Day 2 – Bathroom Water

October 7th, 2011

on Thursday, Oct. 6, 2011

Today the demolition continued.   On the first night Tom asked them to put plastic over the doorways to keep the dust confined to the construction area.  Pedro used a couple of the large BLACK garbage bags.  This made it really hard to see what was going on.  At one point I was on the telephone and there was a loud noise from something being removed.  The person on the telephone  asked if I was okay.  With all the differnt and loud sounds going on I was getting really curious as to what was actually being done. 

Finally I went out my front door walked around to the back of my house  and used the outside entrance to go into the basement.  Since the tiles have been removed, there is a fairly large space between the door and the floor which made it so I could see alittle of what was going on.  Do you like my view point.

 

The kitchen part of the room is gutted. All the cabinets have been removed along with the sink.  I think the loud noise must have been when they were removing the subfloor. 

I have spent alot of time thinking and planning on how I would handle our food preparation while having no kitchen, but I hadn’t though about not having any water.  And to make things worse – the water that we will have is BATHROOM water.  Tom chuckles at my dislike of bathroom water.  He just cannot relate to my dislike of bathroom water.  Growning up we had soft water in our house.  Since my mother didn’t like the taste of soft water there was special plumbing so we had the regular water in the cold water tap in the kitchen.  Therefore, our bathroom water did taste different.  I know logically that the difference was because of the soft water, but emotionally I still have this adversion to drinking bathroom water – in fact I don’t do it.  Well, I am probalby about ready to have to start eating (or drinking) my words.  Not only will I be drinking bathroom water, I will be doing our dishes in bathroom water.  What is this world coming to.


This is the corner where we (actually Pedro) will be extending the wall.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Since that wonderful outdoor tile also extended into the powder room we had to rip up that floor also.  Also, talk about one thing leading to another.  I began to worry if the cabinet we had in there would look old if we put it back in – so we are now going to put new cabinets in this room also. 


The other end of the kitchen will be our office with a built-in desk with wall cabinets above it.  Right now this area is serving as a storage area but eventually the hardwood floors will be taken out and the tile will also be laid in this section.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is the doorway that will be our access to the basement from now on.  The door is to be removed.  When they extend the wall you will not be able to get into the kitchen through this doorway.  I think that when we get our new classey living/dining room (oh, did I forget to mention, this redo has also spread into that room – more about that later) those personalized licenses plates will have to go (to the train room).

Lots more details to share over the coming days.  Here is a preview of my make-shift kitchen/office.

Just waiting for the workers to arrive to get started on Day 3.

Day 1 – The Demolition Begins

October 6th, 2011

on Wednesday, Oct. 5, 2011

At the beginning of 2010 Tom saw something about rebates being offered if you replace your old appliances with more energy efficient applicances.  We started talking about replacing our refrigerator.   Next thing you know we are talking about redoing our entire kitchen.  Since the beginning of 2011  we I have been planning for the renovation of our kitchen.  Back in March I remember having a conversation with a friend on the way home from The Lancaster AQS quilt show about wanting to swap locations of the frig and stove, but the frig would stick out beyond the wall so this probably wasn’t going to be that great of an idea.  She then wondered if there might be a frig that is designed to be more the depth of the counter.  The next day I did some research and found that they do make counter-depth refigerators.  Who knew?????  (Me now!!!!)

Our kitchen is quite small and I wanted to maximize the space that we do have.  For the past few months I have used alot of my creative energy thinking and planning for our kitchen renovation to hopefully accomplish this.  When the hurtle achieved of convincing Tom that it is possible to move the gas line thus making it probable to swap the frig and stove I began scouring cabinet catalogs for the perfect size/type cabinet (both inside and outside) for each small space that we have.  Then it was on to securing estimates.  This in and of itself was an agonizing process.  The difference in cost was astounishing.  Also trying to decide the cabinet types and all that kind of stuff was very overwhelming.  I think I finally could relate with those quilters that have so much trouble in choosing fabrics for their next project.  At one point – I just wanted to someone else to make all the decisions and be done it it.  Just when we thought we had finalized the size/shape and layout of the cabinets, another big brainstorm – closing off the one corner (passage way to the basement) to really make it feel like a real kitchen.  I think this last alternation was the crowning decision to make this kitchen really nice.  Needless to say, this has all been very exhausting.  After deciding on a contractor then we had to plan the work around visits from our kids.  Anyway – the kitchen is empty (needless to say – our front room/dining room IS NOT) and the contractor started working on Wednesday.  

Day 1 – 
Removed the old floor tile (I really have disliked this tile – come to find out it is an outdoor tile and is not really meant to be used inside).  Let’s hope the new tile we have chosen will look nicer and be easier to keep up.  They also removed alot of the wall tiles.  

Thank your Pedro and your workers – I am REALLY glad that Tom and I ARE NOT doing the work ourselves.

 

Teaching at HMQS in Salt Lake City, UT

May 26th, 2011


I am busy getting ready for the Home Machine Quilting Show that I will be teaching and vending at in May.

I will be teaching my Disappearing Rainbow class.

Teaching/Vending at HMQS in Salt Lake City, UT

May 23rd, 2011

Last Fall I was contracted to teach 3 classes and one lecture at the Home Machine Quilting Show (HMQS) in Salt Lake City, Utah.  A couple of months later I got this CRAZY idea that we should also get a booth and vend at the show.  I am not quite sure why I thought this was a good idea, but we (me and my very supportive husband) committed to this.  So, for the past few months I lived and breathed (except when I was distracted with some other major events – more about them may be coming later) getting ready for this show.

Here is our booth all set-up and just waiting for the fun to begin.


My first class started at 8:00 am on Thursday.  I had sixteen wonderful students in my Disappearing Rainbow class.  We had a great time (sorry no pictures because my camera was in some bag somewhere).  Juananne did post about the class on her blog.

The show had been open for a few hours before I even got to be at the booth to see how things were going.  My husband is so great – he took care of the final set-up and selling while I was teaching .  After my class was over it was off to present my lecture –  “The Legacy Lives On – Six Geneartions of Quilters”.  What a great opportunity to share because we had three generations there – Me, Emily (my daughter) and Autumn and Prairie (my two granddaughters).  I showed the quilt (Tricky Squares) that Autumn gave me and the blocks that Prairie is working on.


Here is a picture of some of the venders at the show.


Thursday afternoon – I am finally at the booth.

Saturday morning I taught the Mini-Magic class and in the afternoon a two hour induction into the Hexamanic Club – Let the Hexamania Begin.  My sister Susan, her two daughters (one officially and one to just watch) and her adorable grandson came to this class along with a bunch of other hexagon lovers.


I think the real plus for us deciding to vend was the motivation this gave me to get seven of my patterns published.  Many of them were started, but not finished.  Well now they are finisihed and ready for you quilters.  They will be up on my website very soon.


Here is my best friend and business partner (aka husband).  I could never have done this wild adventure without him!  I really appreicate him taking a week of his vacation time to work by my side.  (The Queen of Projects was in top form and there were some pretty late nights followed by some really early mornings.)

I am happy to report that by being at this show two shops have picked up some or all of my patterns.  In this picture Tom is helping Judy from the Stitching Post in Wyoming with her purchase for her store.  Also, Kate Thomas from Sew Armadillo (an on-line store in Australia) picked up all of my patterns.  Needless to say, I am pretty excited about this.


He was even very good sport and was willing to wear the shirt with my new logo on it.  The logo was designed by my daughter-in-law, Isa Ciccotelli.  She does great work.


Here is the happy business couple on the third day.


The show is over and we are packing up.  I am not sure how those that vend week after week do it.  It is alot of HARD work.

Thank you to Ann Collect and everyone that worked on the show.  It was a wonderful experience and I hope to see you again next year (to teach at least, I have not decided about this vending stuff)!

Comfort Zone

March 10th, 2011

At the beginning of 2011 I made a goal to go to the gym more regularly (I know, lots of people make this goal) and attend classes because I get a much better workout that way.  I also wanted to be conscious of what I was eating.  I was doing great until my brother passed away and I was out of town for three weeks.  Since then I have had a really hard time getting back into enjoying the exercising – I am just doing it.  This week has been no different – but today I committed to myself that I would go and attend a strength training class.  When I arrived  at the gym it was not the Inside Out class that I was expecting but it was Pilates Infusion – no problem I am thinking, this will still fit into my strength training goal.   I had arrived a few minutes late (I was trying to talk myself into not going), the classes had not started yet but the room was packed.  Each person was to get a 2 lb medicine ball and a mat.  There were neither left – I found a suitable replacement for the ball and decided that I had plenty of fat that I could go without a mat.  I found me a spot with sufficient room just inside the door.  The class started and I was good to go.  A few more people arrived later than me and two of them decided that my sufficient space was also big enough for them to squeeze into.  I don’t like to be floor hog so I moved over to make room for them.  All three of us did not have mats – but they are not quite as self-sufficient as I am in this area.  Before long I realize that one lady has left – yah, some room to kind of move again.  But, then she returns with a mat ———- wow, I didn’t think of going to the Yoga studio and getting a mat there – good idea, but if I leave I probalby will not have any space when I get back.   I was also thinking that it would have been really nice for the lady to bring a few extra mats down with her–but not to be.

The class progressed along very good, in fact, I was thinking that I like pilates.  Then we got to this exercise where we were laying on our back and rotating our legs from one side to the other.  I was so squished against the wall that there was no way I had room to do this exercise.  I kindly asked one of the squaters to move alittle to some open sapce in fromt of her so that I would have room (I didn’t think this was too unrealistic of a request since I was there first).  She kind of moved but not very willingly.  Then the insturctor came back and told me to move to this other area of the room where there was more room.  Yes indeed there was more room, but is was basically on the front row.   Talk about making me uncomfortable.  The room has mirrors on one wall and I really don’t enjoy seeing a full reflection of this fat old lady in the mirror and I am sure that others feel the same way.  As I continued with the class I could feel me loosing control of my emotions and the tears were beginning to well up in my eyes.  Only 20 minutes to go, but I realized that I would never be able to keep control of my feelings for that long.  I gathered my stuff up and beelined it for the restroom.  Of all times for there to be a line——–I HAD to keep it together for just a few more minutes.   When I finally got into the bathroom stale I covered my face with a towel and just sobbed.   

While sobbing in the bathroom I reflected on an other time in my life that I used the bathroom stale as a refuge to cry my eyes out.  It was just after my divorce was final and I started to attend dances.  That was pretty humiliating in the beginning.  I would stand there and it felt like the men (which were out numbered by the women by alot) would just walk up and down the rows of us cattle trying to deicde who they were going to choose to pick this time around.  Needless to say, I would endure it for awhile and then I would go into the bathroom and sob for awhile.  I used to measure how I enjoyed the dance by how many times I went to the bathroom to cry. 

While attending all these classes at the gym I think that I have learned alot about how to be a better teacher.  As I was driving home I was thinking about how I could apply the experience this morning to my quilting life.  First off, by attending classes that I am out of my comfort zone it has given me more empathy for those student that my be struggling and how just a smile here and there and a word of encouragment means so much.  Also, realizing what might seem like an easy fix to me as a teacher might put the student in a place where they are not ready to go – way beyond their comfort zone.

Anyway – I will get back on the bike – infact, but I will try to arrive a few minutes early so I can get a space on the back row but in the opposite corner of the door.  That way I might have a better chance of maintaining my space.  I also now know that I do not do well on the front row and I would tell the insturctor to ask one of the other people to move becuase I do not want to move to the front of the class where I would be in full view on the mirror.

Now off to try and get my router talking to my wireless hard-drive that is holding all patterns that I am working on hostage.

Have a great day!

2010 Christmas Craft Project

December 16th, 2010

Once again the Christmas season and  need for a new craft project is upon me.  This year I have actually created two.  (Maybe because I didn’t make one last year, or maybe because I am working ahead.  LOL)


The first one I designed was these gingerbread men.  You can see the progression from right to left.  Each alittle different.  I am not exactly sure which one I like the best.  How about you?


I think since I was not completely satisfied with the gingerbread man I moved onto another project.  The wooden soldier.  I really like the way he came together.  I am thinking that I need to get some really tiny fleshed colored pom poms and use one for his nose.

Here are the projects from past years.  The snowman is pretty boring in this picture because my decorated one way used as a last minute gift and I have never decorate another one.

I love it when my students are creative and make the project their own.  This student made her snowman ready for a visit to Hawaii.

What fun ideas would you use on your holiday craft project.

Happy 60th Birthday

December 2nd, 2010

Nov. 15 was Tom’s 60th birthday.  About 1 1/2 year ago we decided to celebrate in a big way and take the entire family to Disney World.  Needles to say, I have been doing alot of planning, especially the past couple of months.

Tom and I had talked about getting t-shirts for everyone, but we didn’t really make any definate plans.  Six day before we are leaving for Flordia I was talking to Emily (one of my daughter’s in Utah) and telling her that the “Queen of the Projects” was still entertaining the idea of trying to do t-shirts.  She told me to forget it, there just was not enough time.  I just did not want to because that is the one thing that alot of people had told me to be sure and do.  So, she sent me to a blog on how to do a t-shirt design with freezer paper stencils.  This was a possibility and pretty interesting.

I think that part of the problem with doing t-shirts was I was not sure of what design to put on them.  Emily and I had talked about a few people that might be able to design a drawing for us, but it just had not worked out.


I decided that I could use this picture.  I used the tutortial here to manipulate the photo.  I took this picture of Tom when we were on our fact finding mission to Disney World in August 2009.

As I was working with the design, I decided that this was CRAZY!!!!  This was going to take way to much time to make it look good and I didn’t have alot of extra time.  Monday morning I started calling t-shirt imprint companies to see if they could produce my order by Friday.  I received quite a few “NOs”, but Customink said yes and they were excellent to work with.

In October I was in Seattle visiting my brother and sister-in-law and while there Rodney gave me a quick lesson on layers in Photo Shop Elements.  This was very valuable information that really helped me out when I was working on getting this design just right.


Here was how the design came out – I decided that it needed some more work.  I did not think that Tom would like looking so scruffy.


Here is the final design.


I received the t-shirts on Thursday.  The one for Zephyr was way too big…….so I remade it smaller.  Needles to say, they all looked really cute.  Tom still knew NOTHING of this project.

Once in Flordia the kids and I decided that on Monday (Tom’s birthday) – our first day at Disney World (Magic Kingdom) we would put on our shirts, but put something else on over top of them.  When everyone was in the kitchen area I would send Tom back into our bedroom to get something and we would all take off the outer shirt and surprise Tom with the 60th Birthday shirts.  It was pretty fun to see everyone wearing these shirts.  Tom was surprise.  I then handed him a wrapped gift – his shirt.  He changed and we all headed off to Disney World.

Here is all 17 of us wearing our shirts.

My Lastest Project

December 1st, 2010

Go, go, go (but what FUN, FUN, FUN it has been) the past few months.  More on that in the next few posts.  Today I wanted to share with you what I was working on last week.  For the past 2 1/2 years I have been serving in the Young Women at church and on Nov. 14 I was released.  Thepresident (Jana Lindberg) and her family are moving on Dec. 1.   At the last Wednesday night activity (Nov. 10) that my age group of girls (Mia Maids – 14 & 15 year olds) were in charge we decided to have all the girls decorate blocks and then I would make them into a quilt.  We had not yet figured out how we were going to keep Sis. Lindberg from see us make the blocks at the activity, but I was so busy getting ready for our family vacation to Disney World that I really did not give it much thought.  But, when Jana called on Wednesday afternoon and said that her brother had just arrived from Washington DC and would it be okay if she just stayed at home and visited with him – I tried to act cool about it, but I was quite relieve that she was not going to be at the church.

I left for Disney World on Saturday, Nov. 13 and returned home the next Saturday.  Needles to say, if I was going to get the project comleted by Nov. 28, I had to get busy really quick on this project because Nov. 28 was the Lindberg’s last Sunday in our ward.  I was totally exhaused from our trip and just did not have the engery to push those first few days.  But, the Queen of the Projects completes this quilt at Noon on Sunday morning (church starts at 1:00 – plenty of time).

I did not have to purchase anything to make this quilt.  (Tells you what a well stocked store I have in my baement.)  In fact, the fabrics that I used around the blocks have been used on two other projects.


Here are lose-ups of a few of the blocks:


I had a couple of extra blocks so I included this picture from girls camp on one.


Jana and the young women were please with the quilt.

Five Years, Five Months, Five Days and Still Not Completed!

October 10th, 2010

My niece got marred on 5-5-05. I didn’t quite (what an understatement) get her wedding gift completed for the wedding. In fact, at the beginning of this year, I decided that it would be cool to give it to her for her 5 year anniversary. Well, you guessed it, I went on to Plan C – give it to her and her husbnad for their 5 year, five month and five day anniversary (10-10-10).  Well, here comes Plan D – ???????.  Anyway – I am thinking about you Angie and love watching all the wonderful things that you and Ryan have done in the past 5+years! So I guess that Plan D will be – 5+5+5+???????

Here is a sneak peak.

Side ntoe:  I was working on this post and was going to hit the Publish button at 10/10/10 at 10:10 am but my computer froze up.  I was nto to worried because I just though I would use 10:10 pm except the clock is a 24 hour clock.  Oh well, alway good intentions and not much else.

Who Know? Not this Idaho Girl!

August 9th, 2010


Thursday night while I was ironing Tom’s shirt he started looking at the third skyline piece that I was working on.  He looked and looked and then just walked away without saying nything.  I knew there was something wrong.  He was very hesitant to say anything because he didn’t want to hurt my feelings.   Finally I got him to tell me what was wrong with my piece – the skyline was kind of mixed up.  To me all the parts were there, so it was okay.  But to Tom – someone that was born in New York City and has lived around this area all his life, he picked it out imediately.  Do you see the problem or are you on Team Mary Anne?

Here is the skyline in the correct order.  Once I changed things around it did seem “just right”, but I sure did not sense the problem before hand.  I decided that part of the problem was that I was trying to make the skyline fit how I always see it – fromt the George Washington Bridge and also New Jersey.  After looking at the fabric Tom pointed out that it was printed from a Queens-Brooklyn prospective.  So, that is what I have now.


After realizing this, I went back and changed one of the first pieces that I was working on.  I did one cut and was able to rearrange the skyline. 

The other small one (10″ x 10″ block) has already gone to its new home, so I will always remain a naive Idaho girl in regards to that block.