If you've been following me along over the last few years you'll remember all the drama we've had. 3 years ago the house we had been renting was sold when the owners divorced. This started a long journey through 4 different moves, including moving from Oregon to Idaho. We moved to Idaho in June 2010 and stayed with my mom until January 2011. In January we were able to find a rental. The house was a Godsend at the time....just a little 2 bedroom/ 1bath but we had 4.5 acres to play with. Little did we know what kind of issues we'd face with this house.....we've had sewage issues with the toilet backing up into the bathtub. We've had electrical issues...and have had to play with so many breaker switches I never want to see one again. We've also had issues with mold ALL over this house. Now remember...we moved in to this house in the wintertime. We had no idea what we'd face when summertime came. The house is infested with spiders and earwigs. At night when we go to bed we have to shake out all our bedding to make sure there are no spiders or earwigs in them. We wake up to them crawling on us and are constantly smacking them all over the house. I would rather live with flies than the bugs we've had. Here are a few pictures of the house....


This is the tiny kitchen...excuse the mess all over, we are in the process of packing things up. Notice the standing dishwater in the sink, the sink is plugged and drains slow. Also notice there are no cupboard doors....
This picture shows the gap at the top of the backdoor and the mold around the top. Earwigs constantly come through here as well as spiders. I've often wondered if the ceiling is full of mold too considering it's so wobbly.

This is just a picture of the bare bulb in the hallway. It is covered in rust and mold....it will not come off no matter how much you scrub.

This is one of the heat vents. Notice the gap? Mice live in the walls and come out through the gaps. This is how EVERY heat vent in the house is....

Here is a picture of one of the windows. This has been scrubbed numerous times and it's still covered in mold.

This is a picture of how my kitchen sink drains. The pipe goes from the kitchen to the garage and drains into this trash can. We then use a garden hose to drain the trash can out in the yard. My washing machine also drains from a random pipe out to the driveway....nothing like pulling your car up and driving through dirty washing machine water.

I felt very blessed when we found this house to rent. We needed a roof over our heads and a place to call home. We were lucky to find it at the time and I've been thankful for it. Even with all the issues we've had just living here, I knew we were lucky and things could have been way worse. Well about 2 months ago the owners put the property on the market. They said they would honor my lease but I knew from past experience we had better start looking for another place to live.

Fast forward to 3 weeks ago.....I was browsing craigslist for a new rental and happened upon a place that sounded great. Called the number in the ad only to discover the place had sold, but he had another house he had just purchased at forclosure auction and hadn't listed it yet. Told him our credit was bad and we really couldn't buy anything at this time. Come to find out, not only is he a liscensed broker....he's a liscensed lender too. Ended up chatting on the phone and telling him our entire story of the last 3 years. Sooo, out of curiousity more than anything I agreed to go peek at this other house. I fell in love with it! After many bouts of looking over our credit report, some financial planning and chats with the title/escrow company......we were able to find a way to purchase the home!!!

We now have a nice fat 30 year mortgage to worry about....but this is what I get to live in for those 30 years........enjoy...



Here is the front of the house....the grass was just planted so doesn't look so great yet but it's starting to grow.

This next pic is the living room area....

Here is my kitchen. So much more space than what I've had to work with....

Here's a pic of my pantry.......Love it! I had nowhere to store our food before....

here is my master bathroom.....

Master bedroom closet....

Master bedroom.....

Another shot of the master bedroom......

My youngest sons room...

Oldest sons room....

My craft room......(happy dancing!)

Craft room closet.....

Backyard for my little Rudy (my chi-pom) and the boys...

Another shot of the backyard.....

And my favorite thing of all.......my front door. They painted it "Ferrari Red"....love it!

Ok...so no stitchy pics this time....but I hope you enjoyed the pics of my family's new "homestead"......I am so excited to begin this new journey. And doubly excited to FINALLY have a crafty oasis of my very own. Hugs to all and happy stitching!

Been Awhile....

It's been a while since I've wandered over here in blog land. I've been reading everyone else's blogs from time to time but just haven't been keeping up with mine. I lost my stitching mojo for a while and just couldn't seem to finish anything and nothing would hold my interest. Over the last month or so the stitching bug is finally returning and I've been able to finish my Lizzie Kate "Living with Charm" piece. I did NOT use the charms on this one because I like it just fine without them. I think I may make this into a wall quilt. Here she is in all her glory.....

My group KraftersKorner is doing a RR and after searching for just the right piece to do, I finally found just the right chart in one of my older UK magazines. I've left the middle 3 sqares for each person to stitch and sign and then when it comes home to me, I'll let the group vote on how to finish it. It was a little bit of a switch for me since this is 18 count aida and I usually stick with 32 count but I liked the color and it was the right size fabric so voila! Here is my piece waiting to be sent to the next person.....

My other group, the Stitcherhood, is having a challenge to get so many projects done before we buy new stash. I've fallen off the wagon and had to restart so I thought to myself the best way to complete those 10 projects is to finish some of the UFO's & WIPS I have laying around. I've had this next project sitting here for months just waiting to be picked up. It's Lizzie Kate's "Christmas by the Letter". I'm going to try to get this one finished soon and it will also be a wall quilt for the holidays. Here's my progress so far:

Not much else going on in my world at the moment. The kids start back to school at the end of August and I am so ready! I need some "me" time again! Hope this stitching bug hangs around for a while, maybe I'll actually update this little boring blog a bit more often. Hugs to all and happy Stitching!