Miscellaneous

Several of you have asked what I do with all of that beach glass. Well, I don’t have a particularly good answer for you. I find a shockingly small number of pieces that I’d like to have drilled (or wire-wrapped) for necklaces, but for the most part? No plans.

Honestly, the big lure is twofold: It’s neat/unique to the Lake, and it makes a 2-1/2 hour, six-mile walk go by in the blink of an eye.

Meanwhile, here’s my solution for now. I found a bunch of these large mason-type jars at Ikea last year. I have two that are full and three empty ones. Next time I’m in that neighborhood, I may see if I can pick up a few more. Cheap and highly functional.


Ooh, I didn’t put anything in that picture fore perspective. Oops. The jars are 8.5” high and have a 16” circumference, so they hold a pretty good quantity of glass.

In other news the Hubster gets a gigantic gold star for wearing his thinking cap while we were on vacation. At the end of our tour of the Darwin Martin house, they finish in the gift shop (much like every single ride at Disney). We both poked around for a bit before the Hubster called me over to take a look at something he’d found. A new floor mat!

We had talked about getting a new front door mat once all the stonework was finished. Neither one of us was a big fan of the one we had inherited (sorry, Mom!), plus it was beginning to fall apart and was molting all over our entryway.

On top of that, indoor/outdoor mats are obscenely expensive! At least the ones I had looked at and liked were more than I was willing to pay. But this one? That’s styled after Frank Lloyd Wright’s art glass? Very reasonably priced. I love it.


Gotta be efficient on Wednesday. I’ll try to WiP Wednesday you straight out of the gate, then I need to work efficiently in the morning. I have Barenaked Ladies tickets for Wednesday night in Cleveland, and I’m going with a friend I haven’t seen in about a dozen years. Can. Not. Wait.

In a Galaxy Far, Far Away

I’m in Florida. That sounds good, but I think I’ve been outside for a grand total of half an hour since I arrived at 2 p.m. on Sunday. So don't get jealous.

I got up at 4 a.m. and forced the Hubster to drive me to the airport, leaving the house at 4:45 a.m. to take me to the airport. Flight was at 7:15. I connected in Philadelphia (no plane change, just a layover), but didn’t have to switch planes. The good news is that I was able to get off the plane to use a bathroom that doesn’t move and get a pretzel (yum!). The bad news is that while I was in the airport, the fire alarm went off. It was LOUD.

But, it was nothing, so we all just stood around waiting for it to be turned off. I was the first one back on the plane (only person who came from Pittsburgh headed for Fort Meyers) and the rest of the trip was uneventful.

Before I left town, there was a flurry of activity. On Friday, my mom and I executed Christmas Tree Acquisition: 2008, getting trees for my house and hers. After we got her tree set up and in the stand, my tree was dumped in my front yard and mom scurried back home to get ready for a holiday party she was attending with my dad.

I figured I was already outside, covered in needles and smelling pine-ey. I had brought the four tubs of Christmas stuff down from the attic earlier in the day (good grief, were the big ones ever heavy!), so I just started putting up the outside lights.

It was 20 degrees outside and as long as I kept moving it wasn’t too bad. I got all the outside lights up and got Santa up on the roof of the front porch before turning into a frozen banana. Inside tree was put up when the Hubster got home. I’ll take pictures and post once I get back to the ‘Burgh, but basically? Looks the same as last year!

I threw up a few of the easy/favorite decorations. I have two “new” snowmen.



This guy was purchased on clearance for a buck or two. He sits on the “mail-dump” piece of furniture in the front hall



I don’t remember where I got this guy, but he was purchased some time last year. He’s sitting on the ledge of one of the windows that flank our front door.

I prefer to decorate with snowmen instead of Christmas. Then I can leave things out longer :)

There’s one other thing I finally took care of while I was in “git ‘er done” mode



I finally hung up my birthday presents! I have a better photo, but apparently I forgot to throw it on Flickr so I could access it here.

Yes, my birthday was in May. The Hubster did pretty well, having my signed program from March’s Wait Wait, Don’t Tell Me! visit and the accompanying ticket signed. He also got my signed Barenaked Ladies CD and concert ticket (two separate meetings with the band) framed.

Yeah, it took me six months to get this done. So sue me!

I’m in Florida (don’t get excited. I’ve been outside the hotel for a grand total of 30 minutes since my arrival on Sunday at 2:30 pm) all week and will try to blog when spare moments come up. The “big reveal” for the M&Ms quilts was last night. Lisa was kind enough to email me photos of seven of the eight quilts. I’ll just have to wait to see mine until it shows up in the mail!

My “master plan” is to work backwards, featuring each quilt as it was when it spent time in Pennsylvania, starting with Beth’s (the last quilt I sewed on) and finishing with my own masterpiece, which I haven’t seen since February. Please be patient. I can only access the web when I’m in the conference area of the hotel, and my spare time is limited this week.

Okey dokey. Back to work!

House Tour

I know it’s pathetic, but for the first time in the year we’ve lived here, I feel like the house is in the kind of shape that was reasonable for a photo shoot.

I’m not as organized or efficient as SJ who seems to be ready for public exposure of the new abode just minutes after unpacking the last box. Less than a week after moving day. Sorry, that's just not how I roll! :-)

When you walk in to our front door, here’s your tour, walking clockwise around the house


1. Foyer. Quilt on the wall was made by my favorite quilt teacher out in LA. I hate that bench that you see underneath it, but it came with the Hubster and we don’t have anything better to use right now, so I’ll deal with it. Carpet is inherited from the previous owners. I love both the piece on the left, which is directly in front of you when you walk into the house, and the lamp on top of it.

2. Living Room. Big room that we hardly use. I once did a gymnastics routine in this room when we were getting new carpet. My dad recorded it, but that was the roll of film that got eaten by the processor. Once upon a time when you had to send film to be processed/developed. Yeah. I’m old.

3. Dining Room. I really like this dining room set. It’s also inherited from the previous owners. Boxes along the far wall are trash accumulated during the recent major purge that has happened over the last week or so. Hooray!

4. Kitchen. My mom re-did this room in 1996. It’s great, although the Hubster and I agree that we miss the trash compactor we had in Redondo Beach. But that’s the only thing we miss from California that’s not a person :)

5. View of the Knitting Corner in the TV room. I sit by the ott lite. All those cabinets you see are full of YARN. It’s my primary storage area for the yarny bits.

6. Wide view of the TV room. Yes, that’s Frank Burns on the TV. Love that show! :)

And now, the upstairs!

We'll start at the top of the stairs and kind of work from there.


1. My old room. It’s looking pretty empty, but it was plenty big enough for yours truly and my Mountain of Mess. I’m just sad that having this house on the market for a year before the Hubster and I bought it meant that all of my sticker collection had to be removed from my door. That thing was awesome! (queen size bed for scale)

2. Down the hall and to the left, my brother’s old room. Full-size bed. As you can see, we have plenty of room here at Hotel Hughes. Too bad we don’t have any visitors! This room is on the back-right corner of the house if you’re standing on the street looking at the front door. I take no responsibility for the Hog Hat. It belongs to the Hubster.

3. Back the way we came, this is my office! It’s the front-right corner of the house from the street perspective, and is directly above the TV room. However, since that wall you see is window-free, it can be a really dark room. It’s also farthest from the heating/cooling system, so it tends to be the warmest/coolest spot in the house as well as the darkest. Hubster and I hung all of our sports stuff in this room, so it’s a pretty fun place to work.

4. And you’ve seen this room before, it’s the master bedroom.

So that’s about it from here. I’m headed to the lake in … ooh, about eight hours. I’d best finish wrangling all the crapolla for the upcoming 13 days in my version of paradise.

(The reason we’re presentable now, for the first time? MaidPro! Woot!)

Home Dec, With Quilts!

I did a LOT of laundry today, and did some basic decorating. We “did” our tree last night. I thought I had taken a picture, but not so much. I also went to "knit night" at Bloomin Yarns, but wound up tagging new yarn instead, since I was the only person who showed up. It was fun!!

Oh, and the Hubster wants everyone to know that he is NOT a Scrooge. He was just cranky on Sunday when I was doing the outside lights. He was quite helpful with trimming the tree last night, and is ready to go for the holiday. Ho Ho Ho!

So aside from the magic of dirty-to-clean that is laundry, I also got three quilts hung up around the house … well, mostly around our entryway.

First, I wanted to get my Christmas Charm quilt up on the wall. This is one of my very favorite quilts, although I’m going to need to do the Penguin Charm quilt, also by Mount Redoubt Designs, that Beth and my other M&M peeps got for me at Asilomar last year. Soon. Really.


The door handle you can see is for the stairs to the basement.

I’m using the “No-See-Ums” hangers plugged -- and sold -- on the Ami Sims website. I’ve been thrilled with every thingamajig I’ve ever purchased from Ami’s website and this is no exception. These suckers are a little pricey, but I’m still a fan. Oh, and if you need a chuckle, Ami’s monthly newsletter is always pretty good. Click on the snowflake on her home page, here.

You can see the brackets on either side of the top of the Christmas Charm quilt. I was very much OK with that, since for the majority of the year, I have another slightly wider quilt that will fill that space. Plus, the gold brackets against the off-white wall are a lot less obvious in person.

Oh, and this was the first one I put up and it’s more than a little crooked. I need to get a few more Command Adhesive strips and I’ll fix it. Meanwhile, safety pins are my friend!

Next, we have another one of my favorite wall hangings, my Snowflakes quilt!

It's on the landing going upstairs. I'm basically standing a half-step to the left of where you'd be when you first walked into our front door. The quilt is a little small in the pic to give you perspective.

I didn’t think to take a closeup shot of this quilt, but each snowflake is machine appliquéd with gold metallic thread, and it looks pretty damn cool. This is also a spot where I can change out less seasonally-oriented quilts. Or, thanks to the Command strips, I can just take down the brackets entirely.

Finally, the “showcase” spot in our entryway goes to a quilt that I didn’t make, but it’s one that means a lot to me.


This is “Celestial Gekkos,” a bargello quilt made by a good friend and fantabulous quilting teacher, Mary Ellen Sakai. Several years ago, she decided to sell a few of her quilts. This one spoke to me and her price was quite reasonable, so I jumped on the opportunity.

When we were in California, this quilt had a place of honor in our guest room, and I could see it every time I went downstairs. Now, I’ll see it every time I go into the entryway of my house!

We're meeting with our interior designer on Saturday to get a piece to fill the space under that quilt. I'm hoping to get a bench for one wall in the entry and a table of some sort for the other wall.

All of the colors are a little "off" in these photos. They were taking during daylight, but it was seriously rainy in the 'Burgh today. I needed the lights on all day!

I'm volunteering at the hospital with my mom tomorrow morning and then I'll start chipping away at my loooong list of things to do. I need more hours in the day!