A visit with Layla and Sable

Isn't Layla adorable??? No, we didn't get another puppy but we did stop in and visit Carol and Pete's new addition! Layla is an 8 week old Rottweiler -- and she is just so cute! Of course we had to bring her a toy -- which she did like chewing on. She has huge feet and has that puppy smell and puppy breath. I just love puppies.

Layla shares her new home with Sable who is also a Rottweiler although she is affectionately known as a Notweiler since she really doesn't look like a Rottweiler -- she looks more like a Doberman. Sable is a sweetie too and is just starting to like having Layla around.

Images made using Creative Memories StoryBook Creator Plus Software and With Love Predesigned 7x5 Pages.

Whole lotta stuff going on!

There is so much going on and getting finished at our house -- it's hard to keep up! Our front door is now the same color as our shutters!

I took these pictures last week. Since then, all the hardwood floors have been sanded and finished. All the bathrooms are almost done but the most important thing is that all the toilets work! So I spent all of yesterday cleaning out the kitchen (lots of dust in the cabinets!) knowing that if I had to use a bathroom, I wouldn't have to run out to a store somewhere -- I just can't bring myself to use the PortaJohn on the front lawn...

We're hoping to spend our first night back in our new home on Thursday!

But I don't wanna wear underwear!

Seeing Eye puppies are not fixed until they return to the Seeing Eye because all pups are evaluated for the breeding program.
The one downfall for raising a female Seeing Eye pup is that they will eventually go into heat and usually it happens twice.

This means undies for our girls. Ava is tolerating them but she'd rather not wear them at all. There weren't many choices at the pet store so she only has denim blue undies...if only they were pink with purple flowers.

Images made using Creative Memories StoryBook Creator Plus Software and Creative Memories Digital Content: Delight Baby Predesigned Pages 7x5 and Pet QuickKit

27 Doors!

We have 27 doors! It was amazing to count them all which we had to do in order to buy all the doorknobs (which cost $400+!). And yes, it is possible to have a favorite door :-)

Our kitchen had a sliding glass door to the backyard. We pushed the backwall of the house 14 feet which put our kitchen in the middle of the house and my crop room behind the kitchen. There were many debates in the beginning about what to do about the entrance way to the crop room from the kitchen. It had to have a door because my evening workshops go until 11 pm at night and I knew that Ed and my Dad would want to be able to shut out all the chatter.

The original plan was to have a french door but I couldn't decide which way the doors should open. If they opened into the kitchen, it would be inconvenient if we had dinner in the crop room -- you'd have to go around the french door to get to the store or any of the counters. If they opened into the crop room, chances are that a customer of mine would get hit during a workshop.

The solution was a pocket door.

It's actually an odd kind of hybrid. There is a french door on the left that opens up against the wall in the crop room. But even then, it isn't a traditional french door -- it will latch into the ceiling (I believe) so the design actually accounts for it to probably be closed most of the time. The right side is actually a pocket door. In order to make the pocket work with our existing wall, they actually built another wall alongside the wall that was already there -- this way the pocket could slide into the new wall while the wall that had all the studs supporting our kitchen cabinets could remain.

The glass panes of the doors are actually covered with some sort of protective seal while they are still painting but it will eventually be clear glass. This will let more light into the kitchen when the doors are closed although I think that for the most part the doors will remain open...except during my "noisy" workshops :-)

I love my door!

Images created using Creative Memories StoryBook Creator Plus software and Creative Memories Digital Content: For Him and Baby Boy Bright.

Sunny Delight

The painters are almost done painting. Bathroom vanities, sinks and medicine cabinets are arriving today so the plumber will be in connecting pipes during the week. The electrician will be getting our lights connected. And so far, we're on track to move in on President's Day! It's very exciting!


The painters painted our bedroom on Thursday. When I arrived at the house on Thursday afternoon, the foreman asked..."are you sure you want your bedroom to be that color?" Our bedroom is a shade of yellow and it was picked to match a bit of color in a quilt that is going to hang on our bedroom wall over our bed. It was a good thing I was alone in the house when I walked into our bedroom because I just couldn't stop laughing.

I guess depending on your computer monitor, the shade that you see may be slightly off. One of the painters said our den and living room was chocolate milk, some of the rooms upstairs were strawberry milk but our bedroom...well, that was Sunny Delight. And that is probably the best way to describe it.

It is bright in there. Everybody working on the house finds the color very funny and it's a good thing I do too. Ed says that all we need now is a Tennessee Volunteers logo and we're set. Of course, he loves it since he did want to a room somewhere to be in UT Vols or UT Longhorn colors -- he loves college football and he also likes the color orange :-)

We're going to leave it for now and see how the room looks once there is actually furniture in it. I have to admit, the color is growing on me. And it may help Ed get up in the morning for work since he does have to be up at 3 am...

No sliding down the bannister!

Sometimes it feels like we haven't lived at home in forever yet other times it feels like it's only been a little while.

Right now it seems like so long ago that they first installed our new stairs. All the walls were open and we could see right into the basement from the living room.

I went to the house this past Wednesday and it was filled with all sorts of people -- painters, tilers and a guy installing the handrail for our staircase. We won't be able to slide down the bannister since it starts on a wall and it isn't very long but it will be very nice to have soemthing to hold on to when we're coming down the stairs.

It really is an illness...

About a year and a half ago, I rediscovered knitting. I had learned to knit in college -- there were classes being offered at student center. I knit lots of things and bought lots of yarn but about 10 years ago, I decided to pare back on crafts and knitting is one of the things that went by the wayside.
But then I discovered how much fun it can be to knit your own socks. Since I started knitting socks, I've knit over 30 pairs. I've given some away but most of them have been for me. I own very few store bought socks now since it really is more fun to wear something I made myself. Plus I can knit socks in all sorts of patterns and pretty colors.

My youngest sister owed me some money and I told her she could pay me in sock yarn. The box arrived and it was so much fun to open -- all these pretty skeins of yarn just waiting to be turned into something pretty.

I am expanding my horizons into cowls (that's for your neck) and gloves.

Knitting your own socks is more expensive than buying your standard bag of 8 pairs of white socks at Target BUT it is cheaper than treating myself to ice cream and less fattening too. And yes, I admit that knitting socks is probably considered odd by most people, but at least I'm having fun!

This post is dedicated to Monica...my personal knitting enabler :-)

Shake it up baby!

I don't know if you can tell from the pictures but our siding has changed just a tiny bit. I'm not sure what we're supposed to call the area above the bay window but I do know that from the inside, we can walk into that space -- in fact it is a big enough walk in area that I'm pretty sure I'll be able to fit a sofa in there -- a nice addition to make our bedroom cozy.

Anyway, we used to have plain siding on that area around the two windows. Now we have something else -- I think it is called cedar shake but I'm not positive. All I know is that the contractor wanted to change it to make it look different and was wondering if it would be okay with us.

And we finally covered up the last of the Tyvek wrap! We now have white panels below the bay window where there used to be pretty Tyvek paper :-)

More Closets Than Clothes...

Our itty bitty cape cod had 1 coat closet and 2 clothes closets -- 1 in each bedroom. There was also a very tiny linen closet in the hall that was fairly useless because it was very shallow.

Our new colonial has so much closet space, I'm not sure we'll ever fill it all. There is a coat closet downstairs that is about two and a half times the size of our old coat closet.

Dad's room has a walk-in closet.
The two guest rooms upstairs each have their own clothes closet and the larger room has another closet that I'll use as a crafts closet -- that one may not be big enough :-)
There is a linen closet in the hallway upstairs that is plenty big for linens and towels for the guest rooms.
Lastly, in the master bedroom there is a huge walk-in closet (huge by our standards :-) ) and another closet that we will use for blankets, sheets and towels.

On top of that, we have two attics -- one is over the new second floor and the other attic is over the addition. And of course we have our old basement and a new basement under the addition.

I've been thinking of renting out storage space :-)

Of course the only room in the house (besides the basement) that has any type of furniture is the kitchen since we didn't remodel that room. But all that is in there is a folding table to hold boxes of munchkins and muffins that we leave for the guys working on the house and a pantry/cabinet. Other than that, the house is empty. There is a lot of equipment for cutting stuff like trim and the foreman says our walk-in closet makes a great office for him since it is quiet in there when the door is closed.

We can't wait to get in and fill the house with real furniture!

Floors, Doors and Moore!

It took less than two days for the contractor to put in oak floors throughout the whole house. They aren't sanded and finished yet, but they are there. I just hope they hold up under doggie feet!

Doors arrived and actually, right now they are all hung -- we even have trim! No doorknobs yet though -- we bought them but they are still with us in Staten Island.

The house is really coming along! The painters sprayed primer paint throughout the house today. We won't be going by the house until tomorrow since we didn't feel like getting wet paint all over us. :-)

The house is really beginning to look like a house!