My Only Sunshine

Mail Mail Mail!!!

I love mail!  I haven't gotten much mail to get excited about since I moved back to Texas.  Most of our mail isn't even for us.  Yesterday was different.

Amy sent me a package.  She told me she had something for me, but I don't think I ever had time to stop and think about it.  Then yesterday Elvis arrived at my house.  He had Barbie with him, and yarn, Mmmmm yarn.  I don't believe I've ever owned any handspun yarn before.  I love yarn, I buy lots of it, but this yarn is special.  it was handspun by my friend Amy and now it lives at my house.  See, I told you it was special.  Isn't it beautiful?  I am a lucky knitter.

Probably all of you (who go into Starbucks, that is) have seen the new cupcakes they are selling.  I mean to take pics the other day but didn't get around to it.  This morning they showed me something else new though...  Now when you buy the Marble Mocha Macchiato, which I love, you get a stir stick.

It's white and dark chocolate in a ball at the end of a plastic rod.  They say you can stir the chocolate into your coffee or enjoy it on its own.  I went with the second one.  Yumm.

I would recoming trying this if you like coffee and chocolate. Sunday at SnB NanC said to me that a few visits with their group and I would be knitting socks for sure.  Obviously she can see the future.

What is that reclining in my front yard?  You got it, a sock.  To be more specific, it's a Tech Guy sock.  I'm on a MagKnits kick I guess. 

After hanging out with the flowers Mr. Tech Sock went to check the mail.  I guess he was hoping for goodies too.

Odessa, she is done!

I went to Dallas Stitch n Bitch yesterday and finally got to meet Chris and NanC.  It was a wonderful time.  Want to know the best part? I got to knit!!!  Lately I have been knitting for about half an hour a week, and that is in 3 minute intervals.  During the SnB I got several hours of knitting and chatting, straight through.  Amazing.

Do you see her, reclining in the sunshine in my back yard?  The fruits of my labor...  Odessa.  I used the yarn called for, Rowan Cashsoft DK, in lime.  The yarn was very enjoyable to work with.  I love the color and the feel.  It's nice and squooshy and soft.  I got my beads in a random pack of greens at Michael's.  I think they worked very well though they weren't so easy to work with.

Just so you don't think Odessa spends all of her time lounging in the sun, here she is mowing the yard.

After getting the grass taken care of she came back in the house.

At first she tried to hide in shoe-kea...

but then she knew she needed to get back to work unpacking.

Next up, getting the kid healthy. After that, socks... wish me luck.

Shoe-kea?

Last weekend Bob (my mother) came to visit and check out the new digs.  While she was here we spent a day at IKEA.  Bob had never been and I knew she would love it.  I was right.  She got herself a lazy susan that she could fit in her tiny suitcase and wished she could take home the rest of the store.  She bought me something too...

Not the kid, I already had her.  No, she bought me a small chest (sold in the kids section) for us to keep our shoes in. 

Historically we have left our shoes in a heap right inside the door, or when feeling really organized we keep them in a big plastic bin.  It keeps the rest of the house clean of shoe stuff but it doesn't look so good right at the site of the shoes.  In the new house we have an area right inside the door from the garage that is sheltered from the living room by a short wall.  This area is right outside the master bedroom.  I have decided that I want to hang hooks on the wall (they were sold out) for our coats and that I also wanted to keep our shoes there.  This chest is just the thing.

It didn't take TOO much work to put together, though I did curse a couple of times.  It already has shoes in it and I love it.  Yay Shoe-kea!!!

While one kid is sitting on the new chest the other kid is asleep in my bed.  Remember when I posted about missing SnB because I had a kid sick with a stomach virus?  Well now that same kid has been out of school for a week with the flu.  We even went to the doc yesterday and made it official, the flu it is.  Oh, and this weekend is the next SnB, what are the odds?

Even with everything else going on I have gotten a little knitting done.  Not much, but some.

We haven't seen the sun here for a while.  So I am going to post a bright pic and maybe I can trick myself into thinking it's sunny.

I was right

You may all remember the saga last week with the new house.  We closed on Thursday at 11 and when we got to the house at 12 there were moving trucks out front.  We ended up going back at 3, 6, and 11 and he was still in the house.  Actually, at 11pm we went by the house and the lights were out and things were locked up so we thought maybe he was finally out.  We opened the front door (at some point during the day we had been given a key to OUR house) and the security alarm went off.  The Secutiry Alarm!!!  We were breaking into our own home, because we do not yet have the code.  We just had to sit around waiting to see if the cops would show up.  While waiting we looked around the house and it still had a huge pile of stuff in it and a refridgerator.  After a few minutes the "former" owner showed up and said that the security system had called him so he could give the password so he thought he should come check things out.  We asked when he would be out of our house and he said he had to wait to hear back from his moving people because they had forgotten to get his fridge.  I guess he didn't realize we had been inside and seen all of the other stuff laying about.  So he went back to his brand new, much bigger house, and we came back to the temp apartment.  First thing in the morning we called a locksmith to come out and change the locks on the house.  The guy stll had the garage door openers, but at least he wouldn't be able to get into the house unless we let him in.

When we got to the house everything was gone but the fridge and the realtor lock box on the front door.  Oh wait, there were also four business suits in the coat closet.  Thankfully, not long after we had the locks changed the guy was ready to get his fridge and get out of our house.  He still hasn't gotten his suits though.  Later in the day our Realtor called me to say that he had called the attorney that owned the title company we used and that in the end I was right.  It says in our contract that we take possession at the time of closing and we do.  From that point forward the former owner was trespassing.  It doesn't do any good, knowing that, but it does make me feel better to know I was right.

One of the reasons we closed on Thursday was that we had hoped to spend Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday painting and cleaning up around the house before our things were delivered on Monday.  Well we ended up only getting the weekend to get things done.  We did almost get it half done.

The house has 4 bedrooms; three in the front and then a master in the back.  One of the three in the front was already painted purple, perfect for Bitty.  The other two were a more neutral color.

This is the room we will use for a playroom/office.  You can see the color the two non-purple rooms were on the wall in there.  Well Bug couldn't have a room like that if Bit was getting a purple room, so this is what we did.

Pink!  What a surprise.  Just like in the house in Tulsa we have one pink room and one purple room.  Painting that one room was much harder than I thought it would be.  We're sore, still.

After getting the room all pinked up and then cleaned up we moved on to the trim in the rest of the house.  In several rooms of the house the trim is brand new and has only been primed before installation.  It still shows the nails holes and the woodgrain.  Here is a pic from the master bedroom as an example.

With the trim looking like that we had to start with putty, the sand paper, and then tape.  Bitty is very helpful.

After that we had painting, lots of painting.

While doing all of this, Buggy wasn't feeling so well.  She was doing this

As you can see, she didn't look so perky. With all of the painting, the sick kid, etc, I didn't get to go to Stitch n Bitch. I was pretty bummed out not to get to go. (well that's quite an understatement) but at least we got lots done. If Bug hadn't ended up in the urgent care center with a scratch on her cornea yesterday she might have even been feeling better. I hope everyone is having a better few days than I am. Soon I will be settled into my new home and things will start looking up, I'm sure.

Closing Day

We closed on our new house today.  We signed the papers, funding went through, we headed for our new home.  This is what we saw when we got there...

This might be exciting, if that was our stuff, but it wasn't.  When we got there we found the former owner still there, most of his stuff still inside.

We went off to pick up the kids and came back later.  He was still there.  We went off to kill some more time and came back, he was STILL THERE.  So we asked our realtor and he said that he looked into it and that the guy could stay until midnight.  I totally disagree, it says in our contract that we take possession of the house at the time of closing.  The problem is, what do we do?  Really our only recourse is to sue the guy for the money we paid for the house for this one day.  Is it worth it? Probably not, it would cost us more to sue him than we would get from him.  It just really ruined my day.  When you close on a house you want to get to run into the house whooping and roll around on the carpet giggling before your stuff shows up.  I wanted to be excited, instead I was frustrated.

So there ya have it.  We own a house today, maybe tomorrow we can actually go inside.

As Seen on Child

She likes it.    That's good because she can be pretty hard to please.  She even likes it enough to let me get a few pics of her wearing it, though she didn't want to slow down for me to get "good" shots of it.

My Bitty, she's a swing girl.  She could easily spend hours on the swing.  Sadly, her mother can't really spend hours swinging her.

Bug saw all the attention "Bit in scarf" was getting and had to get in on the action.  She's a ham.

After I picked up the kids from school we went over to the playground, as you can see.  Frisco has these huge sports complexes set up for youth soccer and baseball.  This one is right down the street from our house and has this wonderful playground.  With swings and everything.  My girlies love it. 

In between pushing Bit on the swing and taking pictures of opera Bug there I got ready for a new project.  Now that the scarf is done I needed something new to work on.  Something to refresh me.  I went to the Woolie Ewe today and picked up a ball of RY Cashsoft DK and some new needles.  Then I went by Michael's since I didn't have time to hit the bead store I wanted to go to.  Now I am all ready to cast on for Odessa.

Bitty's Rainbow Scarf

Last night I completed the Children's Rainbow Scarf from Last-Minute Knitted Gifts.  I had intended it for someone else but when I got about 2/3 of it done Bitty said, "Is that for me? You never knit me anything."  Well when your 4 year old says you don't knit enough for her what is a Mommy to do?  So now it is hers.  I didn't let her wear it today though, I wanted to get a few pics before she runs off and loses it.

It was knit from Noro Kureyon in two colors that I don't remember the numbers for.  One of them is mostly pink, which suits her well, and the other had all kinds of colors, good for a rainbow scarf.  I plan to give it a quick little wash to soften it up a little and then set it free to be with Bit as long as she can keep track of it.  I'm thinking of tacking it to the collar on her denim jacket.

I had fun going out in the bright sunny crispness of our Dallas morning and taking pictures.  It really is a beautiful day.

I went out to the little dog park out behind my temporary apartment unit.  The funny thing about this little area is that there are never any dogs.  There are plenty of dogs doing their business in the tiny little bit of grass outside my apartment.

Thankfully all of that will be over soon.  The neighbors will no longer have to come out on their balconies to figure out why the strange woman is hanging accessories from the tree.  (I had lots of on-lookers this morning.)  Thursday we close on our house and on Monday our things are delivered.  I will get to  sleep in my own bed, I can't tell you how happy that makes me.

I'm so excited for Sunday as well.  I have been invited to ride with NanC and Chris to the Dallas Stich 'n' Bitch.  That will be much fun, though now that I have finished the scarf I need something new and portable to work on.  That being said, I'm gonna finish this post and hit the yarn store.

Here I am

Yes, it has been nearly eternity since I have posted. I've got reasons though, really.

The good news is, I am sitting here at the mall in Plano on the computer and I am posting. Since you heard from me last I have moved from Tulsa into temp housing in Dallas. Soon I will move into my new home (it's not really new, just new to me) and start settling in. I can hardly wait. I probably won't be posting all that much until then, but I do promise I will be back.