Chaos

I had no idea what else to call it.  My family has been on a merry-go-round of events since my last posting 2 months ago!  We have definitely been living life, but has now gotten to the point where we need to stop and take a breath.

On May 18th my husband and I have become landlords.  We purchased the house that was my grandparents and aunt's home from my parents.  We are now renting that home out.  We are so glad that we were able to keep the home in the family.  This home has been in the family since November 1966.

This kept us busy for the entire month of May & part of June getting the paperwork all in order and everything changed from my parent's names to ours.  We also did a bit of shrubbery trimming, and flowerbed work along with the tenant.  This was also done around the planning of my parents' auction of their home & packing to move along with my brother & nephew.  Plus my niece will be moving in the next month.  Everyone decided to move at once!  Not really, it just worked out that way with the house hunting.

We've also been diligently working on getting our barn organized and the workshop set up the way my husband wants it to be, along with finishing other projects around our cabin & the house.  I've been too busy helping out the hubby as his "goffer" to be able to take photos and post here.

I am glad to report though that the end is in sight.

I promise to post about it all as soon as all projects are complete.

The Barn

It's hard to believe that we started building in August.  Today the plan was to actually move items from the old shed to the new one.  Things did not go as quickly as we had hoped.  Got a lot of trash cleared though, and decisions made concerning layout and placement of critical tools.  Last week Eric came home with 2 sets of free shelving units that he combined into one, with a few parts left over.  The extra shelves gave him the perfect idea for tool storage for those long handled items.  Check out his creation.  All it cost us was time because all of the supplies were FREE or remnants from the build.

The 3'-0" x 6'-0"" shelf was cut down to 3'-0" x 2'-0" pieces, only two of the cut pieces were used.  Each of the squares in the shelf are 2"x2".  Just the right size for handles.

Next Eric used the Dado blade to make a 3/4" indentation for the shelf to lay down against in the frame.  This took a bit more time because of the set up required to change the blades on the saw and adjust height etc.

Also had a few adjustments to make after dry-fitting the shelf into the frame.  We decided that we wanted the shelf countersunk deeper than it was.  Next step is to fasten the frame together, since we were going for speed and not looks, we book-ended the corners.

One frame ready to go.  Now on to the next one...

Next was to assemble the legs, we agreed upon a 30" height for the length of the legs, and to keep the bottom frame up from the floor the width of a 2x4, about 3.5".

The completed frame.  We also fastened it to the purlins just to prevent tipping, although it most likely was heavy enough not to tip.  Eric always errs on the side of caution for these types of things.

Filling it up with some of the tools.  So great to have all of them organized and not rooting through them all stacked in the corner.  Eric really blew me away with this brainstorm of his...LOVE IT !!

The entire time to assemble from start to finish was approximately four hours. I hope you enjoy our brainstorm of a project.

Voting - our right

Today was the primary's for our state.  It was also the first time voting for my son.  Of course I had to have photos of the moment.  My son was voter #14 at our precinct.  He was a bit annoyed with me, but everyone there also knew him and made just as BIG of a deal about it as I did.  Once he found out another Mom was going to do the same thing with her son later, he settled down realizing that I'm not the only one who feels this is a milestone; he cooperated with a bit of reluctance.  Love him to pieces for putting up with me.  We've taught him to be informed about the candidates & the issues.  I can only hope that information follows him the rest of his voting.  Also taught him to NOT take it for granted.

A Day Off

Today was a fairly relaxing day for me.  My youngest had the day off for the President's Day Holiday.  She wanted to cook and bake today, since it was sub zero temperatures today with snow flurries on the way and more snow in the forecast for this evening.  She went to her favorite new cookbook.

The cookbook was a Christmas gift from very good friends of ours.  She has had a blast reading it as well as cooking from it.  She chose a Goulash recipe for the main course tonight that her Daddy very much enjoyed.  I didn't care for it because it had mushrooms in it, not one of my favorites.  But it was good even with my picking out the pieces of 'shrooms.

Then for dessert she wanted to make an apple pie.  I had to go into work for two hours today and this was when she decided to start all of this...may have been a good thing because I'd have freaked with where she moved some things from the kitchen to so she had plenty of working space.

This was the pie recipe she chose.  Not one of the easiest to make either.  She was less than thrilled to have to use shortening for making the pie crust.  I had to giggle because she'd have really disliked the lard my husband and I grew up on with so many of our foods as kids.

She used my MIL's hand me down KitchenAid™ mixer which has been a great item to have in the kitchen. She even used my Pampered Chef™ apple corer/peeler that I haven't used in ages.  As well as my juicer.  She was loving all of the gadgets that I have for cooking.  I got a "Mom, you have a lot of really neat tools."  What a compliment!

She also had quite the amount of pots and pans.  On the upside though she was rinsing them and loading the dishwasher as she went.  Training her well.

We didn't have any room in the refrigerator to chill the pie dough, so I had her cover the bowl to sit it out on the porch for about 20 minutes.  Didn't dare let it there any longer with the temperatures and the wind chills or it would have froze.

She had then rolled out 1/2 of the dough.  She did okay except she couldn't get it off of the board.  (hadn't used enough flour).  I got out my handy dandy rubber scrapper to pick up the dough to re-roll it with a bit more flour.  I managed to impress her; with four to five strokes of the rolling pin I had a 9" - 10" circle for the bottom crust. (I even impressed myself, it's been ages since I've done this!)  Then her question was "How do we get it into the pan?"  I loved showing her these tricks...wrapped it around the rolling pin and Viola!  Trim the excess, fill with the apples and spices mixture, put on the top crust, a few vent slits and ready for the oven.  Had a little bit of dough and filling left over so she made a dumpling for her Daddy, too.

She was afraid to use my Longaberger™ Pie Plate - she didn't realize that they could be used for regular baking like my Pfaltzgraff™ stoneware.  I had to smile (giggle) at her innocence.  Love it.

She had a wonderful afternoon and is learning so many skills that will last her a lifetime.  Judging by the picture I'd say she had a great time today, a bit messy, but fun.

This story will make a wonderful double page layout in one of my future albums.  Such great memories.

My Crafting Space - 10+ years old

A few evenings ago a friend of mine posted a video to me of one of the crafting cabinet/hutches that look similar to an armoire and opens to all sorts of storage and a fold out desk for work space.  She has never been to  my home so she did not know that I have an entire room devoted to my crafting and scrapbooking  which has overflowed into my den, too.  This gave me the inspiration to post these photos of the process of converting my room over 10 years ago.  As with any remodel project there are always surprises and this project was LOADED with them!  (Warning photo heavy post).

I do not recall which teams were playing, but our first mistake was to begin this during half-time of the super bowl 2005.   All I wanted to do was take up the carpet, paint, & put down hardwood flooring.  I was hoping to get my family's help with it over the weekend so I could paint the following week & again have their help with laying the floor the following weekend.

This is what we found when we pulled up the carpeting: 

Hubby pulling up the sub-flooring to repair water damage.

fresh water damage.

As you can see from the water stains this room had seen repeated water over the years.  The dark wet spot indicated that it was still not properly repaired.  :(  A big SAD face here.  My quick makeover quickly changed into a major project - so we put off anything more until the next evening when we'd have more time.

Once the floor was opened up we removed ALL of the water soaked insulation removed, we also opened up the wall under the window to investigate where the water was coming from.

opened up sub-floor

opened up wall/roof

rotted plywood to roof.

Unfortunately  we found much more than we bargained for with this project.  Now that we found it, we had to repair it.  Well our 30-40 temperatures turned into 0-teens very quickly so we could not work with the shingles on the roof and had to WAIT until daytime temps hit 40's -50's for a few hours so the shingles would not break & could be applied & have them seal properly.

covered opening with styrofoam insulation

 We covered the openings with styrofoam insulation that a friend gave us...it was used in cargo containers for shipping frozen items.  It worked really well with keeping the COLD out.


FINALLY on the Ides of March it was warm enough to begin work on the outside so we can finish our project on the inside.  Our good friend/roofer Steve came by and began checking for the water path to repair the damage to the roof and wall, and to help us with the sub-floor.

All of the shingles are removed so that they can get to the interior wall to make repairs.  Fresh tar paper has been put on here under the shingles.

This was a photo of the guys when as they were tearing out all of the damaged wood.  No one likes to find these kinds of home repair surprises.

The fellas worked very quickly and had all of the repairs done by mid afternoon.  On the inside we cut the drywall out to the base of the window to make the repair less noticeable.  I think it looks well.

My daughter had just turned 4 and wanted to be Mommy & Daddy's helper while my 8 year-old son was no where to be found in this project.  So I have a few photos of my helper during the process.  She would sweep with her broom (the one I used to help my Grandmam) which made it that much more special.  Now that she's 15 you won't find her caught dead holding a broom! LOL.

Many blessings to  my wonderful husband who is extremely handy around the house besides being a computer guru.  His skills have saved us so much $$ over the years.  I also don't mind getting a bit dirty and pitching in with these types of projects, too.  Reminds me of all sorts of projects from my childhood.  Guess that's where I learned it.

 Beginning the placement of the flooring.  This is when the snap together laminate flooring was a "NEW" thing.  I do have to admit, it's still pretty wonderful for a DIYer.

 

Eric also rehung ALL of my shelving and adjusted them to fit my large photo albums.  It required him redoing every shelf because I told him they were 12 inch albums, but he forgot the shelves had a 2 in lip that hung down, so I couldn't get them on the shelves without having to tilt them.  Sort of defeated the purpose of what I wanted to use the shelves for.  Reluctantly he moved every single one for me.  If that's not love I don't know what is...also required patching the old anchoring holes and repainting the entire wall!

Some more of my husband's skills.  He found me several filing cabinets and made me a built in counter top/desk.  This area will hold my computer and printer.

This area will be for my genealogy, scrapbook, card making and other small crafts. Where I'll need some space to spread out.

 

 The above photo is when he was adding the 1/4 round molding to the plywood to give my desk a nice finished edge.  Then he shot a finishing nail through his ring finger/nail.  Akk!  Fortunately he was fine, just a few drops of blood.  For some reason I can't find that photo - yes, I took a picture of it - part of the process.  After cleaning the wound we could see that is was through the fingernail & not into the nailbed.  Only a small cut under his fingernail.  Bandaged it up & he went back to work on my desktop.

I then stained the desktop & added several coats of varnish.  I love the final outcome.  This photo had most of my items back into the room.  Since this project was finished I have added even more storage & crammed as many things into this tiny room as I can...

A spice rack on the back of the door holds my ribbon & other tiny items that I want close at hand.  Was an easy install for me and only $30-$40 at Lowe's.  All shelves are adjustable so it's nice for those taller items.

Please ignore the messiness of this photo...  I wanted to show how my hubby hung my TV/VCR/DVD from a mount on the wall for my.  I can watch my favorite shows while crafting away in my room.  Also shows my double closet with my carts of drawers and artbin storage cases stacked floor to ceiling with each project ready to be pulled and worked on at my fancy.  The lateral filing cabinet is an addition that now holds my large format printer for printing out 12x12 digital pages.  Previously it was where my drafting printer called home.  you can just barely see my sewing machine cabinet, which sits in the alcove under the window that was repaired in the earlier photos.  I just need to pull the cabinet out a few inches to be able to use it.

This is why my craftroom/office was still messy in the photos.  We moved on to laying more flooring in the upstairs hallway since it went so easily.  

 

looking good.

Then I moved on to removing the carpeting from the stairs.  I HATE carpeted stairs...have always been a falling hazard for me even since I was a teen.  The goal is to get the wood stairs cleaned up and stained before we move out of the house! LOL. 

It's a constant process around my home.  We enjoy doing the DIY thing, we just run out of steam sometimes now that we are getting older.  I must say though that we always finish the projects we start, just not as quickly as we'd like.

I hope you have enjoyed a glimpse into our home and our love for DIY.

My Handmade Tree Skirt

Well I haven't been doing much new stuff recently between work and the holiday's and hosting the family meals for my husband's family...so I thought I'd post something "old".  I made my tree skirt over 27 years ago for my first Christmas in my own apartment.  I didn't like any of the store bought ones and the majority of my ornaments were also handmade cross-stitch ornaments or antique ones.  I wanted a more vintage feel to the fabric.  After searching for months to find a print that I would be happy with this is what I settled on.

I loved that the fabric had the old fashioned teddy bears, trees, and various toys.  I picked out a per-gathered ruffle to add for the edging.

a red dotted swiss print for the ruffle.  I wanted it to have a traditional Christmas feel to it.

My kitty Patches in her favorite "hiding" spot - she thinks no one can see her under the tree when she sneaks in from the garage.

This is a very simple sewing project to make. It was 42"-45" wide ploy-cotton print. bought 1-1/3 yds. folded it in half then half again (quartered) to find the center. Took a piece of string tied to a pencil and made my arc for the edge. Cut & added a per-gathered ruffle. Definitely a 10-minutes worth of sewing project. To know the amount of yardage for the ruffle - use the formula for the circumference of a circle - Pi R squared. R= 1/2 of the diameter of the circle for those who have forgotten their geometry. I then cut a slit in half way and hemmed so that I could wrap around the base of my tree.

Maybe this will inspire some of you to tackle such a project.  I have certainly enjoyed my "old-fashioned" tree skirt through the years.  My kids think its great that no one else has one like it.  

Maybe I'll share some of my counted cross stitch ornaments and other hand-made ones next.  Tune in to find out as I am un-decorating from the holidays -- slowly.

My Tree

I wanted to take a moment to thank my children for decorating the tree this year.  Normally this is something that has always been "Mom's thing" to do.  However with working, I just couldn't get it done when I wanted to this year.  My son came home from college on the 11th and has been a terrifically HUGE help to me with my "to do" list.

my favorite - tree lit & no other lights in the room

the ornaments: handmade, hallmark & white house ornaments

He and his sister were good elves and decorated the entire tree for me after our light debacle.  I was just so frustrated that I couldn't see past the mishap with all of the hours I was working at the time.  Here are some more photos of my lovely tree.

George's 1st Christmas - I made this one

what really matters...made this one my 1st Christmas on my own.

more of my x-stitch ornaments

another for George

one of my angels

another favorite

my teal snowflafe

my poinsettias

one of my 1st x-stitch ornaments, on metal.  was not an easy one to make.  may be why I only made two!

a favorite...

a new addition this year...Eric's lights.

shotgun shells - red & green.  They're a hit!

Thanks kids for helping your Mom out with the holiday stress.  I LOVE you for it!