer AND Dryer!

It was at the end of last weekend when my dryer stopped blowing hot air.  The washer had been acting funny for a while but hadn't given up the ghost completely yet.  The very nice men from Lowe's just left after setting up my brand new high capacity front loaders.  Guess what I'll be doing for the rest of the day?  I know that there have been a lot of advances in laundry technology since I got mine soon after moving to Florida.  I think I'd better read the manual.  I'm thinking of making a counter top of sorts to set along the top to use for ironing and folding.  Kurt had the kids make me a new PVC hamper to slide under the counter.  I just need to make a muslin liner for it and I'll be all set. 

New House Smell

You know that smell that a new car has? The artificial chemical smell that shouldn't be so delicious, but makes you think lots of good thoughts? My whole house smells like that. Now I have a huge urge to go and clean everything to make sure it looks as good as it smells. Instead I'm overloaded with lots of other stuff that has to be done. The quarter ends tomorrow, so everything has to be graded. I'm that annoying teacher giving a test on the last day of the quarter, so I have to write that before morning.
This weekend is packed, all with good stuff, but still booked solid. Tomorrow is my day to teach science to Anna's class. Ryan and Kurt are doing Cub Scout camping. Saturday there is a Girl Scout mall lock-in. Sunday is football, OM and ice skating. I think that's all. I'm trying not to think about it.

The air has taken on a definite tinge of fall. There is a little nip in the air that makes you think it might be nice to have a jacket in the morning, but the afternoons are crisp and bright. We sent Ryan out to get the toys out of the pool, but he didn't want to get wet. Instead he built himself a little boat and paddled around shoving everything to the side.

New Carpet Done

The new carpet is in. Now the house just needs to be put back together again.
I spent a lot of time before cleaning and touching up paint. I've got the beds made, but the closets are going to require some work. Now with the new carpet, it all looks fresh and clean.


The upstairs was done yesterday, so the kids could sleep all snug in their own beds.
So here I sit, drinking a Diet Dew and taking a deep breath before I jump in and get started again.

The Return of Before and After

Knowing that I always forget to take "before" pictures, I went around the house a few weeks ago and got pictures of every explosion of messiness that existed in the house. Now I just have to systematically go through and tame each of them, one at a time. Today was the closet in the master bedroom. It doesn't always look this scary. I think this particular crisis followed our own summer vacation and a couple of business trips along with some company who needed extra linnens. Frightening isn't it?
We had the carpet man coming today and it didn't seem fare to make him wade through all of that to get measurements. We decided that the organizers should come out so the carpet can go under, so I'll be trying to get rid of even more before the installation gets scheduled. Goodwill is coming for a pickup next week and they are going to find lots of fun stuff to take away. I have yet to tackle Kurt's side of the closet, but at least my half looks much better.
I didn't get a chance to make any midget blocks today. I measured the blocks I had already made and realized that all of the paper pieced patterns were coming out 3/8 of an inch too big. I'll have to mess around with my printer and see if I can get it just right before I get carried away again.
My mom is coming to visit for the weekend so I really need to pick up all of the sewing stuff so that my studio can look like more of a guest bedroom. She doesn't mind at all, but it a good reason to clean everything up.

Baby Steps

One room at a time.
I've been trying to cut fabric in the laundry room, but it tends to get cluttered. It is the pass through from the garage to the house as well as storage for fabric and craft things. Everyone tends to dump things on the counter as they walk through.
There is room to cut fabric now, and if you look off on the left hand side, you can see that the scrap basket has managed to fill itself up again magically. It must be some sort of spontaneous self replicating behavior unique to scraps. I've asked DH to put an outlet above the counter so that I plug in the light without running the chord over the edge. After that I might do something more decorative on the wall. Before I get too carried away in here, there are a few more rooms in the house that could use some attention. One step at a time.

Too Much Stuff

One of the projects for the summer is to get new carpet. Kurt wants hardwood on the stairs, so we are going to have the downstairs done first. There are only two carpeted rooms left downstairs, meaning new carpet shouldn't be that big of a deal, right?
I wanted to use the new carpet as motivation to get the study organized and set up now that the new frame and machine are taking up a big corner of the room. I can't believe all of this stuff was in the study! It didn't seem like that much at the time, but WOW, it seems like a lot when I look at it all spewed out like that. Now, next step, figure out what it is and where it should go. I'm guessing a lot of it needs to go live with someone else. Wish me luck, I'm going to need it.

Trade Offs

I used to have a manicure. Now I have shiny clean grout and sparking kitchen tile. Life is full of trade offs. There are very few times that I wish for a smaller house. When scrubbing the kitchen floor is a two day job I can't help but think that we'd be happy with a little less square footage. I got all the grout, all the tile and cleaned and painted the baseboards while I was at it. I think I'll make everyone eat outside tonight. Just got back from taking Sydney to the dentist and I feel like I've earned a little sewing time. Maybe I'll find a bottle of nail polish remover first though.

Summer Days

Yesterday was the first day that summer vacation was regular -- with no postplanning, no vacation, no holidays. It started with swim team at 8 am. Ryan had volleyball camp so Kurt volunteered to drop him off. I got a bit of a panicked call at 9:05 informing me that the volleyball camp consisted of Ryan and 50 girls. I guess volleyball is a girl sport at those ages around here. I can't think of a single school with a male volleyball team now that I think about it.
Then I started in on the summer cleaning list. I organized the Tupperware cupboard and tidied the kitchen before tackling the fridge.

This was before.
And this was after.
I even cleared off all the notes and pictures and magnets from the front. While all of that was going on, Anna had a friend over to play which involved 11 year old drama. Sydney had several friends over and hosted a little marathon of Just Dance on the Wii, no drama necessary. Then she went to play outside, coming home with a skinned knee. Band-aids make everything better at 7. Kurt wanted me to "just check" on Ryan, so that involved spending half an hour driving back and forth through a detour and road construction so I could go and ask the lady running the camp if he was OK. He was of course, so I came back home to finish my fridge cleaning. There was a panicked message from one of the moms who had heard that Sydney got hurt and confused our trip to check on Ryan with a trip to the emergency room for stitches. That required a bit of reasurrance, but after the whole dog mauling incident I guess I can't blame her for worrying.

When all of that fun was finally over, I decided to enjoy a little fabric fondling. I had been wavering as to what to use for the "colored" blocks in Judy's June Mystery. Sydney had picked out the dark and light teal along with the background fabric, but I hadn't decided what I wanted to go with them yet. After pulling a bit of this and a bit of that I decided to use the fat quarter bundle of Girl Scout Fabric that I ordered in January. I got a bit of cutting done for that before it was time to go back through the road construction (no detour this time:)) to get Ryan again. I made yummy baked spaghetti for dinner prompting the kids to ask why I couldn't make good tasting stuff like that all the time. Clean up of the kitchen was followed by clean up of the kids and then bedtime. I made sure to get a nice early night so that I could get up this morning to run. I'm trying to get back into training mode again and Amy's post yesterday helped motivate me.
Speaking of motivation, did you know that today is National Running Day? So go strap on your sneakers and run a bit. I was out bright and early this morning and I'm going to feel good about it all day long.

Rather be Quiltng

No school today, so the kids and I were home together. I thought I would finish up the last of my quilt marathon projects, but life got in the way. Anna wanted a ride to a play date and then a parade of random children started coming in and going out. Between keeping up with all of that I managed to fold a couple of loads of laundry. I got one and half borders put on Christmas lights and pressed whirlygiggles, but that is about it on the quilting front. I was very much hoping to finish borders and backing today so that they could be hung nicely until I'm ready to quilt them. I may sneak in for a few minutes after the kids are in bed, but I should really figure out first what I'll be teaching tomorrow.
I pulled a couple of rock climbing pictures off the camera as well. They all had a lot of fun and want to go again next year. Tomorrow there is a Girls Scout leader meeting, cookies are due and we are signed up to serve snacks. Kurt will be headed off to the school board meeting where they will continue to argue over rezoning. Wednesday will bring football and that is as far ahead as my mind has wandered. Sigh, the nicer the weekend, the harder it is to go back to the work week.

Bliss

Today was a Phyllis day. That is what we call every other Thursday when our housekeeper, Phyllis, comes and works her magic. It is a lovely thing to have something done in my house that I do not have to do myself. I have long ago gotten over the guilt of having help and learned to enjoy every moment.
So the kids and I went got up bright and early, ran some errands, saw a free movie, had lunch out and visited the fabric store. We went to Target to look for new backpacks, and not finding the exactly the right kind, were headed out when I saw that Janet Evanovich has a new book. I've read all of her books, even those goofy "written as" books that they always republish when an author hits it big. They are a funny, quick read with no literary qualities at all. I'm finishing up Emma on my i pod right now, so there is some sort of ying and yang there I'm sure.
Here I sit in my sparkling clean house, listening to my fabric in the dryer, getting ready to dive into a brand new book and thinking, life is good.
Oh, on a side note, I saw one of, my students at the fabric store and she said she tried to get into my first period Anatomy class, but couldn't because it was full. So that is two new bits of information. My Anatomy class is first period, and it is full. I am slowly starting to work my way back into school mode. Maybe I'll log on later and see if my rosters are posted yet and go through e-mail. Slowly, slowly.......

Spring Break Fun

The kids decided to make dinner last night. The theme was foods that start with the letter "P": pizza, pineapple, peperoni, peanut butter, Parmesan cheese, pink lemonade, popcorn and pound cake. For tonight they have planned an "M" meal: meatballs, mozzarella sticks with marinara, mushrooms, marshmallows and mini muffins.

We had a garage sale today. Mostly it was an excuse to clean out the garage so that I could paint the floor. I've been on a purging and organizing spree. Spring cleaning I suppose. Kurt was out of town for a couple of days so I stayed up until the wee hours ironing and cutting fabric into little bits and pieces. I'm going to have trouble shifting back to a regular schedule when school starts again on Monday, but I am enjoying my time at home.

Crazy Person

It's been crazy busy around here, and any sane person would have buckled down and started working on the list of things that must be done now. Instead I'm puttering away on this and that, as if I had no deadlines ahead. My school (for the first time ever) is taking a winter break next week. Just like spring break, but this year we get both. My husband and I scheduled a cruise, and my mother-in-law has been wonderful enough to volunteer to come and stay with my kids who don't get the week off. Vacations should be relaxing, but instead, I'm trying to get everything finished off before we leave --thinking that the house should be in some sort of reasonable shape before I hand it over for the week. The guest bedroom has started collecting everything, not just my quilting, but now the OM junk as well. I had it all beatiful, and then we started doing stuff again. That's always the problem. The doing stuff makes the house a wreck.

I've been plowing steadily through my scrap basket during the odd down moments this week. I got a bunch of stuff ironed last weekend and started slicing it. I was lucky enough to inherit bunches of scraps from our neighbor who moved away recently. I'm focusing on 2 inch strips to go into my scrappy irish chain. I've picked this one as my February project. I think I will make it into a twin size quilt because I'm contemplating a new charity project. Another Girl Scout troop is working on their gold award and helping to get a local shelter ready to open again after a recent transformation. They are cleaning and painting and decorating. Before I even knew what I was thinking, the first thing that popped out of my mouth was, "Do they need quilts?" We made 40 lap sized quilts for Christmas, how hard could 23 twin sized quilts be? This one is still in the planning stages, but I've been turning it around in my head for a couple of days now. I have some vauge idea about kitting up a bunch of happy square blocks and hosting an intermediate quiltmaking session for the girls who enjoyed the first quilt making experience.

I am seriously a crazy person. I've just lost a girl scout leader at my school, another troop is having a crisis, my own cookie mom dropped out on me, so I'm frantically arranging all of that while trying to get ready for a cruise and a visit from my mother-in-law. I'm giving two tests tomorrow and I'd better get those written or my students will be seriously disappionted. So how did I spend my evening? Any reasonable person would have been handlling the urgent list. I was peacefully ironing some yardage so that I could get it put away before the weekend. I'm not just crazy, I'm also oblivious. Not exactly an effective way to deal with stress, but I guess it's better than freaking out.

Thursday is a Good Day

I always enjoy Thursday. It isn't the weekend yet, but you've made it past the hump while still having time to finish what needs to be done for the week. It helps at my house that the housekeeper comes every other Thursday. I come home from work to a clean and peaceful house with the pressure of restoring order gone for a brief respite. If we are going out to dinner, it usually happens on Thursday so that the kitchen can stay spotless for just a while longer. Tonight I bucked tradition and made dinner for the family. I was in a mood to try new recipes. As a child, I remember my Grandfather making potato pancakes out of leftoever mashed potatoes. I don't know why I have that memory, because he wasn't from a generation where men did much of the cooking, but the images still linger in my mind. So tonight I combined potato pancakes with home made applesauce and some turkey sausages. Quite a departure, from our usual fair, but it was fun to branch out. I got a few more Rolling Star blocks put together for the mystery quilt, no new pictures yet, but I may get a few more together after the kids are in bed.

I do have exciting vacation news. For the first time this year, my school is taking a "winter break" week in February. We still end up with the same number of days off, but they've grouped all the random holidays together to make a week! My kids don't get the week off, so Kurt and I have booked a Caribean cruise for that week. Him mom is being kind enough to come and stay with the kids (Thank you so much Bonny!!!), and we will have 5 days and 4 nights of relaxing dinners, calm afternoons and random leisure time. I'm already starting mental a list of books to read and handsewing to bring along.

Murder on a Manicure

I spent the morning finishing the pin basting on Dad's Plaids. I've seen systems with PVC pipe or wooden frames for basting. I even made one just for that purpose, but it just doesn't work on something so ginormous (yes, I'm making up my own words now!). So after crawling around on the floor all morning and scrounging for every last safety pin in the house, I got the job done.

As much as I would have loved to start quilting this afternoon, I was feeling guilty about not doing my share around the house. So instead of firing up the sewing machine, I decided to start painting the bathroom. It's coming along slowly, and even though it's not done, all of the components are usable again. If I was a really good person I would get out the tile saw and finish the part that Kurt isn't supposed to do because of his bad rotator cuff. Maybe next weekend. I didn't paint the high parts, but I did finish everything I could reach with the small step stool we keep in there for the kids. Wow are those ceiling high! I'll have to get the big ladder out later and do the rest. We haven't gotten new light fixtures yet, so I would have had to do more painting when we got those anyway. I'm rationalizing not finishing the paint job, but I was just darned tired by dinner time and glad to put it all away for the night.

Quilt Washing Day

I'm sure in the old days I would be hanging the washing out on the line to dry in the sun. But I don't think clothes lines are allowed in our neighborhood and it rains every day in Florida this time of year. So I've spread the quilts out to dry over patio chairs under the covered lanai. Something has been smelly in Ryan's room lately and I can't quite get to the bottom of it. I'm hoping it's something simple like the quilts or pillows and not something complicated like water intrusion through the wall. That side of the house took the brunt of the last couple of hurricanes so I tend to worry about mold and such. I haven't seen any evidence, but I'd feel better if I could get rid of the smell. Maybe it's just 7 year old boy smell.
I'm slowly getting to the bottom of my cleaning list. Kurt is on his way back from the airport now, so maybe he can do a few little things this afternoon while I run out to the store. I've got a good start on packing so I think I'm in pretty good shape overall. Gwen Marston's Liberated Strings book came in the mail today, so I'm thinking I should take a few minutes to relax and look through it before I do any more work.