Maine Quilts 2010

Took the day off and went with Mum to Maine Quilts 2010.  Tons of people, tons of vendors and so many quilts!!  More pictures here.

   

    

We also went to Marden's and found my couch!  It was one of the few sleeper sofas there, but it was a Simmons queen sleeper that was marked down from like $650 to $499, then they took another $50 off because one cushion was a slightly different color than the others and there was a mark on the very bottom.  The only bad thing is that it's a very light beige.  Grey cats, a black dog and a light colored couch don't exactly work well together!  Oh well, that's why man created slipcovers.  I'm just happy to have a real couch, that's not a 20 year old, raggedy hand-me-down or the grungy futon (also a hand-me-down)!

Maine Quilts 2010

Two more days till one of my favorite summer events – the Pine Tree Quilters Guild’s Maine Quilts 2010!  This is my 5th year attending and I always come home with a million new ideas and inspirations. 

This year, I’m looking for woven quilts (my newest fascination).  I stumbled upon the book “Simply Stunning Woven Quilts” by Anna Faustino and was awestruck by how innovative those quilts looked.  I found a tutorial online (which looks really easy); I just haven’t taken a moment to try it.  Well, that and the fact that I still don’t have a sewing room that isn’t full of boxes yet (hopefully this weekend will put an end to that, because I REALLY need kitchen and bathroom curtains…especially bathroom curtains – I’m convinced that the neighbors down the road can see into my bathroom!). 

Here are just a few of my favorite pictures from the past four “Maine Quilts” shows:

 

For more pictures from the last 4 years, click below:

2006

2007

2008

2009

She's crafty...

I attempted to tackle the sewing room/craft studio/whatever you want to call it. I think I managed to unpack about 3 boxes and just rearrange the rest.

  

 

I did put up the pegboard and the inspiration line above the quilt wall, and I moved the table and boxes of fabric into the corner.  I just need to paint the cubbies (maybe tonight if it doesn't rain?) for more storage, as I really can't unpack my other stuff until I have a place to put it.  The bookcase is almost packed out entirely already!

I get the impression that this room will be an ongoing project.

Nothing like a new vacuum!

I broke down and bought myself a new vacuum.  At the old house, we had three vacuums. I had a dead Bissell, my brother had a dead Eureka and we used the 20 year old Frankenstein Kenmore canister vac.  I call it a Frankenstein because it had a wheel that fell off every time you used it, a cord that didn't retract and a power head that came from some vacuum at the dump.  BUT IT WORKED!! That's all that mattered.  

Well, since my brother still lives at the old house, I thought I would be kind and leave him Frankenstein :^) and I went out and bought the cutest little vacuum cleaner on earth!  It's the Hoover Nanolite from Wally World.

I know, it's not about cuteness, it's about how well it works.  I only spent $50, because I didn't need some HUGE $200 to $400 monster vac that has 8,000 attachments and needs an entire closet for storage...I only have a small house.

What sold me on this vacuum was that it had a shut off for the brush, something my Bissell (that I spent $250 on several years ago) did not.  My downstairs is wood laminate and my upstairs is carpet, so this feature is fantastic!  It's bag-less and empties from the bottom, which is kinda cool.  I filled the dirt canister chock-a-block full on the first use...oops.

All in all, I'm very happy with my little purchase. Sadly, the animals are shedding so badly that I could vacuum every day and still not keep up with the cat and dog-hair tumbleweeds!  I don't know if this renewed, extreme shedding is because we're supposed to have more heat, or we're six weeks out from cooler weather...because we are six weeks out from the start of fall!

The Hazards of Home Ownership

On Monday night, the temperature had dropped from stifling to mildly humid and there was a bit of a breeze, so I got the brilliant idea that I would start mowing the lawn.  I hadn't even made it a quarter of the way done and I managed to  jab a tree branch into the back of my hand near a vein! Don't ask how, this is decidedly something that only I can do!

I cleaned it up, after it welled blood for a while and bandaged it, only it hurt so bad that I could barely move my hand. It throbbed most of the night and started to swell the next day.  I couldn't flex it or make a fist at all, so what do I do? I go to work and complain about it all day, rather than call the doctor and see what's wrong with it.

I did finally go to the doctor yesterday - she sent me for an x-ray, which showed that there was nothing broken or fractured.  She figures that I bruised the hell out of it and possibly scraped a nerve or a tendon, which is why it hurt so badly.  Ice and 800 mg of Ibuprofen three times a day was the prescription and the swelling has already started to go down.  It's just still sore.

This injury seriously put a dent in my plans to unpack the quilt room, needless to say, it still looks vaguely similar to the day I moved in...

Only without the truck, with the table set up, the small filing cabinet moved under the window and the bookcase screwed to the wall and filled with books.  Other than that, it's still full of boxes that need to be gone through and the contents put in their rightful places...once I figure out where those rightful places are.

Taking a break and heading to the Lake

Headed to the Lake for lobster dinner last night in celebration of my mother and sister's birthday (which is on Monday).  I was able to get eight lobsters for boat prices thanks to our summer intern and her Portland harbor connection. Super cheap prices!

My niece was having FAR too much fun playing with the lobsters

They cooked up beautifully, but we forgot to take the bands off...oops!

Grilled corn on the cob, potato salad, coleslaw and bread rounded out the meal with cake and ice cream for dessert. Very messy, but sooooo good!  

Today's forecast is calling for 90 degrees +, which means I'll be spending my day in the water.  Such a nice break from my overly humid little house!

little things...

Small things that make it feel homey

Flowers on the deck and whimsical planters with spiky orange Celosia hair

Reminders in chalk written behind the door and cats who sleep comfortably in the most awkward positions

Coming together

Slowly but surely, it's all coming together!

 

 

 

And here are my "foremen" napping on the job!

One extreme to another

We go from heat wave to pouring rain and high humidity.  You can't even walk upstairs without breaking out in a sweat!

Having almost everything still in boxes has made me feel so disorganized.  I don't really know where anything is and there is still so much to do before I can unpack some stuff.  I realized that what I was missing was a list. Being the Queen of Lists, I tend to write everything down, but I've been going from room to room, unpacking a little here, a little there and really just managing to make a cluttered mess.  So I started a list this morning and managed to get a lot done today.  My dryer is hooked up and my laundry is nearly done.  The bookcase and full length mirrors are painted (spray paint in the basement...maybe not the best idea I've ever had, but they're done!) and I emptied five boxes of books from the corner in the living room.  I also unpacked a box of planting stuff in the shed and set it all up on the shelving unit in there.

I found out today that I really need a dehumidifier; my basement is quite damp, as in water beading up on the lower shelves of the metal shelving units down there.  I should have listened to Dad when he said not to put boxes on those bottom shelves.  Thankfully there were only three and the boxes aren't that wet! 

Ah, the joys of homeownership! But the sunsets make it worth it!

It's like a heatwave burning in my heart...

So Maine has been experiencing a heat wave since last Sunday – high 80’s/low 90’s and HUMID!  Like “make you want to melt” humid.  I installed the A/C in the kitchen, turned on the ceiling fans in the living room and bedroom and set up box fans, but that upstairs of this house was like an oven!

I felt bad for the cable guy, who had to be in that hot little room for the majority of the time he was at the house.  BUT, my cable & internet are operational and what’s awesome is that I found the piece of paper that I wrote the password to my router on when I first got the thing last year!  The password was saved on my laptop and I was just able to use my wi-fi at the old house, but I couldn’t let others use their laptop to log on, because the wi-fi was locked and I couldn’t remember the password.  Tuesday, I was able to log back in and actually get my wi-fi up and running at the new house! Super psyched!

The only crappy thing was that at 6:30, the power went out for two hours!  By 8:00, I was so sick of the heat that I took Sadie to the boat landing in town and made her get into the water.  She wasn’t thrilled to get into the water, but loved it when she could get out and shake – Sadie doesn’t swim, she wades and only when she wants to…stubborn dog!  After a quick walk to let the majority of the water drip off the dog, we hit Cumby’s for a Chill Zone (I’m addicted – I blame my niece) and headed back out to the house where the power was on!  I turned the A/C and fans back on, vegged out in front of the TV and BOOM! Power went off again at 9:20.  I was so cranky, I fell asleep on the couch until it came back on at 10:30 and then went to bed.

Knowing that the humidity wasn’t going to get any better, I brought the A/C with the broken slide arm from the basement and installed it ghetto-style (or yankee style, depending on which you’d rather) in the bedroom…with cardboard and duct tape!  Yeah baby!  I didn’t care how it looked, it cooled off that bedroom on Wednesday night and I was able to sleep!

All this heat has made it too hot to unpack, though!

Ahhhh....summer

I slept so well last night! It was peaceful, it was quiet…I was comfortable; even the cats slept in this morning!  It was awesome!

The only not-so-awesome thing was that it was muggy as hell and it was only 6 AM.  Walking Sadie, I felt like I couldn’t breathe!  I heard that today was going to be hotter than yesterday.  Ugh!  So much for unpacking – the upstairs gets so hot, I’ll be pouring sweat within ten minutes! 

Maybe I’ll suck it up and just head back to the Lake today.  I should have just stayed the night.  Oh well, the sun is out now and I’m guessing the temperature is just going to start climbing.  I need to clear a space in the sewing room, so the cable guy can get to the outlets (which are covered by boxes) tomorrow.  I guess I better go do that now before I can’t breathe upstairs!

Happy Independence Day!

What a good day to start my first full day on my own, in my new house!

The cats woke me up at 5:00 AM – yay…I was thrilled to no end to have spent the entire day before on screech trying to move and direct everyone where to go to put stuff and to only get six hours of sleep…whoo-hoo, yippee. Oh well, new house, they were excited.

Good lord, I have a lot of stuff! And I’ve already unpacked some of it and moved some stuff to the basement!  I just didn’t realize how much stuff I’ve accumulated over the years!  I guess it’s time to figure out what I really just don’t need and ship it off to the free shed at the transfer station.

The move went well!  Thank god for Melissa and Darrell bringing over the trailer; that made it so much easier.  The washer and dryer are in the basement and set up…or almost set up. The plug for the dryer is about 2 inches shy of the outlet, so we’ll have to prop the dryer up on blocks.  Whoo-hoo for ghetto dryers!

My plan had been to unpack today, but it reached nearly 90 degrees and I said to hell with it, packed up the dog and headed to the Lake. The water was really refreshing! When I got back to the house, it was still 88!  Ugh!  But I unpacked some stuff in the living room, set the TV up on the floor, because it hangs about an inch or two over the lip of the armoire and makes the TV unstable…and since its front heavy, I don’t want to do that.  I’d like to buy a flat screen, but money is a little tight right now to be buying things that I don’t necessarily need. Dad’s going to create an insert to accommodate it.  I hooked up the DVD player and watched a movie until I fell asleep on the couch.  I won’t have cable or internet until Tuesday…so obviously, I’m writing these entries on the day, but 7/2 to 7/5 won’t be posted until Tuesday).

You could hear the fireworks from 9:00 till 9:30 and then someone (or maybe the neighboring town?) set off a bunch from 10 to 10:30.  Poor Sadie, she really doesn’t like fireworks, or gun shots, or trucks backfiring.

Oh, I also introduced the cats to the basement.  Nym was psyched that there was a whole new room that he had yet to explore!  He checked out the area under the stairs where the cat box is now located, then crawled under the furnace, behind the washer and dryer, under the oil tank and then under the bulkhead stairs.  He came out COVERED in cobwebs and dirt!  Ellie took a different approach; she pitty-patted around the shelves, where it was clean, checking everything out over there, then she checked out the water tank and walked UP the bulkhead stairs and avoided all the cobwebby spots.  Then she followed me upstairs to the kitchen.  Nymmy, on the other hand, didn’t want to leave the basement; he kept going up the stairs and then running back down, like he was making sure the room was still there!  Later, I think Ellie gave up on staying on the clean areas of the basement, because she came up with cobwebs all over her face.

MOVING DAY!!!

   

 

   

   

 

This about sums all of Saturday up!

Load em' up and move em' out!

Juli and Fran helped me move a ton of stuff on Thursday and Friday night, but there still seems to be a ton still left to pack.  But tomorrow is “Moving Day” and I’ll just have to come back on Sunday or Monday for all the stuff that I’ve forgotten.  Thank god it’s only Derek living here and I don’t have to be out by any set time or date! 

I’ve got about a dozen people moving me, four trucks and three SUV’s – I think I’m set!

It seems weird that this is the last night I’ll be spending in this house.  So many memories, good and bad…it’s kind of surreal.  I mean I’ve moved before, but this was always the permanent address; the house that I always came back to.  It was home.  It’s been home all my life.  Definitely some mixed feelings here.  I’m excited for my own place…one that I own and for living alone in my own space, where no one but me decides how to decorate, where the furniture and plates are going.  But I’ll miss my house.  I don’t think it will matter who lives there, it will forever hold a place in my heart. 

What I won’t miss are the neighbors; the ones who talk out in front of my house at midnight, rather than in their own backyard where they won’t bother anyone, the ones who yell to each other across their driveway because they don’t know how to speak in normal tones, the drunken weirdo’s who walk up and down the street in the middle of the night swearing, the teens who are out at all hours during the summer just being annoying, the nursing home staff that smoke out the back of the building at all hours so the smell drifts down into my open windows…yeah, I won’t miss any of that!  Or the street lamp shining into my bedroom at night.

There are a lot of good things about this new place that I know I’m going to enjoy!