It was well and truly worth it

After all the hair pulling, crying, panic attacks, and swearing (lots and lots of swearing), I think it was well and truly worth the hours and hours and hours and hours of working on the house.  At the risk of boring you all witless and/or making you hate me because I'm lucky enough to live in paradise, I'm posting some photos that will be used for marketing.

I wasn't going to put the house on the market until next month but due to being pushed by the real estate agent to get it ready for sale, I pulled my finger out over the last couple of weeks, now it's done, and a couple of people have looked at the house already.  It's still not up on the internet but these are some of the photos that were taken by the photographer that will be used for advertising.

I'm so pleased with how it looks, and now I'm having second, third and fourth thoughts about selling, as it looks so beautiful, even if I do say so myself. It's so annoying that I didn't make the most of the house while I've been living here and now that I'm selling it someone else is going to benefit from all the work.  Typical, and I swore I'd never do that. HA!!!

Look at the beautiful blue sky, it's the middle of winter here and we have had the most fabulous weather, not today though, it's been cold and wet and horrible.

A similar view to the one on my blog header

You've seen these doors before but not the cushions on the chair.

From the studio looking across the pool to the house.

The pavilion

Living and dining areas.

The kitchen is not as huge as it looks in this photo.

Look at those floors!

The hammock and sofa on the verandah and there's Wonky Owls in the foreground, just!

Look at that fabulous view, I'm really going to miss it.

There are 30 photos all together that were taken, most are great, a couple I'm not loving, you can see a few more, but not all of them on flickr.

Oh and I would love it if you could tell me which photo from here or on flickr would be THE photo that should be the first one that will be seen on the internet. There are so many great photos and we are having a very difficult time trying to choose which one would be the best.

I'm still alive

I've spent the best part of the last few months trying to de-clutter, organise, fix and otherwise have my house ready to sell, but I'm still not quite there yet.  I can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel. I'm hoping it's not THE light as I'm not quite ready to pop off just yet, although I think I was close to it a couple of times.  I'd never had a panic attack before but I now know exactly what they feel like.

Part of the fixing up meant painting the bedrooms, re-oiling the decking (that was a massive job, there's lots and lots of decking), and sanding and polishing the floorboards.   Each step involved moving and relocating furniture.  All the outdoor furniture had to be moved to clean and oil the outside decks and verandahs.  All the bedroom furniture had to be moved and covered so that the ceilings and walls could be painted.  All the furniture had to be removed from the living area so that the floors could be sanded. Can you guess that I've had enough of moving furniture and living in what feels like a used furniture store.
I didn't take many photos of work in progress as it was bad enough living through it without capturing for all time, each hideous step of the journey. I do however have some pics of the floorboards. The kitchen photos are all taken at night so the colour of the boards is not quite right.

This is the kitchen, can you see that dark curved area? A couple of years ago I swapped the kitchen and the living zones, so this used to be the living room and the dark part is where the hearth used to be. (It's a high-set house so it was relatively easy to move all the plumbing etc.)

This is an "after" shot. No more dark hearth, but look how the two boards in the centre of the kitchen now stand out. The new finish has emphasised the colours in the timber.

Now to the rest of the living area. These are the "before" shots, once all the furniture was removed. They were taken early morning so it's a little hard to see properly with all those shadows.

Dining area in the background

Living area, this used to be the kitchen.

Looking from the dining area towards the hall and stairs.

Looking from the dining area towards the kitchen on the right and stairs on the left 

From the dining area to living area.

Looking from living area to stairs and bedrooms.

I really love the early morning winter sun shining in and warming up the house.

This is where the furniture was stored. 

The fridge out on the verandah and covered with a tarp.

The dining table also on the verandah and covered in an old sheet, tarp and the upside down coffee table on top.

BP's bedroom, taken from the hallway, that's as far as I could get into her room.

My sewing room, again taken from the hall as there was no way I could get into that room either.

Now for some after photos. I totally forgot to take any before the furniture was moved back.

Honestly, I prefer the way the floorboards looked before. Unfortunately the previous flooring tradesmen did a really really bad job, and because I had moved the kitchen and taken out a wall a couple of years ago, they absolutely had to be sanded and polished.

The best thing after doing all this, is now there's no cluttered spots, which means not having to crop photos or take them at a particular angle to hide stuff, yay..........and a great big sigh of relief.

So hopefully I'll be back blogging a little more often now, It may still be sporadic but I think I'm over (gee, I really hope I'm over) the worst of it and it should be a lot easier from now on. Every piece of my body is crossed...........not just fingers.



PS    Oh, and I have been able to do a little bit of sewing, not much, so I'll even have some crafty stuff to show soon too.

Organising, bats and geese

Im going to get on my soap box and whinge. I know it's wet season here, and in the last few years, March has been notorious for a lot of rain, but I'm over it. Well and truly over it.  In the last couple of days we've had another 110+ mm of rain, yep that's another 6 inches. That takes it to over 400mm (almost 16 inches) in 13 days. Sunshine? Paradise? my @ɹ$€, no sunshine and it's definitely not paradise when everything is damp and going mouldy.

OK off my soap box now.

I've been de-cluttering, and will be for the foreseeable future, as it's slow going.  More photos to come eventually.
My sewing room.

A partial tidy up. So far, my yarn stuffed in the shelves, fat quarters in Samla boxes and yardage jammed carefully placed in shelves, and Karma, surprised that there is carpet in this room, not just fabric and crap all over the floor.
It's going to look crap again very soon, as this room is going to be painted this week, so I have to move everything to the centre of the room and cover it with drop cloths and then move it all back again, yuck!

During the week I had a visitor. I had one of these last year too, lucky aren't I. I'm glad I'm not the type to freak out at having a bat flying around my house.

Sorry the photos aren't great, I may not have been screaming like a girl when the bat came in, but I wasn't about to get up close and personal with it either.  This time the cats and dog didn't notice it, so I shut them in the bedroom, opened all the outside doors and crossed my fingers that it would find it's own way out. It did, phew! You may remember that last year I woke up in the middle of the night to the gentle noise of a bat flying into the rotating ceiling fan above my bed and being flung across the room into the wall. No harm was caused to the bat. This time it was because I forgot to shut the screen doors before dark.

On the sewing/crafty front, I worked on another block for Foundation Paper Piecing For The Terrified. Katy has posted some fab tutorials and I can genuinely say I'm no longer terrified of paper piecing. I'm still not sure whether I love it enough to make a whole paper pieced quilt but I'll certainly feel confident to give it a go to make smaller things like potholders or pincushions. On the other hand I've wanted to try a pickle dish or New York Beauty quilt for awhile now. Maybe just a mini quilt later this year.

The Circle of Geese is my latest attempt. It was not without problems, like forgetting to check that the piece I am about to sew is sitting in the right place and not folded over so that I sew it all wrong. That happened twice. Also not checking to make sure I haven't picked up the next couple of pieces along with the piece I am sewing, because they were sitting too close to the machine and as I sewed, they came along for the ride.

That would be the two white strips hanging from the bottom of the block, after being sewn in to the seam of the white piece pinned diagonally across the block. This may have happened more than once. 

Yes, I'm a slow learner.

Anywho, despite a couple of setbacks and seams unpicked, I'm very happy with the result.

I used some scraps of Amy Butler Soul Blossoms, the fabric I'm using for the Starflower quilt. Amazingly, some of the geese even worked with fussy cutting. Now that's a minor miracle!

Tuesday ?

I need a change, I think ADD is kicking in again, I'm over Tuesday Tidbits. Umm........ no I'm not over the idea of Tuesday Tidbits, I'm just over the title. I've been thinking on and off for a few weeks to change the title but can't come up with anything that sounds interesting and possibly slightly flaky, because we all know I don't take myself at all seriously.
I really like having a post each week where I can post about lots of little things happening at Chez Sunshine that don't necessarily need a whole post to themselves. So if anyone out there can come up with an interesting and of course extremely witty title, please feel free to help me out. Sorry no give aways in it for you.  I did say feel free!  :P

This week has been busy at Chez Sunshine. To cut a long story short, I'm having the wardrobes in my bedroom and Bitchypoo's bedroom re-vamped.  I was told that they wouldn't be able to fit them until the end of this week, possibly next week. We had a phone call Friday to say that they would be able to come on Tues and Wed, that's today and tomorrow. Panic ensued at Chez Sunshine as we realised the enormity of having to remove 12 years of accumulated crap in our wardrobes.  Saturday was already booked up and Bitchypoo works Saturdays so Sunday we spent taking everything out of our wardrobes and putting them into piles - rubbish, give away, and keep.  It was a very cathartic experience as I do tend to hoard. I keep lots of stuff  - just in case. Hopefully I will never get bad enough to star on an episode of The Hoarders.

While I was on a roll, throwing things out, I made inroads into the linen cupboard as well. The above pic is what came out of there, (not what my house looks like normally with piles of crap everywhere, I'm not quite that bad yet.)

This is a before shot of my wardrobe, well technically it's a before the wardrobe was revamped shot, as it's definitely NOT before I took most of my crap out of there.

On to far more exciting things.

Yesterday I had a lovely day at Patchwork Angel. Jenny was running a class on a quilt "French Roses".

I'll post pics of that in my next post.

Last night I made myself sew on the binding to dad's quilt. Today I'm I was going to start the hand sewing to finish the binding, but it's stinking hot here, it's possibly one of the warmest days we've had this year. I just checked the thermometer out on the verandah and it's showing 36C (97F), so much for being Autumn. 

Trying to think about Autumn in this heat, here's the fabrics I've gathered so far for the Autumn in Paris quilt. I find that my fabric choice changes as I progress on the quilt, I like to see how it's going and sometimes I add more and sometimes I take some away as they just don't look quite right.  That's what I find exciting when using lots of different designs and fabric ranges from my stash rather than sticking with the one range. If you have any trouble in trying to pick what "goes" together it's always safe to use fabrics from the same range as the designer has already done the hard work for you, but if you like to try to choose your own, the fabulously brilliant Kerry from VeryKerryBerry has guest posted on Lily's Quilts on how to choose fabric.

P.S. Still haven't heard from George, yet.

1.1.11

I frankly don't have much to post about today, I just really wanted to have that as a title. Small things amuse small minds.

After two very lovely days, finally, of sunshine and blue skies, we are back to "showers" which seem to mean at least an inch of rain, we have had anything but showers today.

Last night I welcomed in the New Year, by going to the Sheraton at Noosa Heads. An interesting night.

My first new project for 2011. I've started working on this, 200 x 2 1/2" squares.

Why is it that I always buy really bright fabric and then I make pale, pastel things, very strange. Where does the pale fabric come from?   Questions that will need to be answered this year.

A photo of my kitchen bench, at least one day in 2011 it is clutter free.

Progress.................. finally

I have had a week of absolute nothing, well, nothing crafty.  I stared at a computer screen for hours on end, tried to get some inspiration, looked at and maybe purchased fabric online as the exchange rate is so good, read blogs to see what everyone else was doing while I was doing nothing.
Then today, all of a sudden the funk lifted and I had a great day, both on the home front, cleaning, washing, ironing and sorting though clothes and taking the excess to the Salvation Army, and more importantly, working on the layout of two quilts.  The first one using Rural Jardin and the scruffily quilt tutorial  from Moda Bakehouse. Roughly and quickly laid out on the floor before the possibility probability of being re-arranged by cats, dogs or teenage daughters.

The second one, bitchypoo's quilt, I had to take the blocks over to my parents house as I don't have a "design floor" large enough to lay it out. Sorry no photos of this as I forgot to take my camera.  Both quilts are  ready to go now, and I've sewn the first row of bitchypoo's this evening. A couple of close ups.

I started pulling fabric for another project and this is a very tiny sneak peek.

I need to use up some Kona Solids fat quarters, as I accidentally ordered (and paid for 2) bundles of the same colour way. Hmmmmmmm

Organized - for today!

Somebody whose name starts with Q and ends in P, had a bet with me last night that I had lots more fabric than her. That was all the incentive I needed to clean up my fabric stash dumping ground, as I was positive I wouldn't have as much fabric as Mrs P. 

I don't! 

However I now have kind of neat/tidyish piles of fabric. Here it is in all it's glory. This will be the last time it is this tidy for another 6 months.

The top shelf, on the left are the solids, behind those are some Kaffe Fassett fat quarters I bought earlier in the year. I fondle these regularly but still haven't decided what to do with them. The solids are mainly half yards except for the two bags on top which are the Kona solids fat quarter bundles, pretty in pink and spice which just arrived this week. To the right of those are my charm squares, behind those, yardage (mostly 1/2 yd) of blue/green/greys.

On the left below are the 1/2 yds of orange/pinks/mauves/reds and black/white. To the right of that, all my layer cakes and on top left overs from layer cakes, and the Pure disappearing 9 patch quilt top. (And a mini iron)

The bottom shelf has the chenille and flannel quilt kit I bought earlier in the year, which I haven't started, and a box with all my Martinique fabric ready for when I make my next Martinique based quilt.
By the way, my mum loved her quilt and has asked me to make one for my dad, in the same fabric, so another quilt in Martinique but a more masculine feel,  no florals.  Even my sister liked it and has put in an order of a quilt for her **th birthday in 2 years.  I never ever thought they would want hand made quilts, so I feel pretty special this week!

On the right of the bottom shelf, yardage bought for backing.

My drawer stuffed full of jelly rolls. This is the only drawer with fabric in it, the top one has quilting books and the bottom one is empty.

An Ikea box full of fat quarters and some solids charm squares.

This box has been hiding the infamous snowball blocks and also the  scraps I used to make my first ever wonky log cabin block.

That's it. Even I was surprised how it all packed up nicely into this. I had visions of purchasing lots of storage boxes to hold it all once I had tidied up.  

So woo hoo now I can buy more fabric, yippeeeee. 

No not really, I have a couple of orders to come from the States, but I think I have more than enough to keep me going. It's just so tempting to keep on buying now that the good old Aussie dollar is so high against the U.S. dollar.

My latest sewing efforts have been using these lovely bright fabrics, Plume.

 A messy pile as I was sewing. This is the beginning of bitchypoo's quilt using 30 fat quarters, and the solids above.

. 

 I love the blocks, I am just hoping when it is all put together it won't be too overpowering.

These are the left overs from the blocks which will be made into matching pillows/cushions/something!