Before and After

 Finally!

A before

and after!

The before picture was taken from a slightly different angle so the space looks bigger. It's roughly 90" wide.

Still looking for a new rug.

Bathroom cabinets are painted - waiting on countertops.

When Life Gives You Lemons

I have had this lemon tree for several years.

Last year it had one tiny lemon that turned black before it got any bigger than the end of your finger.

This year it produced three lemons. 

They stayed green for ever - I was starting to wonder if they were limes!

They finally started to turn yellow and we collected our harvest.

Hubby sliced one up to use in his tea.

Yesterday I decided to try a new recipe and use the other two lemons.

Well, I don't bake as much as I used to and I never was great but I could at least usually at least get a passing grade. These are the ones I could actually get out of the pan without them falling apart.

And the 'scraps'. You were supposed to dip the tops in the frosting while they were still warm but that didn't work too well for me. I just spooned it over the top, them spooned some over my scraps.

They taste pretty good but they look nothing like the 'Lemon Blossoms' in the picture on Facebook!

When I cut into the last lemon there were seeds that were already starting to sprout!

I'm going to plant them and see if I can get another tree to grow! 

Have a great weekend!

 

Might as well, and while we are at it...

Famous last words?

We say them frequently.

So, while we were having a cabinet built for under the television and the guest bathroom we also had one built for the powder room. 

Another one of those things that has bothered me from day one.

Do you see it? Yes, the sink is short and the faucet barely sticks out far enough to get your hands under it but the real problem

it's not centered!

(It's really hard to get pictures in here!)

Also, she took the mirror that was in this room when she moved out!

I had this one so I just used it until I figured out exactly what I wanted to do in here.

(side note - just about every wall in the house was this same color when we moved in)

Last year we painted and replaced the mirror and light fixture.

We finally have a cabinet in here!

And in here!

Oops. Forgot to allow for the angled wall 

Had to shorten the drawers on the left side

Still have to patch where the former wall was.

Countertops have been ordered

Assorted other goodies are hanging out in my sewing room

The new cabinet for under the tv.

(this one is not built in)

We had been using the bench from the dining table.

Now for paint!

Why not?

 The guest bathroom has been on my list since we first moved into this house.

It's miniature sized.

As you can see, the vanity is separated from the shower/potty by a wall and the space on the other side of the wall is tiny. I took the door off first thing - it didn't help much and I have wanted that wall down pretty much since day one.

The wall sits on top of four tiles. If we had four extra tiles we could replace just those and not have to do the whole floor. We have two. 

The vanity was on the short side so we decided to replace that too.

Since we were tiling the living room we decided to demo the wall so we could have new tile put while we had tile people here. (okay - 'we' didn't demo the wall - the tile guys did so they could get to the floor)

It already looks so much better but now we have to have the walls/ceiling repaired. Before we repair the walls we need to have the switch to the fan/light that was on the no longer there wall moved. Also, when I went in to clean the floor in there I found water on the floor. The hot water line was leaking so before new cabinets arrived we had to have that replaced. 

Are you keeping track? We have had tile guys, an electrician and a plumber. We still need a new vanity (being built off site) sheetrock repair and paint. That mirror has to come down because the new vanity is taller and the mirror was resting on top of the backsplash, which means the light fixture above the mirror has to also be moved up. The plan is to re-use the mirror - assuming it comes off the wall without breaking.

Living Room Progress

 Messy

I told ya it was going to get messy before it got better.

This was after they spent the whole first day sanding/grinding the finish off the stained concrete and patching cracks. This picture is pretty clean - earlier in the day both the front and back doors were open with a fan blowing out the front to help keep the dust down. 

Fortunately, it was a good weather week and we could turn the a/c off and not spread the dust through the vents. They did a pretty good job sealing the room off and limiting the dust. 

It's already looking so much better!

Mostly cleaned up, it took more than a few mops before it was really clean. 

Sorry for the crooked picture.

Now the floor under the television matches the rest of the room!

Then - hubby decided while all the furniture was out it would be a good time to paint the ceiling.

So this is how we spent our 44th anniversary!

He would paint what he could reach, then I would move the scaffolding to the next spot.

We finally started moving furniture back in.

That might have been a little premature.

More on that next time! 

The Chaos Begins

I took these pictures of the living room back at the end of January. (We don't have a separate dining room in this house so this room does double duty)  

The floors don't look too bad in pictures but there were a lot of places that needed attention,

plus, that naked spot under the tv...

This just gives you an idea of how much stuff is in this one room.

Our original plan was to have the floor refinished. It can be done, but finding someone to do it proved to be all but impossible so we finally decided to just go with tile. 

Either way, the floor was going to have to be sanded down to get the shiny finish off. 

This means everything had to come out of this room.

Everything!

Where? Everywhere! This is my sewing/craft room.

I had to get everything I thought I might need out of the room before we started emptying the living room, which included anything I thought I might need for the get-away weekend because I wasn't getting back in there before then.

Guest room

Patio

and the bonus room upstairs. 

What you can't see in this picture is that there is a shelving unit with a television behind this one.

It was too tall to put on the shelf so we had to improvise with two end tables and then the coffee table slid underneath to hold the cable box and stuff.

It's kinda like sitting on the front row at the movies except you don't have to look up! There are two beds behind where we are sitting. 

This is basically our 'living room' for the duration.

I didn't get a picture of our bedroom - there were two small tables and a DVD cabinet in there.

and we have an empty room.

The Way it Was

 There has to be a better way to arrange photos than the way I'm doing it!

Anywho - lets go back to the beginning to see what has transpired over the past few years and how we ended up with a house in total chaos for the last month. 

When we bought this house, this 'entertainment center' was built into this spot. 

It measured 90 some-odd inches x 90 some-odd inches. If it wasn't totally square, it was close. It 24 inches deep and built to hold one of those huge tvs from the late 90's early 2000's. The shelf in the middle was added later to hold a more up-to-date tv. To me it was a big, dark hole. It needed to either be painted or come out. 

Since there wasn't room for a larger tv with the built-in in place, it came out! There are pictures of the process of getting it out but I lost them in the process of arranging them in this post and didn't go back and upload them again. Suffice to say it was quite a feat. It had to come out in four parts and all the screws were hidden. I think hubby ended up with just about every tool he owns in the house by the time it was out. This is what we were left with at that point.

Then kidlet #2, Pa and Tyler finished getting the paneling off the wall and figured out what would be need to be done before the next step.

He got his bigger tv

Then it was time to add shiplap to the wall. 

Notice the floor under where the built-in was. 

The rest of the living room is stained concrete and this was apparently put in place before they stained the floors because it was bare!

Got the shiplap done. 

Kidlet returned to help hang the tv

And we have a rug covering the bare concrete floor. 

This is how we ended 2021.

And this how we ended 2022.

Well over a year later, we still had a runner covering the bare floor.

It's going to get better - but first it's going to get really messy!

It's been a minute!

 If January drug on forever, February and March went by at warp speed!

We have some house projects going on (I'll show those in a different post) which has cut into my stitching time but I did make a little pillow for hubby for our 44th anniversary.

The chart is a freebie by Cathy Habermann, Hands on Design.

I made the little pillow using scraps from a quilt I made for hubby several years ago then appliqued a heart made from some wool felt I had in my stash.

With everything going on I still managed to go on a little get-a-way. It helps that it is planned (and paid for!) well in advance! Like I already have the dates for next year ahead of time. :)

I think we had about 36 ladies this year. There are only 40 spaces total, but I think there were some last minute cancellations. While I think it would be really fun to attend one of the big stitching events, and I'm not saying I won't ever try one of those,  this one is close to home so we can drive. (only 90 minutes for me) There were several new faces this year as some of the regulars have had to drop out for health reasons. While I'm not the youngest by far, I'm not the oldest either!

Every year the theme is different and this years theme was Samplers, Past and Present.

These are pictures of the finished models  - not pictures of my work.

There are always several different projects and this little pin pillow was the one we got on Friday night. Several people completely finished the stitching on this one before the weekend was over. I'm not one of those people. Some ladies stayed up really late stitching and finished Friday night - I only made it to midnight and I stitch really slow so...

I will show a picture of my project at the end of this post.

Saturday morning we got the pattern for this stitcher's roll.

All the elements are Texas related.

What the inside will look like.

Project number three was this cute stitcher's pouch. 

The last project was a little sampler that goes on top of an Altoids tin - I failed to get a photo of that one. 

We get everything to complete the projects except for the stuffing for the pin pillow. I think the model has walnut shells but I will probably use fiber fill in mine.

So how much of mine did I finish?

Told ya I stitch slow and this includes the few stitches I have done since I got home! 

I might have been running my mouth more than my needle. LOL

It's always fun to spend a weekend with a room full of women that share a love of needlework. 

Next post I will show you what has been cutting into my stitching time at home.