It's been awhile... and a winner...

Thanks everyone, for your well wishes for the move. The move itself went really well; the moving company did a great job with packing, moving and unloading, with no loss or damage. They left the apartment on Thursday evening, we left on Friday morning, and they arrived at the new place on Sunday morning.

By the following night, I had every box unpacked. The house is coming together very well, but the garage is a disaster area. It's absolutely filled with empty boxes! It's going to take a while to clear it out.

I have started to put up my pictures on the walls, but am nowhere near close to being done with that, so until then, you'll need to wait to see pictures of the new place.

I started work at the new location immediately with no time off, but with the lack of commute, I'm enjoying the extra hours in each day. I've started back again with my stitching, but as I'm working on obligation stitching at the moment, I have no pictures to share.

My stitching room is wonderful! I still need to buy a table for my sewing machine, and I think I'd like to have a book case in there, but other than that, it's almost finished.

Thanks to those who commented on my recent post asking for suggestions about setting up the stitching room. Once I got my stitching chair and other furniture in the room, I realized that there was not going to be room for either a sofa or daybed, unless I remove the stitching chair, so I'm undecided what to do at the moment. I'll just keep the stitching chair for the moment, and decide at some later point.

In the meantime, here are some links for those who provided links to their own stitching rooms. I'm envious of all of the room some of you have!

Daffycat - It's Daffycat
Jenny - Jenn's Counted Threads
Karen - Simply Stitching
Karoline - Karoline's Corner
Kathryn - Threads of Desire
Theresa - Giraffexing
The Ridgeways - Wishing I was Stitching

I'm a little late with the prize drawing I had promised on that post. I put the name of everyone who commented on the post (whether you included a link or not) into the randomizer, and the winner is:



Jenny!

Jenny - as I know you have your own new address, can you please let me know it, and I'll get the gift box off to you shortly!

Touching base...

I know I haven't been around much recently, but I just wanted to check in to thank you all for your comments, and e-mails. Tomorrow is the day when the movers come in and pack up the apartment, and get the truck loaded for the trip down to Texas. On Friday, we drive down there.

I don't have internet currently set up, and I don't know when I will have it installed, so I won't have an update for a while. With online access through my iPhone, I'll still be able to read blogs (when I have the time), but writing more than a really basic blog post on the iPhone is almost impossible, and I couldn't add pictures anyway, so I figured I'd just skip blogging until I am back online again at home.

Not that I've got much stitching to show, either. I haven't picked up a needle in so long, it's ridiculous.

I'm hoping that once I'm settled in to my new place, that I'll have lots of stitching time - my commute to work is going to be cut from 4 hours a day to about 10 minutes a day, so there should be some stitching time in there, right?

My first stitching priority will be in finishing up a RR that I'm in, followed by working on my mum's Little House Neighborhood piece (I'm helping get rid of the frogs!). After that, I want to turn my attention to Shores - I haven't worked on it at all since April (if not earlier). I want to have it finished this year - I'm going to have it framed, and then it's going to have pride of place above the fireplace in the living room.

Thanks for visiting - I hope to be back blogging soon!

Show me your Stitching Room - win a prize!

Thank you for all your lovely comments on my new house. I'm pretty excited about the prospect of moving in, and getting it decorated. I will definitely share more pictures when it looks more like "home".

Do you buy decorating magazines? Ever since I can remember, I've bought decorating magazines - I currently subscribe to three of them at the moment (Coastal Living, Traditional Home, Architectural Digest), and if I see one on a newstand, I'll often flip through it, and if there is an appealing house or room (especially a craft room), I'll buy the magazine for my collection.

I'm always looking for decorating ideas, and now that I have my "own" house again, I'm even more interested in decorating ideas, and particularly when it comes to hobby/craft rooms.

It's been my dream for a long time to have my own stitching room, and the third bedroom in our new house is my stitching room! I still have to pinch myself to believe it!

Now, I just need to decide how I want to decorate it? In the apartment now, my stitching "room" is a corner of the living room, where I have my stitching chair, lamp and side table set up. My stash is stored in an armoire, which sits behind my chair, and a linen closet in my hallway. I also have a cedar-style chest in the corner of my living room.






I'll keep the chair, lamp, chest and amoire, but what else am I going to put in my room? I would like to have some kind of table, and a chair - the table needs to be large enough to set up my sewing machine, and my finishing supplies. What else will I need in the room? Do I want a daybed? By me having a stitching room, there won't be an official "guest" room in the house (don't worry, mum & dad - there will be plenty of room for you to stay when you visit), so I don't know whether I should have the daybed, or perhaps get a sofabed.

Basically, I'm looking for inspiration, and hence the competition!

I want to see your stitching rooms or stitching space! To enter the competition, you need to create a blog post of your stitching room/space, and add the link to the comments section here in this post. If you've already blogged about your stitching space, let me know the link for the existing blog post.

I will select a winner from the comments received (with links) by July 1, 2009. The winner will receive a gift box filled with stitching goodies.

Thanks for entering - I can't wait to get some decorating ideas!

A dream come true...

The biggest contributor to the stress that I've been feeling lately is the fact that when I was in Texas for our visit in April, we entered into a contract to buy a house.

The house was new construction (a spec home), which was partially finished when we visited it in April; that is to say, the house was up, but it hadn't been "finished" (there were no fixtures, cabinets, counter tops, etc.). Do you know how difficult it is to go through the home buying process when you live 1,100 miles away? It's not a lot of fun, let me tell you!

When we initially visited in April, we were considering whether to rent or buy. I knew that if I bought, it was going to be new construction, and we had anticipated that if we were going to buy, there would be a delay of a number of months once we relocated before the house would be ready.

On our last day down there in April, we took one last look through the subdivision that caught our interest, and we talked to the salesman about some housing currently under construction, and he showed us this model. It immediately said "yes" to me, because it had exactly what I was looking for in a house (3 bedrooms, plus study and/or gameroom). DH and I talked about it when we returned to Indiana, and I entered into negotiations to buy the house.

The house was finished in May, and we discussed when to close. I could have easily waited until we had relocated down there before closing, but that brought more stress than I was comfortable with dealing with (what if the closing was delayed - where would we live, where would our furniture go, etc), so we decided to close ahead of time.

That meant two trips back down to Texas - once to do the "walk through" and again to close. Unfortunately, I couldn't do both of them in the one trip, but I decided that the expense of the two trips was worth it for the peace of mind of getting it taking care of sooner rather than later.

So, last weekend, DH & I drove down to Texas (with my MIL, but that's a whole other story...), and walked through the house. It was wonderful to see our house finally finished. I had no idea what the colors were inside the house, and I was thrilled with the choices. (We had put in an offer too late in the building process to have time to chose paint or cabinetry colors, etc.) After the walk-through, I flew home, and DH & his mother continued on their mini-vacation, visiting my DH's nephew in Austin.

This weekend, I flew down alone, and have just closed on the house. I'm currently sitting on the floor in the living room, writing this post (okay, I cheated a little - the pictures were taken last weekend, during the walk through...)

As any reader of my blog surely knows by now, it's been a long term goal for me to purchase a house, and now that the day is finally here, I still can't believe it!

I have told a few people about buying the house, but didn't want to jinx it by blogging about it publicly until I actually had the key in my hand.

So, without further ado, here are some pictures...

(each picture is clickable - the little bits of tape were where the builder identified that either the drywall or paint needed touching up prior to closing)

Front of the house (obviously!)

I love this light fixture! It's in the foyer; it's opaque glass, with brushed nickle hardware

Kitchen. (This picture was taken on the walk-through, before the appliances were installed).

View from kitchen to living area. I'm not sure how much use we'll get out of a wood burning fireplace in Texas, but there's a mantle for hanging Christmas stockings! All the ceilings on the main level are 10' high. I can just picture a large Christmas tree in this room!

View of living room, overlooking the small (perfect!)back garden.

My husband's favorite room - the home theater. This room and the adjoining study and powder room take up the entire 2nd floor of the house.
Another view of home theater, showing entrance to study. The house plans did not include a separate room up here, but we had the wall and double doors put in.

Master bathroom

Can you tell that my husband took these pictures? He didn't take any pictures of the bedrooms. There are three bedrooms in the house. One of them is destined to be my stitching room!

I can't wait until we have our furniture in the house, and I have my stitching pictures on the wall. I promise I'll take more pictures at that time!

I'm hoping that my stress level will go down in the next two weeks, but I don't think I'll feel really stress free until I'm all moved in, and settled in to both the house, and the new surroundings in my job.

If you're still reading, thanks for making it this far!

Feeling a little stressed.

A look at the ticker above will explain why I've been absent from my blog recently, and why I'm so far behind with my blog reading.

Can someone pass the chocolate please (preferably Cadbuy's Dairy Milk)?

I don't know if I'm going to get the chance to post in the next few weeks; I apologize for not leaving comments on all your blogs. I'll try to catch up soon!

A musical interlude

Susan Boyle continues to wow the audience (& judges)...

As others have said, I'd love to hear her sing "Don't Cry for Me Argentina"...

The final is next weekend...

On Memorial Day

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old;
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.

from "For the Fallen" by Laurence Binyon (1869-1943)

Day Out...

Yesterday, Holly and I had our own little "Stitcher's Day Out". In the morning, Holly came by my apartment, and picked up DS and I for our final trip together to House of Stitches. We did a little shopping, and took some photos inside the store of the lovely ladies who work there.

Linda (owner of House of Stitches) and I.

Holly & I in front of the silkies

After our little shopping trip, we headed out to lunch, and, having left the decision of where to eat to my DS, we ended up at Chili's, and then it was back to my place for an afternoon of stitching.

All in all, a very pleasant way to spend a Saturday.

I'm going to missing those stitching afternoons with Holly when I leave Indiana. They're always such fun!