Slow but sure

It took 12 hours for them to put down our new carpet!  Yikes!  A long day for all of us, but I think all the effort and expense is paying off allergy-wise.  Already!  Woooohoooo!

Now I'm trying to get the house back in order.  It's pretty much a blank slate.  Nothing on the walls and not even bedding on the beds.  Actually, I'm finding it a blessing in disguise.  Most everything was where we plunked it down or hung it up when we moved in back in September.  This has been a great opportunity to move things around and put them where we really want them.  One of those things you often don't do unless forced.  Several rooms and the halls still need to be freshly painted, but it's not urgent....except in my mind maybe.  :-)

The very first morning of new carpet and Ivy had a whoops and christened it....sigh.  And the carpet cleaning solution was in the only cabinet I couldn't get to!  But it cleaned up easily.  Not that I let the dogs know that.  LOL

Wow.  From a cluttered mess to this.  I'm still moving around furniture and emptying the bathroom so no photos yet.

Ngaire and Ivy approve of the carpet and have each claimed a favorite stair!

Yesterday I got far enough to see the floor of the bathroom.  Oh look!  There's the Featherweight.  :-)  And today I got as far as the bathtub!

The machines have been liberated also.  I spent a good deal of time today setting them up and crawling around under tables getting everything plugged back in.

Not sure what to do with the scrap bins.  I love how colorful they are but I'm not sure I want to share my newly cleaned space with them.  Decisions, decisions.....

Just now The Tramp called me over to look under his desk and see that he had a dog warming each foot.  :-)  I guess things are back to normal!

Carpet day

Besides being a dreary, cold, rainy day, today is carpet installation day!  Which is good....but it's a big job and even with them working steadily it's taking many hours.  The moving of furniture alone is a huge job.  So at 4:30 pm we are still sitting here in the kitchen with the dogs, suffering from the pounding over our heads and the horrible smell of sealing the seams, a guaranteed migraine for me.  Nonetheless, I'm thrilled it's happening and the guys appear to be doing an excellent job.

Last night we finished stuffing all of our loose belongings into the dining room and bathroom.  This includes all knick-knacks, pictures on the walls, bedding, computer stuff, lamps, bins of stuff from the sewing room, sewing machines....you name it!  The bathtub is full nearly to the ceiling.  The vanity is covered, as is the toilet and every inch of floor.

At one side of the vanity, supporting other things, are three Singers.

With the Juki and Bernina at the other end.  The Featherweight is somewhere on the floor.

Many rolls of padding (5 or 6?) were stacked in the front hallway, trapping us in the kitchen unless we went out into the garage and around.  :-)

The other kitchen doorway is to the dining room.  Yes, that's our sectional standing there.

Our first glimpse of the new carpeting.  I think it's going to be really nice. It's not nearly as light as it looks in the photo.  More of a medium brown.  Ok...to be honest...dirt brown.  Dog dirt brown.  But hopefully, classy enough to look nice even to those who don't know the reason for the color choice.  LOL

Until it started raining again, they were able to cut from the big roll outside in the driveway on top of the old carpet and padding.

The wall of furniture in the dining room.  :-)  I'm sure glad I wasn't the one who had to move the armoire with the TV in it!!

We are as comfortable as we can be, with laptops, books and sewing projects.

We tried sending the dogs out on the porch with chunks of rawhide to keep them busy for a while.  Maisy just stood there looking very hurt and confused.  :-)

So indoors they came so she could be more comfortable.

After much worrying and barking everyone has finally settled down!

 Thank goodness!!

A bit of drama

Sewing happening here and it's a gift, so I can't show you quite yet!  :-)

Yesterday evening our Charlie created a bit of drama.  I let him up on my shoulder and quick as a wink he pulled out one of my silver stud earrings.  I shook out my clothes, no earring.  I crawled around on the kitchen floor searching, no earring.  Looked in the sink and all over the counters, no earring.  I thought I had startled him fast enough that he couldn't possibly have swallowed it but there was no way to know.  So I worried all night and all day!   But.... just a few minutes ago I spotted the earring on the kitchen floor on the other side of the room.  **happy dance**  Much relief all around!

Lesson learned.  He's too fast for me to take that risk again!

The weather and my health have greatly improved so I'm trying to take at least one dog for a walk each day (much to the disgust of the other two).  I always have my phone in my pocket so I can whip it out when a "Kodak moment" presents itself.  On Wednesday, this was supposed to be a photo of the three geese on the pond but when I uploaded the photos up to my computer I was amazed at the gorgeous color.  I really didn't see it in person.

There was a breeze rippling the surface of the water but it still made a wonderful mirror.  Our house it set back a bit so I hadn't really seen a clear reflection of it before.  So this was another surprising picture.

We have several home improvement projects waiting to be done but we decided that replacing the carpet needed to have priority.  The Tramp would rather have me breathing than not.  :-)  As I've been saying carpet is evil, our plan was to put down laminate or engineered hardwood.  Not necessarily the best solution -- I was imaging myself chasing the dog hair tumbleweeds all over with a dust mop every day.  To say nothing of acres of floor to wet mop.  Dogs are dirty!  And....we've discovered that hard surface floors are above our budget.  WAY above.

So we've selected carpet.  Yes, I know.  The evil stuff.  We're very pleased with our choice however.  Green Smart carpet which is made from 100% recycled P.E.T plastic.  It's also certified CRI Green Label Plus which means it has been identified as carpet with very low VOC emissions.  We also chose the "pet" padding which has a membrane on the top to stop liquids from penetrating the pad.  I insisted on a very low pile, nothing fluffy, and a medium brown.  As far as carpet goes, I think it was the best choice.  Installation will be soon and I'm looking forward to breathing easier.  :-D

Last night Marti Michell was the speaker at our guild meeting.  I particularly liked this vintage quilt she showed us. 

A fun design for charity quilts.

Great colors!

Striking.

Today was Maisy's turn for a walk.  It was quite chilly but the park was very pretty in the sun.

The geese were hanging about as usual.

Maisy isn't particularly happy about her head collar, but it stops her from pulling so she's going to have to live with it.

Ivy's turn tomorrow.  After a while I'll try two at a time and when they can walk calmly together I'll go for all three.  Otherwise I'm going to have to call Cesar!

Bananas

Charlie is such a handsome boy.  :-)

Yesterday I discovered our Charlie likes banana.  I bought some to make smoothies and a whole banana is too much.  So I broke off a bit for Charlie and once he got over the texture he seemed to like it.  The dogs were jealous so I gave them each a piece too and they liked it. Who knew?  So this morning when I opened my banana I was instantly surrounded by dogs and Charlie was nearly falling off the cage with excitement.  So I guess we're going to be eating a lot more bananas around here.  :-)

A new mix of outdoor bird seed has attracted all kinds of birds.  We have titmice, chickadees, house finches, carolina wrens, nuthatches, cardinals, goldfinches, woodpeckers and various others I haven't noted yet.  Last week we even had a small flock of redwing blackbirds!  It's the sort of thing that makes my day.  The new position of the feeder makes me happy too.  I'm easily pleased.  :-)  This photo has a house finch up top and a carolina wren and chickadee in the feeder.

Handsome house finch.

Not sure who this is.  I need to find my binoculars and bird books.

I caught this chickadee with his (her?) mouth full.  They flit off so fast!

And I was pleased to see a goldfinch amongst the crowd. (leftmost)

And!  Drumroll please.  I finally got this small quilt top together.  It's already pretty funky as designed, but I had to cheat a bit and piece some of the pieces.  Crazy.  The designer must not have used prewashed fabric...sigh.  I bought the right amounts but since I washed it (at least I assume that's the reason), I kept coming up short or very close to short.  The designer assumed a width of fabric I just didn't have!

Anyway.  It's cute and colorful and grand #1 should enjoy it.  I also have the Hungry Caterpillar book for him and the Hallmark Christmas ornament.  I picked up some backing fabric today and it just came out of the dryer.  Ironing time.

And the "holiday" weekend continues...

I'm not sure The Tramp would consider this a holiday weekend either.  I kept him busy today as well.  First on the agenda was raking leaves.  This week is the last round of leaf pickup by the town and we didn't want to miss it.  It looks sooooo much better with the oak leaves off the lawn and driveway.  Between the trees you can see the bi-fold doors leaning against the truck, waiting for pickup by someone on Freecycle. 

The ice is melting on the pond.  It looked very pretty today with the reflections of the sky and clouds.  There were several mallard ducks floating around and the three somewhat resident geese.

And bless his heart, The Tramp helped me pull out the bird feeder pole and move it over so I can see it from my chair in the living room.  And it's straight now too!  The drunken lean was really annoying me.  :-)

As soon as I stepped back the chickadees and nuthatches were right back on the feeder.  Of course I didn't move fast enough to get them in the picture.

Then...sigh....we tackled the garage.  Argh.

It's not nearly done, but we bought and put two shelving units together and I managed to empty some boxes.

The Tramp has been sorting and hanging his tools.

And we put this Ikea cabinet together, to hold all his bits and pieces.  I have two shorter and wider versions of this cabinet in my sewing room and I love them.

I also got a portion of the Hungry Caterpillar quilt top together (ignore the purple quilt behind it) and now I'm going back to work on the rest.  Yesssssssssss.