The Joys of Unpacking

I don't like boxes.  I'm too Type A to just let them sit there.  They've got to get unpacked!

The front room is basically a microcosm for my whole house in terms of boxes.

I tried to unpack some boxes while the movers were moving things in, because they were willing to take any boxes I had with them at the end of the day.   The movers were great and put boxes in the rooms we asked them to.  Joel did that while I corralled children and got to work on the boxes. By the end of the day this is what I was left with in the front room with absolutely no furniture.

Some of our furniture got delivered, and Joel spent a lot of the day putting it together.  I continued to unpack.  By the end of day 2 we had 2 chairs to sit on, but we were still eating on the floor.

Day 3 was Sunday, so we tried to unpack all the clothing in hopes of finding church clothes.  After church I got a few boxes unpacked, and then we went to dinner at a friend's home.  It's so funny, but at church I realized I knew someone from my church where I grew up in Syracuse.  I was really good friends with her sister.  We went to dinner at their home and they have children around the same ages as mine.  It's such a small world!

Day 4 we got more furniture, including kitchen chairs, so we were finally off the floor during meals.  I got just about all of the boxes done.  The front room was starting to look great, but I confess I had moved some of the boxes into the other room.  ;)

By day 5 I was determined to never have to look at a box again.  I powered through every single last box until I reached the final one!

He's still putting things together after work...

Everything had a home, but nothing was really organized per say.  I was just grateful that all the boxes were broken down and in the garage!  Now if only we had some couches...

Scrappy Stars

Today is Stina's baby shower, so I can finally show you her quilt. 

For the quilting I added stars in with the loopy lines.  The back is a flannel that I had in my stash.  It matches perfectly.

Baby Joshua Quilt

I managed to finish the quilt the day before the movers showed up.  Phew!  I probably should have been packing and cleaning and stuff, but uh, the quilt is done!

I went with a huge, organic swirl quilting.  It's not perfect, but it's different and fun.  I had the perfect flannel fabric from my stash for the back.

Baby Quilt Top #2

My sisters are due within a day of each other.  I really had a goal of trying to get both of their baby quilts done before moving, so I have been squeezing in as much sewing as possible this week.  My sister, Angie, is having a boy and his bedroom colors are green and brown.  With that in mind I pulled all my baby boy fabric that was green, blue and brown.  I saw a quilt tutorial here that I really liked, and went to work on a quilt top.  I'm making a smaller version and leaving off the border.

One fun thing about this quilt is that I used leftover scraps from Ethan's baby quilt from over seven years ago, so the brothers will have companion quilts. 

The true test will be to see if I'm able to finish this quilt before my sewing machine is packed away on Saturday.  Wish me luck!

Quilt Inspiration

My sister sent me a picture of bedding they're going to use for Baby Alice's room.  It's gray and gold yellow, and then instead of the green they're going to use a girlie color like pink or purple. 

I was looking through a bunch of my pins on Pinterest looking for quilt ideas when I came across this quilt.  It was really cute and it fit the theme of stars.  After looking at it for a while I realized all it was was a wonky star block connected to a nine-patch.  Since I'm ever trying to reduce my scrap pile I pulled all my pink, purple, and gray scraps, and then added in the gold yellow for the stars.

Gratefully, it came together quickly, because I just found out the movers are coming two days earlier than we had originally planned.  Once again my timeline for everything has been moved up. 

The Sooner State

In honor of our recent trip to find a home in Oklahoma, here's a little background as to how it got its nickname:

In 1889, the Indian Territory was opened to settlers. Thousands of people lined up on the border and, when the signal was given, they raced into the territory to claim their land. Some people went in early to claim their land. They became known as Sooners.
Hence, Oklahoma's nickname today is “The Sooner State”.  
source: http://www.salinaok.com/oklahoma.html

    

We arrived in Oklahoma City, got our rental car and headed to the LDS Temple.  It's a good grounding place for us to start. 

 A peculiar thing about Oklahoma that I noticed right away: There are oil rigs all over the place in some of the most random locations.  There are quite a few right as you're leaving the airport and there are even some downtown.  I guess it's not much of a surprise how much of this state's economy is directly linked to oil prices.  With the oil price dropping really low, the largest energy company in Oklahoma City laid off 1,800 workers in February.  This made it so when we were looking for a house, there were tons of homes just sitting empty waiting to be purchased.  It is quite the buyer's market right now.  It made me feel bad like I was capitalizing on their poor fortune.

We saw 18 beautiful houses in one day!  It was quite the whirlwind.  It was actually a lot of fun even if my brain hurt by the end of the day trying to keep all the houses straight.  We narrowed it down to our top 5 choices and saw them another time the following day.  We're in the process now of trying to put an offer on a house.  We're really excited!  It feels a lot more real now that we possibly have a place to call home.  Fingers crossed that it all works out!

Scrappy Happy

After almost a month away from my sewing machine I was finally able to sit down for an hour and whip out a quilt top.  I had all of the March do.Good Stitches blocks just waiting to be put together.  Since it's made entirely out of everyone's scraps it's a fun quilt.  I've been calling it the Scrappy Happy Quilt.

 I'm not going to have time to finish it before my quilting stuff gets packed, but I'm glad I was able to get the quilt top together quickly, so I don't have random blocks all over the place. 

OKC Bound

After 10 long months we finally know where we're moving.  It's been an emotional roller coaster to the very end, but we're excited to have a direction and to have a job that Joel's happy about.  We are moving to Oklahoma City!  It's pretty funny, because when we started this process OKC wasn't even on our list.  I didn't even know they had a children's hospital.  I thought they either went to Dallas or Kansas City.  It wasn't until we expanded our search in January that it first came on our radar.  I'm sad about being so far away from family, but we're excited to explore an entirely different part of the country.  It's going to be quite the adventure for our family.
 
Here's the video they sent us when we were first being introduced to Oklahoma City:  Video