Merry Christmas

This is probably our last post until we get back from home. Our suitcases are almost all packed, just waiting for tomorrow for our bathroom stuff. Gotta cram the cameras and other things into our carry-on bag and we are all set. 3 Christmas presents are sewn, 1 more is cute out and needs to be whipped together. I'll start it in the morning and finish it on my mom's sewing machine on Thursday. Then off to the store for a couple presents we're buying up there (cuz there certainly is no room in the suitcases) and then it's visiting and seeing friends and enjoying our vacation.

Tonight we had our family Christmas next to our beautiful Christmas tree. Peanut wasn't so interested after he got about 3 presents opened. He just played with his new toys and Mike and I exchanged gifts. My husband is the best, so very thoughtful and always gets me exactly what I love. And Peanut got me a beautiful sewing basket with 2 bundles of fat quarters inside that Mike says he picked out all on his own. They will make some very cute pillows for Peanut's room and for the floor for playing. He loves pillows. Loves to lay his head BRIEFLY down on them and then sit back up with his huge handsome smile on his face. This he does over and over.

I wish everyone that we won't be able to see on our visit or over the holidays a safe, warm and wonderful Christmas. Please don't drink and drive.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

~Crystal

Busy before Christmas

Well, we are only 2 days away from our trip "home" to the pacific northwest. I know this is our home now, but for some reason I can't stop calling it home up there. We are very excited to get to see people we miss, that's a given, but why can't Christmas have fallen in the warm months? We are going to freeze our butt's off! I'm still considering wearing shorts up there, til I talked to my lil brother yesterday, and he told me the high was 35! I've gone out to head to work in the mornings and had it be 35, but usually it gets up to high 60's in rather short order (no punn intended) so thats ok, but if that's all the warmer it's going to get, no way am I wearing shorts, I'll freeze my twig and giggle berries off!

I decided to try and get the garage cleaned out of peoples stuff I've been working on, so Friday and Saturday afternoons I got some serious work done in the garage.

This is 2 tables from a lady I did an inspection for way back in October. Sometimes when the Insurance companies send us out to do these inspections, they don't give us permission to do the repairs, they just want to know how much the repairs would cost. Then, they will either call us back and say "go fix their stuff", or you just get your check in the mail for doing the inspection and thats all you hear about it, when that happens, they send the shipper (thats the person whose crap they destroyed) a check based off of my report telling them how much it would be to fix their stuff. Once in a great while, people actually want their furniture fixed and will call us to come back and fix it. This last week was the first time someone actually called me back. Of course it would be one of my shippers that is at least 4 cans short of a six pack. She is a bit of an odd duck, shes alittle older, probably in her 60's, and I think a bit of a hypochondriac . She walks around in her house all bundled up like she is going to go climb the rockies or something. Anyway, she had a couple tables that got trashed, her moving truck had a leak in the roof and so alot of water got in and ruined quite a bit of her stuff, some could be fixed, some could not, or at least not for as cheap as it would have been to just buy new. Anyway, this first desk, its pretty cool. Tiny for a desk, but as best as I can tell, thats what it is. It has 2 drawers on it, one is concealed on the underside, and in fact, the shipper didn't even know the drawer was there, to bad it wasn't full of money, finders keepers! ha!

Anyway, here are the before shots:

2 Drawer desk




And now, the after:



She also had a sofa table. Cool table, not very well taken care of, but the leaking truck did it in. In this first picture, notice that the legs are black? Well, I re-did the table in black, even called her before I did it and told her I was going to redo the entire table in black so that it looked the way it used to look. "ok, whatever you think is best" was her response. Boy, I'll never trust that one again. When I got it to her house, she hated it. Cooky old bird! She then says to me "I didn't realize when you said it would be black, that it would actually be black".....is there a black out there that anyone know's about that once you apply it, it turns green or something? Holy smokes lady!!! Whatever, anyway, before and after again, you know the drill.





In an effort to get the garage even further cleaned out, I pulled a table out of a house this week to be re-finished, and am now waiting for my leather repair lady to call me back and tell me when she is headed up to this gals house so I can meet here and pay her after shes done with the work, and bring the ladies table back at the same time. So, here again, before/after.


So, that's what I did the last couple days. Now it's back to the grind, well, for a day anyway, taking Tuesday off to pack and work on cleaning up the office. Last night before Elliot went to bed, we were bringing in some still unpacked boxes from the garage and moving them into the spare room to be unpacked, its all mostly Crystals books getting unloaded onto a bookshelf. Thats the room we've moved our DVD's too until I can build us a cabinet with doors on it to keep out the boy. He got in there and went to work on the rack. It does my heart good to see him go straight for the video games, I'm going to really enjoy it when he grows up alittle and I can kick his butt at them, until he turns 5 at least, then his eye hand coordination will catch up and I'm screwed.


Well, thats it for now. Gotta hit the shower and then it's off to my next cooky old birds house. Did an inspection for her last week and got authorization to repair already. Hopefully I can get it all done today and never have to go back! I won't get that lucky. Oh well, at least its a pretty drive down to Sahaurita Arizona.

Poop

Today is a poopy day. Peanut is sick, I am sick and can't take anything because I'm nursing and all the good medicines diminish milk production and we're just not ready for that. So, all I can say to that is POOP. Thankfully, Peanut doesn't seem as sick as I am, but it's still very difficult to watch him try to nurse with his cute little nose all stuffy and not able to breathe.

I did get some sewing in this weekend. I made a couple purses for a friend of Joy's who bought one. She wanted a blue one so I made 2 different ones so she could have her pick.


Our house is as decorated as it's gonna get for Christmas. We tried to not have a Christmas tree because we'll be home for Christmas, but it's just wasn't working for me and after a meltdown, Mike went and bought me a tree as a surprise. He's such a great guy. It has a handful of ornaments on it. After seeing the cat try to play with them and Elliot try to use the tree limbs as something to stand up against to reach the ornaments, I decided it's not going to have more ornaments. Too many of mine are too old and irreplaceable so I don't want any to get broke. Especially since we leave next Wednesday for a week and Blackjack is going to be one pissed off cat. I'll be surprised when we return if the tree has any needles on it and if it's still standing up.

I saw this on Shannon's blog, a friend of Steve and Ronda's and thought it was so cute and festive that I copied the idea and decorated our dining light in a very similar fashion. Peanut's first pony ride. Well, not really a ride since he just sat on the pony and the lady took our picture, but I guess it can count as his first pony experience. I can't wait for him to be 3 years or so old so we can start him riding. Yeehaw!

Our development had a Santa celebration going on and they had pony rides for the kids. The lady was so nice to take a few pictures for us. I think Peanut was more interested in our shadows or something than the pony but that will change soon enough.

That's all for now. I'm off to try to get my sick baby into bed so I can follow right after him.

TTFN ~Crystal

Nothing special...

The other day I had a job to do down in Vail, Arizona and on my way back decided to stop at a tool store and get some router bits. So I took a detour and took a road I haven't driven on yet. As I'm driving along, I see airplane tail fins sticking up in the air in the distance, "wth is that?" I wonder, then it hits me, I'm about to pass by the extreme west end of the Davis Monthan Airforce base. They have a rather large airplane graveyard (if the link doesn't do it for you, up in the upper right hand corner, hit they hybrid button) there full of all kinds of military jets and other aircraft. Being the plane freak that I am, I had to stop and take a look. So I parked the truck on the side of the road, and climbed up the 30' embankment to a chain link fence that was plastered with the "U.S. Airforce installation, no tresspassing, violators can be shot", well, I think we will just take our pictures from the safe side of the fence.











They lose something through the chain link fence, and its sad seeing them all covered with whatever it is they use to patch them after they take that part off to keep another plane in the air, but still pretty cool to see up close like that in person. I can't wait for big Mike to get down here so we can go to the Air and Space Museum, thats going to be awesome. They have the planes set up there so you can go right up to them and check them out, they even have an SR-71 Blackbird there, if you don't know what that is, here's a pic from the web for reference:


Yes, it might not be pretty, but it hauls serious ass. In fact, its the fastest plane ever built. 50% faster than the Concorde cause I know you doubted me and thought there was no way it was faster than that thing. This sucker set a speed record once with a flight from L.A. to Washington D.C. total flight time....68 minutes!

Anyway, that's enough geek talk out of me for today. Elliot is growing like a weed! I swear in the last week he has grown an inch, maybe more. His 4th tooth has finally popped through, and if his sleeping schedule last night was any indication, he has another one coming right on its heels.

Business could be "alot" better. Things have really slowed down, stupid holidays! Hopefully they will pick up and soon. I've put off getting a 2nd job for as long as I can, but I think that ship has sailed and its time to seriously start looking for something, which means I'll have to find something at night, or something that starts in the middle of the night and gets me off work by mid afternoon so I can still get jobs done for the business. Should be fun trying to find something like that. Well, its time to get the day started, hope everyone is doing well. Crystal should be posting new pix of Elliot any day now, the camera is ready to explode she has so many photos on there.

Oh, and we will be up in P-Town December 20th thru the 28th, so if you want to get together, call us, email us, send us smoke signals, something.

Happiness and Thankfullness

Happy Thanksgiving. So I'm a little late, what else is new?! I hope everyone had a good Thanksgiving. Ours was good, different because it's the first one I've had away from home, but still good. We misjudged the freeway traffic to get to Phoenix and took a roundabout longer way to get there, but we got there and home safely and that's most important.

I've been sewing lately! Woo hoo! I've made 5 bags in the last month, sold 3, possibly 4, and kept the last one for myself. It was too cute to put into the selling pile.

On my trip back home a couple weeks ago, Mom, Peanut and I went shopping. Fabric and craft shopping of course because neither of us have enough fabric or sewing do-dads. I bought a cuddly quilt kit for Peanut and sewed it together this weekend. Total time was about 5 hours, including having to chase him away from the ironing board and keep him occupied playing with his toys and not my sewing chair. It turned out EXCELLENT! I love the corduroy on it but remembered why I don't sew with it after the first seam. It's a little more difficult than I'm used to. And, Peanut got a huge smile on his face when I gave it to him. He kept trying to grab the cowboys and cowgirls in the middle with his little pincher fingers.
Since I finished Peanut's cuddly quilt this afternoon, I had time after Peanut went to bed to keep on sewing. I whipped this up for a friend who's expecting a baby boy soon. I'll throw the backing in it tomorrow and he'll have his own cuddly quilt waiting for him to get here. The dark blue is a small plaid - not sure why my camera didn't pick that up better. Total time so far, 90 minutes! One of my personal best. Toot Toot on my own horn.
One of the most precious things my mom taught me when I was 5 or 6 was to sew. I remember making lots of barbie clothes, then bigger baby clothes, and then finally, my own clothes. I remember being a little girl and going to the fabric store and watching Mom touch fabric as she looked around. Always touching and petting bolts of fabric as she walked by, and now I do this too. If you don't sew or quilt, I don't think you understand this subconscience touching. It's like it's programmed into our brains that our hands must touch fabric of any kind, anywhere we are. The love of sewing, of cutting pieces of perfectly good fabric up, pinning it together, and then sewing into another creation is such a huge part of who I am that I could never repay Mom for instilling it into my soul. So, this Thanksgiving weekend, I give thanks once again to my Mom for being such a great influence in my life and for being my best friend.

And for my last photo, pure Happiness.


TTFN ~ Crystal

Almost...there...

Only 4 more days til Crystal and Elliot get back from visiting up north in Vancouver. Thats going to be the longest 4 days ever!!!!! I miss them way more than I can possibly describe in words, and I cant wait to go pick them up Monday at the airport, wonder how many land speed records I'll break on the way up there?

It's been pretty lonely and boring around here with out them. The cat was entertaining for awhile, now shes just annoying. Into everything and anything she can be.

I've managed to keep myself pretty busy while they've been gone. Haven't had a lot of new jobs come rolling in, but thats ok, it will pick up. I've had a couple different adjusters tell me its the start of the busy season now, so thats a good thing for me. Over the last week seems like all I've seen on the freeway are moving trucks coming into town. Several taking the Tangerine road exit here by our house and heading out into Oro Valley...its kinda like the Lake Oswego of Tucson for you portland metro area folk. Lots of big houses, lots of snooty people...and alot of new houses for all these old and rich people to move into :) GO OLD RICH PEOPLE!!!

I've had 4 tables and a chair in the garage for weeks now trying to get them finished and taken back to some customers. 2 of the items are for shipping claims, the other 3 items are from being at a shippers house, having them like my work, and then asking me if I can refinish a piece of furniture for them...well duh, of $ course $ I $ can $ silly $. :) For the right price, I will do just about anything, aside from wearing a skirt that is....panty hose ok, but no skirts.

One of the items was a Herman Miller Chair that started out with some huge scratches on the seat. At first I was leary on trying the repair cause the scratches were across the grain and those are hard to get rid of, but, all turned out well in the end. Here are some before and after pic's of the chair.





And now the after pic's.



The other item I finished today was an old hutch. The before pic isn't that great as I forgot to take a picture of the entire top. There were way more scratches on the top than these pics show, but you get the idea.


The after pic has some weird spots that showed up on it, not sure what that is, but still, the effective point is made, they are done.




I have 3 more tables to do, one of them has been sanded and stained, the other has been sanded. Tomorrow I'll get the other one stained, then the 2 of them will be ready for lacquer. The 3rd table is all done too, just needs a coat of wax on top of it and its ready to go back to the customer too. I'll get some pix of all those posted as soon as I'm done. I'm off to get some chow then its bed time. Have to get up early tomorrow and go take back this jerks speaker covers that I had to recover with new speaker fabric. He better be happy or he's going to look awfully funny with them crammed up his bum!

Punkin Pie

HAPPY HALLOWEEN! Although by the time most of you read this, it will be November and you won't care about Halloween except to wonder how many pounds you put on when you philfered trick or treating candy out of the bowl by the door. A few photos for your viewing pleasure of Peanut's first Halloween. Note: Peanut was originally a M&M but that onesie was shipped up to my parents house so his costume changed. Isn't he the cutest!?

Punkin Pie costume.

My punkin sitting next to our punkins.

Our jack'o'lanterns. Mikes is the spider, Mine is the happy face, and Peanut's is the little one with 2 little bottom teeth cuz that's what he has. Mike carved Peanut's for him. Good job by us both, eh?

We decided to forget going to the city park for the Halloween Spooktacular festival they had and went trick or treating with my friend, Venna, her husband, and 2 of their kids. It was really fun and Mike and my friend's husband, Charlie, got to meet each other. I think Mike is in love with Charlie. He's a golfer and invited Mike to play in his company's golf tournament in December. It's weird to think of golf in December, but down here, it's fricking awesome. Peanut even went to the door a couple times with Venna and got 4 pieces of candy for Mommy. I did want to give out candy and even went to Walmart this morning for it, but realized we're on the end of our development, no one really lives next or near us and the houses around us are about 1/2 empty. So, the candy will be Mike's treat while we're gone for the next 13 days.

I'm off to bed. I'm all packed up, ready for my 5:30 alarm to get ready for our first trip home. Boy, am I going to freeze my butt off. Wonder if I can get enough shivers going to loose a few pounds?? Huge bummer Mike isn't going with Peanut and I, but someone's gotta make some money around here.


TTFN ~ Crystal

Lions, Tigers and Bears Oh My!

Well, one big black widow spider anyway, found him hiding next to the garage door and decided to take a picture of him.














I was rather surprised to see him be so...aggresive. I taped him with my shoe to get him out of the corner and the little turd actually reared up on his hind legs and put his front legs in the air like he was ready to fight. Alas, a size 12 Nike was more than he could take on.















So that was our nature adventure. So far, thats the only nasty wildlife we have come across here at the house. Not to bad for being here for almost 2 months now.

Work is still going well, jobs arent coming in as fas as we would like them to be coming in, but still, they are coming. We are running very low on money now, so to help lighten the load alittle, I'm going to go and get a part time job working a couple nights a week, just until things steady out. Hopefully it wont take but a month or 2 for that to happen, then I can just focus on keeping the business going and getting jobs done.

I used Legalzoom to get my business forms done and filed w/ the state. They had a slight boo boo on their end and royally screwed things up. They got a letter back from the state of Arizona saying that they needed some additional letter to go along with my information, so did legalzoom bother to call or email or send me a letter indicating something was wrong? Of course not! So my account sat in limbo with no one working on it. It was getting close to the time for my paperwork to be coming in the mail so I got on their website and looked up my order to find it was "waiting for customer information"....called them up and found out no one was working on it. This was a service I paid 500 bucks for, and no one is working on it? Finally today I got someone on the phone that had a clue what was going on, and she refunded me back half my money. It's not free, but I'll take it. The only bad part is, the paperwork I'm waiting on from the state is the paperwork I need to be able to open a business account at the bank so I can cash the checks I have coming in....it sucks seeing money tacked up on the board that you cant use for things like....rent, bills, stuff like that. Hopefully it wont take that long and I can get my paperwork before the end of the month and get the money into the bank and get stuff paid. Our current bank says they dont take "3rd party checks", otherwise we could just sign them over to our personal account. Nightmare!

Anyway, Elliot has his first cold, poor guy has snot running out of his nose like a faucet was turned on in his head. Sounds like Crystal might be coming down with something too. I hope it goes away before their trip up north on the 1st. He is crawling around now so well, he can really get going when he see's something he wants across the room. It's fun to watch him play, he's such a good kid, he will just sit and play with his toys on his own for hours!

Last night wasnt so fun as far as sleep goes, he couldnt sleep good cause of his nose, so we didnt sleep well either. Crystal just went down for a nap, I think I'm going to go and join her. Soon as my head hits the pillow, I'm sure Elliot will wake up :)