MORE HOUSE PICTURES - WE ARE UNPACKED

At last - unpacked - well almost completely. We have a few pictures to hang in the bedroom and the guest room, and two closets to organize and then we are officially unpacked. We've been in the new house for two weeks now and just love it. As I am writing this it is beginning to snow - huge feather-like flakes - covering everything with a pretty layer of white.
We'll start in the living room - here is part of it. I love the lace curtains. I am making a new pad for the rocking chair, pine green checks.
I changed the dishes in the china cabinet, now I have the pine cone dishes in the open spot and the Desert Rose that I inherited from my Granny in the top glass doors. The botton is full of several other sets - can you tell I love dishes? The goose in front of the china cabinet is from my cousin in Oregon, a gift for making her a quilt.

Another part of the living room - my favorite chair and some wonderful items under the Raven House picture by Sue Coleman. She is my all-time favorite artist. I have several of her pieces, and lots of her notecards. The Raven House was a gift from Don one christmas.
Sue Coleman is from England, lives on Vancouver Island and paints First People images.
She is truly amazing in her work.
What you don't see in the picture is my sewing box and current project, sitting by the flowered chair. I keep some stitching handy beside the chair for evenings when Don reads to me as I stitch.


Next -on to the dining room - more of my dishes. I especially like the cupboard with the 'rainbow' of depression glass. Most all the blue was bought in Wisconsin when our kids were in grade school - and now it is spendy when you find it in antique stores. The fruit basket on the table is an aluminum punch bowl with ladle that I picked up at a yard sale one lucky day. The furniture has been in my family for four generations - if we passed it down to our grandsons it would be the 6th generation. It has been in California, Alaska, FLorida (was shipped there due to a mistake by the barge company that was supposed to ship it from Alaska to where we lived in California) and finally to Washington with us when we moved here in 2001.

It is solid oak and very heavy to move. They had to take the top off the table to get it out of the old house and into the new one. It was scary watching them put it back together but it is all set up now and looks super, don't you think.

Next to the kitchen - my teapots have moved from the counter to the top of the cupboards - so pretty! I've put the bread box and appliances in the kitchen also - so it looks more lived in , but don't have a picture of that yet. I am going to change the handles on the cupboards - perhaps some left imprints made with sculpey clay. There is a huge blank wall opposite the area you see here - and it is too close to the bar stools to hang anything on it - so my plan is to paint a mural on it. it is about 14 feet tall and about as long, so it is a nice big space, just begging to be painted. I want to do trees and flowers with fairies and gnomes - I can already see the fairy babies sleeping beneath the foxgloves.

Don's den, or part of it. He collects old baseball gloves, good baseball books and cards from when he was a kid in the 50s. The seat in the back corner is from Milwaukee's old stadium before they tore it down a few years ago. We were back in Wisconsin for a reunion before they tored down the stadium and he and his cousin went to the last game played in the old stadium. They had gone to hundreds of games together when they were kids.

The metal cart on the right side is a line chalker - for making lines on a baseball field. We found it one day in an antique store and Don hesitated about buying it - but he is so glad I insisited. Now he has old baseballs and gloves on it.

Our bedroom - with the bead curtain hanging in the doorway to the master bath. The quilt on the bed is Grandmother's Flower Garden, which I made in English Paper piecing, and on the foot of the bed is a YoYo quilt done in 30s repro fabrics. I love the combination. The tall quilt rack in the background is an old VRC tape shelf - a super way to display quilts. I need to get a few more quilts out of the closet and hang them on the rack.

Now to the studio - here is my new Brother sewing machine that was a gift from Don this christmas. I love the drawers next to it - they store all sorts of things and keep the area neat. my doll, Patsy gets new clothes now and then. She is wearing her school jumper today. And my Kit Kat clock - his tail moves back and forth in rhythm with his eyes - another gift from my cousin.

And my treadle machine - under a poster of Washington Wild Flowers and my gardening hat. I can't wait to get started sewing on the treadle. Just need to put the new belt on and it is ready to go.

So that is the new house - except for the guest room - right now there is no bed in there and it is full of our grandsons' toys. It will be a toy room until we have guests, then it will convert and the toys will probably live in my studio closet while we have guests.

It is so wonderful to have all this space - 3 bedrooms plus a den - and a kitchen with loads of cupboards. Do drop over some day and we'll have tea and scones.

LOOK WHAT SANTA BROUGHT ME FOR CHRISTMAS!!

A new house !! We put in our offer on Dec. 10 - and we closed yesterday - in just 3 weeks. We get the keys tomorrow. We are so excited. We've been living in the country - on a great property - but in a very small house. It was built in 1920, when there was no electricity out here - and the kitchen is not arranged to have a fridge - so our fridge has lived in my studio - which is just off the kitchen so it is not that inconvenient, but it sure takes up a lot of my studio space. Also - our small upright freezer is in there - taking up more space. And we only had 14 INCHES of counter space, making food preparation a trial, to say the least. I've learned to balance things on the toaster, in the dish drainer and all sorts of fun places when trying to prepare a meal.


This new house has 3 bedrooms plus a den - formal dining room, living room,


2 full baths, one with an oversize jetted tub and such a big kitchen -


tons of cupboards (we have 4 cupboards in the old house), lots and lots of counter space plus an island, with two levels, one for food prep and one for eating at, with bar stools. I won't know what to do with all that space.



The laundry room in the old house is for acrobats - with cupboards so close to the washer and dryer - yet on the opposite wall, that you have to bend backwards a little, over the washer and dryer, to open the cupboard doors - nearly breaks your back - and in the new house - a good sized laundry room that has a big pantry cupboard in it, and room for another plus room for the freezer, and the cat's bed. Wheeeeeeeeeeeee we are going to have fun!! And look at that pretty washer and dryer!!!!


The sellers left the swingset at our request, and our grandsons will have so much fun there. Jahn hasn't seen it yet, but Ben was there one day and said - Grammy I can't wait to get a look at that". He is only three and is so cute when he talks. We have a storage shed - and pretty trees on the property - plus public land across from us so we have trees on three sides.

I'll have a full size studio - one of the bedrooms has built in shelves, and Don will have his own den. He collects baseball memorabilia from his chlildhood in Milwaukee, he even has one of the old stadium seats from the original ballpark. He can fit his treadmill in his den, with space for bookshelves and all his collection of baseball gloves and photos - he even has an autographed photo of Hank Aaron, his childhood hero.

The other bedroom will be our guest/music/toy room - I'm planning for a piano. We will keep the grandson's toys in there when we don't have guests. It will be so nice to have a guest room - I can display quilts on the bed in there.

As you can tell, we are very excited about this - we move in on Jan 12 - and then have until Jan 20 to finish cleaning the old house and getting it ready to turn over on the 20th. That gives us plenty of time to get the cleaning finished.