Friday, March 12, 2021

March Madness

 

Hi! Sorry I have been a stranger, but I am getting ready to downsize/sell my house and that is taking up a lot of my time. It is shocking how much junk you can accumulate in 16 years. I remember when we moved into this house, we had empty rooms--lots of them. Going from a 900 sq. ft house to a 2400 sq. ft house was a big change, but we have managed to fill it up along with the garage. We park two cars in the garage, but it is nearly a three car garage, so it has plenty of storage space. I uncovered things I moved here from California that I have not touched especially many UFO quilting projects. I will be donating them to some local quilting groups--if I haven't made them yet, I probably won't!

My new house is being built and won't be ready until sometime in August. The real estate market in our town is crazy with homes selling in hours--one sold yesterday in two hours! Especially homes that are in my price range. With the help of my friend/realtor, she put me in touch with a builder that was going to be building a spec home in the neighborhood I like the best. It has a new section of lock and leave homes where the snow removal, front/backyard lawn mowing, and irrigation water is included with the HOA dues. It is also very quiet and on the outskirts of town. So now instead of him building a spec home, he is building it for me! I have selected my lot, floorpan, and some of the finishes (I will get to pick them all out eventually and get to pick where the electricity outlets go).  It also includes the landscaping and sprinklers for both the front and back. I have never had a brand new house, so it is fun and exciting to get to participate in all these decisions.

My sewing room is actually going to be bigger than my current room and when I told my builder about my quilting, we decided to put an extra large window in it to help with natural light. We actually added in quite a few windows throughout the house. The whole house will have luxury vinyl plank flooring, so I am excited about being able to roll furniture around in my sewing room. My dad is going to build me a new cutting table on casters to take advantage of it!

The block pictured above is from the February block of the month (BOM), My Favorite Color Is Moda. I am doing the coastal cool color way for my new house. My current house is mostly browns and greens.
For the BOM, they had us do all the cutting ahead of time which makes it much quicker for assembling the blocks. This is block 2--it just reads water to me. There is a pond in my new neighborhood that I am looking forward to walking my dog around.
Here is block 3. I whipped up both of these last night.
I did make 2 more Labyrinth baby quilts in February and I already gifted one of them. Here is the other one!
That makes 4 of them in the same color palette. I bought a fat quarter pack with animal prints and with the help of it and my stash I squeezed out 4 baby quilts!
I quilted this batch more heavily and used gray minky on the backs.
I had today off as an end of the quarter vacation day and to get my second dose of the vaccine! It is hard to believe that a year ago today our school district shutdown and we went into lockdown for the rest of the school year. It is devastating how many lives have been lost to this horrible virus.

Today, I started on these muted pastel rainbow blocks for another work friend. She is due next month, so I need to get cracking. I am using the rainbow block pattern from Bonnie and Camille's Shine On book. I am going to appliqué hearts in the space under the rainbows. We have a big snowstorm on the way, so hopefully I won't get any side effects from my second dose and I can stay in my pjs and get this baby quilt done!














8 comments:

  1. Hello again. My, lots going on in your world. I'm glad you're excited about the new house. Making all those decisions would stress me out so much, I wouldn't be able to do anything.
    Pat

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    1. The hardest decision so far is cabinets! Did you know white cabinets cost 20% more? To me white cabinets are what you paint old dated cabinets. I decided to go with maple which I have in my current house and I saved 3k with that decision...The layout was pretty easy because I am doing a split floor plan with the master on one side of the house and the 2 extra bedrooms on the other side. I am doing an open floorpan. I actually made the walk in pantry bigger by stealing a couple of feet from the master closet which is going to be huge! I will share pictures throughout the process.

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  2. Oh boy, you have a lot going on!! My DH passed 8 1/2 yrs ago and the real estate market was like that back then. We had started looking at downsizing but they sold so fast, we were never able to snag one. Our house was 3600 sf and when he died, I did not need that much room. And I did not want to be in an HOA again. I found one just under 2000 sf in our old neighborhood and grabbed it. When I put the other on the market, it had 2 offers in 3 days, one was cash and over the asking price. It worked out good. But this one is really still bigger than I need and my quilting is in every room. UGH Good luck with all that lies ahead.

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  3. This is all very exciting! Your new house sounds like maybe your forever home, if you don't have any reason to move again. How wonderful that you have gotten to choose so many special features! I'm a lot older (71) than I'm guessing you are, and I did have some reaction to the second vaccine, but nothing serious--a temperature a couple of days and nausea for about 4 days. Take good care during this giant snow, and I'm looking forward to you writing more about your quilts and new house in the weeks to come.

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  4. Can't wait to see the progress. I always wanted to build but we went for a drive one day and it was raining so we stopped at an open house and fell in love with the one we have. Having lived he 20 plus years or so of course I would change some things but picking out what we need for the master bath and then getting all the worker lined up!!!! I give you credit lots of it for tackling it all.

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  5. Wow! Lots of changes!! I can't believe you left SD that many years ago! Good you got your vaccine. We're all set. Am becoming g'ma again. Will have 3 granddaughters by the end of Sept! Feast or famine I guess!

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    1. Wow! I bet you are an amazing grandma. I will keep the updates coming.

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  6. Congratulations on the new house! I can't wait to see what you do with all those fun decisions. Wishing you the best of luck in everything that goes along with the process. Really looking forward to the new sewing room photos as well! XO

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