Hey, I won a pillow!

Back at the beginning of April, I posted a Spring party suggestion on the Create My Event blog in a contest to win a Thomas Paul pillow from 2Modern. I checked the website today to see who won the pillow, and it was me! What fun!

Here is the pillow...

And this was my party theme suggestion:

"How about a "Springing From Your Garden" party for your friends. Provide inexpensive, colorful flower pots, pansies or seedlings from a nursery, and some dirt. Let each person plant a couple of pots of flowers (or herbs, hot peppers, etc.) to take home with them. Serve simple hors d'oeuvres on spring themed floral plates and enjoy good friends and conversation. Send everyone home with the promise that Spring has sprung."

If you want to read the other party suggestions, you can find them here, in the comments section of the page.

So, I worked in DD's bedroom yesterday packing up her desk so the desk can go in the POD. I spent today in there also, packing up all the things that were piled on her floor, cleaning out the bookcase, moving the furniture around, cleaning out the closet, vacuuming and dusting, and using a scraper and Goo Gone to get a gazillion little spots of sticky stuff off her walls. She used to have a bunch of cork board squares on her wall and they didn't stick well. The double stick tape that was supposed to hold them up stuck very well to the wall, albeit not to the cork boards. After I finally got all the sticky stuff off the wall I had to touch up 2 shades of blue paint (she has 3 wide horizontal stripes in different shades of blue on her walls) where some of the double stick tape had pulled the paint off the wall.

So, it looks a whole lot better than it used to and this arrangement of her furniture makes the room seem larger, so I think it is ready for potential buyers to see. Oh, wait - I forgot the tape on the window that I need to scrape off with a razor blade. OK - it's ALMOST ready to show!

Last night I made new curtains for the dining room window and for the French doors in the kitchen. The old curtains were getting tired after 11 years and the morning glory flowers on the fabric on the kitchen curtains went well with our wallpaper and border, but since those are no longer up on the walls the curtains went bye-bye too. I didn't replace the curtains over the sink, but the French doors have mini blinds on them to block the setting sun and I needed new curtains to cover up the ugly mini blinds.
We are planning to head out to the house tomorrow to see what's going on. I won't be here this weekend, so we'll go tomorrow and then again on Monday or Tuesday to check on things and take more photos (I love digital cameras - I can't imagine how much film I would be going through taking photos of this house if I didn't have a digital camera!).

Oh, and let's go PENS (for the hockey fans in our midst)!

There's mud, and then there's MUD...

Wow! The siding and brick are almost done on the front of the house! There is still a lot of brick to go up on the back and side of the house, but the hardie plank looks like it's about done.

And, notice that my sewing studio window has been corrected. It only took 3 tries to get the window correct. :-D

The window was originally supposed to be a rectangular window where the octagonal window is now, but the roofline over the mudroom was in the way, so the framers put the rectangular window further to the right and higher up. In that position, it was too close to the adjacent protruding wall and there was no room for the window trim around it on the outside. Now, they have replaced the rectangular window with the octagonal window and put it in the location that the window was originally intended to go.

On the inside of the sewing studio, you can see the second location of the rectangular window(where the drywall is missing on the left). The octagonal window is too high up to see out of, but it does let in light. I'd rather have it look right on the outside of the house than to be able to see out of it from the inside. Whoever buys this house from us is going to think it rather odd, though.

The brick accent has been put in over the front door. They built a template to use to help keep the arc of the brick even and to hold the bricks in place while the mortar dries.
Here is the underside of the covered area by the patio.

And these are the boards that will be used as the ceiling of the outdoor covered areas (by the patio and by the front door).
The El Dorado Meseta Fieldledge stone has arrived. It will be used on the chimney, on the bottom of the posts near the front door and near the patio covered area, and on the fireplace inside the house. They don't have as much color as I thought they would...
The mudding of the drywall inside the house will probably take most of next week (we like this kind of mud!). And, speaking of mud, we were happy to see that most of the MUD around the outside of the house has dried up (we don't care for this kind of mud). I'm sure it won't stay that way for long, but it was nice not having to put boots on to walk around the house.

Tomorrow is a big work day at our current house. DH will be replacing the woodpecker-damaged corner boards while I continue packing up stuff in our closets, and we need to get the POD loaded with boxes.