I've been doing a lot of handquilting. I know I could run it on the machine, but I like hand quilting and I like who I'm making it for, so it's a labor of love. (CS) I am sending out a care package for CS this week because I love her and because she needs some post-partum TLC. I've gotten a lot of the quilting done and I'm having the best time inventing my own designs and quilting them in there. I wish I had some more design stencils to play with, but I starting inventing things with the stencils I have and I invented some stuff just for fun. I think I understand the whole fun of quilting thing now and it's not the piecing, which is what I suspected to begin with.

You know you're turning redneck when...

You drag your poor unsuspecting family to the auto show.

Well, Mike is so damned tall at 6'7" that finding a car that he can fit into comfortably is a big challenge, usually involving much whining and several car lots and a lot of bitching by all. So we dragged him through a buttload of cars with kids testing out the leg room behind. Genny was stumbling tired behind us working feverishly to put herself into the other side of every car we tried, which meant of course, that I was circling around different ends of the car, trying to keep track of her and ask Mike his opinion of the car he was in, simultaneously. We narrowed it down to a Honda Odyssey, a Chevy Tahoe, a Chevy Malibu, and a Saturn Vue. The problem that we ran into with most of these cars is that most of them have a center island, due to the bucket seat thing, so we'll actually have to go to a dealership and see if we can get rid of that feature and fit him in there. A Taurus wagon also fit Mike really well, but the legroom behind him was pretty rugged on kids.

The other thing we were looking at was gas mileage because Mike is going to use this car as a commuting vehicle, so whatever we get ought to get reasonable gas mileage for that commute. Of course, Mike's solution was that we should move really close to his work (the housing there is REALLY expensive) and then we could skip buying a second car and just get a nice house. But then we'd be living in a town I'd rather not live in because the schools suck for the kids.

We've been eyeing over this house down the road from us which we could totally afford -- mostly because it needs a lot of work. The actual buying of it is months off, though and the asking price is steep for what you get, so I need to see if I can do some title searching and figure out how much the guy paid for the place and offer him something reasonable between his super high asking price and what he paid for it. No one has bought it and everyone I've talked to has said he's asking way the hell too much for it. It needs a lot of TLC -- serious redecorating inside -- it has a room that is bright purple and orange because of a previous Phoenix Suns fan, another room that is black and white stripes with a mirrored closet that looks like a prison and a kitchen that has been painted two pale shades of pink, mint green, and then the faces on the drawers were left as their natural wood color. And no, I don't understand what possessed who. There's also the front room, which would have to have the half wall ripped down that separates the dining area from the livingroom area because it breaks up an already limited and small space. Of course the dining area is carpeted, so I'd have to pull that out, eventually and the carpet in the family room area is truly horrid, and would also need to be pulled. The family room area has a fireplace and adjoins the kitchen, so I'd probably just put down a tile floor in there to keep it cool in the summer and the drop an area rug for winter, with the idea that if we run the fireplace, the stone floor will retain heat. I would also initially either repaint/refinish the cupboards in the kitchen or I'd replace them with something nice.

The yard of this place is also thrashed. The deck out back needs to be treated or painted or something. It's all wood and just basically stripped. The yard front and back has marginal landscaping, so yes, when I got through with it, it wouldn't know what hit it. The house is close to a busy road, so I'd have to put up some bushes and trees for screening out street noise and I'd have to make sure the house was well-insulated, so we weren't feeling like trucks were driving through the house. Apple trees grow well here, as long as we don't have late freezes and they're short enough to where they'd soak up the noise, provide a screen and add value. I took Mike by this house yesterday and he could see the possibilities with me and while it's not my first choice in a house and and not even like the brand spanking new ones of the area we look at a few months ago, it'd keep Russell in the same school district, we'd retain our neighbors and friends, and we'd still have the same astounding view. The house would gain equity quickly because of the area we are in and would allow me to pay off my student loans in short order, which would allow us to consider buying a much more expensive house in a couple years, and I'd have my loans paid off that much faster. And with the loans, because so much of them is interest, at some point, I'd get an amazing tax break because of all of the interest that we'd pay off.

And ultimately, I'd have a lot of fun working on this house. I have enjoyed living in each of the houses we've rented because each house has allowed me to fix things up and add a lot and come into my own in each room. Genny's room has a Winnie-The-Pooh theme going -- I even made her curtains. I've still got some Beatrix Potter stuff, but I'm slowly phasing that out for Pooh, which Genny loves. Russell has a space theme working in his room. He's got a combination of Star Wars and Harry Potter, so we've got stars and moons and planets in his room, including on curtains he picked out fabric for and I've got a HP quilt I'll be working on for him this summer, probably for his birthday. The kitchen is a chile pepper haven -- chiles of all kinds adorn it and the dining area is kind of ethnic, and our livingroom is as always, stars and moons. I bought different carpets for the livingroom and I made curtains, pillow and futon covers that reflect the stars and moons, and I have a lot of star wars stuff in there, too. We've got our cardboard cutout of Bobafet, a framed mosaic poster of yoda & Darth, and soon we'll have Mike's old star wars poster framed up. Our bedroom is kind of the nature palace. I've got Moose stuff for Mike, wild bird curtains, wildflower posters, moose bed spread and sheets, and something that may not entirely fit, but that we both like a small poster of Gustav Klimt's, "The Kiss." I'd seen it on someone else's website and loved it and Mike knew how much I liked it and saw the poster at a student union poster show at school and brought it home for me. It has a natural feel to it, however, so it works for me. It also symbolizes how I feel when I'm with Mike, I guess...protected, cherished and always always kissed. In our house, it hangs appropriately, over our bed.