Christmas 2008

We managed to find a smaller tree this year and it fit nicely in this space.

Here is Carina opening her Christmas gifts from us with the cats watching.

This is the first year we have had a fireplace to put our stockings on.

Reilly loves the Christmas tree, he spends a lot of time hiding amongst the presents under the tree.

More snow pics!

I decided not to attempt going to work today, it snowed all day yesterday and it was still snowing when I first got up this morning.

My waterfall rocks are just about burried now.

We have about a 3 foot snow drift right outside the back door.

My pond is now completely hidden underneath the snow.

Seattle snowstorm 2008

Here are some pictures of what I woke up to this morning. I know, I know, in comparison to most of the rest of the country this is nothing, but in Seattle this is huge, yesterday the grocery stores were packed with panicky shoppers buying enough food to last for months. The gas stations were also busy, people were filling their gas cans up, (us included) and the mall was chaos, how do I know this, because I did all three. They had predicted 90 mile an hour winds, but I don't think the winds got that bad last night, we still have power.

Somewhere in this picture is my pond, I turned the pump off yesterday, which I should have done a week ago because now there is a big frozen waterfall leading into the pond.

It was so windy last night that snow got into the cat pen and I noticed little cat paw prints in the snow this morning, a little later I saw Reilly going wild in there, this is his first snow, when he came back inside he had snow all over him so he warmed himself up by wrapping up in the tree skirt which now sits in the middle of our living room far away from the tree along with one candy cane, a bow and a couple Christmas balls.

I'm a great Aunt

Here is me and Jillian, my grand niece. She was born on October 7th, 8 lbs, 2 oz.

Here is Carina holding Jillian. She is such a beautiful baby and very alert. I kept saying that she was wise beyond her days.

These pictures were taken at the hospital on Friday the 10th. She had to spend a few days in the NICU because she had a fever on her second day at the hospital, but by this day her temp was normal and she got to go home the next day.

Breast Cancer Auction Quilt

Here is the quilt I made for the Breast Cancer Auction which was held at my in-law's church yesterday. They raised just under $10,000.00 dollars and their goal was $5000.00. It was so much fun and I was so pleased to be able to contribute a little. My MIL won the quilt and I couldn't be happier!

The pattern is called "Snowball Quilt". It is the first quilt I have made since finishing the craft room. The picture below is a close-up where you can sort of see the quilting.

I did a motif design on all of the blocks and a continuous design around the border. Here is the back.

The design around the border is roses. I also used my Martelli zip bind system for the first time on this quilt, I really like it, but will need to practice more to get the mitered corners perfect.

That darn Raccoon!

Craig was in the kitchen this morning and happened to look outside and saw our raccoon. We have never seen him during the day, he usually only destroys the pond at night, that is why the plywood is over the pond. He is getting pretty bold, which makes us afraid, raccoons are pretty mean, he may be cute, but looks are deceiving. Today he just came out for a drink and a quick bath and then he went back up into the ivy so we are thinking that is where he lives. I think its time for an electric fence.

Entertainment Center

I haven't been a good blogger lately, life gets in the way sometimes as you know. I forgot to blog our entertainment center that Craig built right before we had our open house for our remodel. He did a fantastic job on it. We had bought a new TV which is smaller than our other one and so that required a whole new entertainment center, not really but what the heck. I decided that our lights look like devil horns on our TV, but really our TV isn't evil in the least, lol.

I know, you are probably saying, "smaller?", yes, by one inch, but more importantly it is 1/4 of the thickness of the old one so we were able to move everything back a foot which gives us more living space, and in a house the size of ours that is huge. It also weighs considerably less than the other TV which weighed 370 lbs.

Craft Room Makeover

Just when you think you are all done with the house.......I decided my craft room needed a makeover, so I got busy and used up some of the left over flooring from the rest of the house and put in a new floor, primed and painted the walls and then I decided to pretty much get rid of everything and start over, not my craft stuff of course, but the shelves and bins and the old counter with the ugly curtains on it. If it looks very IKEA like, it's because I bought everything at IKEA except the hutch that surrounds my computer monitor, I designed that and Craig built it. I have one wall that is just storage from top to bottom and side to side as you can see from the picture below.

Here is my computer/office area. I haven't had a chance to label anything yet, so finding things has been quite a test on my memory skills. The computer is hiding away in the cabinet below along with my printer, modem, router, etc...I installed a fan in the side of the cabinet which is plugged into a temperature sensitive plug so it will turn on if it gets too warm in the cabinet and turn off when the temp drops below a certain level, it vents into the cat tunnel (see paragraph below).

The wall opposite the storage wall has a row of cabinets for more storage and you can see from the picture below that I left an area open so the cats could still access their cat door out to the cat pen. Craig put a solid surface counter on top of my cabinets for me, the old counter was a laminate counter and it got really scarred up, this will be much better.

Here is a look from the doorway, Craig is going to make a frame for my pegboard so I can hang my stuff up again, and we are going to somehow make a collapsable working table that will connect to the bookcase, we still haven't figured out how exactly that will work. You can see my tech jacket on my dress form, it's the perfect place to keep it when I'm not working. I started my new job at NorthWest Eye Surgeon's right after Labor Day and I love it.

Bathroom completed!

We finally got the bathroom completed. The shower door is in, the crown molding, toilet and sink.

The shadow boxes and shelf are mounted, but I haven't bought anything to put in and on them.

Here's the sink, it is very similar to the one in our other bathroom.

Here is a shot of the crown molding that Craig put in.

Grouting is done.

I just finished the grout and did my final wash.

The tiles are still wet in these pictures. I used a grout that is stain resistant and doesn't need sealing, it is actually a sanded epoxy I used the same stuff in the kitchen and just love it.

I still need to put in the baseboard tiles, but I wanted to get this part done and cured before doing that so that it would be easier to do.

Tiles, tiles, tiles.....

I did the tiling tonight after work, I just finished up. I will grout on Saturday. Hopefully we can get the toilet and sink in by Tuesday and then it will be a fully functional bathroom again. We still have trim to do, but I feel like we are making progress.

Painting is done!

So I got the final coat of paint done. We are going to put in crown molding so I will have to paint that, but the major painting is done.

I also installed the new light and hung up the mirror.

I couldn't wait to see how the tile was going to look so I laid down a couple to get a sneak peak. I still haven't decided how I am going to lay them out, but I'm sure I'll come up with something.

Texture and paint

I got the texture put on today, I decided to go with the easy way so I bought spray cans of wall texture and sprayed it on, it was so much easier than the way I did the other bathroom. Once that dried I got the first coat of color on, it is a purplish color called Irish Tea, in the picture it looks more brownish. I am just waiting for paint to dry right now so I can put on the final coat, next will be tiling the floor.