I met with the contractor, Rick, and cabinet maker, Todd, yesterday. It was so nice to plan the cabinet configuration! The basic layout of the kitchen won't change, but the cabinet spaces will. More on that as time goes by.

Rick wants me to choose pretty much everything now. Once it's all in, he'll be able to gut and replace different areas pretty quickly. Shopping… that's doesn't sound bad at all, does it? It's a good thing that 1) I've been thinking about this for a long time and 2) I don't have problems making decisions.

I found the double oven and gas range on Wednesday. Steve looked at them, agreed that they were what he wanted also, and bought them. 

I did more on Wednesday… In our bathroom, we're taking out the tub and replacing it with a walk-in shower. The vanity will be re-built and will be counter-top height. The room is small, I'm keeping the palette light and bright. Here's the tile for the shower walls and floor. The color is more like the top left in the photo – lighter and whiter than it looks in most of the photo.

There will be a 6" band of accent tiles slightly above eye level in the shower. It's a mix of glass and white quartz pieces:

The floor of the shower will be these river rocks that have been flattened:

I think the grout will be a light to medium gray throughout. The vanity top is a very white Silestone, sort of terrazo-looking thing. I don't have the sample any more and failed to take a photo. 

Today I drove to Dallas and found the granite slab for the kitchen. I didn't think I wanted granite. A lot of it is busier than our kitchen could stand. I thought I'd want Corian or Silestone but after seeing friends' kitchens and feeling a variety of countertops, I decided to look at granite to see if I could find a slab that was mostly white with some black. There were a surprising number of choices but this is the one that has my name on it:

This is it from a distance, not a close-up. It looks a little more yellow here than it does in person. I think it's going to look good with the white cabinets and natural hickory floors.

You might wonder where Steve is when I'm doing all this picking. He's happily not joining me as I do it. I am very lucky that he trusts me to make it all look good together. He was only particular about the range and some of the cabinet layout. Being able to make decisions on my own and not 'in committee' absolutely makes this sort of job easier. I like that a lot!

And so is the Applique Caddy! If you haven't seen the video, it tells you all about it. You can order the applique caddy here.

And, of course, the Best-Ever Applique Sampler is on my shelves, ready to ship to you. I'll send a newsletter tomorrow but for now, you know it first! Click here for more.

I'm home from being gone for 9 days. So much to do and you'd think I'd have been organized enough to make a detailed to-do list on the plane home. I didn't. However I did find a link to a post on Buzzfeed with 21 incredibly helpful lists (those are their words, but the lists are indeed very helpful). For example:

What I really need a list for is 'how to choose everything for a remodeling project' because that's what I spent the day on. We are about to begin kitchen/bathroom/other stuff remodeling project. We are not doing this one ourselves because neither of us have the time to do it. It will be a new and amazing experience to pay to have this sort of work done. 

The contractor, Rick Owens, comes highly recommended and I like him a lot. He returns calls and shows up when he says he will. All very important. Since I work at home he is working with me to keep the disruptions to as short a time-frame as possible. The plan is to order everything, get the cabinets made, and then he will gut the house in sections and put it back together. Then move on.

My biggest quandry at the moment is which flooring to go with. We are doing the whole house and the floors are a very serious expense. Here's the Bellawood engineered floor which can be glued to our slab, in natural hickory…

Or the solid bamboo that would be a floating floor. The one I like best is darker and has a stronger pattern.

Here's what it looks like in a customer's photo. Those dark areas are nearly black.

I like it but am not sure what it's like to live with this much pattern on a floor. Do any of you have something like this? How do you like it? I should add that the Bellawood is half again as much as the bamboo which equals a lot of money. I look forward to hearing your thoughts.

I ran across Sightseer, by Roger Minick. Read more about him here. And/or just look at the 1980s era vacation photos. I could be in one of them – certainly I have vacation photos that look like they belong here.

Really, what can a person say? I wish I could look back at my own vacation photos and dress differently but, on that day, I know I dressed in a way that I thought was perfect for the event and that I didn't mind being photographed in. Case in point is the photo below – me and Steve by the same Disney castle.

All I can say is that I hope over time I can do better :-). Every vacation presents a new opportunity!

When I was in Georgetown, I met Judi Tyrrell who shared a couple of her quilts-in-progress with me. They are wonderful and she said I could share them with you. Here's her version of Chirps (from Applique With Attitude, set differently than the one in the book, more like the way I set the class quilt that I made):

And her version of Fresh Picked Posies. The background is constructed the way we show in the book, Applique Outside the Lines. Judi is still working on the borders – she said she'd send a photo when it's all together.

Pretty wonderful, don't you think?

I drove from Georgetown, TX, to El Dorado today. I nice, fast uneventful drive. The speed limit for much of the trip was 75 mph. I know I shouldn't love that, but I do. I was born with a lead foot.

Once in El Dorado I checked in with the lovely ladies in the guild who were setting up their quilt show and then I avoided working on read work yet again. I shopped a litte and bought a scarf, as if I need another one. But I forgot to pack a scarg and this one is a great shade of blue and my neck was cold – and only $14!

I walked and looked at cool stuff and took photos. I drove past and then walked back to the police station because I like the look of this brick border at the top of the building:

The green in the windows against the red of the bricks is very nice as well. 

There was this old doorway…

You know, the blue-gray in the window in this photo is also very nice. I noticed as I walked that I was way more attracted to the old, beat-up facades. I'm also finding myself more and more attracted by words and letters. If only I could have gotten up in the air about 20' – this would have been a much better photo. 

The electric boxes are on the way to the entrance to my room in the B&B (which is very nice!) I just like the arrangement of the different sizes of boxes. 

Last but not least, the ironwork on this bench is also good. Why? I see a suggestion for a machine quilting pattern: vertical rows, one with a linear pattern alternating with a more organic design. Neither row of designs must be precise… the designs can be a little organic which lends itself to free-motion quilting. Fun, don't you think?

I also posted some other images to facebook and instagram and twitter that aren't in this post. If you happen to be on any of those social media sites, please do follow me. Or don't because goodness knows I understand anyone who prefers to use their time in other ways :-).

If you want to find me elsewhere, go to www.pieceocake.com, scroll down to the bottom of the page and click the appropriate links. Now I'm off to dinner – Mexican food – yay!