Poor Isabelle or a tale of how stupid I can be

On Wednesday some time during the afternoon Isabelle got her paws (literally) on my brand new food processor blade. It had been sitting on a shelf in the kitchen and she somehow knocked it down. She proceeded to play with it (the vet and I could tell from all the tiny cuts on her paws) and eventually sliced open an artery in her left foot where the paw meets the leg - what I would call her wrist if she were human. I can only assume at some point she got tired of batting it around or it started to hurt and she left it alone but on it's side with the blades up in the air. Then she must have stepped on it hard and the blade cut across her paw, back over her wrist and back up her leg a couple of inches. She almost died from the blood loss. I got home from work a little after 6:00pm and I knew something was wrong before I even got out of my car - Iz didn't meet me at the gate. That was only the first clue - the rest of the night was a nightmare. There was blood on the deck as I walked into the house, in the kitchen it was everywhere and I called for her and she came staggering out of the living room barely conscience. By one of the happy circumstances in life my sister was in the driveway having brought me dinner and was waiting for me. I ran outside and got her and the three of us were off to the emergency vet seconds later. I live very close to an excellent emergency vet that is open 24/7/365 that also has a blood bank. She ended up with a blood transfusion and surgery to repair the artery, ligaments, tendons and muscles that were sliced - she has stitches three layers deep! Iz is splinted and the vet needs me to confine her to a crate for the time she is splinted, four to six weeks. My poor baby! I feel so awful. That blade should never have been sitting on a shelf. I've since gone through the entire house and didn't find any other hazards but of course the damage is done.

I really didn't notice just how much blood there was in the house but my sister did. She was on the phone in minutes calling people to come and start to clean - she told me later she didn't want me to come home to that if Iz died. I of course had to leave Isabelle - the transfusion took hours and they couldn't do the surgery until she was stable. I didn't even know if she would going to make it until the vet called me at 11;00pm. So I got home about a hour and a half after the cleaning had started. And was still shocked by the blood. It was everywhere. My sister wouldn't let me go into the bathroom - apparently she must have settled in there at some point for a long time. Throughout the house there was blood on the walls, of course furniture and the curtains. By the time I went to bed at midnight the worst of it was taken care of and I and I was to go to bed with the great news that Iz would make it.

I was able to pick Isabelle up from the vet at 10:00am yesterday. She's very uncomfortable and hates the cone and crate. I have a better cone coming early next week called a BiteNot and she is in the super sized crate that a friend gave me a month ago when she was cleaning out her house so Iz can turn around and get in and out without much trouble. The pugs are leaving her alone for the most part and I've been working from home. She gets potty breaks every couple of hours but no toys and no excitement. Hard to do with a 10 month old lab puppy. It's going to be a long six weeks. Once her splint comes off she will need to be evaluated for the possibility of more surgery but physical therapy will be a must.

The pugs rallying around Isabelle.

So all the bedroom plans are off for now. The fund is gone to pay to fix my baby. Money well spent and it's not like the bedroom is going anywhere.

a happy surprise

I've moved onto the tree portion of Birds of a Feather. My counting is all over the place! You can sure tell how distracted I was when I started it. But no big deal - I'll just work around the miscounting and no one will ever be the wiser.

Thanks so much for your kind remarks about my new house. I'm having a blast and all I want to do is stay home and work more. :-) And work on quilts, and pictures and painting....

On Monday I received in the mail a most unexpected bonus. Some how my mortgage company double payed my home owners insurance and I received a refund of almost $1,000! That's the drywall, insulation, new sub floor and paint for my bedroom! I can start the tear down this weekend! That is so much earlier than the January date I was hoping for. Of course I have to clean out the room now. I ended up putting everything that wouldn't fit into the other two bedrooms into the main bedroom the day I moved in (it was against my better judgement but I let it happen anyway). Not being able to move into the "real" bedroom put all my plans for the other two rooms into chaos. My bedroom is 13 x 18, what will be my sewing room is 12 x 8 and what will be the spare room is 8 x 9. You can see how not being able to set up my bedroom in the what is huge compared to the other two rooms set up a domino effect on storage. Everything extra that should have a home in the two spare rooms ended up in the main bedroom and my bed and dresser is totally taking up all the space in the sewing room. I call it the room of bed. :-) So really before I start to gut the bedroom I have to move everything that is currently there and move it to the garage. And I need to make space for that too! I have somehow filled up a two car garage that is totally full with all my extra stuff and holiday things and only one car. ;-) So it will take at least one weekend maybe two just to get ready to start the tear down. So some of the money will be used for floor to ceiling shelves in the gargage so I can stack things much more orderly. Right now to get to one box in the gargage I have to move ten. I hate that.

A long weekend ahead of me.... It needs to be empty before I start tearing out the ceiling - there is blown insulation in the attic above and it's all going to come down on my head and everything else the second I start. What a mess it's going to be! But I'm so glad it's going to happen sooner than later!

getting to the new normal

I'm finally finding my new normal. I've been in the house a month now and yesterday I actually got my sewing space together finally (new curtains and slip covers soon!) and I stitched when the day's work was done. Here is my progress on Birds of a Feather. Back to the border. I don't want that left when the guts of the piece are done. I'd never go back to the rest! :-)

I took a bunch of photos of the house yesterday complete with shots of the dogs throughout.

I have a long living room and this is what is looks like from the front door. I divided it into two sections - one the tv area and one what I'm calling a book reading area. I need to recover / slipcover the 1980's colored green chairs to the right still but they were a bargain at a garage sale two weekends ago - $22.00 for the pair and just what I was looking for in front of the bow window.

This was the main bathroom before I got my hands on it. It was a mess and I took it down to the studs. New everything. I'm actually still working on it - I still have to put down some trim and finish sealing the tile floor I put down. The bath is small. On the someday wish list is knocking out a wall to make the bathroom bigger.

Here it is now. Chocolate brown and white. I love it.

My dining room is right next to the living room and is open to the kitchen. In fact all the living room, dining room and kitchen are open to each other. It was one of the things I liked most about the house. Here is my china cabinet with some of my depression era glass.

One of my brothers made me a corner cabinet several years ago. I pulled down some cabinets in the kitchen that overlooked the dining space and I lost all my glassware storage. So I made a bar out of my cabinet! I'm so happy with how it turned out. It stores all my bar ware, wine and liquor.

The kitchen area is really low on storage so I put in a pantry in the laundry room. This is still a work in progress - I have another cabinet to buy and install on top of the one shown and I need to add a couple of shelves to the actual laundry space. But I found another space to show off my quilts! They are everywhere. I'm so happy that I finally have space to live with more than one or two at a time.

A shot looking into my kitchen from the dining room - one of two rooms that still needs a ton of work. But the money has dried up and I have much more pressing issues to deal with as I find more money. The kitchen works and I put in all new stainless appliances - there is an peninsula of cabinets and counter top on the other side. I'm planning on putting in a slate tile back splash in the coming weeks and as soon as I have finished doing the outside of the house, I will start to redo the kitchen - a couple of years down the road at least.

This was before looking into the kitchen island area and dining room.

Now after. :-)

The front hall before.

The front hall after (Isabelle is looking out the screen door hoping one of the neighborhood kids comes over to play with her - they come over almost everyday after I get home from work and several times during the weekends). I've haven't touched the front door yet accept to replace the screens on the screen door and Isabelle proof it. :-) I'm replacing the doors shortly and didn't want to waste the time or money to make it look better. If I can't get to it before Thanksgiving, I'll paint the door a nice bright white and get rid of the nasty flat grey color (which by the way is the same color of the siding outside - I can't wait to make it a nice light almond/yellow color with green shutters).

Looking into the house from the front door before.

After. One of my best garage sale finds of the summer. A cabinet made from old barn wood. It was being used as a tv cabinet and has the type of doors that slide into the unit to get out of the way. The plan is to remove those type of hinges and put on the type that just open wide - I'll add shelves and put quilts on the doors to display them and put them on the shelves.

No photos of the bedrooms yet. I ran out of money before I could do over my bedroom. There is a crawl space and there was standing water in it when I bought the place. I've put in a sump pump and drain tile so it's now all nice and dry. The bedroom however is where the crawl access is (in master closet). There was a ton of mold in the room and I had to rip up the floor and I need still to replace all the drywall - walls and ceiling and all the windows in both the bedroom and the adjoining bathroom. And as noted earlier I'm out of cash. So this means I'm sleeping in the larger of the two remaining bedrooms - one is going to be my sewing room and the smaller of the two, my spare room. I'm hoping to start on the bedroom in January or so.

Have a great week!

be it ever so humble

Last Friday was officially move in day and the truck and movers were at my parents house nice and early. They were gone from my house by 1:00pm and I spent the rest of the day settling in.

It's been several long days for the dogs and by Sunday they were all pooped out. Iz is enjoying a nap on the couch.

I now have a doggy door the all four of the dogs come and go as they please. Molly was enjoying the last bit of sun on the deck Saturday.

Clancy and Aoife were enjoying the early morning sun on Sunday.

Even Hunter got to come over and visit and play!