Starting Out.
I decided that I would try my hand at blogging once again. It has been years since I had one, life just got in the way and it just went dormant. So very much has changed since then in my life. My mom died, my kids have all married off and started families of their own. We have recently moved to a new home, new community. I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE my new home.
This blog will be about my journey in this new chapter in my life. By the way, my sweet hubby retired as well. Not sure how I feel about that. I have pretty much always been at home, but now he is always here too and I am having to learn how to…shall we say, navigate…around him for the first time in our lives. It is not a bad thing, just a huge difference.
So, here I go. Guess I should start by telling you a little bit about me. I am married, we have four children and several grand children, ranging in age from 17 to infant and one more on the way this summer. As I said earlier, we recently moved. For 20 years I was in the same house in a very large city, with a very small home and lot. Now that it is just the two of us, we have a house almost twice the size as we had before, and an acre of land. We have moved from a town that was about 200 feet above sea level, mainly agriculture, very flat and pretty much the same season all the time. Now we are in a rural, small, gated community in a mountain valley, our house is in the lower part of of the valley and we are at about 4,200 feet. Some of the homes are as high as 6,000-7,000 feet. We have only lived here for a few months, but I am just in love with the area. For the first time in 20 years we actually have snow.
This photo was taken from our deck, looking down on part of our front yard. That is my chicken coop. More about them later. I am not a huge fan of cold and snow, but it beats the ice storms for days we had when we lived in West Texas. I am sure that after living here a few years it will not be so exciting or fun. Our two sons and their families bought homes up here as well. My youngest son, bought his house early in 2020, they have the newborn. He has almost 4 acres and while his house sits about 900 feet up higher than the back of his land, that part of his land is actually on the valley floor and very flat at about 4,000 feet, he is about a 4 mile drive from our house. He also has a very tiny creek that occasionally flows through. It was so amazing to go to his house and sit on the deck and watch the deer and elk that would hang out on his property, so we made the move up here too. Our oldest son bought his house about 2 weeks after we did. His house has 2.5 acres and the lot is long and narrow, a rectangle, but not at all level, it is more like in tiers, he is also at about 4,000 feet and is about 1/4 mile down the road from us. His two children, having never seen snow before, are always quite excited to get snow. As I said earlier, we have a tad bit over an acre. Thankfully, the house is built toward the back of the lot, and the front of our lot is somewhat level. I will have to post some photos that show the “hill” as we call it. It really is too steep for much of anything, but there are some really nice oak trees up there. The deer love hanging out up there and eating the grass and shrubs that are growing up there.
I mentioned that I have a chicken coop. I am in love with my hens. Sadly they are a bit on the old side as far as chickens go, but they have a good life and reward me with the pleasure of watching them and eggs. I have 9 hens, get about 3-4 eggs a day during the winter. During the summer I would gather about 5-6 a day.
So, now for a bit of what keeps me going. As you can tell by the photo for this blog…I am a crafter. Quilting is my passion, but I have a rather extensive list of hobbies. They all seem to lead to each other. I love to quilt, I machine embroider blocks for quilts, hand embroider as well. Since I use embroidery floss for hand embroidery…I use it for counted cross stitch. I used to scrapbook, but realized that I do not enjoy it. The little embellishments are great for dressing up embroidered squares. I do however rather enjoy making cards. I sew and crochet as well. I can’t knit to save my life, admire those that can. So, you can well imagine how absolutely in love I am with my “Sewcial Den”‘. The whole downstairs of our house is mine. I will post some proper photos of my sewing room once I get it all cleaned back up. I have to confess, I have what some would consider a large stash of fabric and supplies, but from what I have seen on some of my FB groups and Google, it really is on the small to medium side. I am the type of person that goes all in when I start a hobby, technique or such. I purchase all the supplies, gadgets, tools, anything and everything needed for a project. That will serve me well up here, the nearest town is short drive, but only a Walmart for craft supplies and not a large offering at that. It is a little over an hour one way to the nearest large town that has Hobby Lobby, Michael’s, JoAnn’s and some quilt stores. Anyway, as I said, I go all in. I have a couple of sewing machines, a serger, a couple of embroidery machines as well. My main sewing machine, that I am determined to learn to use, is a Pfaff Creative 2.0 with an embroidery unit. It is a rather intimidating machine, but since I have it, and my mom bought it for me, I will learn to work it. I do have a Brother sewing machine that I just love, and use it to take around with me. I also have a Cricut, Easy Press, AccuQuilt, Sizzix, and a pleater for smocking. Once we can actually meet in person again, there are several quilt and embroidery groups up here that I look forward to joining. I also have a Babylock Coronet quilter, on a 5 foot frame, purchased 3 years ago, that I have yet to actually use. As I said, I plan to change all of this inactivity this year.
I will also soon be planning and plotting out my vegetable garden for the coming year. I can’t tell you how much I am looking forward to being able to have a garden and do some canning/preserving once again. We have a few challenges in that regard as to critters, mainly the garden will have to have wire on the bottom, the sides and the top to ensure that we actually reap what we sow…so to speak. I will post more about that in the future.
I think that is enough for this post. I think I will leave you with one of my favorite views this past summer. That of the view looking out from the window where my sewing machine sits.
After years of sewing looking at the fence, this is a delightful change and I am so excited to see the view in the different seasons.
Please come back and visit often.
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