Whirlwind Week

My week has been full of painting, painting, and more painting.  First came all of the wall touch-ups.  That wasn't so bad and went pretty quickly.  I think I got overly complacent that my work was almost done.  Then the reality hit when I started to work on the trim.  Whoever came up with the idea of white trim obviously never had children.  I spent so much time touching up baseboards and door frames it's ridiculous.  Gratefully, it looks a lot better, but man, I'm sick of painting.

Our realtor is awesome and very hands on.  She stages the entire house for pictures.  This was an almost 3 day process.  We started on Tuesday and I finished up right before they took the pictures this afternoon.  It was so much work, but the house looks good.  I was so relieved when it was all done.

During all of this I've had a very sad and sick little boy.  Well, all three boys were sick and missed some school this week, but Little Guy has gotten the worst of it.  It started out with a cold that developed into croup.  He started to get better and then he tanked again this weekend.  I took him to the doctor yesterday and he had an ear infection, tested positive for Flu (Type A), and on top of it all we think he has asthma.  His wheezing got really bad and we went ahead and got him an inhaler.  You would think we're trying to amputate his arm when having him use it.  Joel and I both have to hold him down to get him to breathe into the mask of the spacer.  He's been just sitting on his bed for hours at a time he's so tired and sad.  It's helpful when trying to get the house ready, but it's so incredibly sad to see him like this.  We're hoping the meds will all kick in and he'll start feeling better soon.  Little Lady has been the only person in the family to remain completely healthy.  She absolutely loved working on the staging with Sharon (our realtor).  She became her little assistant.  Little Lady also enjoyed her field trip to the zoo today, so she's had the best week out of anybody in the family.

Now that the pictures are done, we just have to deep clean everything for when it goes on the market next week.  Fingers crossed that it sells quickly, so that I don't have to try to keep it clean with 4 children running around the place!

Quilting Woes

I saw a quilt I really liked that just used Organic Waves for the quilting, and I wanted to do that with this quilt.  It's one of the beginner designs you first try when starting free motion quilting.  Why is it that sometimes the easiest things turn into the hardest ordeals.  That's what happened with me this time around.  I think first of all that I was just going too fast.  I was impatient and it caused its own set of problems. 

 I only did a couple of rows when my bobbin thread ran out.  That wasn't a big deal, but then I ran into trouble a couple of rows later.  This quilt has a ton of different types of fabric.  There's even 2 squares of stretchy t-shirt fabric.  I was careful with it when piecing the quilt together, but I completely forgot about it when I was quilting.  As I went quickly over it, it began to crazy stretch and when I reached the next fabric the t-shirt fabric was bunched together and it caused me to actually stitch the fabric around my free motion quilt.  It was crazy and funky and took me a little bit to cut carefully through the thread and detach every.  I fixed that, but then within a couple more rows I ran into more trouble.  I got to a thick piece of flannel, and as I crossed between the two fabrics it was slightly puckered.  My free motion foot snagged on it, because it wasn't laying flat, and it caused the needle to hit the free motion foot and snap in half.  I don't know why, but any time my needle breaks it scares me to death and I always give a little yelp.  It left a divot in my new free motion foot, so I was a bit sad about that.

I finally admitted I was trying to quilt way too fast.  I slowed down, and after replacing the needle, I didn't have anymore issues the rest of the way.  Slow and steady really does win the race!  I was cranky by the time I was done, but luckily the quilt looks fine, and now it's ready to be sent in the mail.  It's headed to one of my former middle school students who is now a mother.  Most of those students graduated from college this past year.  I'm feeling old!