Renovations are coming along......

I now ask myself why I decided to do more than one project at a time in this house, but when it is all over, it will all be done.

This will be called the kitchen reno; but I, also, had the study painted because I had been wanting to update that room for quite a while. 

My before pictures consist of a room that is already being torn apart.  Hey....when it's "GO" time, you don't waste time to take pictures beforehand.  

We're taking this room from the 80s to present day.

This is the study with three burgundy walls.

The window wall had stenciling around the window.

It really makes me wonder what I was thinking back then.

This room was professionally painted since I am just not up to doing 10 ft ceilings anymore.

As you can tell, he couldn't wait to prime that stenciling and he tried a spot on the burgundy wall to see if he was going to have to prime it or if the paint would cover it in two coats.

I am glad to say that after doing two coats of white on the ceiling (I've never used white before on my ceilings, but this room was always so dark) and two coats of my warm beige on the walls, this room is up-to-date and so much more appealing to me now.

While Kurt was painting the study, I was painting the small bathroom off the kitchen.

We gutted the room and will replace the beige sink and toilet with white fixtures.

Again, I have painted the ceiling white.

The old walls were painted with a sea foam color and had a saran wrap paint treatment on it that was very popular in the late 80s, early 90s. I am thinking that watching HGTV can be very dangerous some times.

Anyways, it is now a color called Revere Pewter (a beige/gray) color that was color of the year for 2017 (Benjamin Moore).  

It's still not together because floors were just finished on Monday.

Right after I was finished painting the bathroom and while Kurt was painting the study, the floor guys were laying my new floor in the kitchen which, also, consists of pantry, bathroom, hallway and laundry room.  So, if you can imagine, things are pretty torn up around here.  Here's my first peek at the new kitchen floor being put in.

There is over 600 sq. ft. of flooring that needs to be laid.

Kitchen....

Kitchenette

Then looking down the hallway with pantry on the right, bathroom on the left and ending in the laundry room.   

Once the flooring is done, quartz will be installed next by professionals and we will be putting the toilet back in place and I will be ordering tile for the back splash.

Stay tuned, there will be plenty more progress and pictures to show.

Nesting.....

I have been doing a little nesting this week.

Since retiring, my goal was to get a lot of the projects that have been sitting in my sewing room done and a couple of those things were pillow shams and drapes.

The pillow shams were waiting for me to find the perfect fabric and I finally did.

I like the mixture of prints and just knew I would be happy with the big black and cream, linen/cotton, dot fabric for the shams in the guest bedroom.

The next project that has been waiting for a very long time (and I don't even want to hazard to guess how long this fabric has been sitting in the stash) is the drapes that I wanted to make for the master bedroom.  I have been perfectly happy with the 2" blinds that I have in there, but after making the check drapes for the guest bedroom, I was ready for that second layer of window treatment.  

I put my long ago custom drapery classes to work with this fabric.

This is what I came up with.  They are lined with Roc-Lon and I made loopy tabs for hanging.

 

Thank  goodness my thoughts when I bought this fabric were the same as when I finally got around to making them.  I had just enough fabric. 

It's amazing what a difference they make in the room.  

I may wrap my pleats up for a day or two (that's wrapping the pleats up in paper and then letting them sit for a day or two).  Once that is done, you remove the paper and  the pleats should lay perfectly.  

I have felt the need to finally get to these projects not only because they have been waiting  to be done for so long, but I would have resented putting them further down the "to-do" list when my services are going to be  required to chip in at my daughter's house.  She just bought a new house and I know there is going to be some sewing and painting projects that she is going to need help with.  That alone gave me the incentive to get busy on my own projects.  Plus, I put these two projects on my 2017 goal list back in January.  Feels good to check them off.  

Now on to quilting again.  

All packed and ready to go....

Sewing machine, projects, gifts, prizes for the prize table, charity quilts, show-n-tell, GPS are all packed and ready to go. Once I get up in the morning, my suitcase will be zipped and it will all be waiting for me when I get home from work. Then my friend, Sheila, and I will be taking off for our annual retreat (RIM aka retreat in the middle) in St. Louis, MO where we meet up with on-line friends from all over the U.S. (We do have friends in Canada, but we haven't talk them into joining us just yet.) There will be around 40 or so of us this year.

We will have a representative from the local hospital picking up over 100 love covers for the NICU and there are a number of quilts that will be donated to teens who, I believe, are in the foster system.

We are staying at the Mercy Center in St. Louis. This is a convention/retreat facility AND where several retired nuns live. Last year each of these nuns received quilts from us, too.

There will be lots of eating, yakking, laughing and definitely lots of sewing in between.

So when I get back next weekend, I will have some pictures to share with you of all the great gals who I now can call friends, You will see some of the craziness that goes on, some of the beautiful quilts that are being made and some of our show-n-tell which is HUGE!!

I hope you have as good a week as I know I will have. See you next weekend.

Serenaded all day long....

This was the first time in a long time that I have spent the "whole" day in my sewing room. I so needed this. It certainly put me in a happy mood, too. I have either been too busy or have been procrastinating for whatever reason or whatever my excuse is, but once I got in there and knew I had the whole day to myself, I really accomplished a lot. There won't be any pictures until I can show you a completed project, but I did get a baby quilt to the point of quilting it (it has to be done in a couple weeks for the shower), two large quilts got their bindings sewn on and are ready to have them hand stitched down, I mended the lining of a leather purse for my daughter (but I didn't think that was worthy of a picture) and I cut out a pair of "monkey" pants (lounge pants, pajama bottoms.... I have not idea where the name monkey pants came from!)

But back to the explanation of the title of this post. All day long.....and I mean ALL DAY LONG, there was what sounded like a flock of baby birds calling their mom and dad to "feed me!!!". They barely stopped to swallow whatever little goodies that were brought to them before they started calling them again. They were some hungry little guys. Anyways, I have these two birdhouses right outside my sewing room window and with all the noise that was being made, you would have thought that either my window was open or they were in the room with me. So....I had to go out and finally look to see what all the commotion was about and I wasn't sure which birdhouse all the noise was coming from. It was either of these two birdhouses.

But what do I see in the lilac tree that is right next to my window, but this little guy. He was the only baby bird out there and he was the one making all the noise. He was a cutie!

Actually, I looked at it all as being serenaded the whole time I was sewing. I didn't even turn on the TV because it was so interesting listening to him call his parents. Now mind you.... if I were that mother bird, I think he would have been driving me crazy, but all-in-all it was a good day. It's Spring, the birds are singing and I got to sew ALL DAY LONG!!!

Spring has sprung!

It seems to have been a long time coming, too. I have been so jealous of those blogs who have pictures of little green sprouts showing up or pretty little flowers in bloom. Now I can say that we here in Michigan are finally seeing some warm weather and warm enough to make the magnolias bud out and the forsythia come into bloom.




I, also, have a picture to show where our pear tree was that fell this winter from a wind storm. It has been chopped down and ground up. All that is left is a mound of chips. While dear hubby was out there cleaning up that area, he also trimmed up the evergreens that were encroaching on his ability to cut grass without getting all caught up in them. Didn't trim them up too much as we like our privacy when sitting outside on our deck. I was a little leary about him doing this, but it doesn't look too bad.




Anyways, it sure it nice to finally have some nice weather. Made me want to go out and get my mani/pedi.....always a good sign of nice weather.


I will be leaving for the big AQS quilt show in Paducah on Wednesday, so be assured that when I get back, there will be lots of pictures to share. If not a lot, at least you will see MY quilt hung up in all its glory. Hope you are all enjoying a beautiful Spring day.

Oh, oh....by the way, my blog has just been added to http://www.quilterblogs.com/. If you want to get your blog "out there", this is the place to be for quilting blogs. Check it out!!!

60 MPH winds.....

holid

Well, that warm weather we were experiencing yesterday was absolutely wonderful. It was nearly 60 degrees out. DH and I took a walk downtown Rochester to see the Christmas lights before they are done for until next year.













Of course, this morning 60 mph winds blew in the cold weather again and we are back down to 32 degrees. We did find that the winds blew down our pear tree early this morning. This is the tree that DH was going to cut down but he was waiting for all the leaves to drop. If you notice, we are at the end of December and there are still leaves on this tree.


Since it was so windy and chilly out, I stayed in my sewing room most of the day and made up another three rows of blocks for the Merry Go Round quilt. One whole tower of Strawberries and Lemonade made this 62 x 82 quilt and all I have left is 8 half blocks and several wedges that will be used for charity baby quilts (or at least that is my plan).





I, also, made up one of my Hearts and Hand blocks. This quilt is going to be so pretty. I have a couple more prepped and ready to stitch, but since I have been neglecting my Dear Jane, I am sure this one is going to take some time to do, too.




Well, I hope the weather is good where you are; and I hope I have more to report to you in regards to my sewing soon.