Staying HOME!

Hello and Happy New Year! For the last several months, I've used an upcoming move as an excuse not to blog. Anyone who has ever had a house on the market knows how all-encompassing it is...you spend hours a day trying to make the place look perfect, and then you have to be somewhat detached from the beautiful clean house you are living in. It is definitely not conducive to random acts of craftiness, I tell ya! Then you have to hear why lookers aren't interested in your house (in our case by and large, the layout was too open and contemporary, but we also had people who didn't like the curb appeal, proximity to the beltway, or the small size of the bedrooms. We even had one group take exception to our fat old dog, who didn't even convey with the property). Back in the day, we could just plant mums and bake cookies, and we'd have a sold sign in 2 weeks time. It is downright humbling to try to sell a home in a buyers' market!




Anyways, I am THRILLED to report that we are not moving after all! Del really enjoyed his job up in PA, but when it became clear that our house was not going to sell without us taking a major financial hit (so much so that we couldn't even consider buying another house), he decided to look closer to home. He got a great job as an Executive Chef at a major university that is within commuting distance! He is going to be in charge of a brand new, state-of-the-art dining hall - he will be in culinary heaven!

As for me, I can now throw myself back into my crafty happy (messy) lifestyle! I actually have lots of projects in the works...a much requested Scientific Seamstress pattern is in the testing phase, several Sis Boom patterns are being developed, and I'm also doing some fun freelance editing jobs to help keep the family afloat. I also need to "move back in" and make the house mine again. We did some "neutralizing" when we put the house on the market (I painted over the peacock feather in the bathroom, but didn't touch the birch forest in the entryway). The biggest thing I need to do now is make our home functional for us. First order is to turn our giant, unused living room into a studio space for me.

The extra bedroom I've claimed as my sewing room is now carpeted, which means it is just a matter of time before I make a nasty stain of coffee and/or paint, or worse yet, someone could step on an embedded needle.


The picture above was taken after about half the sewing room furniture was stuck into a PODS unit, which is coming back next week. My plan is to take over at least half of the downstairs space with my sewing stuff and the furniture shown above (mostly if not all IKEA stuff that came with the house), and then we will bring in my old dressers, headboard etc. and have a proper guest bedroom (so please come visit)!


Above is the space I'm grabbing. I've already moved the "living room" furniture to take up 1/4th of the room. Tomorrow we are hauling down the very heavy IKEA shelving and desks. I'm trying to decide if it would be better to disassemble, or if Del and I should just risk sore muscles and scraped floors and move by brute force. It will be lots of work, but so much less work than setting up a new household all together!