Our New Home

A couple of people have asked to see our new home so I will show you some outdoor photos!

This is the front of our home

we have solar here!  YAY

Hope it helps reduce the bills.

and here is the yard.

There are lemon and orange trees in the backyard.

My daughter painted all the rooms before we moved in

and mine is a light...PURPLE! My favorite color!  

I am still "organizing" my space and

next I need to sew some curtains. 

I think we are in for many years of enjoyment here!

Thanks for stopping by,

see ya next time!

Just a brief update today…

The warmer weather has FINALLY come to the Chicago area!! YIPPEE ~ I have been patiently waiting for this weather (ok maybe not so patiently)! Anyone who knows me knows that I LOVE the summer and the heat and I will take it ANY DAY over the winter.

I wanted to show you some pictures of my garage floor from before we had it repaired.

These are the before pictures ~ you can see how bad the crack was!

And here are the AFTER pictures! VIOLA ~ A nice smooth floor!

As for stitching ~ I am still working on the L*K ABC’s of Parenting. Just have a bit more to do and I and get back to my EMS Year of Flowers SAL. I am about 2 (almost 3) months behind!

H O P E F U L L Y ~ I will be finished with the stitching this week!

So check back next week and see if I finished or not! :)

Finally...an update ~ 05/22/11

It has been a while and boy have we been busy!

First we had to do some HOUSE REPAIRS. When we moved into this house 6 years ago my garage floor had a BIG crack down the middle of it...and since then it has raised up on one side about two inches higher than the other side. Not so good for walking in there so my brother's friend came over and said that he could "sand" it down some and pour a new floor for us. GREAT! But first we had a big obstacle to overcome before he could do anything and that would be to EMPTY the garage. We don't park in the garage but instead we use it for storage...and it was PACKED to the BRIM! We ended up having to rent a PODS storage unit and emptying out the garage into it. He then came over and poured a new floor and as a bonus we even got our front step repaired and leveled out! Once the floor was finished it looked great! Then the fun part came; putting everything back while at the same time weeding out stuff we didn't need or want. We freeycled everything and got rid of so much stuff that now we have room to move around in there...so we put down some indoor/outdoor carpeting and now we can actually setup the treadmill AND the elliptical! YIPPEE!?! Now I don't have an excuse NOT to use the treadmill...not sure if that is a good thing or not ~ I'll have to get back to you on that one! :)

During the last month Jacob and I had an adventure day! We visited the Adler Planetarium. I haven't been there in years and Jacob had never been there and we had a blast!! They have a section just for kids called Planet Explorers and he got to "dress up" like an astronaut and simulate doing a spaceship launch! He totally enjoyed the day and so of course; I did too!

I have READ plenty of books since my last update! I am all the way up to S is for Silence in the Alphabet series by Sue Grafton; this series gets better with every book. I am on the last available book by Lee Child in the Joe Reacher series. Also read an excellent book by a new-to-me author Nicole Baart After the Leaves Fall. I recommend this book and can’t wait to read the rest of her books. I am up to 62 books for the year.

I am also back to STITCHING but I am wayyyyy behind schedule. I bought a craft stand on eBay for less than $20 (shipping included) to try and take some of the pressure off my arm and the tendinitis. Don't quite have the hang of stitching with it...but I am trying. It seems like I have to take my q-snap on and off the stand a lot of time for ending and starting new strands of floss and that seems like a hassle. Hopefully I will figure it out soon and be back to stitching o a regular basis. I know have all the words stitched on the L*K ABCs of Parenting and have to put in the color blocks and the the little pictures! Then I will work on catching up on my EMS Year of Flowers SAL.

Oh yeah...we also visit our local aquarium recently for their new jellies exhibit. Who knew there were so many different kinds of jellies! Here are some of the ones we saw.

Well that's about it for now... thanks for stopping by and please feel free to leave me a comment ;)

Weekly Update

This week there was not to much going on...except we had a plumbing emergency at the house. Not so much fun! LOL It started with the washing machine backing up into the bathtub and we ended up not being able to do anything that involved running to much water cuz everything backed up into the tub! Not a great weekend... Finally got in touch with the plumber on Monday morning and scheduled an appointment for him to come clean out sewer lines and drain pipes. I don't think it took him longer than an hour to do everything but thankfully everything is running perfectly now! YIPPEE

STITCHING

I started stitching the biscornu I received from Kim last week. It is coming along very nicely. I am making a few minor changes, like changing the direction of the hearts in the squares...they were all pointing the same way and I decided that I didn't really like it that way. Think I may change the border too; but I will decide that when I get that far. This is my progress so far...

I am also participating in a SAL in my Yahoo group Stitch N Swap. We are going to stitch the EMS 2010 flower series. So this weekend I found a piece of fabric to stitch it on (18 count antique white) and I started making the borders that go around each monthly flower. We are going to start in March and I hope to have my fabric all ready by the first. This is how much I have finished so far.

I am going to stitch it 3 flowers across and 4 flowers down.

WEATHER

In the past few weeks we have had to many different weather conditions! Three weeks ago we had a blizzard, the following week we had subzero temperatures, last week we had temps in the high 50s and that melted most of the snow away! :) But guess what??? This morning on the way to church..it was raining and the rain was mixed with ice -YUCK! This week they are forecasting more snow. I know it is only February but I am TIRED of snow and cold! 4 weeks until SPRING! YEAH

MOVIES

We watched a couple of movies this week...the first one was about a bank robbery called The Town; it was pretty good. The next one The Takers was also about robbers but they robbed armored trucks and it was really good. We also saw Legendary, and it was just all right. We also saw an oldie but goodie on TV...Serendipity. I love that movie and when I saw it in the listings I just had to watch it!

BOOKS

Still reading Lee Child's One Shot. Last week I listened to Tess Gerritsen book Vanish and started The Mephisto Club, which I should finish this week. Vanish was the 20th book I finished this year!

That is it for this week...Hope you have a wonderful week and hope to see you again next time!