It's only Wednesday evening but so far this week I've found every SLOW driver in town. No matter where I was going or what I was doing, it was all slow. I try to be patient but to be honest I got cranky. Just ask Mom. 

So in the spirit of instilling calm, how about some flower pictures?

I have ONE of these lilies. It popped up out of nowhere. I believe it is locally known as a naked lady. I took these photos a couple of weeks ago when I noticed it blooming.

It's gone now. No leaves, just a withered stalk.

I love the hints of purple in the flowers!

It calms me down just looking at it.

Tomorrow Mom, Elanor, and I are driving south to go shopping and to have lunch. I expect it to take some hours…. and there's highway construction to look forward to! It'll be fine, right? I do actually expect to have a good time. Mom and Elanor have a tight bond and it's fun to watch them together. I just need to slow down and enjoy the day. 

Mom, Steve, and I got to see the last performance of Sarah, Plain and Tall on Sunday. 

I knew I would think that my son and granddaughter were very good – which they were! I really didn’t think that I would be as moved by the whole play as I was. I got a bit weepy and so did many others in the audience. Mostly the women, but that’s typical. Christopher played the brother of Sarah – a big but not huge role. He was perfect! And Elanor, who played Violet, one of Anna’s friends, was way better than I had any idea she would be. Darned if that girl doesn’t make you look at her even when she’s not doing much. I was proud.

Instead of cut flowers that fade, I made Elanor a paper flower bouquet. It was really cute and will last a lot longer. Christopher, who did not want or need flowers, got an extension ladder. He has to get up on his roof often and he needs a safe ladder. Now he has one.

Today I went to lunch at my friend Jacquie’s house. I was there on a color consult – although Jacquie’s house is so cool it was hard to find something to give advice on. The house is over 100 years old and quirky. And wonderful!

I took a few photos to share with you. I should have taken more because Jacquie does some way cool things in her house. So, first, for the cat folks amoung you…

Jacquie and Todd have 4 cats – and no cat smell! That in itself is amazing. One cat, Dixie Edwards, is a very active cat so Jacquie installed a series of shelves all the way around her office, mostly up high, for Dixie to climb on. They could be book shelves, but aren’t. The silver brackets came from IKEA. Jacquie covered the first several with a sisal sort of material but she said she’s going to take that off and make them sleeker in appearance.

FYI – that black tree and birds on the wall is a decal.

There’s Dixie and some of the most fun, weird book shelves thatI’ve ever seen. The green behind the books is paint.

Dixie was performing for me. You can see that the shelves mostly hug the ceiling and are a varying lengths. What a GREAT idea!

I didn’t get a good photo of these but I gotta tell you, these photos were amazing. Many of us have similar framed photos/faux paintings in our family. Alone, they are pretty bad. But when you put them together to tell a story – they become priceless! That’s Todd, his grandfather, and mother. In their original frames! I love it!

I worked on a new video today but it will be late tomorrow before I get it uploaded.

Chris and Steve have begun a new project – landscaping. It will take a few hours a day for the rest of the summer. I am only an interested, opinionated*, bystander. 

The first wave of this project involves diverting water away from the foundation. With the gutters gone, water rolls off the roof and onto the ground below which splashes dirt onto the walls and makes a ditch in the dirt. And it can eventually pool under the foundation. None of this is good. 

You can see the old stone walkway between the newer, lighter stones. There's a french drain** underneath these stones. The water will flow through the cracks between the stones into the drain.

The rocks came from a pile on the side of our house that I have wanted to make go away for a long time. We have another, bigger pile of thinner stone that will find a new home somewhere at Chris and Lorna's. Good! I want them gone from the side of my house!

There is going to be interesting concrete poured in other areas around the house and I'll show you that as it happens.

In quilting news, here's a new video. The first videos I uploaded were a little dark. Youtube offered to lighten them for me and I clicked OK. Shouldn't have done that. If you watched a video and the lighting was bad please do watch it again. It shoud be better now.

*The decking boards on the side and back decks are really slick when wet. One of my recent opinions is that the boards need to be power-washed and then painted with gritty porch paint. This is an idea that generates work that I don't have to do but that both guys agree needs to happen. Safety first and all that. I did volunteer to help with the painting…

**Did the French really come up with 'french drains'? And what about 'french doors"? I could google it but I think I'll just assume that, yes, the French did indeed come up with these ideas.

Did you know that we have the French to thank for silverware and oh-so-many other civilized items that we use all the time? I for one am very happy that the people of France have come up with so many things that make my life better.

Or, as it is more commonly spelled, Hallelujah! I'm back to my normal routine which is mostly working but I'm inside (with air conditioning!), I'm clean (as opposed to sweaty), and what I'm doing is quilt-related. Oh happy day! A few weeks away from the norm makes you really appreciate your regular routines. I am hearing this song in my head a lot and it makes me smile. 

I have uploaded the first two of the many how-to videos I promised. I'm starting at the beginning so today let me share with you how to make templates the way Linda and I have made them for more than 20 years.

You hear me but all you see of me are my hands. That's the way almost all of these videos will be because I don't have a cameraman. I've considered doing a short intro to each video that shows more of me but that means foofing* up. I'd want to wear something a little different for each video… You can tell my heart is not in the foofing.

I would love to have some feedback on the videos. It's like anything else, the more you do the easier it gets. Videos are a good way to convey information. The real trick is to say what needs saying in as short a time as possible. I try. At any rate, don't be afraid to tell me if you think there's something I can do better. That's how a person learns to do better.

*I'm pretty sure that 'foofing' may only be a word in our household. I googled it and nothing came up. ('Phoofing' came up but the definitions for that spelling are not the way I use the word. Really.)

Foofing means sprucing up your hair and face, probably your nails (hands and toes), and putting on something nice.

As Chris and Steve are saying, combat operations are now over. I'm finished, they still have some detail work for tomorrow. Here's the back of the house, before:

and here:

And here it is today:

Looks pretty darned good don't you think?! The bathroom window did not come in so still needs to be installed. The pile of leftover Hardie pieces needs to find a home. Steve and Chris need to put brick and/or rock on the ground next to the house, about 2 feet out, to help the water run away from the foundation. They still need to install some trim inside the house. They have another day of small jobs and then more days of general landscaping work.

The light did go up in the bedroom! It is perfect with the white walls, blue ceiling, and green trim.

The trim around the new bedroom window is in. Any funky little holes on the outside of the house have been closed off so that rodents won't get into the house/walls/attic. The painting is done! (I might have said that already. Since I am the painter, I'm very excited!)

We generated a huge pile of debris. This is what it looked like this morning:

Notice that it is not as high as the fence. Then the guys cut down a dead tree in front of the house and now the pile looks like this, taller than the fence:

The pile has changed over the 16 days. The doors, metal, windows, etc. that we put out and that were salvageable, got scavenged. We didn't want the stuff but were very happy when others did.

Luckily the City of Sherman has a once a month pick-up of huge piles of debris. This pile is big, really big. The pickup is Monday, let's hope it's gone at the end of the day.

I must say right now that Sherman may be small and it may not be scenic but this is a really great place to live. Sherman is a big small town. The traffic is negligible, the people are friendly, you can find a physician (and get an appointment!), the basic shopping is good, Dallas is close. The cost of living is not bad at all. We have 4 distinct seasons. Life here is very good.

I can live happily without scenery and the costs that come with it. Those of you who live in great places be happy that those of us who live in places like Sherman are happy where we are. You don't need more of us crowding you out! We will visit your space and go home. It's all good.

I got to make these inflatable things go away today:

They are big inflatable balls that have a space inside that a kid can get in and be rolled around. Really, it's kind of neat. Lorna's parents bought them for the kids a while back. Now to the down-side. Each inflatable section is separate. It takes forever to blow them up and more than forever to deflate them. These things have been sort of abandoned in the back yard for months. The aphids dropped dew (lots of it) on them. They got dirty. They got wet and then mosquitos came. I've wanted to kill these balls for 2.5 weeks. 

I finally got the go-ahead this afternoon and they are deflated and on the pile (after I took the photo of the pile). You have no idea how satisfying it was to make these go away. 

We are having a celebratory lunch tomorrow. I'm going to get serious about making the 'how-to' movies and designing new quilts. Life is good!

PS – Uploading these movies is more involved than you'd think. I hope the one that's going up now is going to be high quality enough to call it done and move on.

Today was all Steve and Chris. Mom and I went by to check the progress this afternoon and they were gone to Lowe's to buy more facing boards. But look how much is done!

They plan to finish this area today so I'm guessing that they will put a facing board over the horizontal seam in the peaked wall on the right, and over the french doors. (That peaked wall is the back of the garage, opposite the side of the garage with the two big doors.)

They may also have time to install the cat door to the right of the french doors. The little bathroom window should come in on the Lowe's truck tonight and they will install it in the morning and trim it out so I can paint it.

I decided that I would wait until tomorrow to paint. I can finish it all (two coats) in about 6 hours. And then that's it! If it doesn't rain and the window is on the truck we will have finished on time, in 16 days. 

I've heard from so many of you and I appreciate the comments. I know what we've done must look amazing because when I read back over the posts I am sort of amazed myself. But the truth is that this is something you can do if you are in reasonably good shape, have some tools*, and a willingness to work.

The materials weren't free but they weren't nearly as expensive as you might think. So much of this sort of job is in the labor. We happily pay for labor we cannot do ourselves but we have saved a lot by doing what we can. You can too! I think the biggest trick is not allowing yourself to stop before you are finished which is one reason why I am so looking forward to finishing my part of this job and marking it off the list!

So – what did I do today? I have begun making the movies I have promised to make. I'm learning how to do some edits in iMovie. The files are big and it takes time for the computer to process them. I'm starting at the beginning with how to make templates and I hope to have that movie up in the next day or so. And there will be more, many more.

*About tools – Steve realized a few days ago that this is the first big project that we've done and not had to buy a new tool. I think he was sort of disappointed but that means that he does have a well-stocked aresenal of tools.