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September! It has started out well. The days of August to the present have been filled with so many varied events, I felt like I was going through the weeks in a fog. Not sure things have slowed down any this month; however, my girl is a freshman in college locally and we are sharing my car, so I have a bit of forced time management while being home bound a lot through the week, and that does me a lot of good.
Once again, all my transcription work is done at home now and just in time for car sharing. We’ve been moving rooms around and shuffling the extraneous items place to place while setting up new work and living areas.
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Over Labor Day Weekend, I made the big choice to pull up the horrible, stinking, totally shameful carpet from the family room. It is better to live on the plain sublfoor than that mess. Once that was done, the fireplace was painted! It looks beautiful. Eight and a half years I wrestled with that choice, and I love it. Just the rest of the decisions to make now. That's just the primer you see in the photo. The final color is Lowe's Valspar Cream Delight. Will show soon. We were just going to paint the subfloor as noted around the web until we could put down hardwoods (you must check out that link!), but this isn’t the first floor of the house, and the noise and echoing is pretty crazy. You can see what the room looks like in better days - nice and pretty on this set.
A surprising discovery by my husband, though. As our home was custom built 33 years ago by the builder who lived here, the workmanship is pretty awesome and thoughtful. We knew the paneling is real wood, however, after taking a door frame off , Michael found that it is about 3/4” pine. We think we have discovered our very own, reclaimed hardwoods! Michael can taken the paneling down, cut up into various sized lengths, and lay the floor. Is that amazing? It certainly is to our budget. Now I can use that savings for furniture! First, though, when the paneling is removed, drywall must go up, and then color choices. My head hurts! My plan of action, though, is to just open a favorite magazine, find a look that I like, and copy. At least it gets done, and I can always make decorative changes later.
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In the studio, things have been buzzing right along. Nothing very new to show, since sewing embroidered pillow covers has become my forte! I’m so pleased. Square items that I am familiar with makes the multiple orders go fast! The pillow covers above are the largest I have made so far at 20". They are living happy in their new home on pretty sofas. Thankfully, my friend, Liz, is back this fall to help keep me organized and use her sewing and creative skills to move the orders along. Oh, I have a coupon code to use in my calicodaisy etsy shop, as noted at the top of the post. It's received some usage already! Please pass along to any interested parties you know. Start thinking about holiday orders! I’m on a 3-week turnaround at this point, so if you hope to shop with calicodaisy for gifts, early is definitely better! Especially with free shipping on orders of $50.00 or more.
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My only time regret at this point is not keeping up with my One Block Over Bee squares. They are a forgiving group of ladies, but I don’t want to disappoint, especially because my blocks started off the year! I can’t allow myself to sign up next year, unless (hopefully they read this with good thoughts), they let me participate by being the coordinated embroidered block person. I could be the 13th on the team, I thought, creating a quilt label or embellished block that fits in to the chosen quilt design. We’ll see what their tolerance level for me is when the time comes. The block above is the Maverick Star. It was fun and works out great with not much precision required! Anyway, I probably need to take a day off from ALL work and get those done. I've completed through June, though. The shame of it all is, once I get started, a block may take as little as an hour to put together.
So, I have two kids in college now. I’ve also been in a bit of a funk realizing how fleeting life is, and my baby girl is now me -- 29 (??) years ago. I started university at 17! Really, I did! October birthdates will do that. I’m feeling a bit old and worn out; only 47 next month, so not that old, but calculating "29 years ago" as starting college seems crazy! I feel more ill about that than dealing with the horrible carpet! I have plans to pull myself together, though, now that I’m not running kids around anymore. Time to pretend like I’m 19 again with my whole life ahead of me (but with all my hard-earned wisdom!) and pay attention, within reason, to my own self. That encompasses so many things, but obviously a healthy lifestyle plan (so I can allow myself to appear in photos), traveling -- that starts in October when BFF Lynda comes to visit and we go to Atlanta for the Country Living Fair, learning new things -- I want to take some classes on web design and graphic design so I can do a better job with my own website and maybe create some calicodaisy fabrics, and exchanging the time spent on the kids to time spent building calicodaisy handmade up a couple of notches -- just up far enough to sustain the budget and ensure good savings and investment for the future. So, all good things, right?
Well, time to get back to the homekeeping part of healthy living. I allow myself to lose hours in the laptop! Music by Pandora hypnotizes me as well, I think. Must clean the kitchen and get to the studio for sewing.
