Photos, Finally!

When last we met (a long, long time ago....) we were in the midst of renovating 2 rooms of the house. It's been a slow-go, but I am proud to report that all the sheetrock repair, painting and carpeting is complete. This is girl-child's room. Yes - we stayed with the medium gray on the walls. More coats of paint helped it. The carpet is a charcoal gray, and the trim is true white. And check out the chandelier! Okay. When a 12yo girl tells you that her heart is set on having a black chandelier in her bedroom, you just have to take a deep breath and try to figure out how to do that. Have you priced chandeliers lately? OMG! Anyway, fate smiled on me. I was telling a couple of really good customers about Audrey's grand decorating scheme and bemoaning the cost of chandeliers when Sue says, "I've got one in the back of my truck. Do you want it?". Well, um, heck yeah! Long story short - it was in several pieces when I got it. I completely re-wired it, painted it, re-wired all the crystals, figured out how to put it back together and it's now hanging in the room! (It's still missing 15 crystals, but they've been ordered.). After the daddy-man finished hanging it, we just stared at the miracle. Thanks, Sue! The windows are another story for another day.

We're still trying to decide what kind of furniture makes the most sense (from an organization + style point of view) before we can put both rooms completely back together. I did decide to replace the full sized bed in the guest/music room with a daybed. It's here, but it needs a custom-made quilt because of the funky sizing (twin sized, but not quite). Know where I can get a custom-sized quilt? har, har......... Perhaps I need to make an appointment with myself.....for Spring, maybe?

I have been sewing quite a bit lately in preparation for our Market Review Party this Sunday. I will confess, the past few weeks I have been torn..."Paint or sew? Sew or paint?". It's been a juggling act. Anyway, this top was made using Kaffe Fassett strips and the pattern is in the new "More Strip Clubbing" book. It may be hard to tell, but it's draped over a mattress stuffed behind my longarm. Actually, 2 full sized beds have been stuffed behind the longarm for almost a month. They were both moved out last week, so I quilted this quilt yesterday. Photo forthcoming.

I also complted this yesterday. It's block #1 of a new BOM called "Piece, Love and Applique" we're going to begin in January. You can see a photo of the whole quilt here. Isn't it adorable? And yes, glutton for punishment that I am, I hand-appliqued the block......

Time for the shower and off to work.

Help!

Okay. Have I been gone from Blogger so long that things work differently now? I'm trying to bring in some photos and I keep clicking the "Add Image" icon and getting nothing. Is Blogger having a cranky day, or am I missing something?

Change

How do you handle change? With grace? Kicking and screaming? I am currently neck-deep in a whole lotta change. Changes personally - changes at home - changes professionally......I don't even know where to begin. The good news is that I can see that in the long run all of these changes are going to be good for me, but darn if it's not a little bit hard while in the midst of it. There is so much change goin' on that I'm at the point of just shrugging my shoulders and asking what's next. Don't worry - everybody's fine, but if I start listing everything out, I'm afraid it's going to come off as whining. Whining is not acceptable. Venting = good; whining = not so much - and it's a fine line between venting and whining so I'm not even going to go there. But it does boil down to me not having enough hours in the day to get all the things done that need doing. That might account for me not blogging in FOREVER.

I feel like I've been off the reservation for so long here in blog-land that it's hard to jump back in. I write a blog post in my head daily, but before I know it, it's 11:00pm and I'm falling face down into bed. I was originally going to talk about intention in this post (at least that's how I've written it in my head for the last couple of weeks). When I started this blog, my intention was to post if not daily, at least a couple of times per week. I did really good for a while. And then I was going to talk about the actual intent regarding the content of my blog. Personal journal? Project recording? Quilt shop marketing? Right now I just don't know. I guess I'll just have to settle in again and see where it goes. Why do I feel guilty for not blogging in 2 months? Why do I feel like I've been letting people down by not posting? Perhaps the fact that people in my everyday life comment about my current lack of posting. Do I really want to put that much pressure on myself in the midst of everything else right now? I guess I AM a glutton of punishment, if nothing else! Perhaps my goal for right now is to just attempt to stay current.

I had a couple of pictures to post, but apparently you can't add photos to blogger after you've begun writing text. Or perhaps the photo button just doesn't want to work for me right now. I'll try again in the next post.

I just want to say "Thank You" for even coming back to my blog after such a long time. I promise to try to post more often.