Happy 2016...finally!!

Happy 2016!!  Yes, it is a belated greeting, but it is heart felt!  I am so thankful to have survived 2015, but so glad to see it GO!  I got to a point of being ready ENOUGH for all the family at Christmas, but not until 3 minutes before the first of them arrived on Monday night, December 21!  Have you ever experienced that kind of entertaining panic?  

(Steve and I were shoving the extensions into 2 huge dining tables, right before the first car rolled up!)

I wanted so badly to get pictures of my efforts in the house before they all came, because I KNEW with 3 kids under 6 yrs old, the house would be SHREDDED quickly!  But no pictures were taken and now I am trying to put things back together again!  The main floor is just about there...

I have not taken down any of the three Christmas trees yet, so I know what that means...WITCHES!  But I say, bring 'em on!  I decided I wasn't taking them down until I had a chance to sit and enjoy the decorations FIRST!  Dec. 21 - Jan. 9 is kind of a blur...there was some kind of family here for that whole period of time (plus we were in Philadelphia for 5 of those days, Christmas-ing with Steve's family).  But now it is just me and Steve, as daughter Riley returned to the University of Alabama for the new semester last weekend.

Ahhhh...

We are almost moved into this beautiful family home that my parents built, called "Yeldell," in rural northwest Alabama.  These pictures feature half of the 'great room' that makes up the center of the house (my back is to the kitchen and dining room...).  The ceiling is 27 feet tall, which is hard to capture in pictures.  It is a log home, so what you are seeing is the interior of the logs which have been stained and varnished, or log panels where opposing wings of this floor branch off.

There are clear story windows up high, so it is very hard to photograph on sunny days, hence the weird patches of sunlight in some of the shots.

The music tree, which features instruments and all things musical...

And a few old instruments underneath...

A nativity scene at the end of the piano...

A snowman scene on top of the piano (standing snowman by Mary Jones)...

And my favorite, my main tree which holds so many years of homemade ornaments, made by dear friends, my daughter as she was growing up, co-workers, and me.  

The look on my daughter's face when she found a car key in the toe of her stocking on Christmas morning...

And when she found the car in the garage...

And checking under the hood with her Dad after Christmas...

Surprising her on Christmas morning was FUN!

Now that the dust is settling, I have started to sort out some fabric and quilt books.  I am still trying to determine where everything will go. There is no single space large enough to house the quilt cave, which comprised most of our large basement in our Michigan house.  There will have to be things stuffed, staged and stashed in a couple of areas of the house.

I moved a lot of the fabrics, books and supplies from the outside storage building to the walk-out downstairs family room before Christmas.  But then I had to cram all the boxes and bins under the ping-pong and pool tables and in a large "mountain" against the back wall of the inside of the house until family left.

I need to drag it all out again now that I have some time to figure things out...I can't find ANYTHING right now!

I will have a small sewing area in our large bedroom equipped with my featherweight and my main studio downstairs with my primary machine. 

Splitting up the tools will be tricky.  Quilt books will be upstairs, but all patterns and files downstairs...trickier still...

All fabric, batting, tools, project boxes and cutting area will be downstairs, except for what I am immediately piecing on with the featherweight and my little containers of applique fabric pieces for applique block prepping.

Getting things in the right area so that I can have ready access will be a complex problem to solve.

I have managed to do some designing of six inch applique blocks and have a few prepped and ready to stitch.  I will share those next time.  Maybe by then I will have a few applique stitches placed! I could be doing some chain stitching on previously cut-out piecing projects if I could just find the bobbins that fit my featherweight machine, LOL.  Oh, and thread.  See my problem??

Thank you for the emails of concern about my absence from blogland.  It has been harder to settle in than I anticipated.  The house in Michigan has sold and trying to blend our furniture and belongings with my parents' stuff has been tricky and emotionally difficult.  I have had to sort through a lot of items.  There is still lots of stuff left to do, but with Christmas out of the way things can wait until I get my sewing areas set up!!

Any news of quilt shops or quilty events in NW Alabama or the surrounding area would be appreciated.  Not that I need to buy anything, but I definitely need to meet some quilters!!  At some point, I will probably join the Huntsville, Alabama guild.  They have monthly meetings and a show every other year.

Looking forward to sewing and creating again!

In stitches,
Teresa  :o)