The sound you are about to hear...

...is a door slamming shut in your face.

Oh gee thanks.

Well, so my plans aren't exactly going according to plan. By that I mean they've all gone up in a plume of smoke with a wildly, maniacal cackle and rather large mushroom cloud. It seems that the great grand city of Denver is not to be blessed with my captivating presence.



So, since I'm really not sure what to do with my life at this moment in time. I've decided to post a lovely pole on the side and I would love to hear my reader's (yes both of you) opinions on that point. Please feel free to vote and comment and let me know what you think I should do. :)

The House...

So it has apparently been decided that the house down the road was not entirely acceptable for habitation. This is a rather serious matter considering the fact that my dear brother is getting married at the end of this month and he and his blushing bride are to move into said house. So, this last summer my father and brother decided to start renovating this house. Needless to say the phrase, 'biting off more than you can chew' has come up multiple times in our conversations since that point in time. Here are a few pictures to show the, 'before' condition of this house.





However, my father and brother, forever the optimistic pessimists ("We'll get this job done and it'll be great! We'll just die in the process") started working. I have to say I must applaud them for their great efforts. Not only did the re-side this poor structure but they also added a deck, fixed the stucco, and added new windows. And that's just for the outside folks!





But wait! There's more! After the guys finished working on the outside we began renovating the inside. Josiah and I painted and painted and painted some more. We tore up carpet, sanded, stained, and sealed floors. We swept, scrubbed, polished and bleached.

Now the only projects we have left are to re-carpet the porch (yes, thank goodness that horrid electric blue carpet mess is out of there) and clear out all of Jacob's *ahem* stuff *coughjunkcough* from out of the basement. So here are the final pictures. I would also like to point out that if my brother and sister had known all along that they could've had these wood floors that are in the living room, I think they would've much preferred them over the yellow carpet of yester-year.



Interior before/during/after:

A Quilt for a Car...

Well folks it's always been a slightly strange dream of mine to have a quilt in the trunk of my car. You never know when you might need said quilt for keeping warm during a colder night of watching softball, laying down on the grass to watch the fireworks, or spreading out across the grass for a spontaneous picnic. So, inspired by my sisters craftiness I thought I might as well get to work.

The first step I had was to select the fabrics. Absolutely ages ago I had received some fabric from one of my grandmas. This was pre-cut, pre-sorted, buy-in-a-cardboard-and-plastic package fabric. The 'squares' weren't exactly square but I wasn't going to let that stop me. I'm guessing that at various points I had tried to construct something out of these because after I had dug them out of a rather dusty Roughneck tub, I found them pinned together and sorted by color, mostly. I decided to continue with this and sort them not only by color, but also pattern of fabric.




So after sorting out these various 'squares' I began sewing. After about 10 minutes I had my first block. Megan rejoiced!



And so with a will, I went onto the rest of my project. Planning out blocks, putting fabrics together and sewing away to my heart's content. Sadly though, with all of this rather unexpected gung-ho-ness I forgot one of the first rules of sewing my mother ever taught me. Right-sides together. No, this doesn't mean you can never sew on the left edge of fabric. This means that you want to make sure that all the pretty sides of your fabric are showing, once the quilt is complete. Sadly, this rule was broken as is represented in the picture below. Please note how the fabric on the right square does not exactly match the fabric on the left square even though they're supposed to be the exact same.



However, I was not to be deterred. I corrected my mistake and continued on with my project. After a few hours I was rewarded with a lovely quilt top which I am quite pleased with. On Monday, mom is supposed to go thrift shopping and pick up a couple old denim skirts for me. I plan to split the skirts and use them to back my blanket to add durability and warmth to it. I'm hoping that the finishing of this project will be taken up with as much zeal as the start of it was.