Moving In!

We haven't celebrated Christmas yet, that's tomorrow, but I've already had Christmas! The addition is finished!

Bathroom is complete. I was rinsing a fake plant if you noticed the odd thing in the shower.

DH was sitting by the "fire". It's an electric fireplace, but it does have an optional heater. 

DH wants a quilt on this bed ASAP, but we'll see how that goes. For now, I'm OK with the vintage style bedspread. It's made in the USA, which is hard to find these days.

Finally, this is my new sewing area! I could hardly bring myself to sew in our last bedroom, because it was so cramped I felt claustrophobic. I'm thinking this will be better. I'll still miss having a sewing room, but with a house this full, I'm just happy for this sewing corner. I think having my ironing station up is going to make things much easier. 

I am so excited to be in our new room before the New Year! Maybe things will be better in 2017, 2016 has been a really hard year. I'm certainly having a nice start in our new addition! Happy New Year to all, may we all have a better year!

Getting Closer

The closer the addition gets to completion, the more antsy I get to move into it! Waiting was easier when it didn't look like a room. 

This is the ceramic tile flooring I chose for the hall and bath. It looks like wood, but it's not so it's safe for wet areas. 

DS the Younger is in town on leave, and we got him to help DH to put up the wall mural I wanted! I just might need a sound machine to play forest sounds in my new retreat ;-)

The bathroom is coming along now. The sink and vanity are in, but the plumbing isn't connected. The medicine cabinet and light are up. The towel bars are hung. Basically we are down to plumbing, carpeting, and masonry, as our chimney needs to be made three feet taller. 

We bought an electric media fireplace to place on the wall opposite the mural. DD#2 thought it was hilarious we did that. She said we put a fake forest on one wall, and a fake fireplace on the opposite wall to burn it down! I saw her point, but I told her I looked at it as luxury camping. 

It looks like it will take until the end of next week to get the addition finished, because of the holidays.

On Sunday we had all the wives and grandkids here at the house. We were missing a couple of the men, but were very thankful to have as many of the family around as we did. 

We didn't celebrate Christmas that day, because three of these grandkids are waiting anxiously for their daddy to arrive from South Africa tomorrow. DD#1 and her three kids have been separated from him for 2 months while he was waiting for his American visa to come through. Now all of his paperwork is in order, and he'll be joining them to start their new lives in the USA! We won't be celebrating Christmas until the 30th, so he'll even have some time to get over jet lag. 

I hope you all have a wonderful holiday, no matter which holiday you celebrate!

Grandkids

Still no sewing in this house! Right now we've got six grandkids in the house since one of our DDIL is visiting! One two year old, two four year olds, two five year olds, and one seven year old! Let the games begin!

Who can resist a bubble machine in the backyard?

This is my living room right now. I came downstairs to blog while they are busy watching a movie!

Right now it's all about people, and just keeping up with all of that is an adventure!

We've now got a nice slab of concrete behind the addition. DH is thinking this will be a nice spot to work on his scooters!

The addition has been painted inside and out. I like the silvery gray color, and the ceiling fan is UP!

The stucco is painted now. I took this pic before they took all the paper down off the windows and brick. I chose a color as close to the siding color as I could get, that pale yellow. No more trenches though the side yard now that the plumbing is in, and they filled the huge holes in the driveway that had to be made to connect to the sewers. The addition is getting closer to being done!

I'm finished with the Christmas shopping, but I keep having to buy things for the addition. Yesterday I ordered a custom window shade, today I ordered curtains and  curtain rod. We ordered an electric media fireplace for the addition. It can hold the TV, has storage space for some DVD's, an electric fireplace to set a relaxing mood and it can be a heater or we can have the flames with no heat! We are really aiming to make a room a retreat from the chaos.

DH really wants a quilt I made on our bed, but the one on our bed currently is shredding, not to mention the fact it won't match the new room. I have one about half quilted that was supposed to be for our bed, but it's not a great match for our new room either. I give away quilts faster than I make them, so I just don't have extra quilts lying around. For now, I ordered an old fashioned chenille bedspread to go on our bed in the new room, and I'm debating on ideas for a new quilt to make for the new room. The quilt on our bed now, I'm going to cut down to throw size, and that way I can salvage most of it. It was made from fabrics I bought in Hawaii on our 25th anniversary trip. We've been married almost 33 years, so it's been on our bed for several years now. 

At any rate, I'll have to decide what look I want in our new room, and go from there on quilt design. At least I'll be thinking quilty thoughts, even without time to sew!

Happy Thanksgiving!

We had planned to have our Thanksgiving celebration a couple weeks ago with lots of extra people, and Mr LJ's arrival nixed those plans. DH is working today, as he does on most holidays being an Emergency Room nurse. We ended up having a smaller version of Thanksgiving last night, with only 11 in attendance. For anyone who thinks 11 is a lot, remember, right now there are 9 people living here, so 11 is only two extras!

This has been a really hard year, but there is still so much to be thankful for! DS the Elder got married this year, and by doing so brought another grandchild and a new daughter into the family. Mr LJ was born adding yet another grandchild. DD#1's family moving to the USA really caught us by surprise, but I'm so thankful to have them closer instead of on the other side of the world. We're praying her husband will be here by Christmas! The hard parts of this year have been really hard, and they aren't over yet, but still I see blessings all around.

Today, since we didn't have anything celebratory to do, I broke out some Punch balloons for the grandkids. The weather is great!

I sewed long enough to repair a pair of pants, but that's as far as I got. 

The builder's are moving along on the addition.

This photo was taken looking in the exterior door to the master suite. Drywall is up!

Looking down the master suite hallway, you can see the door opening to the bathroom on the right, as well as the opening to the kitchen to the left of that. That area you can see tile shows how far into the house we moved the doorway. That tile is from the kitchen, we moved the doorway in towards the house almost three feet, to allow for the master bath doorway to be where we wanted it. 

The shower is installed in the master bath. It's the same style shower we had installed in the upstairs master bath, and we loved it, so we bought another one. Tile showers are pretty, but the fiberglass ones are MUCH easier to clean. I like easy. The shower is 36x60 inches, so a nice sized shower for a master suite.

I leave for Phoenix on Sunday, and I'll be gone about two weeks. I doubt I'll blog while I'm gone, I'll be too busy getting cuddles from Mr. LJ and helping DD#2 around the house. I'm anxious to see what gets done on the addition while I'm gone!

I wish all of you a Happy Thanksgiving, and whether life is hard or going well for you right now, may you always see blessings!

Newest Grandson

DD#2 had her baby! I am so excited to show you pics of Lincoln James! After this, he will be referred to as Mr. LJ, since I already have a grandson I refer to as Mr. L. (Why do I use terms like DD#2 or DSIL or Mr LJ when referring to my family? The first is a privacy issue, this is my blog, and not my kids' blog, so I try to give them a certain amount of anonimity. The other is much more basic. I have five kids, four of which are married, I have 8 grandchildren. If I used their names, you'd never be able to keep track who I was talking about!)

I got to hold him when he was less than a day old!

One of the few pics of him awake!

Most of the time he's a sleepy baby!

He weighed 6 lbs 8 oz, which isn't bad for being three weeks early. He is 19 inches long. Most importantly, he and Mama are both doing well!

I know I haven't been blogging much. I mostly use this as a quilting blog, and I have had no time to sew anything! We've got nine people living here, and that alone is enough to keep me busy. Add in holiday preparations, construction on the house, a new grandbaby, and everything else that's going on, and my head is spinning!

DD#3 got a new (to her) car! Her SUV was on it's last days, and this car is low mileage, so hopefully will serve her well for several years.

The addition is coming along. The stucco will be going up on the outside soon. The electrical inspection and plumbing inspection was today, and it passed with no problems, so hopefully we'll see drywall going up inside soon!

We've remodeled several rooms over the years, but this is our first experience with an addition. SOOOO many decisions to make! I'm used to choosing paint and tile, but being asked where do you want all your outlets, how many switches do you want to which lights and such are completely new questions to me. I'm pretty stressed with all the construction going on, and I'll be so happy when it's done, but I am also getting really excited about our new bedroom. It is all coming together to be much nicer than I expected at the beginning. The electrician suggested some changes would have never occurred to me. The framer and I ended up coming up with an idea to add a second closet without taking any square footage out of the main space. The bathroom is larger than I thought it would be, that storage room we're turning into a bathroom has been so full of stuff the whole time we've lived here, I never realized how large it was. The bedroom itself is also larger than I originally thought we'd be able to have. As far as decorating goes, I'm going gray on most things, which is a little odd for me, but the shades I chose just seem restful to me. 

I'll be going up to help DD#2 care for baby Lincoln when her husband has to go back to work. Since she had to have a c-section, recovery could be slow. I am frantically trying to finish my Christmas shopping and wrapping before I go up to Phoenix for a couple weeks. I'm one stocking short for Christmas, and I'm debating trying to bring the stuff up to Phoenix and use my daughter's sewing machine to make another one. I'm already bringing some sewing stuff up to Phoenix, because she needs some Pack and Play sheets and doesn't like the ones she bought. You know you have a big family when 16 stockings aren't enough, and not even everyone will be here for Christmas!