Goodbye 2010, Hello 2011!

At the end of each year, I like to revisit and summarize the projects I've completed for the year and to work on my goals for the next year.  While I didn't come close to achieving all of my 2010 goals, I did reduce my UFOs from 75 to 58.  I also completed all quilts that I started except for one, so I'm pleased with how the year turned out, particularly since I had some major life changes occurring at the same time.

Keeping track of my finishes on my blog was motivating and also made it easy to do my yearend summary. 

In 2010, I completed the following:

• 1 bag - my first!
• 6 medium to large quilts
• 18 small quilts
• 6 pet quilts
• 3 cross stitch projects
• 12 cat mats
• 37 dishcloths

Next up is to work on my goals for 2011.  I'll do that over the next week or so, as well as my annual fabric inventory.

All Ready for the Furniture!

Well, almost.  I still need to paint the baseboards and do a few touch ups, but that won't take long at all.  For the most part, my bedroom/quilting studio is ready for my new furniture, which I ordered on Monday and which will be delivered on January 5th.  All I have left to pick out are lamps and possibly something to display some quilts, but the essentials are ordered - bed, mattress, and bedside tables.

So here is the tour of the finished room.  For purple lovers like me, it's perfect and I love it.

Entrance to the room showing the two colors of paint pretty well:



Future design wall and quilt display area:



Sewing table space with view of the backyard:



Wall where the bed and tables will go:



Entrance to the master bath - how convenient to be so accessible to the quilting area!

And back to the entrance:



And if you think the felines haven't been up to their usual activities, you would be mistaken.  Things may look innocent in this first picture, but looks can be deceiving.

About 30 seconds later, this is what the top of the end table looked like, which by the way, is not normally sitting in the hallway.  It was moved for the carpet cleaning and had not yet been put back.  Actually, it's not even an end table.  Those left with T, along with the matching coffee table, so until I can replace those items, I am using the nightstands that previously lived in the bedroom.  It's kind of like going back to college living with a hodgepodge of mismatched furniture, but I hope to remedy that soon.

So anyway, back to the next picture in the story.  Any guesses what they are looking at?  See anything missing in the picture?

Oh look, now we can play with the plant on the floor too!  Yeah, I don't think so.  And just so you know, the poinsettias are fake, so no animals were harmed in the taking of these pictures lol.  Real poinsettias are toxic to cats, so I never have them.  Actually, I don't even know if real pink poinsettias exist.  These were on sale at Joann's after Thanksgiving, so I picked them up.

Indian Summer Bound and Ready to Hang!

I finished sewing down the binding yesterday on Indian Summer, so now I just need to find a curtain rod that I like and get it hung in my new bedroom.  I finished the painting on Christmas Day, but will wait to take final pictures until after the carpets are cleaned tomorrow and before I move everything back in.  I also ordered my bed, mattress, and bedside tables today, to be delivered on January 5th, so the room is coming together nicely.  The only things remaining on my shopping list are lamps and possibly a cabinet for displaying quilts.  I will wait on the cabinet until the bed and tables are in place so I can see how much room I have left and how things are laid out.

So here is Indian Summer all finished.  I really love this quilt and can't wait to have it up on the wall.



Merry Christmas from Our House to Yours

Merry Christmas everyone from myself and all of the furry members of the household.  Tyrone got in the spirit of Christmas this year by putting a little spot of glitter on his nose.  Can you see it?  Look closely and you will lol.

Echo decided to see if he could squeeze into this basket, which he obviously did:

And Sassy was once again very helpful with the laundry this week:

This morning we, well me anyway, will be enjoying the Christmas morning tradition of cinnamon rolls for breakfast.  They are in the oven as I type this.  It's supposed to be a gorgeous day here...probably about 70, so I will be enjoying the weather for sure and will see what else the day brings.  I'm sure it will be another great one.  They have all been great lately :-).





Purple, Anyone?

Anyone who knows me, knows that my favorite color is purple.  So once I decided that the master bedroom space would also be used as my quilting studio, purple was the logical choice for paint color.  Well, to me it was anyway lol.

Day 1 of the painting project was covered in yesterday's post, which also includes all of the before pictures.  Today I got an early start and made great progress.  I'm thinking one more decent day of work and I should be done.  The two large walls both have two coats of paint, except for the obvious open spaces on the wall with the lights.  Those spaces are open because that's where I finished up with the first gallon of paint.  Had I still been on speaking terms with the extension ladder at that point, I may have been inclined to open the second gallon, but since I wasn't, I moved on to the next phase of the project which did not require the extension ladder. 

Speaking of ladders, I have a beautiful set of matching bruises on the backside of both calves from leaning on the step ladder, along with misc other bruises on the front of my legs and on my arm.  Good thing it's not shorts weather, or someone would probably think I'd taken a beating.

So today I got at least one coat on all of the remaining areas except the bay window.  Now that I have the rest of the room painted, I think I'm going to switch how I do the bay window and put the lighter color on the outside wall and the darker color in the bay portion. 

Here are the pictures of today's work.  It was a perfect day for painting.  The temperature outside got up to 70, so I was able to open the window for most of the day, which was great.

The next two photos of the entry to the master bath really show the contrast between the two paint colors which isn't apparent in the photo above.  I am really pleased with how the room is turning out.

And now I'm off to eat my dinner, have a glass of wine, and probably do nothing else productive for the rest of the evening!







Painting Day 1

Ok, so the first major change I am making to what is now my house (wow, do I love saying that!), is to paint the master bedroom.  It has never been painted since we moved in almost 14 years ago, mainly because the water bed couldn't be moved without draining it and I didn't want to paint all of the walls but one.  The original paint is builders grade flat in eggshell white, so to say that it is showing it's age would be an understatement.  Now that T is gone, the master bedroom furniture is as well, so before I move back in, I wanted to get the room painted and the carpets cleaned. 

The room is so large that I've decided to make it my quilting studio as well.  The bay window has the best view in the house and is perfect for my sewing table and one of the huge walls will be great for using as a design wall, which I've not had the luxury of having up to this point.

Here are the before pictures.  They start with the wall as you walk into the room and go all the way around and back to the door.  The large wall just inside the door is the wall I plan to use for my design wall.  You can see that I sampled 4 different colors of purple paint.  The dark ended up being too dark and the lightest ended up being too light, but I thought the middle two shades were just right so that's what I went with.  They are the top two of the three shown in the picture of the bay window.



The plan is to put the lighter shade on the large wall just inside the door, as well as in the inside of the bay window and the wall below the plant shelf which leads to the master bath.  The darker shade will go on the wall above the plant shelf, the wall surrounding the bay window and the large wall with the window, which is where the bed will go as well.  I think I will also be replacing the wall lamps, but I've left them for now because they are the only lights in the room at the moment.

Today I started with the large wall just inside the door.  One gallon of paint, one near fall off the ladder, and about 4 hours of total time later, this is what that wall looks like now.  Oh, and it's really not two toned at the top and the side.  Those were the last parts I did, so the paint was still drying.  And this picture is after the first coat only.  I forgot to take a picture after the second coat.

Stay tuned for part 2 tomorrow! 

 

The Last Christmas Gift is Done!

I played hooky from work today in order to finish the bag I am making my aunt for Christmas.  As I mentioned in a previous post, this was my first bag and I found it easier to make than I anticipated.  The only part I had left to do today was to cut the cardboard to go in the bottom and cover it with fabric.  There were no instructions as to how to best cover the cardboard, so I did it in the same manner as I would wrap a gift using double sided tape to hold it in place and then blind stitching the loose edges.  I did press all of the sides under about a half an inch before wrapping the cardboard.  That approach seemed to work well and resulted in a nice finished look, although it was a bit time consuming to do the hand stitching.

Now I just need to get it wrapped and in the mail.  I should still be able to get it there by Christmas.  Fortunately, I have the perfect box on hand so I will wrap it up this afternoon and run it down to the post office.  Fingers crossed that I will be able to use the self service kiosk and avoid all the lines.