My poor sweet dog

She is having her last moments. Her legs decided not to work yesterday afternoon and R was gone on his tour. She is now barking and crying and can not get up on her legs. I helped her out the door this morning to go pee but R had to carry her back in because of my bad back, and she's near a 100 pounds.

R will be taking her to the vet to have her put to sleep when he wakes up today. And sad day in our house, we will miss her.

The cute paint job

This is the old scatterville, shortly after we started demo, although you can't tell from the front of the house.


This is what it looks like now. We are quite happy. I spent yesterday getting the roof area done on the scaffolding 20 ft up in the air and it's done on one side of the house. R spent the day replacing boards on the house where our side door used to be. The kitchen area is there now. I am scrapping and caulking today, hoping to get the whole side primed so I can finish either tonight or tomorrow. It is very hot. VERY hot. This is one of my many breaks to not keel over. R patched an area that used to be a window today and is off to town to look for nice shoes. He has a very important tour/meeting tomorrow with BIG shot people.

I haven't decided what to do tomorrow. It's either pack, which we haven't done yet and we close in 12 days. AH! or go into town and see if one of our friends can play. I think I am going to opt for cleaning/packing so I don't feel so much panic next week. Our week is already packed with parties (three of them), a moving truck on Saturday, 4th of July, and well I don't see much getting done in the packing area. OH and we have to return the scaffolding and get the other side done on Friday, Saturday so really I have to keep my nose to the grindstone.

I would much rather be in some airconditioning, reading a good book while my children blissfully play with new toys all day long. Instead I'm outside covered in dirt and probably lead paint in 90 degree temps with the sun beating down on me and occassional scream from inside the house of one child hurting the other.

I will post more pictures when I get new batteries for my camera. I just barely sqeaked out that one.

pictures of home

Here is what we have been working on. We removed all the old siding on the back of the house as all the windows and the sliding door are all new so there were holes in the siding from the old windows. We decided that it would look better to take them all down and rehang them so they were staggered correctly and use our new replacement boards. We got some of the work done Tuesday, getting it up to the windows where we need to make cuts with a jig saw we killed earlier in the year. This is the left side of the house above.

And this is the right side of the sliding glass door.


R is working hard at getting the cuts just right to nail them into the studs. He's very good at this, I just guess he actually measures.

The kids were very good at doing their own thing, they are always great at this, sometimes we need to step in when they start fighting but they come up with good things to do. W is sitting at the base of where we are working building shelters to make the house strong so tornadoes won't blow it over. Either that or nailing old nails into the dirt with a rock.

K and T decided to do the smart thing since it was near 100 that day and swam for two hours in our pool which is set up just 10 feet from the wall we were working on. The occassional splash helped keep us cooled off.

We tried to work yesterday after spending the morning/afternoon in the city, but it was so hot! After dinner we decided to drive to the next small city and get a jigsaw to cut the house boards but as we were driving home the thunderstorms started all over again. I did manage to pull some nails out of the side of the house before the lightning scared me off.

R went into town this morning to go to some meetings, and pick up scaffolding to get to the top parts of the house. I was going to work on things outside, scraping, priming etc. but it is raining very hard right now. I guess I'll work on packing instead. I hate packing.

Tiny Bathroom

Our new house has a bathroom off the master bedroom. It is the tiniest bathroom ever and is in need of an upgrade at least in the sink. We hope to take part of the closet out which is across from the toilet and put in a shower if space permits. So here are some of the tiny sinks I've found to replace the ugly one we have. The bowl is too small and the faucet takes up to much room of the sink.

Ideas from surfing

I found this wonderful apron and it just looks like it would make a beautiful skirt! I am going to have to get my sewing room unpacked when we get moved to start on one!


This is another lovely skirt sewn by Keri at A Bookish Life. She also made this one.

She also made this lovely!



I found this one too.
It's by : ohbara.com : She made these too

Child's Reversible Flap Hat, The Secret Workshop Pattern #100

I have a baby shower coming up this weekend, and well short on cash. Not short on fabric however so I am making three flap hats using this pattern for a Child's Reversible Flap Hat. I have used it before and have a few changes. Put a stiff stablizer in the brim and the top of the hat needs to be modified to not be so tall. Besides that it is a great pattern.

SCATTERVILLES NEW HOME!!!

Here it is. R fell in love with it the moment he stepped in and while the kids and I were still dreaming of the farm house, I have to say this house was the most beautiful house we had seen yet. There is no way I could have said no. It does only have three bedrooms but we'll just have to bunk up kids until we can add one in the basement. The purple paint may have to go fairly quick but besides that there is nothing I would change except maybe adding a shower to the little tiny master bath.

As you can see this is a very big two car garage. Can you say Ceramic studio? All my stuff that is in storage will go right in here and I'll I need is clay and I will be in business. The gardens surrounding it are gorgeous and the yard is very nice grass. There is even a concrete pad for the kids to ride scooters and bikes.
We are debating making a second studio for R in the other side since he hope to only have one car, our lovely beater van. We don't need to garage keep it that is for sure!


What a great shot of the leaded glass windows in the dining room. There is a matching one in the entry way. It's just beautiful.


Oh and you really couldn't say no once we found this little play house deep in the greenery in the back yard. Surrounded by raspberries, daylilies, ferns and flowers of all kinds. It is also under the biggest lilac tree. My personal favorite. K is planning paint colors and an addition already. A bonus is we have six very small working windows with screens in our basement right now that were waiting for a playhouse to put them in.

The yard continues to have suprises that just bowl me over. I was morning the loss of our strawberry patch in our current home, but this one has an even bigger patch. It has a place for other veggies and fruits and is already planted. Bonus, there is no crab grass or wheat growing in it! There are two cherry trees full of fruit, a Hydranga bush, Clematis, and tons of my other favorite plants. I feel like I'll I will need to do is a little sprinking of my favorites that are missing around the yard and it will be complete. I was going to be many years before I felt that way about any of the previous gardens. There is even a lovely place to put W's pond behind the play house buried in the gardens.



This is the living room, lots of great light. Very large room for us and space to spread out. The kitchen has new cabinets in it, although not many. We may need to do some rearranging at some point to add more but for now it is very functional. The huge window over the sink looks out in the awesome back yard and opens out for great conversations with the people outside. (Ok for yelling, stop hitting your brother/sister type conversations) A huge bonus in my book and R's for that matter. It has a dishwasher. We have had to buy three dishwashers for the last three houses we have lived in. Finally we don't need to.

On the main floor there is also a nice size Master Bedroom with the tiniest bathroom I have ever seen. It is just large enough for a toliet and minature sink. You could over shoot that thing brushing your teeth. Next to it however is a walk in closet that we could go into and install a shower to make it complete. The closet would be very small then but currently the only shower is a 50's shower kit in the basement.

Upstairs there is a landing of about 10 by 8 that will perfect for the kids toys and tv room. On both sides of that are bedrooms, one for K and one for "the brothers". There is also a full bathroom that is a very nice size with lots of built in's and a bathtub with two huge windows over looking the back yard.

Looking for a new home tomorrow

We are leaving for the new Scatterville tomorrow and I have been dreaming and have the entire family excited about a farm with 4 bedrooms (one for each of us) and 10 acres. The kids are excited to have the space to play, K for the chance of having a horse and me the chance of having chickens and a huge garden. W for the chance of having a pig. Why? I don't know. But there are two barns and a garage on the property. We even talked R into looking at it first before the in town properties. He's excited about making a bike path around the property.

If that doesn't work out of us there are about three other properties we can look at in town. After thinking about renting we just really don't want to.