I Have Been Quilting

This is a quilt top my mom asked me to quilt on Gene.

The pattern is called Tucson Sunset and can be found here.

My mom will be using on a bed in Arizona, so the pattern is perfect!

This is a close up of the quilting.

The pantograph is called Curly Q and can be found here

I enjoyed working on the quilt.

 I have missed Gene...we need to spend more time together.

And I did a little research into the bag of silver we found in the Poodle Palace.

It can be found on Ebay for $3000.

Do you think the previous owner misses the silver?

Doubt it!

My dad took the Seth Thomas clock we found to a friend of his who repairs clocks.

I am waiting to hear back.

Curious... is the clock valuable too?

Work on the House

A friend asked what we were going to call this house.

I didn't have to think on this too long.

The former owner raised show dogs; poodles to be exact.

And not the small ones; big ones.

So, Poodle Palace it is!

We did manage to take the truck to the dump.

3162 pounds of junk

And I removed and replaced most of the grout in the kitchen,

cleaned the oven, washed the walls, cleaned the basement,

washed the blinds and lined the cabinets with new shelf paper.

The girls have been busy painting their rooms and dreaming of moving in soon.

Mr. Farmer has been clearing the trees and brush from the property.

And he has been shipping pumpkins and squash too.

This is wagons loaded with boxes, waiting to be filled with pumpkins.

I am looking forward to Fall.

 My favorite season!

And Tug has been loving the warm, dry weather.

Here he is, working on his digging skills.

We have been very busy...

We recycled two van loads of just wine bottles.

We have made two trips to Goodwill.

And we took a van load of paper to the recyclers.

Go ahead and say 'this woman has a hoarding problem.'

I found stacks of newspapers from 1996; which is the year she moved into the house.

Mr. Farmer cleaned out the refrigerator and freezer too.

Notice he is wearing a respirator?

The fridge still had food in it and the owner moved out over five months ago!

It smelled so rancid, I could not get close enough to take a photo.

I found this in the freezer.

I know the photo is fuzzy, but the label on these chicken livers says

 'use by 09 23 98.'

WHAT?

This is what we are dealing with. Not pretty! 

We moved one of Mr. Farmer's trucks to the house, 

and we have been loading it with junk, furniture with dog odors and carpet.

Things are starting to look better.

 This is what the garage looked like the day we closed.
(She hoarded toilet tissue, among other things.)

 And this is what the garage looks like now.

All nice and clean. 

We found six dog kennels and two Oriental rugs hiding in the garage.

Plus a mama mouse and her babies.

And this treasure was in the basement.

Made of wire and Poodle hair.

Priceless!

Exterior of the New House

This is the front of the house.

Very plain, a lot of grey paint.

I don't understand people who use grey paint in our area.

People... the sky is grey 10 months out of the year... choose a different color on the color wheel.

This is the river side of the house.

I was standing on the dike looking down onto the house.

I love all the windows!

This is the huge blackberry patch that Mr. Farmer removed today.

A Few Photos of the New House

This is the corner of the living room, looking into the little office area.

The walls are covered with floor to ceiling windows that face the river.

The view is gorgeous!

But first we need to remove some trees along the dike.

Behind the wood stove is a little office area.

Here is the small kitchen with a door to the utility room and the stairs to the basement.

This is the larger of the two bedrooms.

I love the corner windows!

And you can see our farm from these windows too.

This is the smaller of the two bedrooms.

Tiny.

And one photo of the basement... Yuck!

The basement is FULL of JUNK!

Smelly junk.

The previous owner raises large show dogs and has a bit of a hoarding problem.

The basement stinks like dogs.

This is where we will do most of our work.

Starting tomorrow.