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.
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