Maine

I still haven't gotten to my pictures from Maine, but here's one. Mom came down yesterday and spent some time helping me get my kitchen put together and shopping for rugs and misc stuff.

This pic is from a shore path in Bar Harbor that we walked. It is lined with a couple large hotels and some really pretty huge old houses. Sections of the fence were starting to fall down and it was just pretty.

Scandinavian Blog Tour at Allsorts

I saw this posting the other day on bloglines for Allsorts' Scandinavian blog tour. If you have time, and I mean awhile, go check out some of them. The pictures are beautiful and if you follow the links, you could be there forever. Oooh. I got distracted on these kitchens that were linked in one of the blogs (don't remember which one). I've bookmarked a bunch of stuff to go back to when I have time.

I'm Baaack

Sort of. I'm home anyway. We left for Maine on Aug 28th and returned on Sept 6th. It was lovely. We brought home a cooler of lobsters and stopped to spend the day at my parents where I could get started on getting caught up at work and then we had a nice grilled lobster dinner with Mom & Dad and my brother and his family. That was nice.

I've got a billion pictures that I could share, but I haven't gotten that far yet. Unpacking and getting caught up on work are sucking up my time. So here's a little something. They are some sort of sweet pea (not the real, fragrant kind, more the weedy kind) and they are growing like crazy along the driveway. I picked up a pair of crystal vases on vacation and put them on our nightstands. The blue ones are reproduction ink wells that I also picked up on vacation as well and they are gracing the windowsill above the kitchen sink. After I bought them, I noticed real ones over and over again in antique shops but they were too much to justify purchasing any. I did find one that was only $2, so I snagged it and put some sweetpeas in my bathroom as well. My house maybe disorganized and dirty, but I have my flowers!

My hardwood floors are refinished and are absolutely beautiful! If you happen to be near Pittsburgh, I could happily recommend the guy. I washed and rehung the curtains that were already in the living room and we got a call last week saying that our couch and chair are in (several weeks early - since when does that happen??) so now I am in desparate need of some rugs to start to pull the living room together. Woohoo!

I'll be back later with pictures, hopefully.

So I've been absent for awhile. We closed on our house on August 7th and have been busily working on it since. We've painting the living room and bedrooms, stripped wallpaper in the kitchen, bathroom and entryway and painted them as well, and removed carpet. Then we spent a ridiculous amount of time removing hardware, sanding cabinet doors and painting cabinets and kitchen walls around freshly painted cabinets. I'll share more pictures later, but this is some of what it is looking like.

I ordered cabinet hardware on eBay and saved a decent amount of money doing that and I got the same hardware that I had picked out at Home Depot. I also ordered my new oven (there wasn't one in the house) on eBay and it is scheduled to be delivered tomorrow. That was also a significant savings over both Lowes or Sears. The seller has been very helpful so far and has answered all of my questions. Hopefully it will end well too! I also ordered a crystal chandelier and bought a couple palm trees. Yeah!

We are moving in on Thursday and things are really crazy here now. I'm trying to finish up the quilting on my yo yo quilt so that I can take it with me to work on when we head out of here for Maine on vacation on the 28th. Because of that, I won't be around much for awhile yet.

We are having a friend who refinishes hardwood floors come in and do all of ours while we are away, so they should be finished and dry when we get back. We won't be able to move in to the house really until then. Ugh. But I'm excited about how they will look when they're done.

Original Kitchen

Original Living Room

Sanding the cabinets

Scraping off faux slate

Removing Carpet


Living Room after removing carpet & painting


Painting cabinets with Cotton Ball


Painting vent covers


Old awful cabinet hardware


Kitchen after wallpaper removal


New kitchen paint in Beacon Gray

Monogrammed bath towel set

Instead of doing the packing I really should be doing, I monogrammed towels today for my cousin's bridal shower. Its not till the end of the month, but I want to get it done and send it home to Mom's house so I can get them out of mine!

My stupid needle kept falling out for awhile and giving me fits, but the towels turned out okay. I get a bit stressed monogramming nice bath towels, but they always look so nice when its done.

Back to work!

Wool Felt Shoes

Oh how cute! Check out these adorable felt shoes by diddledumpling on etsy. And these. Goodness. I love all the details.

Rugs rugs everywhere

I've been trying to shop for rugs while we're waiting on the house. We're planning on refinishing the hardwood floors, so we'll need several rugs. I can't decide if I want to go simple or striking. Here are some that I like:

Horchow

Ballard Designs

Pottery Barn

Restoration Hardware

JCPenney

Etched in Glass

I found this shop on Etsy last night and I love the idea! The name of the shop is Etched in Glass and she's selling 4 different sized glass casserole dishes with a name custom etched on the bottom. I think they would make great shower gifts!

Martha Stewart at Macys?

I never shop, so how long that has been out there, I don't know. But I just discovered it tonight. I kinda like it. I found these cake stands there. They aren't quite as nice as what you can get from Mosser Glass, but they are similar and the price reflects that as well. Pretty!

They have a lot of rather simply designed white serveware that is nice too.

More black and white

This is one of the quilts that I decided to make in black & white. I'm not sure what I think of it yet. I've got the top altogether and haven't gotten around to picking up batting for it yet. I think I'll have to see it quilted and washed to know if this is what I had in mind or not. (Yes, as Anna guessed, I am making another yo yo quilt out of the other black and white fabrics. This time it will be even bigger. I'm am quite obsessed with the sewing of yo yos. I'm up to 550 of them).

On another subject, assuming that we do actually get this house, I think my quilting and posting will have to be quite sporadic for awhile. There's so much to do. Right now we are arguing over the home inspection results and waiting for the bank's appraisal. I'm tired of all of it.

We did, however, order a couch and chair this week. Hopefully the reality of my living room will fit into the dreams of it in my head. We'll see. This is the couch. It is very comfy, if rather boring. In my head, my dream couch is all white with dark wood and silver nailhead trim. That, however, is not very practical. So this is what I settled for.

Photo taken from American Leather

Random, Cause I'm LikeThat

So we signed a sales agreement for the house today and are planning on closing in 30 days or less. The home inspection will be Monday. Hopefully that will be the last hurdle before it is ours, although the bank did tell us that our preapproval has expired. Hopefully that won't be any big deal. They did know why we were waiting. But the great outpouring of money has begun.




This is what I'm working on now. Instead of packing. Which I know I should be doing. Yes, I'm a crazy woman. Oh - I see that Clover has new yo-yo makers out. A XL and a XS. There's also a heart and flower ones as well. I don't really see the need for hearts or flowers, but I think I must have the XL and XS. 'Cause I'm crazy.

I did baste my Toulouse quilt over the weekend, but I don't think I'll be working on that for awhile. I also have another top to be basted, but that may have to wait as well. When I took out my bag of safety pins to work on the porch at my parents, the bottom ripped out of the bag as well and I lost a whole bunch of pins through the cracks. Stink! I wil have to go stock up on some more.

I found Sarah London's blog the other day. She has some really pretty color combinations and the chenille makes me want it too. Oh, and these sweaters at doggedknits make me want to learn to knit for real.

I hate packing

So we still haven't signed a sales agreement for the house, but it is looking possible that we may sign one tomorrow. Man, I hope so! I think its now been six weeks since our offer was accepted. We've gone ahead and schedule a home inspection for Monday. We've never done it before, obviously, so we weren't sure what to expect. I think it will be interesting to see what they do.

You would think that I might be ready to move or have made some attempt to get ready, but alas. No. Not really. I keep waiting for something to fall through and we have to sign a lease again. Or even worse, find a new apartment.

I convinced the Man to start tearing some stuff apart the other night. We spent a few hours and took apart the bed in the spare room and packed some easy stuff and started stashing it all in the corner. I think I'll wait till this home inspection is done before I bother doing much else. I'm really kind of dreading this part.

Washed Afghan

I mentioned this afghan back in March. A couple weeks ago, I finally washed it. I soaked it in the sink for awhile and then let it drain for awhile in the sink. It was ridiculously heavy wet! I threw it in the dryer for awhile and it came out nice and soft obviously cleaner than before, which I suppose is not surprising, given the length of time that I worked on it! I was surprised that the Dr. Pepper and candle wax drippings that were on it have completely disappeared. Who knew?!

Ahh. I feel better to have such a long project finally completed.

Happy 4th!

Hope everyone had a nice 4th!

Not to whine, but the Man had to work, so I did not even leave my little apartment. I did, however, see at least 4 different fireworks displays from little towns visible from my lofty windows. KDKA was also kind enough to post a video of Pittsburgh's fireworks display and I did watch that. How's that for pathetic? Oh well. The Man will have a nice paycheck for the night.

I did, however, spend a good amount of time working on a quilt and I made myself some mini pies from some leftover pie dough. They're not terribly attractive, but they were yummy.

Black Raspberry

Blueberry

Finally for sale

I've finally posted this for sale over at Etsy. Now I'm feeling oddly attached. Surprise, surprise!

Yummy yummy! I've got berries in my tummy!

We've been berry picking! Yeah! We picked about 15 lbs blueberries and 3 1/4 lbs black raspberries. My husband thinks I'm crazy, but I think I might want to pick all the berries I can get my little paws on.

We went to Paskorz Berry Farm and the picking was nice and easy, really, except I managed to get the raspberries all over my fingers and must have even smooshed one on my foot since there was a nice stain between my toes. But I enjoyed it and I think I shall snack on them frozen. Yum.

B&W Progress

I've gotten started on my latest obsession - black & white. Here's a peek.

Zoo

Some random pics from our trip to the Pittsburgh Zoo yesterday.

Festival of Lights

Tonight we finally made it downtown to check out the Festival of Lights as part of the Pittsburgh Celebrates Glass thing. They were interesting. I did my best to take pictures of them and they didn't turn out too bad.

This is from the website:

From June 5 - July 1, the Pittsburgh Festival of Lights-powered by Duquesne Light, will showcase the unique work of Artlumiere, founded by noted French artist Lucette deRugy. By using state of the art technology to project large scale images, de Rugy takes advantage of existing architecture to transform the facades of buildings into true works of art. Working with designer Corentine Buron, she's brought these colorful, distinct exhibits to sites throughout the world. This unique type of lighting has been featured in Paris, Singapore, Kobe, Japan, but never has Artlumiere produced an installation of this scale in the U.S. You don't want to miss this spectacular illumination!!!

The Omni William Penn Hotel

the Highmark building

The Duquesne Light building

Katz Plaza

Huge Quilt

I finished up this blue & green quilt a little while ago, but I discovered a small problem in the binding and was too annoyed and lazy to fix it until Friday. It is done now, though, and I ran it through the washer at Mom's. I did get one picture there anyway, but I'm not quite sure how to photograph it best. It is for sale, but I haven't gotten around to listing it just yet.