MOVING IS PRACTICALLY DONE

At least the part we can do.

Phew.

It was a busy weekend (week actually).  I took a day off and did more packing and moving (the books took FOREVER and the boxes were REALLY heavy).  Then, we were out there on Saturday doing more.  And then I was there on Sunday!

It was hot, feels like of 90's.  Ugh.  It's almost November, what the heck, weather?

There was so much to do but other than the big furniture that we are keeping (and the porch) it's done.

This is from the back corner toward the front.  I tried to keep it all on one side so that we will have room for the big items we are keeping (movers taking them).  It will be dining table and chairs, the yellow kitchen hutch, the two pieces in the guest room, the white canning cabinet, a marble top baking table, cedar chest, a wooden file cabinet, a coffee table and end table, and three bookcases. 

We're thinking the bookcases can stack at the back and the dining table will allow us to put the chairs on top, then we can squeeze in the other things.  Fingers crossed that we planned correctly!  There might be a couple of smaller piece (and maybe even the dining room chairs) that we can stick in the barn (though it's pretty full now, ha).  

OK, now this made us laugh.  You know that we've been saving up boxes from the apartment and taking them out there (it's been a godsend to have so many at our disposal, and we have extras!).  Well most are just U-Haul or Lowes or Walmart or random names.

But this one stood out:

We were a self-fulfilling prophecy and didn't know it! 😆Two men with the little truck that could!

GOOD FOOD AND HOBART SUNDAY

Here it is, already Sunday and the last Sunday of October.  Where DOES the time go?  As this posts, I'll be heading out to the farm for one more day of packing and moving.  It was all day yesterday.  This should be it, then the movers can come soon. 

2nd Man made a nice hearty breakfast of a whole egg mixed with egg whites, sweet potatoes, onions, green bell peppers and parsley.  Sort of using up things we had in the fridge and put it all together to into one delicious breakfast!

Here is Hobart, saying hello.  He was recharging his batteries in the sunshine on his afghan on his chair in front of his favorite window.  Because...

#notspoiled

ALOE VERA PLANTS TRASH TO GARDENING TREASURE

Regular readers know that I have a favorite place to look for bargains...our downstairs trash area!  Our building has trash chutes on every floor, and they feed into a separate room, but for boxes and other things that people can't put in the chute, there is an area (indoor) near the loading dock where people can put the things they don't want.  I've found quite a few cool items over the last few years.

I was taking some of our empty boxes (I break ours down by the way, like you're SUPPOSED to do, ha, but I digress).  I walked in and saw these two aloe vera plants.  We had a nice one at the farm, but we missed it one year in the freeze and it never recovered.  I told 2nd Man we needed to get one to have at the new house and then these fell into my lap!

Two nice and healthy aloe plants, one in a plastic pot, the other in a nice, colorful, clay pot.  I'll repot the plastic one into a clay pot but otherwise, these are great plants in great shape and now we have two new plants for the porch at the new house.  Aloe is always great for burns (and maybe even wasp stings?).

For now, they will live on the balcony at the apartment so I can keep an eye on them and bring them in this Winter and then they'll be at the farm.  Maybe one on the front porch and one on the back porch.

GUEST ROOM NEW HOUSE TEASER

 OK, this might be a boring update, since there's not a lot to see but we said we'd go room by room and since we did the master last week, now it's on to the other bedrooms. This week it's the guest room.

The house will be three bedrooms.  We had the option for a 4th but aside from adding a lot of expense, we didn't really need all that space.  I mean, it's just the two of us and we don't have much family.  We never have a lot of people that stay with us, certainly at the apartment we have none (1 bedroom/1 bath), but at the house we sold before the apartment, we had a guest room that was used on occasion by friends and family visiting

Of course, being the country, you never know, someone might come visit and would rather stay overnight instead of driving back into town.

So here is the guest room.

It measures 12.8'x13.6'.

9 foot ceiling.

4 recessed lights and a ceiling fan in the middle.

We could choose either bedroom to be the guest room but we chose this one since it's at the end of the hall for maximum privacy (also the other one is slightly bigger which would be better for how we'll use that room, more on that next week). 

This is from a model home photo (before they started decorating, ha).  It has a good size double door closet with some built-ins, of course it will probably end up being more of an extra closet to store our stuff, ha.  The guest bed that we have is queen size so it will fit nicely.  There is this large window that will face the front yard (the master bedroom windows face the rear) so it will let in a lot of light.

You've probably seen pics of our guest room at the farm, but in case you haven't, here it is:

This is a great, vintage Hoosier style cabinet my Mom had in her bedroom, we'll put it on the wall by the door going into the room...

Here's a yellow "Jack and Jill" dresser (something my Mom found at an estate sale), we'll put it opposite the bed.  We're going to, more or less, recreate this room in the new house.  We're saving the bed frame, end tables and the two pale yellow furniture pieces (they are antiques).  Some of the decor will move over but we'll repurpose others.

Speaking of repurposing...

...we're going to use these pictures in the new guest room.  We had them in the farm living room and we think they'll fit the guest bedroom theme a bit better.  We have four of them.

Chair in corner, image via Pinterest

One thing we want to do differently is put a comfy chair in the corner of the bedroom, with perhaps a small side table. Ottoman optional, ha.

Overall, the "new" guestroom will be much of the same color palette as well.  Our main decorating style always seems to lean more toward earth tones and more grounded, deeper, richer colors in the rest of the house (though at the apartment we've added blues and orange to our palette, ha).  For this room though, we want it to be softer and gentler.  This honors our mothers with their favorite colors and will give it a different energy.  Plus there will be a wall color, more on that in a future paint color post!

If someone does stay overnight, we want them to be a calm, relaxing space.  Because of the pastels and the flowers, we're going to call it the "Spring room".

MOVING CASUALTIES

Well, the house is about 80% emptied and we've made a dozen or so trips in the truck to the barn, shed and storage unit and everything has gone great.

Until Saturday...

First, I was carrying some bowls into the storage unit and in the top bowl, I had placed this Martha Stewart jadeite green cake stand...I tilted them just a little too much and this tumbled out and hit the ground.  Above is the end result.

Of course, I had to pick up the broken pieces so no one would step on them or drive over them and I poked my thumb.  Yes, that's my blood on there in the photo, the perils of being on blood thinners, ha.

We have a first aid kit in the truck so I cleaned it and wrapped it up and continued on.  I was on the literal LAST box of that load when this happened:

This was our vintage (from the early 70's) sun tea jar and set.  We had the unused, round sun tea jar, a set of six glasses and the hard-to-find matching pitcher.  I wrapped them in bubble wrap, put them in their own separate box, you know to be safe and careful, and as I was carrying it in, the end of the box gave way and they all fell out.

No bubblewrap will protect that.  Sigh.

I managed to salvage two glasses and the dome lid and separate pour spot with the ring.  When you find them for sale online, because they've been used, those pieces are often not available or damaged after 40+ years.

Since this one was never used, we even had the original instruction sheet, it'll be off to eBay to find replacements as some point.  They are usually for sale, maybe I can find one that's cheap because it's missing the ring and top pieces, ha.  The pitcher is more rare and the glasses are a bit pricey (because they all match, saying "solar tea" with the same sun logo), but at least I know I can find them.

Setting all that aside, as I said, we're almost there.  I'm taking off Thursday to hopefully finish it and then this coming weekend we can fine-tune it and finally be ready for the last step, demolition.

GOOD FOOD AND HOBART SUNDAY

 Saturday was a good day (mostly, more on that Monday,ha) but when I returned home, 2nd Man had outdone himself with dinner.

He had been researching red beans and rice recipes to add to our rotation because we wanted to use this wonderful smoked turkey sausage we found that is very low in saturated fat and doesn't have all the processed stuff.  We love it (courtesy of grocery store HEB).

He made up his version, we splurged with a little white rice (because brown just wouldn't work).  The cajun trinity of veggies (onions, green bell pepper and celery), red beans, seasonings and voila, it was delicious!!

Hobart was not interested.  Well, not in the food of course, but he WAS interested in his blue fuzzy blanket and that's where he slept most of the afternoon and evening.  Because...

#notspoiled

POWER IS DISCONNECTED MORE PROGRESS

 We had the power company come out the other day and do this:

They disconnected the power line and rolled it back to the last pole.

They also took the meter off the back of the house.

They made sure to tell us that even though it was on the ground like this, it's perfectly safe as they have disconnected the transformer on the pole before this one.  No danger at all.

When the builder gets ready, they will have this connected to a temporary pole so they will be able to run tools and equipment etc. while building.

TODAY IS MORE PACKING DAY

  New house update will have to wait until next week.  Too much going on at the moment, ha.  As this posts, I'm taking a vacation day to go to the farm to spend the day packing and moving stuff to storage.

The goal is to get it finished enough, so that Saturday, we can get it knocked out completely and hopefully get the movers out one day next week.

I plan to make several trips to the storage unit and the barn/shed to put stuff up.  The good news is:

Check out these temps!  Well, today and tomorrow for sure.  Yesterday it was NINETY SIX.  Today it's going to be in the 70's and tomorrow morning, in the 40's!

Still no rain (we're in Houston, that 20% means none but they are holding out hope SOMEONE will get some free water from the sky.  I'm OK without it for now, that means no mowing which is good because I have more important things to do at the moment, LOL!

Hope you all have a good day!

MORE PACKING DONE UPDATE

 Saturday was a good day.  

It was cool and I was able to get a lot more done than previous weekends.  It's not just the heat, I'm used to that from mowing and actually, inside the house is still pretty cool with the windows open and it's nice.  But, we both work long days during the week and so our weekends have always been the time to relax and do fun stuff and mentally unwind.  The last couple of weekends, it's been a struggle to get motivated.

I think I finally figured out what happened.  We had done a little bit everywhere but not a lot in one room or the next and the next etc.  Plus all horizontal surfaces (including beds) were covered with stuff we moved from elsewhere, empty boxes we had been gathering for the last six months just stacked up and laying around, and already filled boxes and bags also sitting around.  You had to walk around and over stuff.  It made it feel more daunting than it was.  Seeing that, I realized it was time to switch strategies.

I started by moving all the empty boxes outside to the porch.  Then I took all the soft goods (blankets, quilts, kitchen towels, blankets, pillows, etc), organized them,  and put them in those plastic totes instead of where they were piled or stored.  I took them and filled up the truck.  I moved the totes to the barn instead of the storage unit.  It was a couple of trips back and forth.  Then I tackled the rest of the closets and knickknacks sitting around, wrapping them and boxing them up.  Also, my crafting area that had boxes with all sorts of supplies, I packed all of those up.  I loaded the truck again with more boxes and made two trips to the storage unit.

I didn't get a lot of pictures, I was on a roll, ha.  Here are some of the boxes and items I took to storage.  We really like to use copy paper boxes for small stuff because they are sturdy and have handles on the ends.  There is about the same amount on the other side.  Still a big storage unit which we need to put some of the big furniture in here.  Smaller things like small end tables, etc, we'll keep in the barn.

Here is the only pic I got of one of the rooms.  This is master bedroom.  Oh, I stripped the beds of blankets, quilts, comforters etc.  One of my coworkers is going to take this bed frame and mattress and box springs for her son (he needs a new bigger bed, he's a teen now).  We're keeping the guest room bed and most of the furniture in there for the new guest room.

The plan is that this week, I'm taking off Wednesday and I'll get up like I'm going to work (early) and instead, drive to the farm and spend the day (and try to beat rush hour) to finish up as much as I can.  I have lots of books to pack up and still need to get the mudroom cleared out.  We think with one day of that, we can go Saturday and finish it all up.  Then we can have the movers come get the big stuff we're keeping and then it's on to the next phase.

GOOD FOOD AND HOBART SUNDAY

 Hope you all have had a good weekend.  It's been beautiful here.  Yesterday we made great success in getting the house more emptied.  We worked hard and today we decided to rest.

Recently, 2nd Man decided to make some matzo ball soup again...

...because sometimes it's nice to have something simple and lite.  This was homemade chicken stock, carrots, fresh parsley and some matzo balls.  Yummy and filling!

Hobart loves when 2nd Man cooks because there is heat in the kitchen and when we bake or roast something in the oven, well, this is his favorite spot.  When we need to get something into out of the oven, we just slide the mat away (with him on it) and then slide him back when we're done.  Because...

#notspoiled