Moving, Again.

We moved again, last Saturday. We rented another 24 foot truck, loaded it with boxes left in the old house, and hauled it over to the new. The sewing room is once again a mess, the garage is again full, and my body is sore all over. Moving is so tiring. Once I have my own home I will either never move, or never accumulate stuff.

Apparently 90F is the new 70F, because the temperatures here are abnormally warm for springtime. Even though we do have an air conditioner here at the new house, it's not practical to cool both the upstairs and down all day long. Today at 95F I'm guessing my bedroom got to about 85F. It's warm here in NE! But I'm sure we'll get used to it. Today, I managed to hang curtains, make a new bedcover, and take a nap.

New bedroom curtains: when laundry baskets cost $15 and garbage cans $6, curtains cost $2 at Goodwill.

The New Dining Room gets Character

Some two years ago friends gave us a Christmas present of a wall decal, and we saved it for "when we move." At that point I think I hardly believed that we actually were going to move; really, it wasn't until last fall that we actually got serious about moving. Anyway, amazingly we did move and the decal was in one of the first boxes to go.

However, we didn't get around to putting it up until this week. It wasn't complicated to do, but it did take a while to get the paper backing off.

Many thanks to our Texas Friends for our new dining room decor.

New Summer Projects

Sunday night Caleb and I went out Ballroom dancing with good friends. It's so relaxing to attend a dance that I'm not organizing, well done with live music. It's also a treat to do some ballroom once in a while, and with such accomplished dancers, too! Performance Group starts up again for a short summer season, but until then I have to find other ways to get my dance fix.

Three Regency Tailcoats

One summer goal I have is to make three Regency tailcoats for my costume closet. The costume closet, if you didn't know already, is full of rental garments that are primarily used by my ECD Performance group. I'm using the Period Impressions 1812 Coatee pattern as my starting point, and I'm working to alter the collar to make more civilian variations. I have three colors of wool: dark grey with the grey cotton lining, dark blue with the white and blue floral lining, and the camel brown tan with the green paisley lining. The guys may complain about the floral bit, but it was on sale! Last spring I focused on ladies' garments; now I'm excited to start on the guys. They all have trousers, shirts and waistcoats but I just know they'll look even better in tailcoats.

To finish the coats I ordered a 100 button pack from Jas. Townsend. I'm getting really tired of the button choices at Hancock's(not that there's anything wrong with them, I'm just tired of them), and even though self-cover buttons are cheaper I wanted something different and historical.

I also bought another 20 yards of fine white linen/cotton for men's shirts.Somehow the ones I made last year out of hotel sheets were mostly sold or disappeared. But that's ok because now I have the chance to make better ones, maybe even a few fancy ones with ruffles.

I just wish I could get paid to do this!

No One Touch The Phone!

Jen left on Thursday for her once-in-a-lifetime European trip.  Life is a bit odd right now because Caleb is gone too, and having two people always gone just makes life weird.

Jen's flight to Amsterdam was apparently delayed six hours, so I'm guessing that she's a bit tired right now(at 9pm Switzerland time and 2pm Nebraska time) after a night in the Detroit airport. She was afraid she'd miss her ride out of Geneva so she just recently checked in to give us an update.

Now, last week we bought several new cordless phones to put around the house, and the boys really loved using them as walkie-talkies. That was already annoying because the hideous noises that boys love to project through electronic devices were amplified so much as to be unavoidable anywhere in the house. And when Jen and Mom both tried calling home in desperation to get someone to skype the ride in Switzerland, the phone was nowhere to be found because Jeremy had taken it to the mailbox with him and was making grunts, squeaks and sounds in it(all loudly heard throughout the house as we yelled "Jeremy! Jeremy"!) as he sauntered to the box and back.

Needless to say, the phones are now totally off limits for certain people.

Life in a Different House

The weekend after our move turned out to be the busiest planned weekend of the summer. We had an out-of-state visitor and three dance events three days in a row. Grandma moved in on Memorial Day and we're adjusting to having her with us. Now this Thursday Jen leaves for the trip of her dreams; we have no travel plans for the summer so hopefully we can take time to recover. Maybe I'll even get around to posting about something other than unpacking or moving.

Sewing Room: not pretty, but becoming functional. I set up my newer sewing machine today. I hope to start on the three tailcoats soon. For a while I didn't know where my pile of historical patterns ended up, which kind of scared me. It's also HOT, hotter than it should be in June, and that makes me feel like just being lazy.

We Moved

Yes, actually moved.

It was horribly exhausting and I never want to do it again.

Once we signed on the house Monday morning we had a repeat cycle going. For a whole week we all rose early, crammed the van, car and trailer with stuff("It's like packing for vacation every day!" said Jeremy) and went to the other house. We worked like crazy and painted every room on the main floor, every bedroom, and one bathroom. 3000 square feet seems a lot bigger now than it did before. Painting was finally done in the nick of time and on Saturday we moved the furniture. Monday, Memorial Day, Grandma moved in.

My new sewing room. The boys sacrificed(under duress) the third upstairs bedroom to be a sewing room instead of a bedroom; so now my costumes repose here and the boys live all together in the big bedroom. I painted three walls tan and the other the same red as my sewing room back home, so it would be more familiar.

 The costumes have a home.

Everything's still a mess here, but I hope sometime next week to get started on costumes again. I have the materials for several tailcoats and breeches ready to go!

STILL Moving

Our closing date got bumped forward this week, which was disappointing but not surprising considering the mess of red tape we've had to work through in the past four months. The closing day was supposed to be yesterday, but now it's some nebulous event in the future; hopefully Monday.

Boxes are piled every which way, and as we go another week without movement the boxes are being half unpacked and rustled through looking for various items(where's the cheese slicer? I can't find the oregano! Where did you put the aspirin????).

We fluctuate between anxiety(we really need to move! There's so much work to do!) and denial(it's been four months. We're never going to move).