Life Changes

Hi Everybody,

It has been forever since I posted last and I appologize for that.  I have been very busy and have had little time for anything let alone computering or crafting for that matter.  I did manage to make a bunch of thank you cards a few weeks ago and if you want to skip the story of what is happening in my life, you can scroll down to see the cards.

I have decided to downsize.  I live a large 2600 sq. ft. (plus basement) house on an acre of land.  This is far too big for just one person.  Guilt and expenses have gotten the best of me so I have decided to sell this home and move into my small rental house.  It is about half the size.  It will be hard to move and leave my home that we designed and built over 25 years ago.  I love the quiet and privacy that I have here.  On the up side, my daughter and son in law are buying the house.  I do not know if I could do it if it was not staying in the family.  There are so many memories here and trees planted for special happenings in our family and memorial trees.

So now, I am in the process of getting rid of 40 years of accumulated "stuff".  And I really mean 40 years.  While cleaning the crawl space part of the basement,  I have found a couple wedding presents that were still in their original unopened boxes and boxes that were moved from our last house to this one.  I don't need that stuff.   Having a large storage area sometimes is not a good thing.  I have always been a bit of a hoarder (not TV hoarder, but I have kept stuff that I might use sometime) and my late husband was the same.  He had started collecting tools for when he retired.  Many are brand new and still in their boxes.

Anyway, I am having a garage sale and this is what my dining room and living room look like right now.   And this is only the start and doesn't include the bigger items.

Look at all those canning jars.  I used to can a lot and found 40 dozen jars.  When I had a batch or fish or relish to can, I guess it was easier to go out and buy new jars than to go into the crawl space and find the ones that got put there.  What was I thinking?

This is a slow process.  Like the TV hoarders, I have to go through everything.  Unlike them, I can easily junk stuff that is no longer useful to me.  We have made many, many trips to the dump.  Nobody has a use for old outdated polyester double knit clothes :-).

I have promised myself that things will be different after the move.  My storage area there is smaller and is in a full height, bright area.  I already have set up shelving units so that I can see what is stored there easily.

So, while all this was going on, I attended a baby shower.  Both my daughter in law and her sister are expecting within a couple weeks of each other, so there was a joint shower.  We are having a girl and the sister is having a boy.  Part of my shower gift for them was to make some thank you cards.  I made 20 for each of them.  They had to be different for each because they both were sending them to the same people.  This is what I came up with. I made 5 different designs.  I copied the fish card directly from Beth Prout.  You can see her card here.  And I saw a similar  onesie card somewhere on the net but can't find it now.  The other cards were my ideas.  They are all pretty straight forward.  Some are Stampin Up.  And the middle one is a digi stamp made by Pink Gem. Sorry for the odd angle, but I wanted to get them all picture at once.

That is about it for today.

Hope you all have a wonderful weekend.

Theresa in Kitimat