Tuesday, April 24, 2012

I'm going to be a Grandmother!!!!

  **insert huge happy face here**

My youngest son and his significant other are expecting a baby in Aug/Sep and he called last night with the news that it is a boy.  This will be my very first grandchild!!!  I found out about the baby a few months ago, but I must not have mentioned it in any previous post; so I've decided that this is an event deserving of its very own post. 

I met Vicky last summer when she came to the US for a visit and she is just lovely.  She has been doing well during the pregnancy with some morning sickness but nothing too horrid.

They live in Sydney, Australia and will remain there, which sadly means I'll watch my grandson grow up via photographs.  :(  Vicky is a British subject and has already established residency in AUS; Jeff is working on his.  Wait ... did that make sense?  Aren't Australians' British subjects too?  I think a brush up on my international knowledge is in dire need. 

Anyway, I don't have pictures of Vicky or Vicky and Jeff together so instead I'll post one of my very favorite baby pictures of Jeff.  This was taken Easter Sunday, April 1981 when he was 7 months old.  We sat in the living room of my Mom's home and watched the older kids hunt for eggs through the window.  My Ex took this picture and another of Jeff and I from the outside looking in.  James (my ex) had a really great eye for photography.  I think he missed his calling.  :)
They grow up so fast ...............................




Saturday, April 21, 2012

Almost Done!!

The craft room is painted, the new light fixture is in, the window seat has been repaired and the carpet is on order. I was going to put in carpet tiles but when I checked them out they were very thin. Since I stand while creating, the thought of standing on a cement floor with a quarter inch of hard loop floor covering did not appeal to my bad back. So I went with a nice thick nylon carpet with a top grade thick pad under it. If its anything like what I put in my bedroom years ago, I'll probably want to sleep on it. LOL!! Carpet will go in by mid week and after that I can begin setting the room to rights again.    YAY!!

 My camera battery is getting low and I can't find the charger in all this chaos so I was not able to get more than a couple pictures before it gave out. :( This will be it for the updates until I find that charger.

This first picture is taken from the closet door looking back to where the actual construction was done. If you look at the floor near the edge of the door, those cut out areas of the carpet is where the office closet used to be.
This is a picture of the window seat that is in the craft room. It has been buried in junk for a year. I'm not sure what I will do with this little space, but it definitely will not be filled back up with junk. Also, the windows look dirty but it's actually the screens I have on my home. They are thick black insolated screens which help keep the house cool in summer and make looking out of the windows a bit iffy.
This picture was taken from the hallway looking back into the craft room.
Below are a couple of pictures of all my craft room suppies and furniture stacked up in the garage. Only the craft table remained in the room during the process since it was easy to move about. Sadly this isn't all of it; there is a very large stack of craft stuff in the master bedroom that could be ruined by the extreme heat of Texas if stored in the garage.

Tuesday, April 17, 2012

Progress Report



I was excited last night to see the closet was out and everything is ready to go up. So I thought it would be fun to take a few pictures of the craft room progress.

The first two pictures below were taken in the craft room with the closet area that was removed colored in pink. I took these pictures after everything was hauled into the garage. The craft table is small and light enough to be moved out of the way so it remains in the room. Thank goodness because there is not much room left in the garage for anything else; though I still have room for my car. If I remember, I'll take a picture of the garage when I get home this evening and add that to this post.

The first and last pictures are after the closet was removed; the top taken from the office looking into the craft room and the bottom one the reverse.

I selected the paint color last night; it's a very pale shade of yellow with a hint of green in it. Which I guess it not a true yellow and probably explains why I like it. :)

Still no decision on the floor covering, but if I want this project completed by the end of April I'll have to make up my mind before this weekend. At first I thought I'd just put it off until the summer, but the idea of having to move everything into the garage a second time kills my natural tendency towards procrastination. ;)

Thanks for popping in and I hope everyone is well.





Sunday, April 8, 2012

Remodeling My Craft Room

Thought I should pop in and make a post to let people know that I'm here but not making cards right now. The reason being that my craft room is stacked up in the garage while I do some remodeling. I have a question at the end of this post, so please feel free to skip past my rambling if you wish and please take a minute to read the question and hopefully help me pick a color for the new room.



I'm working on the two small bedrooms in the back of the house which are my office and craft room. Between these two rooms is a closet that takes up a lot of space in my craft room and has (or I should say had) nothing but boxes of junk in it. By removing the closet I gain 4 feet of space (or just shy of) to the craft room and a nice large wall space that can be used for floor to ceiling book cases in the office. YAY!!

The floorplan above gives a general idea of what I'm having done. The drawing isn't to scale and in fact in the before picture the rooms look to be almost the same size; however that is not the case. The room I use as my office is very narrow and long at 8ft2in by 11ft. The craft room is currently 10ft by 9ft8in but once the remodel is finished it will be a really nice 10ft by 13ft5in.

The expected completion date on the project is April 20th; but thats only for the general contractor work and finished painting. Once he leaves the flooring will go in so I'm anticipating having the rooms ready to redress by the end of April.

If anyone has seen the pictures of my craft room before this remodel, then you know that my work table, shelves, walls and drawer units are white. I was thinking that instead of painting the walls white again, I'd add color. I thought I'd be daring and go with bold bright colors like Cool Caribbean; or Green Galore; maybe even Pixie Pink. Then of course I could go with Blushing Bride or Certainly Celery. If Island Indigo wasn't so dark that would be on the list to. ;)


QUESTION: If your craftroom furniture was all white; would you go with a bold color on the walls, or a pale color? The space will still be rather small and the lighting is limited to one window, one overhead light and two table lamps.

PS - I'm going with carpet floor tiles in the craft room so whatever the wall color is, I plan to match it in the floor coloring.