Ready for the Ride

We have snow on the ground with more coming the next few days.  

I wish I could ride Rudolph to sunny Florida.  

I kind of rushed sewing up this month's "Party with Patrick" wall hanging,

 "Ready for the Ride".  

Things are heating up with the new Ohio home.  

We FINALLY have dates for the two final walk-throughs and the closing in March. 

I will have to break down my sewing machine to take back to Ohio before the closing because it's too precious (to me) for the movers to move. 

  

We're packing our pickup truck for another trip to Ohio before the closing in a few weeks. 

I never knew I had so many baskets.  

They are lightweight but would be awkward to pack into boxes.  

So we stuffed them together into plastic bags and loaded them into the bed of the truck.  

We also packed most of our larger picture frames.

We want to pack the pickup truck today before the snow comes.   

At least with the house stuff we are moving ourselves.  

This trip to Ohio will be shorter.  

We have made all selections for the new house except for the closets.   

It should be looking pretty good with cabinets, counter tops, plumbing, electrical finish work and tile done or almost done.

  

Off to pack some more.

Keep warm!

  

Zippered Little Christmas Bag

Still sewing Christmas projects at Embroidery Club this month.

What can I say…I love Christmas!

This is a zippered bag (an Anita Goodesign pattern) that can be completely sewn in-the-hoop!

And the design graphic and lettering can be changed easily to another holiday or event if you have embroidery software.

I love the holly fabric in red and green.

The back of the bag is in the red holly fabric.

Here you can see me stitching it out in the hoop.

The zipper is already done.

The only stitching done out of the hoop is sewing it together.

I can't wait to sew up some more of these cute little bags.

The pattern comes in three sizes too.

This is the smallest size.

I just may make several of these for Christmas this year for the girls in my family.

Anita Goodesign's collection also included a zippered Sewing Blackboard Bag (video here).

Watch the video it is so neat to see this little bag sewn in-the-hoop.

Since I used fabric instead of felt I had to double the fabric on the front and back and fold over at the zipper so no raw edges showed.  

I am having so much fun machine embroidering!

Thanks for visiting!

New Motif

I found this pretty little motif on Pinterest (here).

The link goes to a diagram without detailed written pattern instructions.

But it was easy to figure out looking at the diagram.

I actually like crochet diagrams - I'm more of a visual person.

I'm not as good at writing out pattern instructions.

But I scribbled down some notes to assist me.

As you can see the "name" of this motif isn't very exciting.

665 mf Cotton Neat Motif

Huh?

So I'm trying to come up with a new name for my project.

This is a tiny motif.

I'm using an H hook to enlarge it and also because it's one of my favorite hooks.

I have skeins of Caron Simply Soft yarn in yellow (Sunshine) and Soft Blue.

I'm designing this little throw as I go…maybe I will wait to join all the motifs.   

I think white or light green yarn for the join will be pretty.

And I may add some more pastel colors.

Help me out…what would you call this motif?  

Meanwhile 420 Miles Away...

I haven't posted about our new home being built in Ohio for awhile.

So here goes...

Model on left.  Our new home on right.

We made another trip to Ohio over Christmas.

We loved The Model and we are duplicating it pretty much except for a few modifications.

We first saw The Model when we were back in Ohio for Christmas over a year ago.

Having a home built takes time.

Our new home is down the street from The Model.  

Lot has been cleared.

First we had to chose an available lot in the subdivision.

There were several corner lots available and they would probably have worked the best for driving our travel van into the garage but we liked the two lots remaining that had trees behind it (a protective strip of trees that can't be cut down or built on).

All of our previous (and current) homes had lots of at least 3/4 of an acre.

This lot is just under an half of an acre.

It's 106 ft wide and our ranch will just fit on it.

If we had chosen a two-story we would have had more room between the houses.

Ranches take up a bigger footprint.

But we wanted a ranch since we are getting older.

If you don't know northeastern Ohio the dirt there is 100% clay and lots of shale. 

We are only two or three miles from Lake Erie. 

We will have a full basement with lots of unfinished storage, a huge hobby room for Hubby and ME, a family room/library, a bedroom with a connecting bathroom with shower and an unfinished kitchenette.

Basement walls going up.

 Framing going up.

Roof faming going up here.

We added two separated windows on each side of the garage.

And enlarged the garage and bumped out one bay so we could park our travel van in the garage.

No more having to put the RV in off-site storage.

We already drove our RV back to Ohio in November and put it into off-site storage until the house is ready.

One huge thing off our to-to-list.   

Me at our EIGHT FOOT front door!

The ceilings are 9 feet on the first floor except where it is higher in the Great Room, Kitchen, Morning and Hearth Rooms.

The roof shingles are going on here.

                           The garage doors are ten feet high to accommodate our travel van.

                      We should have ordered an eight foot garage man door but didn't think of it.

Model on left.  Our home on right.

We changed the window placement - I thought it would fill in the huge area of the front of the garage if we had two windows separated rather than the one triple window.

And we wanted it to look different from the model.

Top is model.  Bottom is our home.

When we came back at Christmas we discovered the builder had moved the two windows on the garage front because they weren't positioned correctly under the garage peak.  

Much better now.

Top is back of model.  Bottom is our home's back where we added a screened in porch and deck.

We haven't been able to get photos of the back of our house since summer.  

It's been too muddy back there.

This picture was taken this summer.  

The Great Room window on the porch has since been replaced with the correct triple transom window. 

   

Screened in porch.

This is an earlier view of the screened in porch this summer.

I couldn't get a recent photo because the painters were painting inside this past Christmas and had plastic over all the windows and cabinets. 

The porch is further along now. 

And the deck is almost done too.

As I mentioned, the cabinets are in and interior painting should be done now.

We've selected the flooring, countertops, light fixtures, plumbing fixtures and are getting quotes for the closets, mirrors and initial window treatments.  

No word yet when the closing will take place or when we will be able to move in. 

In the meantime we have been busy getting our current home ready for sale.

So stay tuned for more!

Happy New Year 2015 !