My Wonderful World of Crafts Returns!

As I predicted, my house was in livable condition as was our guest room by Labor Day weekend. I had spent the evenings of the Thursday and Friday before that weekend organizing my craft room. After my parents visit, I happily chose a project that had been shelved around Christmas, and started on it again.

The craft I chose was Cameron’s Fraternity Shirt quilt. Last Christmas I had made 3 similar quilts for some of our friends, and had intended to make Cameron’s right after Christmas. His proposing and our setting a date sidelined that thought, and the move added to its delay. I am happy to say I am back on track and estimate I’ll be done with this project well before Christmas this year, even Thanksgiving – I’m aiming for before Halloween.

I also started the process of organizing the wedding photos. Between the photos from the photographer, photos friends and relatives have shared with us and the table camera pictures, we have a lot to chose from to go into picture frames around the house and an eventual wedding album. Thing is, I am having a ton of fun doing such, as I do love organizing.

I figure this is as much as I should take on for now. Once the dumpster comes and the bed is gone from my craft room, I may take more on, but I don’t want to clutter my clean house with all my projects right after getting it in order. A room to spread out in will be great.

Here’s a picture of most of the pieces that will go into Cameron’s quilt. Watch for more posts as I make progress to a completed project.

Love Always,
Sarah

Labor Day Weekend – No Labor Necessary

Saturday of Labor Day weekend was my mom’s birthday. Since she wasn’t able to attend the spa day the day before the wedding, I invited her and my dad down for the day and evening so that I could treat her to a manicure and pedicure, and we could all go out to dinner to celebrate.

We had a lovely time sipping mimosas, being pampered and gossiping with Stacie, my nail tech. Cameron and my dad stayed at home during the spa visit and enjoyed the first day of college football. Summer must be over if Football season is officially back!

My parents’ visit couldn’t have been timed more perfectly, either. On Thursday I had called to see if our wedding picture proofs were ready. They were! My mom was kind enough to pick them up on Friday and brought them with her Saturday, along with the last of our wedding gifts and my dried bouquet. This is my favorite picture!

(Photo Courtesy A. Stanwood Photography)

After an afternoon of pampering, all four of us piled into the car to go down to Old Town Sac. Gold Rush Days were taking place, so we were curious to see what exactly this entailed and what 200 tons of dirt looked like on the streets. It was pretty cool. There were volunteers dressed in period costumes and they had demonstrations and reenactments staged throughout the streets. I could have done with a little less of the gun shots during the Jesse James reenactment, but I guess that was how it was back in the day.



The old stage coach from Wells Fargo was pretty cool to see, and must be of some value as it was guarded closely at all times.


We also saw people in period costumes playing period instruments and music. Not bad, either.


There were all kinds of different carts/wagons placed along the roads as well. Horse-drawn carriages were available for rides around Old Town, which is actually a daily occurrence, but on this day, I definitely wanted to pass. With the dirt and the wind that had picked up that day, it was dusty! I don’t think I would have enjoyed living during this time period, especially when the wind storms came through. Can you imagine March and October back then?


Since it was close to dinner, we wandered Old Sac for what looked like a good restaurant. We finally settled on the Rio City Café, which was nice, except for the party boat that was blaring music prior to its departure. A couple was getting married on the Delta King Riverboat, so we got to see the flowers arrive for their reception and the Bride and Groom take some pictures before joining the reception. Watching the bride having to pick up her dress to walk made me even happier I chose a short dress for our wedding. Too much work!

My parents left early Sunday and we spent the day being lazy, which was wonderful! We met Matt & Lynde for dinner at the Bamboo Inn. Over dinner we got on the subject of Disney movies, followed by the movie Aladdin. It sounded so good, that Lynde and I drove home to put the leftovers in the fridge while the boys picked up some beverages. Then we all watch Aladdin over Champagne (Lynde and Myself) and mixed drinks (Matt & Cameron). Matt and Lynde crashed at our place for the night but left early after one of our neighbors was kind enough to start their Labor Day construction project at 8 AM! We spent the day being lazy again, though Cameron did work hard on school work throughout it, and met back up with Matt & Lynde at their house for a BBQ chicken dinner. Looking back, we’re all shocked no one had a Labor Day BBQ party this year. Oh well, maybe next year.

Love Always,
Sarah

Genius!

I love my husband! He recently came up with an idea that mainly benefits me. Ok, so he doesn’t have to deal with me spreading all my craft supplies and projects around the house once the plan goes into action or dealing with me stressing about cleaning the house as much as I used to when company is expected, but still, I believe he had my best interests at heart when he thought of this.

See, since we moved, and really before we moved, Cameron owned the Office room. In Fremont, I had a desk in the office and piles of stuff on it, but my computer had been ransacked for its keyboard and unplugged from the internet to accommodate his personal laptop for school, his desktop for gaming and his work laptop. Plus, I felt I couldn’t go in there and do anything when he was working on school work at night or over weekends that we were actually home. Once we moved, my desk was moved downstairs to the kitchen area. Where we should have a dining table, I have a small space for my work office, but obviously, this isn’t a place to set up shop for my crafts. Plus, we still have bags upon bags of wedding gift packaging to rid ourselves of, as you can see.

My desk and the bags of trash that have piled up even more!


I think Jake will miss his new Fort when we do get rid of the bags.

Back in Fremont, after Cameron took over the office, I moved most of my craft supplies into the spare room, but with the bed as big as it is and the room as small as it was, there just wasn’t room to spread out, so I shuttled what I did and didn’t need from the spare room to the living room. This definitely added to the mess I would inevitably be cleaning over the weekend or when guests were expected. The situation was turning out to be the same here, but our living room is not nearly as big so my spreading out causes some obstacle courses and I have gone around saying “ow” a few too many times from tripping over stuff when such courses exist.


Melody likes to sleep where we would prefer to walk.

As I mentioned in my last blog, I’ve started the task at hand of organizing and cleaning the spare room. The other night, as I was cleaning, Cameron came in. We’ve been in discussions of getting a small dumpster to help rid us of stuff that is no longer usable and not in donateable condition. This discussion was affirmed once we talked to our landlord who agreed the refrigerator she supplied us is not in good shape (we either get frozen lettuce or warm sodas) and it would be ok to toss it in the dumpster since we have our fridge from Fremont to replace it with. The last tenants begged her to let them leave the fridge, but she would prefer to not be responsible for maintaining a fridge any way, so all sides are pleased.

Here was Cameron’s thought process that night – the bed in the spare room is bulky and takes up space to supply our guests, that stay infrequently and for short periods of times, a place to sleep. The box spring of the bed has been a victim of kitty scratching to the point where our cats can now walk into the box spring on one end and exit at the other. Plus, it makes too great of a hiding place for them when they are in trouble or need to go to the vet. You can imagine the struggles we have when they plop down right in the middle and out of arm’s reach. One corner of the mattress is also a victim of cat scratching and is losing stuffing. We have managed to keep them from scratching our bed using a spray called Feliway. The cats can’t stand the smell of it when it is sprayed (neither can I so if you want to use it spray when you don’t need to be in the room for a while) and it usually takes 6 months after a good spray to have one of them even attempt to scratch the sprayed piece of furniture. We’ve only used it once on the leather couch and never once had a cat try to scratch that.


Any way, back to Cameron’s big idea. Since we were going to be getting the dumpster, why didn’t we just say goodbye to the bed? My parents had gotten a great Queen-sized air mattress to set up in my mom’s craft room for out-of-town wedding guests, which worked great. The mattress sits up about 2 feet, almost higher than the current bed does now. We could invest in one of these air mattresses for our guests to replace the bulky bed and only blow it up when guests are in town. This way I would have all that space plus the few paths around the bed to lay out what ever project or projects I want to work on and only clean up after myself when guests were coming to town to stay – otherwise I can just close the door, and then I would truly have my craft room.

How could I not agree to such a perfect and thoughtful plan? I will finally have a room for myself like Cameron does with his office. Now he just needs to get that dumpster ordered! And I’ll be at Bed Bath & Beyond getting the air mattress as soon as we need it.

Love Always,
Sarah

A Huge Load Off

Cameron and I spent another weekend at home – hurray! The weekend started a little early – Friday afternoon. Cameron went golfing with Matt, while I finished my work up for the week from the great comfort of our bed. I had been in Sunnyvale the day before for a meeting that ran from 10:30 AM straight through to 4:30 PM. That, combined with the visit to the vet Friday morning, left me wiped and since we have wireless throughout the house, I was able to work just as I would have downstairs at my desk, but from bed. I returned to my desk, business as usual, Monday.

After golf, Matt and Lynde came over. We all walked the 1 ½ blocks to the Old Spaghetti Factory for a nice dinner and then Lynde and I had our champagne Friday watching What Not to Wear on TLC, while the boys messed around on the computer and watched Lord of the Rings on the other TV.

We slept in as late as we could Saturday, but by 10 AM, Cameron was at the computer doing school work and I was cleaning the house and packing up more donateable goods in anticipation of Vicki and Joe coming down to take a load of donations away from us for a yard sale. By that evening, I was exhausted and had only managed to get to the top of the stairs in my cleaning adventures. I do have to say, it’s been a joy vacuuming since we got the Dyson from my aunt and cousins as a wedding gift – it definitely picks up everything the other didn’t. I kept having to empty it every few minutes, it’s so powerful..

Sunday, Cameron got up and went skydiving for the day, while I continued to clean. I didn’t get too far, just our bedroom and the hallway, but I did get a lot more items packed up for donations. We now have an actual hallway, not a second storage room, yea!

Vicki, Joe, Carrie and Connor all came down around dinner time, which was shortly after Cameron came home from skydiving. We headed over to the Macaroni Grill for a nice dinner before loading up Vicki & Joe’s truck sky high. We got all the donation boxes and half the furniture in! Sadly, the difference from before and after this load is not as much as we had hoped. Now we can walk on either side of the Camaro to get around in the garage, where as before, we only had a small path on one side. Still, we have a lot of crap and a lot more to get rid off.

My next cleaning project is the spare bedroom/my craft room, which is already underway. Once that room is done, and it cools down some, we’ll focus on the garage more. I’m finally feeling close to being settled here, which means I’m closer to focusing on all the craft projects I’ve been meaning to work on, but had delayed in preparation for the move and wedding. I expect to have the spare room pulled together by this weekend, so I may be crafting as early as Sunday or Monday – and Monday is a holiday!

Love Always,
Sarah

A Trip To The Vet

Today, all 3 kids had appointments with the vet and I was on my own on taking them. Cameron had a previously schedule client meeting - lucky duck! Jake and Kelsey were scheduled for normal check-ups and one vaccine. Mel, on the other hand, had her check-up in July since she had a little cut we wanted to checked out at that time, so this trip was for a sore that had developed on her chin in the last week. All the vet techs thought I was brave for bringing all 3 in at one time, but for me it just makes sense - better to go in all at once than one at a time. The cats make it easy since they prefer being in the same crate for travels. And this way they see they all have to go through it, and that they are not being singled out all the time. Not that they probably remember one trip to the next.

Melody's Progress Report

Melody was nervous the second we walked through the door and was ready to leave at that moment, too. The last visit didn't go so well for her and she had snapped and growled at the vet. We had a different vet this time so I quickly informed her she would want to put a muzzle on Mel before getting acquainted. We muzzled her and Mel did ok. She still preferred to look at the door but she never growled and she even walked near the vet after she was all done. Mel's sore is healing nicely. The vet thought it might have been a bug bite or irritation from a new plant. If it comes back we're to take her back in for a biopsy.

Jake's Progress Report

Jake was my trouble maker today - and he's usually the docile one. He was hissing and growling the second he came out of the crate. He was so bad that the vet wasn't able to check his teeth to see how they were doing. I had to scruff him so she could administer the vaccine. He has been upset with me ever since we got home. I'm sure he'll warm up to me the next time I pour myself a glass of wine - likely later tonight.

Kelsey's Progress Report

Kelsey was the surprise of the day. While she hissed at me when I put her in the crate to leave for the vet, and she didn't want to come out when we did get to the vet, she was mostly well behaved for her check up - she's drawn blood in past visits and she's usually the one to hiss, growl. Kelsey is a little overweight, but she's been this weight for a year so she's not gaining more and more, so she does not need to go on a diet. She's just a little plump and as long as she doesn't gain any more, she can stay that way. Kelsey also had a spot on her chin I was concerned about. It loooked like a scab or flea eggs and just wouldn't go away. I kept telling myself that it shouldn't be fleas, since all the kids get flea medicine once a month religiously. Turns out Kelsey has kitty acne, just like the pimples we get, it just looks yucky. Some can get larger and ooze puss. Sound familiar? Turns out I can easily clean it up with Hydogen Peroxide. I'll try that later, when Kelsey is a little more happy with me. She's been ok with me since the trip back home this morning, but she's still a little suspecting of me.

Kelsey did a-ok with the check up and vaccine. She does have the beginnings of dental disease, so we'll have to schedule her for a cleaning in the next 6-12 months. Mel needs a cleaning too, so we'll schedule them together. We're in debate on whether we have Jake taken care of at that time, too, since the vet couldn't check his teeth and a cleaning would be a good idea in case. It will be a expense so we're going to wait until February when the vet has a special on the cleaning and we may wait to have Jake's done next August when the next special will take place. Yea - more trips to the vet! Can you sense my sarcasm? Ahh the joys of motherhood.

Love always,

Sarah