Flood of 2011

Yes, we've had a lot of rain and the river a mile from my house and down the hill is nearing it's point of over-flow and I've had people ask me if we are in danger of getting flooded and I say "No, not even possible" Well the river didn't hit us but a broken irrigation pipe did. It broke underground and finally found an escape route through the dirt and spewed up one night after the sprinklers went off. It's a pressurized line so it had some force. It filled the big window well and the pressure broke the window and destroyed the blinds in the process. It was 4:30 AM, thank goodness we were home. It was very loud and there was running water so we ran downstairs...barefooted. When I heard arching from the treadmill I ordered all barefoot people out of the water and ran upstairs to hit the breaker switches and unplugged everything before turning the lights back on. On our second trip down nearly every step under our now shod feet was breaking glass that had floated all through the craft room and hall and was making it's way into the bedrooms and even into the family room. This water came from the window well so of course it had dirt, leaves, worms, bugs and even a salamander.

Did I mention that the force destroyed the blinds?

I've never been known for my immaculate house keeping and it came back to bite me in the craft room. I had my top drawer full of stamp pads open 2 inches. It instantly filled with water and filled all three drawers below it. The cart with my paper caught the water coming down and ruined all of that. The family and personal portraits, however, were in hanging file folders safely under the counter.

The counter had my paper cutter, quilt fabric/projects (only a few) and pictures, framed and otherwise. Those items did not fare well and were strewn throughout the room.


This is down the hall and into the family room. Glass even got this far.






Dirty water everywhere.

(I lost a couple of pictures here, sorry)

ServiceMaster to the rescue and after much ulcer causing questions, State Farm came to the rescue and is covering the repairs.

All carpet had to come out and the cabinets. Sheetrock had to be removed 16 inches up and all insulation below that point. D was ready to start on his back yard work shop but now he's sheet rocking and we spend a lot of time looking at paint and carpet samples. Not how we wanted to spend our summer but so grateful that our disaster was nothing more than an inconvenience and otherwise we have all been well.

For my Sisters

No, it's not done yet but do you wanna see the progress of our sampler quilt?
Let me remind you that I've been crazy busy and...well...CRAZY!
This thing is a little labor intensive and remember me reminding you all that I had a new blade on my rotary cutter and it's sharp? Well, I had a little delay because of a rotary blade accident. Haha, nothing serious but it stopped me for a while. Anyway, Here it is:

Obviously I have not put the blocks together but see how cool they look all criss-crossy? If I do two more and put a border on it should be plenty big because it's not supposed to fit a bed anyway, it's just a throw.

I love the randomness and the contributions. Believe it or not I have actually sewn several more strips. It really takes a lot of strips. We bought the green and the brown solid fabric and the green just looked a ton better even though I was leaning toward the brown. Anyway, I love it but can't wait to get it done cause I have so many other projects I want to work on. Thanks again for coming and thanks for indulging me in this fun little project.

Wha? Two months? Really?

OK, First let me be the first to congratulate myself on getting right to the Thanksgiving blog post and showing off Sista J's amazing hosting skills and cute kids to boot. BUT (and it's a big one!) The last two months have really slipped through my fingers. I'm not a big fan of January and I find myself enduring rather than being productive. While I have done all of this (snuggling with Baby E) as possible.

There has been way too much of this going on:

I have managed to get around to this:


I am notoriously NOT a decorator but my lovely daughter helped me make the word HOME in big letters on the shelf above the doorway in our living room so by getting the letters L and V and repapering them I now have my Valentine decoration up. Ok, there's more but I really don't like the old ones I have so I'm working on something new.

I've been trying to get to this:

This is one finished quilt block that my sisters and I worked on while we were together. I should have it done, put together and all quilted up but refer to the beginning of this post. But, hey, did you catch the point about ALL my sisters being together? That has never happened before with just the girls and Mom. We had a great time and since the girls from the midwest were here we saw a little of this:



Yeah, these two are 32 days apart in age but from birth have been 6 inches apart from birth but since the growth spurt of last year this is now the distance between the two. If I did nothing but blog I would go into detail about these two and their exploits. Oh My!

But, yes, we all got together and on a cold blustery day we braved the icy roads and went to the Salt Lake temple and trudged on to the JSMB and enjoyed a wonderful early dinner at the Garden Restaurant complete with fried dill pickles. don't knock it till you try it. We stayed up late that night and the next night was New Years Eve. We had our traditional German Chocolate cake and observed my favorite tradition and went to bed early. Really, I'm no fun late at night. On new years we ate and sewed and watched movies and laughed. We planned another get-together and made memories. I love my sisters and enjoy getting together with them and can't wait to do it again.

As you might have guessed they came a day early and we had a salon day where they got their hair done. That was fun too.