A different location of messy on a Slow Sunday...

 Hello - well as I start to write this post I'm filled with trepidation... for some reason none of the pictures I've sent from my phone aren't showing up on my computer...argghhh... some days they show up immediately ... others it takes a bit of time... but this is taking a really long time... soooooo I hope I have some pictures to show you ...otherwise this is not going to be very interesting at all... wait wait... oh they are showing up now... thank you Lord!

So it has been a busy busy week.. one where I had some appointment or engagement every single day...  Monday I had Dan the Handyman here finishing up the 6 bookcases (much more on that below), Tuesday I babysat all day, came home pooped... he's cute but so much energy... Gwandma Carol had to resort to letting him zone out to Cocomelon (think this generation's Sesame Street) .... Wednesday I got my hair cut and colored...an appointment I never miss...LOL ... Thursday my son had an appointment ...Friday  I took my son to meet his friend for lunch and hanging out... his friend lives about 30 miles from here and we were gone most of the day... Saturday I did stay home and I'll show you what I got done further down....and I don't know about you but I don't juggle that kind of thing as well as I use to... somehow when I go out and do something and then come home lots of time I'm not motivated to get anything done at home... so I sit and piddle around on my computer or scroll endlessly through Instagram... not productive... but I really tried to overcome that this week and to a small extent I did... although there is still a LOT of messy going on around here...

I'm going to start with something pretty... I did get my Easter/Spring decor out last Sunday... it took ALL day and I was pooped by 6pm... I wear a pedometer to try and get in 10,000 steps a day... and I walked almost 8,000 steps without ever leaving the living room,.. and it is not that big a room!! For me decorating is a physical activity because I'm constantly re-thinking and re-arranging stuff... I thought I would start with the big displays and then move on to the small ones... but somehow the small ones got my attention first and wouldn't let go... but by the end of the day everything was arranged and my dear son took all the empty plastic bins back to the basement...  

So here is a little bit of what I did... that niche in my hallway...where the phone would have been installed in 1953... I'm really enjoying seeing it decorated even if I'm the only one who does see it... here's what it looks like before...

and after...

I've got Delivering Posies from Homespun Elegance... I love the buttons as wheels on this piece... and I like how the pillow I made from Lizzie Kate's Spring String fit perfectly on that lower shelf where the phone book would have sat... and since I've done a couple of those String pieces for other seasons I think I'll be displaying them here in the future... 

I did a rather simple (for me)  display out on the sunroom porch....

The cross stitch on the top is a portion of a chart from Blackbird Designs... I like that new little table runner I made last week and I think the three bunny heads are cute and weird at the same time... sometimes when I look at then they appear to have just popped up out of the tray/ground... I do LOVE the one with the yellow glasses... got him last year but I don't remember where....oh well... that shelf unit does look particularly spring-y with that apple green paint.. glad I gave it a makeover a couple of years ago.

In the living room I've hung a quilt that I started in 2011 and finally finished in 2014...this is my  inaccurate version of Fig Tree Quilts pattern Jam and Jelly...

The fabric line was Verna from Kate Spain... so pretty and spring-y...  and I pulled a tier tray out of my storage room that I haven't used in ages... I love the Spring-y green (pretty much the same color  I painted that shelf unit on the sunroom porch)... 

At the top I have Easter Holiday Hoopla from With Thy Needle & Thread ... and in the little galvanized tubs I have the small pillows I made with Prairie Schooler's No. 178 Bunnies chart... and yes that carrot is enormous...LOL... this tray is a little harder to style as it is tricky getting things to stay put on the wire base... but it does look fresh and airy....IMHO...LOL

So now that I've shown some pretty things we are going to move on to the messy... and it is very very messy... ugh... Dan was here Friday, Saturday and then Monday... it took longer (doesn't it always) to do the bookcases in the basement than I anticipated, primarily because the old bookcases had to be removed and then totally disassembled in order to get them out of my basement... they came in flat packed as IKEA does all the Billy bookcases... and my house has this breezeway/hallway right outside the back door which makes it  nearly impossible to get any large item inside... lots of maneuvering and contorting needs to happen to get things through that door... so disassembling the bookcases was the solution... and I had thought that as Dan was putting together a new bookcase I could put the fabric back on an assembled bookcase, but that was really wishful thinking on my part.

Now it turns out that I don't have to re-fold every piece of fabric, but I do have to re-stack them more neatly... and I figure this would be a good time to thin out my stash... my goal was to reduce it by 20-25% and I think I'm accomplishing this but it is hard to be certain as I'm rearranging the stacks and the fabrics... this takes time... LOTS of time... I'm pretty good at looking at a piece of fabric and deciding whether I want to keep it or have it move on, the problem arises when I look at a piece and I can't decide if it should go into the red stack or the pink stack... or maybe the purple stack... it this piece blue or teal... is this one yellow or light orange... arghhh... I drive myself nuts with this... 

Here's where I left off yesterday... so far I've worked on this a bit on Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday ... and I put in some substantial time on Saturday...

AWWWWWW... and it doesn't get much better as I look around the room...

Those last two pictures show all the stacks that came off of one bookcase!!  It is amazing how much I crammed into each one...

And here is a look at how things are shaping up... I may move stuff around again... I've already re-done several shelves a couple of times... starting from the far right and moving to the left...

Instead of having a stack of bright reds in one spot and then a stack of more muted reds on another shelf I'm bringing them together ... I was able to get my Momo's and my American Jane fabric out of bins and onto shelves where I can see them... (last picture, second bookcase from the left)... I'm trying out different baskets for some stuff... I was able to get some from IKEA that are a perfect fit for the Billy shelves...  a new one called Tating...you can see it here... I bought about 6 of them and then went back later in the day and bought 4 more... I may have too many but they were low in stock and I can take back what I don't use... I want them for the shelves and to re do the storage under my cutting table... because you know one re-arranging project always leads to another and another and another and another....

I do LOVE how the white bookcases look... they make the room brighter and look larger... Dan has to come back though for some finishing touches... the basement of the house was never expected to be "finished" ... that concept wasn't around in 1953... it was a basement... concrete floors that slope from the sides to the drain in the almost center of the space... so Dan tried hard to get the shelves to be level at the top (the former contractor didn't bother to do this and it was noticeable that they slanted from one end to the other)... and in getting the shelves pretty level at the top there is a gap at the bottom... he'd going to put some toe molding to hide the gap and he's going to make me a display shelf for the top of the bump out that hides my water meter shut off... however it will probably be a couple of weeks before he returns... the guy is super super busy... my projects are small and he has some major remodeling work he's doing for several people... he's happy to be so busy and I'm grateful for whenever I can get him for my projects... I don't have anything major inside on my list of things to do right now... but that can always change... I do want him to to repaint the foundation of my house and the front steps ... the weather has taken a toll on them... and the weather is definitely trending better around here.... several sunny days and we even hit 60 once or twice... Spring is coming!!!

So that's where I am today... I'm going to go back downstairs and tackle more piles of fabric... I'd love to spend the day out on the sunroom porch stitching but the mess is getting to me... I like my stuff...oh I LOVE MY STUFF...but it has to be organized... and when it is organized I can have more stuff... so that is a win-win situation....

I'll link up with Kathy's Quilts today.... after I get through a couple more piles I'll reward myself with some time reading blogs... the upcoming week doesn't appear too busy... hope it stays that way...I'd like to have the sewing room re-organization finished by the end of next week...cause I'm already thinking about a deep cleaning and re-organization of the cabinets in my kitchen.... and I'd like to get it done before the weather lets me work in the yard... I've bought sooooo many seeds and I picked up 5 bags of dahlia tubers at Costco the other day, along with some caladiums and some elephant ears... and I have more dahlia tubers that will be arriving soon... I ordered them in January....I also suspect that annual bedding plants will go quickly again this year... last year garden centers were picked clean just a couple of weeks into Spring... I'm not going to hesitate to buy things when I see them... I'm already planning different combinations for my big pots and I'm thinking of doing things a little differently in my window boxes... and all of the re-organization in the basement has me itching to sew too... I need to clone myself...that would be very helpful.. but weird...LOL

Hope you have a good week ahead of you... along with all I need to get done in the sewing room I want to finish  my little cross stitch pieces from Jellybean Jubilee... but I still have one that needs a few more stitches and one I haven't started yet... gotta get moving!!

happy stitching-

carol fun