In with the New

I'm looking forward to starting the new year, the last one wasn't so great. We're still dealing with some problems that resulted from the house fire, it's amazing how much even a 'small' fire will disrupt your life. Part of it was our inexperience in dealing with such things, if we had known to never trust a building contractor and to have everything written up in an ironclad contract, we would have been saved a world of trouble. We still haven't settled things with the last contractor, he seems to want to keep stringing things out. We had trusted him because he was recommended by a friend, another VERY expensive lesson learned. We're still finding problems with the work done on the house, unfortunately, but I'm going to stay optimistic about it and hope that we'll be able to deal with the thing that have been done wrong. We don't want anyone else here to work on the house, definitely had enough of that.



We've been having such nice weather, yesterday we had a high of around 54 degrees and actually had sun for most of the day. It was really nice. The pic at the right is of a bunch of birds that were congregrating in the bushes, I was walking by and they were just chattering a mile a minute. There must have been a couple hundred of them. They were right near a feed mill, so maybe they were discussing their lunch plans.

In sewing related news... don't you love my cute new scissors? My son got these for me for Christmas. They're golden stork scissors from Dovo, made in Solingen, Germany. He said that they used to be used for cutting umbilical cords, thus the stork. They have a very sharp point and should be good for applique.
We just had Christmas with our daughter and son-in-law tonight (they just got back from Florida), and are having our big Christmas dinner tomorrow. My daughter, Taiya, made me a quilted wall hanging (I've been scheming endlessly to get her interested in quilting, so this is an extra great present!). When it's bound I'll show a pic. Taiya took lots of beautiful pictures in Florida, hopefully she'll let me borrow a couple for my next blog.
I'm working on a new quilt project, a really adorable quilt for my niece (well, for her baby actually). I've been trying to finish old projects, but this is different, she's about 5 months along so I can't put this project off. I'll try to show a pic tomorrow, it's just the cutest thing.

It's March, right?

It definitely feels like it! If you look back a bit on my blog, you'll see a picture that was taken of our pond about three weeks ago when we had 15 inches of snow. That didn't last long, today was about 50 degrees, the sun was shining and a light breeze blowing. Not too bad.

I am proud of myself, I finally got the applique done on this top. I wasn't liking it much, so wasn't real inspired to get it done, but I like it a bit better now. We changed our minds about what color to paint the bedroom, so I didn't think it would work out, but it's not that far off & DH likes it, so maybe I'll actually finish it and use it after all.

Here are a couple of santas I carved and painted a while back. I haven't done any carving for a long time, but have another santa that I need to finish & I'd like to get back into carving, I really enjoy it. My problem is finding somewhere to work on them, it's a pretty messy process and we don't have a workshop. I usually sit on our bed and quilt, wonder if my DH would mind a few woodchips on the sheets?
So how come nobody told me about Pandora? I'm probably the only person who didn't know about it (except my DH, when I told him about it & how cool it is he gave me a disparaging look and told me I spend too much time on the internet.....spoilsport!).

Merry, Merry!

It just doesn't feel like Christmas-time since the snow melted, hard to believe that last week we were knee deep in the stuff. We finally got our tree up, the picture doesn't make it look too great, but it's really pretty. We like real trees, when the kids were little we used to tromp out in the woods and cut our own, but now we just go buy one. Well, there was that one year that I found one that fell off a truck, ha!

My daughter wanted to use my old ornaments this year instead of our usual conglomeration of whatever is in the boxes. Not all the ornaments are vintage, but most are. Unfortunately they're not passed down through the family, not sure what happened to those ornaments, these are ornaments I've found at garage sales. This sled is a display that we saw in Shipshewana yesterday when my daughter and I were there, very cute! I was surprised that the town wasn't decorated up as much as usual for Christmas. Maybe a bit of snow would have helped. The inside of the Davis building had a lot of really nice displays, they always do things up right. I also noticed that a few shopkeepers actually said "Merry Christmas", that was nice. I'm just not going to really be able to get into the holiday spirit with my family not being here. We'll be celebrating Christmas with my daughter and her husband in January when they get back from their Florida vacation, that will be fun, but my boys can't come home. I really miss the old days (wah!), I had all those years to adjust to the kids growing up, but I miss them terribly anyway.
Have you noticed that EVERYBODY is sick? It seems like every blogger whose blog is read is either sick or her family is. I'm glad I went ahead and got the flu shot this year, I don't usually get sick much anyway, but I guess it's a good idea to be careful now that I'm getting so incredibly ancient.
I have actually been working on some projects, mostly beadwork, but I can't show any pictures just in case some particular people might happen to check out my blog. I should have done a lot more, but I've just been dragging lately.

And here is a pic from the olden days, I'm pretty sure this was about 1989, that little dude is about 6 foot tall now. Dang, haven't seen that couch for quite a few years!

Let it snow, let it snow....okay already!

I'm not really complaining, it's just beautiful. but we got something like 14 inches of snow since yesterday. Dax usually likes running around in it, but this seems to be a bit much even for her. It's not going to stick around too long, it's supposed to be warming up in the next few days. That's how it goes, we get snow & then it melts. The winters used to be different when I was a kid, we didn't have as much of this on & off, I prefer when the snow comes and stays for a while rather than melting away and then we have to deal with the muddy mess. The snow is really light and fluffy, it's insulating the ground so well that it's not freezing, so everythings mushy underneath. Probably not good for the people that are going off the road.

Not to go on forever with this "when I was a kid" stuff but....when I was a kid and we got a snow like this NOBODY would be on the road. It was kind of cool, everything got real quiet in town (Kalamazoo). I loved taking walks on nights like that.
We lived right next to a school with big hills, so we went sledding a lot. Every kid within walking distance would be there as soon as the first big snow hit. It was such a blast, I'm surprise we never got frostbite because we were pretty much frozen by the time we dragged our sleds home. You don't see nearly as many kids sledding there these days, guess they're busy paying video games. Not a good sign.

More door art- I found this new stuff at Hobby Lobby called Stencil Paste. The stencils that are used with it are thicker than the usual stencil. You put the stencil down and apply the paste, run a putty knife over it and ta-da! This is the door of my sewing room, after a day of drying I painted another coat on it and it looks great. I still have another door to re-do, I may have to wait until spring, though, I imagine it has as many coats of paint as this one did. Since the house was built before 1873, I imagine some of the paint on there was lead paint, so we do our stripping outside.

I've been working on some quilts, but don't have any pics of them today. I got the binding done on the Fancy Grandmother's Flower Garden, and am trying to finish up some applique on another quilt top. I'm not too happy with that one, but want to finish the top at least. I was making it for our new bedroom, but we went with totally different colors than I was planning, so it doesn't really fit anymore. I love the fabrics, but am not happy with how I put them together. Oh well, someday someone may come across it and absolutely love it.
Can we go in now?