CLEANING, TILING and RUNNING, oh my :0)

Ahhhhhhhhhhh! LOVELY way to start a muggy Wisconsin day: 6 miles of hills!!! :0) Here is Bethann, my sister-in-law who pushed kicked my butt on the hills today. Thank goodness she is running the "hilly half" of the marathon-relay next weekend; she is SO ready :0) Paul's brother Ryan and family are up visiting this weekend for some boating and tubing. The day is forecast to be BEAUTIFUL; storms should be rolling in later tonight, though.

So the past few days have been cleaning, cleaning, cleaning! The house SURELY needed it! THIS is what happens to a piece of cheese accidently left behind on the dining room floor. EWWWWWW! The good news: now that the house is virtually spotless, I can quilt, quilt, quilt away next week. Well....sorta. I have to head to Mom's on Monday/Tuesday for a funeral :0( My uncle passed away; such a sad quick chain of events over the past two weeks. He wasn't feeling well so headed in to the clinic; was admitted to the hospital for testing; and was diagnosed with Leukemia. He had four bouts of chemo, but wasn't fairing well. On Thursday, once his children had flown in from their locations around the country, the doctor spoke with them with the facts: even if the docs were able to clear his lungs and get him back to tip-top bodily health, his chance of survival was still so low because his body couldn't make its own blood. So after prayers and hugs, they all agreed to stop medications and machines. Despite the doctor saying it could be 1-2 days before he would pass, within an hour of stopping meds/machines, he passed away. The doctor feels my uncle must have had the disease for the past few years...... Live life! It can all come to an end so suddenly. It's too easy to get caught up in the day-to-day 'blahs!' Enjoy your loved ones! And that's exactly what we plan to do today!!!! :0)

Also, once the housework was done yesterday, I finally tackled the last stage of the basement floor.

The grout was finished by mid-afternoon, and I couldn't resist trying out the new rugs. The rug in the middle of nowhere is the location where the toilet will be.

I used some creative cuts and combinations to tile around the toilet base. My lines ended up getting a little "off" on the northern part of the room; I don't mean to blame my husband the contractor, but I don't think the room is exactly square. I needed to "fudge" my tiles as I progressed over the room.
And gotta love my garden-pedicure. Honestly! I don't know why I bother painting my toe- or finger-nails. Within a day of the garden, its all chipped. I TRY to be a girl, though :0)

Okay...time for coffee and breakfast....and then pack up for the day of boating ahead.

HAPPY SATURDAY!!!!!


OH yeah......NOT that it's a big deal.....but yesterday was my 36th birthday. I think 36 will be a great year :0) It's 6-squared....has SO many factors (1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 9, 12, 18, 36), so many multiples of 3 and 6 there......yeah......36 is a great number :0)

Not a lot to show in pictures, but...

I've been keeping myself rather busy these past few days.

Tuesday, Paul went back to work, so I was determined to get some things done around the house.
Laundry; yeah, that's a constant given around here!
Gardening: 6:30 AM - 8:00 AM, then the day was getting warm already. Beans all weeded.
Bills; blah!
School's website work for a couple of hours
And then the rest of the day was spent mortaring the tiles onto the basement bathroom floor. I could run down right now to get a picture of it, but it really doesn't look much different than this picture from a few week's back; only now the tiles aren't movable!

Paul and I DID go looking at tile stores a week ago, but found NOTHING to take the place of the 12" tiles pictured. So, I went with it, and we purchased some blue bathrugs that match the lil' blue tiles PERFECTLY! It is what it is.

Tuesday night after my softball game, we spent an hour in the garden until the mosquitoes start feasting.

Yesterday, Paul had the day off of work, so by 7:00 AM he had all the girls out of bed, eating breakfast, in order to spend LOADS of time in the garden. Our tiller is awaiting repair and is scheduled for servicing next Monday, so ALL of the weeding/cultivating is being done by hand. Next Monday is NOT coming fast enough! BUT, with Paul as the motivator, ALL AREAS but one little patch of potatoes in the lower garden have been weeded/cultivated. The sun was quite warm yesterday :0(, and my arms are breaking out in some form of rash. It reminds me so much of the Poison-Ivy rash from last summer (and even in the same locations on my arms), but I haven't been NEAR any poison ivy; nor are there any tell-tale breakouts anywhere else on my body. ???? My other hunch is some form of a heat rash ??? It's quite itchy and annoying :0(

Anyway, after lunch yesterday, I sat down to catch up on a few emails and blogs....and my eyes were quite heavy after a few moments. I've been back to 5:00 AM mornings this week.....and all that sun in the morning from the garden work....I was pooopered out. {{yeah, Paul is probably saying "WIMP" when he reads this, but.....psht! Whatever! 'I'm rubber and you're glue; whatever you say bounces off of me and sticks to you'}}.

I took a two hour nap while he went shopping for some fertilizer.

After waking from the nap, it was time to get organized to head out to Cassie's last softball game of the summer.

Rumor has it that Grandma and Grandpa are heading over this way sometime this morning to snatch up the girls and travel with them up to the Farm. I think it's a way for G&G to get us up to the farm this weekend, because we'd have to take the girls back home :0) But, we already told them that we were heading up.

My sewing machine hasn't been unpacked yet from the past week of travel----and it's already THURSDAY!
Since the garden is mostly in stable condition right now, I think I'll spend some of the day getting the sewing room back in order....and maybe even make a few stitches.

Happy Thursday!

Patchwork of a new kind (again)

Know what this is? {{Well, yeah....THAT's a wine rack, but that's not what I'm referring to}}.

It's one of my goals for the summer---the basement bathroom project!

Sitting at lunch today, a push hit me to clean up the room and get working on it. It seems like it wasn't that long ago when I was tiling the sewing room in the basement. I can't believe that it's almost a year ago already!

It didn't take long to empty the room. I have at LEAST 12 boxes that need to be taken to Goodwill. {{Don't worry! That wine rack will be staying at our house, specially since Paul has two new batches brewing away!!!!!}} :0)

As I was cleaning out the room, I also took the time to tidy and organize the "tile stash" that was donated to us when we built in 2004. There's a little bit of everything in there!

But THESE tiles caught my eye - I was really liking how the pieces played so well together....and even the little square tiles were present!

About an hour later-----DRAT! I didn't have QUITE enough to reach the walls.

I played a bit with some of the other tile stash to act as a border and you can barely see it pictured here in the lower right....but....EH! Didn't like it!

However, I'm a SCRAP QUILTER. I can make this work, specially when I have these in the stash too!

So, a little of this....a little of that....moving here-n-there.....

Here's what I have on the floor currently. What'd'ya think?

Paul just got home and took a peek. He said he likes the design, but doesn't think the 12" tile color "works." He thinks we should go check out tiles and buy some blue 12" tiles. ???? Hmmm.....any thoughts?

My "scrap" mind is screaming......"Well, we HAVE these. Why not use them??" And the other part of my quilting mind is saying...."And if we put blue tiles there, they'll be next to the blue HST tiles...ummmm.......CONTRAST?"

But really now! I don't want my thoughts to bias you.......what do you think? Change the color? Keep these tiles? Try a different "light" tile?

Hmmm.....what would Bonnie do in this situation?

Hmmm....well, I'm off to run and think some more.
Happy Tuesday.