Housewife, 54

                                     Please: Excuse the spacing... I give up on it! Well, that went well albeit exhausting! After my last post, packing began in earnest... or should I say frenzied?  It was so much harder to divide things into two households - a selection of things to leave for DH in his apartment, and everything else to go with me to our new home - and downsize at the same time.  When all was said and loaded, there were still things in the house that we did not have room for in either household and had not yet sold.  Poor hubby was also left with the task of doing the final cleaning, since I had to take off the next day to race out to the new home and prepare it for the delivery of furnishings. My trip out was uneventful, which I was very grateful for.  We were still under stress that the sale of the house would go through, and there were several things till needed to be done to our new home before I could truly settle in.  But the dogs and I zipped across 3 stat

UGH!  I HATE this part of moving!  Packing things up and playing box tetris... Now, which item of similar use can fill up THIS box??? Living Room Bookcases, DONE!  Husband has been very little help, but I can't blame him too much.  The job he had high hopes of getting in our new town fell through, and he is now resigned to staying behind.  There have been so many uncertainties this past month or so...  We listed the house for sale at the end of June, just before the July 4th holiday, and had NO interest.  So going out that following week to close on our new home was a bit disconcerting - how long WILL it take to sell our old house??? On our return at the end of that week, we had an Open House and then things started moving!  Showing after showing all that week, then a few days of quiet, and a few more showings and BANG, an offer!  So we are now under contract (which CAN fall through, but I hope it doesn't).  We then decided to go apartment shopping for hubby and found j

This will be our new home. It checked off many of the boxes on our wish list, but it IS in a tight residential neighborhood which is not my idea of lovely.  You can see how close together the houses are.  I hope we have nice neighbors... Meanwhile, back on the home front in Illinois we are busy arranging things.  Tomorrow is our garage sale and I hope to sell a lot of furniture that will NOT fit into above house.  This is not a bad thing, we felt we needed to fill this big house, and then took pieces from both of our parents' homes when they down-sized, and then passed away.  We have much more than we will need.  So the sorting and schlepping out to the garage began a couple of weeks ago.  Thank goodness my housekeeping decluttering started well over a year ago and I have been opening drawers and cabinets thinking...I've already been through all this, so it just needs a double check! So my days are filled with more than the usual clutter and my mind is spinning and skip

I knew it was inevitable, and actually I have been looking forward to it... just a bit.    When we moved back to Illinois from South Dakota 12 years ago, it wasn't really because we wanted to, but to help take care of our parents.  Our sons were through school, so the timing was good, and DH was still at a hire-able age, so we knew it was the right thing to do.  But finding a job and a location that would put us between the parent's locations proved to be a bit tricky... we ended up having to take what we could get.  A Chicago suburb - however far out - was never a choice I would have made....  But the job paid well and the location was do-able if not ideal, so here we are.  And here we have stayed far longer than I had expected to.  As you age, jobs are harder to come by, and while our parents have all passed on a few years ago, DH has not found a job to move to, and he feels it is his age that causing him to be passed over. So he feels that staying here until he is retirement

Well, we finally have Winter, and I meat that with a "Capital W"!  Temperatures have dipped down lower than I can remember for eons - try MINUS 25F! and with the wind chill it has felt even colder.  Needless to say, on those days I did NOT go out!  Oh, and the snow... did I mention snow?  Now we have only had one deep snowfall (about 10" in one day), but we keep getting more.  We have had a lift in temperatures, one day was even close to 50F, but then it drops again.  It has been a real roller-coaster ride! The first big snow, January 28th, 2019 So what have I been doing?  Not much on any given day, but I am keeping busy - never bored!  On the days that I am staying in, I am mostly sewing.  I have made long sleeved T-shirts and sweatpants for the grandsons, (no photos) and quite a few items for myself. Here are a few photos: This is for a challenge.. Cowl neck top made of wool jersey. This is from my own T-shirt pattern, and the Cardi pattern from New Loo

Why IS it  that January always seems to spark some organizational fire in me?  Through the past few years, I almost always seem to get in a "sort out, clean up, and organize" kind of a mood in January and this year is no exception.  However, I do see that THIS year, I have had some"triggers". The first impetus is the finalization of my husband's "man cave", which has freed up some space in the Utility room... also called the dog room/old laundry room.  In this room we have built an indoor kennel space where the dogs can spend time when we are away from home all day.. it has a dog door so that they can get outside to another enclosed space for air and exercise.   It is also the space where I bathe the dogs; which when you have an Afghan Hound means there is also the paraphernalia for brushing and drying, as well. It also still has our original laundry area - but I rarely use that now, except for the dog's laundry. We had installed a counterto