The changing views...

It's interesting to see how different the river looks depending on the day, or even the time of day, that you are looking at it. I took this photo yesterday and the river looks very white, but we sure can see a lot of the river without the leaves on the trees!
I took this photo today. The river looks much more blue - whether that is due to the adjacent snow on the ground or perhaps there was a bit of fog lying over the river yesterday, I don't know...
And here is our view of the river when the trees are fully leaved-out. You can barely see it! We're planning to thin out the trees down on the edge of the cliff so we can have a clearer view of the river year-round.
On Wednesday, I enjoyed a luncheon and program sponsored by the Oakmont Garden Club. I put a silent auction bid on this wreath and (with the help of a friend!) won it. I haven't decided where to put it yet. It could go over the mantel, or in the entry, or on the front door...
Last night I embroidered more Santa napkins for the women's dinner that I'm hosting in December. I also made up this quilted name banner for a friend who lives in a senior apartment building. If she wants people to know where she lives, she can put it on the outside of her door; otherwise, she can hang it inside her apartment. She is a huge Steelers fan, so I had to make it with Steelers colors. It will be a Christmas gift for her (so no one tell her, please!)...

The never-ending to-do list...

DH spent Saturday installing the gas logs in our fireplace. It's wonderful to flip a switch on the wall and have a fire in the fireplace. I have used it often since he finished installing it...

And the weather outside made it all the nicer to have a fire in the fireplace. We had snow flurries all day Saturday and Sunday, but fortunately only a bit of it stuck to the ground.
DH's other project for the weekend was to work on the broom closet. The builder only had one shelf in the closet and it doesn't hold much. DH will add a couple of more shelves for cleaning supplies, an outlet for plugging in chargers for phones, etc. (he actually installed it before I shot this photo), and an outlet to plug my Swiffer sweeper vac into to charge it.
While he was at the store to get a longer pipe to install the gas logs, he picked up a couple of thin sheets of metal to put in the bottom of my spice drawers to keep the magnetic tins from sliding around.
DD asked me to take some photos of her room and post them so her friends at college can see her room, so here they are. There are still a couple of piles of things laying around that didn't go back to college with her.
The dresser and closet side of the room and the all-important golf ball collection...
The desk area and entrance to her room...
The bookcase...
For those following the saga of the hunting blind that someone set up on our property, we still haven't seen any sign of the owner. The winds were strong on Saturday, so the blind collapsed but didn't blow away because it is staked into the ground. Gun season for deer hunting begins the Monday following Thanksgiving here in PA, so my guess is that he set up the blind early to stake out his territory. He'll be really surprised when he comes back to hunt and finds the Posted signs that we've hung up around our property!
A good part of this weekend was spent searching online for some stools for the bar in the kitchen/family room. I sent DH a long list of possibilities and he sent back a list of his 3 favorites. This one is the Tommy stool - I was a bit worried that the legs on this one would mar the wood floors and they were so narrow at the bottom it wasn't obvious that felt pads would work on the legs...
This one is the Hillsdale Cierra stool. Part of the problem with all the stools we looked at was the risk that the reds wouldn't coordinate with the red chairs that we already have in the room in front of the fireplace. They came in other colors, so the second dilemma was trying to decide on color.
We finally decided on this stool. It is the Hillsdale Venus stool and we bought 4 of them for the kitchen bar area. The online reviews were very good - very well made, sturdy, and comfortable...
I think this stool is really fun, but DH didn't care for it. Maybe I'll get it for my sewing studio. I'm planning to get a stool to sit on at my cutting table while I work on my scrapbooking. I need to get the counter-height cutting table in there first, then a 26" stool should work well.
I spent Saturday doing some cleaning and cutting shelf liner to fit the shelves and drawers in my kitchen. I didn't do all of the cupboards, but wanted to get the ones done that might get water or dirt on them. I mainly did the cupboards where I store my glassware and the drawers where I store my spices.

I also worked on a set of placemats that I'm making for our family room table. I finished one last week and yesterday I almost finished a second one. It may be a while before I get all 6 of them done! The embroidery takes 45 minutes to an hour per placemat and the handstitching around the embroidery takes about an hour per placemat. I hate handstitching, but it really adds to the details on the placemat. Photos to come later...

Home for the Holidays...

This post was written for Houseblogs.net as part of a sweepstakes sponsored by SC Johnson’s Right@Home.

Decorating for Christmas this year will be a lot different from previous years. We lived in our last house for 11 years, and have only lived in this one for 3 months. I had gotten in the habit of decorating the same way over the years, so it should be fun to figure out how to decorate our new house.

I guess our first step will be to find the decorations! The basement is not yet in any kind of order, although I can see some of our Christmas decorations amid the jumble!
Here are some more decorations. I used to gather all our Christmas-themed stuffed animals and some of the stuffed animals that the kids played with when they were little and I had a collection on the floor in our entryway by the front door.
DH has started to organize down in the basement. He bought 6 sets of these plastic storage shelves to put all the boxes on...
This December will be the third year in a row that I have hosted the women's dinner for our church. Last year I used a snowman theme for the party. I embroidered redwork snowmen on the dinner napkins and had snowman take-home ornaments and chocolates for everyone. The past two years we had 16 women over for the dinner. I had two tables set up in the eat-in kitchen for 8 of the women...
And the other 8 table settings were on the dining room table...
Here is a close-up of one of the place settings...
And another place setting...
This year's theme is a Santa theme, so I've started stitching the Santa napkins...
We have a new mantel to decorate this year. DH's grandmother made all of us felt stockings when she was still alive and we always hang those for Christmas. I think they will look good on our new mantel...
A couple of years ago I decided to gather together all the Santas that we have collected over the years, instead of having them spread around the house. They made a nice display...
Here is a close-up of some of my Santa tree ornaments...
The other thing I do to prepare for the holiday is to sew gifts. Here is a purse that I made for DH's niece a couple of years ago, along with a matching mirror...
And I made one for her sister also...
Of course, we have to decorate the tree! We haven't decided where to put the tree in our new house yet.
I posted this quilt a couple of days ago. I'm glad to have it done so I can use it to decorate the house this year...
And I have to find my Christmas purse, because it just won't seem like Christmas without it! The reindeer's antlers are lighted and flash on and off!
I know it isn't even Thanksgiving yet, but Christmas is coming (and I have to start early because I make so much by hand). What are you going to do to get ready for Christmas this year?

The tile man cometh (sort of)...

The kitchen cabinet guy and bathroom tile guy arrived yesterday morning to add the backsplash to the bathtub in the master bathroom. It turned out that the tile guy was just there to explain to the cabinet guy what needed to be done, and then he left. The cabinet guy worked all day yesterday and most of the day today and got the backsplash done. We had them echo the angle of the top of the shower...
He also added the tile over the vanity that we asked him to do so that the mirror won't look lopsided. The tile guy had to get 2 of the shower tiles to do this area, as the backsplash behind the tub was done in the floor tile, not the darker shower tile.
DH recently added the glass doors to the fireplace...
The photo below was taken from the back of our house. The blue arrow is pointing at the hunting blind. While eating my lunch today, I noticed something over near the bushes to the left (where the orange arrow is pointing). Upon closer inspection, it turned out to be a young buck that was lying there dead. :-( I saw this young buck running across our property the other day. I don't know how it died. If a hunter shot it, they would have taken it with them.
Here is a close-up of him. I didn't get close enough to see whether he had been shot (the zoom on my camera comes in handy sometimes). I'm wondering if he was shot somewhere else, or hit by a car, and then made it this far before he died. So sad...
The pool inspector came this morning to check that our fence was in and the alarm system worked on the doors that open out to the pool. We passed!

Christmas is coming!

So, we finally found the right size light bulb for the glass-topped coffee table that sits between the 2 red chairs in front of the fireplace, and now that there is an outlet in the floor, we were able to see how it looks when it's lit up. It's a fun table!
Last night I decided to finish a UFO (UnFinished Object) in my long list of quilting and sewing UFOs. I'm also probably procrastinating on finishing DD's window seat cushion because I'm not exactly sure how to go about making it. :-D

I started this quilted wall hanging back in 2004, right after I'd taken an online quilting course (Starting From Scratch) at http://quiltuniversity.com/. I embroidered all the reindeer and Santa squares and sewed the top together. After that, it sat for quite a while because I had never done machine quilting before and I wasn't quite sure what my next move would be.

The green squares were embroidered after I put the quilt sandwich (backing fabric, batting, quilt top) together so that the stitches would help hold the 3 layers together. I was having an issue with my sewing machine back then and the tension was really loose on the back of the quilt, but I didn't realize it until I had embroidered most of the green squares. I set the quilt aside for a while (which turned into a couple of years - I didn't like going down to the basement to sew in our former house). Last night I got the quilt out and "stitched in the ditch" in the blue squares, in the two text squares, and around the outer border. Then I trimmed the quilt up and sewed the binding on the outer edge.

I like how it turned out. I designed the quilt from scratch, using embroidery designs from http://emblibrary.com/. Here are some close-up shots of some of the squares. Here is Dancer and the Christmas tree outlines...
And here is Donner and the Santa hat outlines...
And, of course, Rudolph had to be embroidered on blizzard fabric instead of the snow fabric that all the other reindeer were embroidered on, since Rudolph had to save Christmas in the midst of a blizzard...

I still need to make a label and sew it on the back, but it's nice to finally have it done (and it's only been in the making for 4 years!).

The fence men returneth...

The fence guys returned early yesterday morning to install the two gates. I like how the fence turned out, but wish we didn't need to have one.

Here is a shot that shows how the fence looks from the driveway. The fence encloses the pool equipment which is at the end of the garage (you probably can't see the fence very well unless you click on the photo to enlarge it).
DH took the day off work yesterday and we went shopping for some things. I needed to get an area rug for underneath the rolling chair in my sewing studio. The bamboo floor was getting dented from the wheels on the chair and was starting to look bad.
It was difficult to photograph the dents in the bamboo floor - you can see some of the dents near the bottom of the photo where the spot of light is. I love the look of the bamboo, but it is definitely softer wood than what we're used to having on our floors.
We also bought a wheelbarrow to move dirt around. We have a small handcart, but it isn't sturdy enough to move heavier things in.
DH spent today putting a couple of outlets in the floor and working on the security system. One of the outlets went in front of the fireplace so we can plug in a laptop, or the light that is inside the base of the coffee table. The other one is near the end table in the great room, between my chair and DH's chair. He also installed some new light switches in the kitchen and family room. I spent a good part of today arranging DH's closet. It's something he hasn't had time to do and I was able to get rid of about 50% of the casual shirts on the bottom rod. They were shirts that were very old, or work shirts that were not in good shape anymore. I also had to change out all the hangers so that we only had plastic hangers in our closets. The wooden rods in our closets are too large in diameter to use wire hangers.
One of the other things we did yesterday was order mirrors for our master bathroom. DH's mirror choice was fairly straight forward. We ended up buying a rectangular mirror, 36" high x 30" wide. We plan to attach them to the wall and then DH will make wooden frames out of maple to match the cabinets in our bathroom. The wall space to the left of the light will be a spot for some artwork, I guess...
My mirror situation was not quite so straight forward. The difference in the height of the sink counter vs. the height of the vanity counter was an issue. We weren't sure whether to get one mirror, or two. I need to be able to see in the vanity mirror while seated. The other issue is that the light fixture over my sink is not centered, so if we get two mirrors, the light would probably have to be moved and centered over the mirror/sink.

We finally decided to get one large rectangular mirror for the area. Then we'll have the bathroom tile guy put tile above the granite backsplash over the vanity to extend the vanity backsplash to the same height as the sink backsplash. I'll still be able to see in the mirror while seated at the vanity, and the stone from the shower will look like it wraps around the corner to fill in that area above the backsplash (4-6" high). The tile guy is supposed to return on Monday morning to add tile behind the tub, so hopefully he'll be willing to add a few tiles in the vanity area. This is the mirror I've been using since we moved in at the end of July...DH doesn't even have a mirror in the bathroom. He has to go out and look in the mirror on his dresser in the bedroom.
There hasn't been any sign of the hunter yet. DH put up Posted signs around our property today - his note is still in the hunting blind.