Meanderings of a Crazy Quilter aka Jan Quigley: February 2010

Saturday, 27 February 2010

We bought a house, finally!!!

Well after a false start in 2008 & nearly 2 months of searching this year, we’ve found ‘our’ new home. Such a relief. It’s smaller than our current home but we plan to do some serious de-cluttering before we move, so it should be plenty big enough.

Paul has been in Melbourne all this week searching, 2 maybe’s that didn’t pan out & then this. I knew the right one was waiting for us.

It’s a storeybook cottage, I’ve lusted after them for years but never thought I’d have one. I found it online at 10.30 Thursday night, rang Paul straight away & he rang the agent at 9am Friday morning. He had 2 offers to take to the vendors & said I can show you now, but you’ll have to move quickly. We did, & luckily our offer was accepted. Paul & dd Emma have been back this morning to measure it all up & draw up a plan. The owners were very generous letting them in as they were hosting a big birthday party for their dd.

I can’t wait to start planning where everything will go. There is a study for Paul, an area for Rowan’s computer desk & drums & a sewing room for me.

I don’t cook but this is my dream kitchen. I want the house to have a French flavour & this kitchen certainly lends itself to it.

Lovely timber floors in the loungeroom. I think this room could be made quite ‘Weasleyish.’ :-))

My sewing room–to-be. There will be ‘playing’ of a different variety when I get all my fabric in there. I’m itching to know the measurements to see where everything will go.

Two friends have already put their hands up for the guestroom. Helen will be doing a course in June & will spend the weekend with us. I can’t wait, I’ll take her to Chadstone so we can drool over all the designer shops, then we’ll go to DFO & hopefully find some great bargains.

I rang the Victorian Real Estate Institute the other day for some advise & when I said my dh was in Melbourne looking to buy a house the guy burst out laughing & said, ‘My wife wouldn’t let me loose to buy a house!!’ I assured him he was on a very short reign & I was keeping in touch by phone & email & our dd would be doing the final inspection. As it turned out there wasn’t time for Emma to look before we had to make the offer & I’d only seen the pics on the website but I knew it was the one. So in a way it’s a bit of a mystery house for me. Oh my favourite thing at all the fetes I went to as a kid were the lucky dips, so it’s my lucky dip house.

Another thing I especially love is there is so little needs doing. All the other houses we were interested in needed a lot of work, new kitchens/bathroom/ carpets ripped up & then painting everything inside & out. This house is only 4 years old & only needs 2 bedrooms painted as Rowan didn’t fancy pink or purple.

I might get a little sewing done next week. What with trawling the internet for possible houses, the million phone calls to Paul & being glued to the Winter Olympics as much as possible, especially the figure skating & ice dancing, I’ve sewn nothing!!!

Friday, 12 February 2010

What a great week!!!!!

Things have been pretty subdued around here, our plans to move to Melbourne seem to be going pear-shaped at every opportunity & we’ve been feeling a bit ‘over-it.’ We’ve managed to sort out quite a few rooms & have them ready for selling but others ie. the craft/hobby/office looks like several bombs have hit. Motivation is hard to find at times like this.

So Tuesday morning & as always I’m sleeping late when the dog starts barking & I hear Paul go to the front door. He’s saying. ‘Come on in,’ & walks down the hall & opens the bedroom door. Of course I’m thinking, who on earth is he bringing into the bedroom??? You could have knocked me down with a feather, if I hadn’t been lying down, it’s our lovely son Simon!!!! He’s been living in Ottawa for just over 2 years & I had no idea he was heading home for a visit. WOW!!! He’d come home to go to his cousin’s wedding the following morning, to catch up with friends & attend another wedding the end of April. So we’ll be home base for 7 weeks. How cool is that???? Luckily Paul & I had already started moving my sewing stuff in from Simon’s bedsit & we’d even set up his bed getting the house set up to sell with no idea he was coming to visit. He had a nap after a very long trip & a 2 hour fiasco with customs while we took the chance to grab all my other stuff out, give the rooms a good going over & get it ready. It looks great. It’s amazing what you can achieve in a short period of time. Of course all that extra stuff had to go somewhere so my sewing area needs just a ‘little’ work to get it sorted. :-))) If I’d turned around & taken it from the other angle you’d see the piles of boxes & loose stuff. The background is dh’s ‘office’ which is still a wip. OK my challenge is to have this straight & sorted by next Friday!!

Wednesday morning we woke to a beautiful blue sky after weeks of overcast & rain & headed out to the wedding on North Avoca Beach. It was hot but there was a lovely cool breeze to stop us melting. I’d never been to a beach wedding before & I have to say it was the best wedding I’ve ever been to. The service was the nicest I’d ever heard & everything went without a hitch. Here are a few shots so you can appreciate how lovely the setting & the couple are.

The beautiful bride, Yun Mi.

Yun Mi & Shayn.

With Yun Mi’s parents. They flew out from Korea for the wedding with their son & his wife. They are a lovely family. The service was in English & Korean, after Shayn spoke his vows in Korean, Yun Mi’s dad gave him the thumbs up!!!

Shayn has travelled for many years, he lived in Korea for a couple of years teaching English & he was lucky enough to meet Yun Mi.

Isn’t she beautiful!!!!

Simon with the happy couple. They didn’t have attendants, Simon & Yun Mi’s brother were the witness’s.

Rowan & my Mum. This was Rowan’s 1st wedding.

Sewing wise I’ve been working away at my hand pieced Kaffe Fassett project. I have quite a stack of blocks done but there’s still a long way to go. All the ‘missing’ triangles have to be cut yet. They’ll all be different Kaffe fabrics. I’ve built up quite a collection over the years.

The photo doesn’t do the fabrics justice, they are so vibrant!!!!

We had a long awaited Dr’s appointment this week too for Rowan. He’s had the blood test to see if he may have Coeliac Disease or definitely does not. Well he doesn’t have the gene that causes it so yippee. He does however have some gut issues so he will be on a gf diet for a few months to get things back on track & he will be having vitamin & mineral supplements to make up for some absorption problems. All very positive. We checked out the supermarket this afternoon & stocked up on lots of gluten free products. Things were very different when I was diagnosed with CD 25 years ago!!!! Many of the products have too much fat for my diet but they are fine for Rowan who needs to gain weight.

Molly finally had a long overdue trip to the beauty parlour & we are still getting used to the new sleek little dog that replaced our walking rug. :-) I’m sure she feels much cooler. She thinks Simon is the best thing since sliced bread but he’s over her licky, kissy adoration. We rarely manage to get a non-blurry shot of Moll as she’s always on the go!!!

Just a quick note about the Calendar Quilt Girls I started as a blog, it hasn’t been working easily for the ladies involved so I’ve now turned it into a Yahoo group. Thanks Eileen for the idea. I only did it yesterday & already it’s worth it’s weight in gold as now we can chat easily & upload photos without any hassles. Anyone is welcome to join. I’m imagining it will be a fairly laid back group with few, if any rules. We are already talking about having a charm swap to increase our stash of calendar suitable fabrics. Here is the link:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/calquiltgirls/

I think this is the best & busiest week I’ve had for a while. :-)))

Cheers,

Jan

Tuesday, 2 February 2010

January in Review

Goodness a whole month went by without a single post, not a good start to the year!!!

Late last year we decided to push forward with our plans to move to Melbourne. We had planned to move the end of 2008 but things didn't go as planned & we decided to stay until Rowan finished school. The truth is we don’t like living here anymore & the 5 years stretched ahead like a prison term. I then rethought the whole idea of moving after school ends & realised that’s exactly what my parents did to me & I hated it. I lived in Goulburn from age 9 to 16, we moved back to Sydney when I finished Year 10 & of course I left all my friends behind. Arriving in a new place at 16 & not knowing anyone is awful, so the best idea is to move Rowan now in Year 8 so he has time to make lots of friends & keep them when he finishes school.

We were originally looking in Berwick but this time decided to look in The Dandenongs because it is so pretty, the land sizes are bigger & there are some lovely older homes. With this in mind Rowan & I packed our bags & drove down to Melbourne to have a look around. For most people that would be no big deal but as I have agoraphobia the idea of driving to Melbourne is the same as flying to the moon for others. I am pushing myself hard at the moment as I really want to get out there & have a life.

Lunch in Goulburn Macca’s.

Yay Melbourne right on dusk!!! I’m nightblind so if we hadn’t made it this far I would have to stop for the night. Melbourne is very well lit & with the occasional help from Sean (my Irish GPS) we managed to find our way to Lynne & Graeme’s. I was totally freaked when I had to actually drive on the tram lines. Poor Rowan was saying it’s ok Mum don’t panic, lol.

We stayed with our dear friends Lynne & Graeme who luckily have air-conditioning so we didn’t melt on the lovely 45C day Melbourne laid on for us, lol. Lynne & I also managed to sneak in a quilt shop crawl one day. I also found a wonderful patchwork shop in Tecoma, Foothills, I think it was called, hey they were right near the estate agents, I had to have a look. Well maybe I didn’t need to go there 3 times but……… it is such a lovely shop & the staff were really friendly. I also took the chance to ask them about areas to live & get info on the schools.

I looked at some houses although there really aren’t very many on the market at the moment. It was disappointing to find that a lot of the houses I’d seen online & thought would be ideal had actually been sold, many of them months ago!!!!!

While I was away I had an email saying 3 of my wall hangings had been accepted to be published In the US mag Quilter’s Newsletter. Poor dh had to get them out & ship them off asap. That was quite a kafuffle (lol, Little Britain) but he did manage to sort it out with UPS. They will appear in the June/July issue along with a few other Aussie’s who were chosen. It’s an article about Aussie stitcheries. One of mine is the red ‘My Crazy Heart’ shown in the header on this page.

Dh flew down the following week after putting Molly in kennels for the first time. We found what we thought was our dream home in Kallista bit the building report was not good & after doing our sums we decided it was more of a nightmare than a dream. Unfortunately believing we’d found the right house we drove home right after the building inspection not realising how bad it was going to be. So now I’m back to trawling the internet for houses. My dd lives in Melbourne & she went to look at 3 houses for us last Saturday, none suitable so the search continues. At this stage we are leaning towards Belgrave Heights & perhaps The Basin, though we didn’t actually see it while we were down. It’s a good position & not quite as cold as higher up in the hills. We’ve also been told termites are an issue & everyone has their house sprayed. With my numerous auto-immune diseases spraying my house with poison is not an option!!

We took time out to go late night shopping in Chadstone, it’s enormous & has the most incredible shops, lots of designer stuff which is nice to look at. While there I went in search of a “Kirsty Allsopp’ ring. I loved the huge blue ring she wore in her Christmas craft specials. I’d looked locally & couldn’t find anything but the first jeweller I checked out in Chadstone had a ring I couldn’t resist. Kirsty’s is an emerald cut stone (rectangular), mine is oval but I love it. Hers is more likely to be an aquamarine, whereas mine is a blue topaz. There’s a big difference in price. :-)))

It’s blurry It’s hard to photograph up close.

So back home it was time to do the back to school thing with shoes & books & stationary. I swear this is the last year I will do battle with contact, from now on it’s wrapping paper covered with plastic!!!! Molly enjoyed her time at the kennels & made friends with all the dogs there. We will probably get her a playmate after we move.

Molly turned 1 in January. She’s finally booked in for a clip this Thursday. Everyone’s been booked out since before Christmas!!!

Rowan didn't quite last the 2nd day back at school, his attempt to jump a brick wall failed miserably so he spent 4 hours in hospital under observation for the egg size lump on his forehead, he also has a bad scrape under his eye, a fat lip, bruised finger, scraped knee & shin. We decided falling over a brick wall was far too boring so the story is he was ‘roundhouse kicked to the face’ by Chuck Norris, lol.

Rowan Quigley

OUCH!!!

A much happier pic ‘forcing down’ a sundae in a Disney Resort in Flroida last July.

Right now we are rearranging the house to be ready to put it on the market as soon as we find a house. All my sewing stuff is being moved from my big studio so we can set that up again as the bedsit. I have to go through everything & get rid of stuff. We already cleared the study & storeroom & turned them back into bedrooms.

I have managed to cut all the squares for my January calendar quilt. I took my diary with me & jotted something down each night so I didn’t have to try & remember all the days when i got home. Hopefully I’ll get time to sew them later this month!!