I Have C.R.S.

Another snowed-in day today, and no work. Yesterday's white-out blizzard (they made it officially a "Blizzard") forced most of the road crews to stop working and wait it out. This meant misery for the interstates this morning, and forget side roads or neighborhoods! My street was plowed, but only one lane wide, and with the manual snow removal from the parking spaces clogging the empty spaces and slopping into the street, well, it's just not pretty at all.

We did not get all that many more inches of snow yesterday (probably less than another 12"), but the winds - OMG, the howling winds - we have major drifting. MAJOR.

But I'll get to the snow pics in a sec. First, I wanted to show you I actually stamped something today! I did! See?


I am totally out of these, so it was time to make some more. I used pieces of paper from my Scrap Heaplet for the patterned papers, and all the cut shapes came from scraps. The only virgin card stock sacrificed for these cards was for the bases.

I made two of the brown above (for you hoarders, that is retired SU Taupe grosgrain with Close to Cocoa card stock) and two of the purple below:


(That ink, card stock and ribbon really do match the stripe in the paper. For some reason I am incapable of getting a good pic with purple or blue in it. BTW, the ribbon and card stock are Eggplant. No, really!)

For the purple skirt, I used a too-dark Copic color and went over it with the colorless blender to try and lighten it. I thought I had all the colors, but not quite, I guess. ;-)

I also made one of this blue variety:

Again, for my hoarding-type readers, that's retired SU Bluebird grosgrain with Ballet Blue card stock.

Now for the snow update. Last night I could not even see out my front door because the screen was clogged with blown snow. This morning I could see out, but when I opened my inside door, I saw this:

That's right, the snow was drifted between the doors, right through the screen. Since I knew it was fluffy snow, I tried to open the screen door, pushing away the snow outside so I could reach around to the left and grab my snow shovel. It worked, mostly, until this happened:

Crap. I can say that since this is my blog, and it really does deserve a little ##($&#$*&)(%. What's done is done, so I pushed the door open, went outside and cleared off the area in front of the door so I could open it all the way, opened the screen door and locked it open, then shoveled the snow out of my front hall! Good, gracious!

The steps weren't so bad, since they were mostly protected by the 7-foot-high* walls of shoveled snow from the weekend. But the car, OMG, the car(s)! And the snow from the plow in front of my car(s). Sigh ... I shoveled in waves. First pass I did my front walk and the sides of the car. (Forget the Miata. It is so buried right now it may be April or May until it sees the sun again.) Later this afternoon I cleared off the car, then shoveled out the top half of the plowed snow from in front of my car, then I did a test-drive over what was left to make sure I could get out without having to clear the rest of it, and I did. (I love my Subaru Forester.) I called it done and came in to stamp.

Okay, first I grabbed a bunch of old towels and got most of the melted residual snow off my floor, then I stamped.

I also decided to reschedule this weekend's Stamp Camps, mostly because there is nowhere for anyone to park. The Sunday peeps can park across the street in the shopping center and grab a Starbuck's on the way over, but I cannot tell them there are any sidewalks on which to walk, and that won't work for the Monday night peeps, so I just rescheduled for next weekend. Hopefully some of this stuff will melt by then.

I also hope in the name of all that is good in this world that we do not see snow like this again in my lifetime. I live here partly because of the mild Winters, and this is NOT FAIR, I tell you, NOT FAIR. Although, the Weather Service said it snowed in Dallas today, and that if snow actually fell in the FL panhandle like they predicted it would, it meant all 50 states would have snow on the ground by Saturday. Yes, Hawaii, too, in the mountains. If this is not a Snowpocalypse, I don't know what to call it.

Enough whining. I need to go finish some laundry so I can go to work tomorrow! Only my second day this week. :-)

Thanks for stopping by!

*Okay, maybe not a full 7 feet of snow, but it is up to my shoulders, and as far as I am concerned, if I have to heave a shovel full of snow over my head, it might as well be 7 feet high.

And the Snow Just Keeps A-Comin'

Not to whine or anything, but Dear Snow Gods, AREN'T YOU ABOUT DONE WITH THIS STOOPID SNOW?!?!? WHAT HAVE WE DONE TO DESERVE THIS TREATMENT?!?!?!

Sigh. I went to work yesterday, and wave 2 of The Snow (tagged on Twitter as #snOMG), started last night. We have some fluffy stuff today - I shoveled about 4" a little while ago, and the weather forecast for the DC area went from Snow Warning to Blizzard Warning. There are winds approaching 50 mph blowing all this new snow about.

The Federal Gov't was officially closed for the third day in a row, and schools are close for the rest of the week. The local snow plow crews and electric company crews are blinded by the white-out and have stopped trying to keep up. We've been told to hunker down and wait it out.

I have lived in Michigan and Illinois (Chicago Western 'burbs), and I don't recall ever being snowed in like this. Plus, those places can HANDLE slow ... DC cannot. We are so far over our annual snow fall right now, I am pretty sure we've busted all sorts of records.

I decided to not get trapped in my own home again, so I went out and shoveled a bit this morning. This is my front door, inside looking out:

You can see my shoveled sidewalk is covered again, and it's a little drifty. But I GOT OUT and cleared it off.

My official measuring stick, stuck in my neighbor's still un-cleared parking spot:

That sure looks like 24" to me! I think tomorrow I'll help her shovel out at least part of her spot. This is just not right.

Here's my car today:

I had to back it in last night since the opening was too narrow to turn into. You can see where the snow is drifted right up to the right side of the car already. Great.

My neighbor brushed off her own car, and the two of us shoveled between them.

I am not going anywhere, so I did not bother clearing off the car yet.

Here is the path down my steps. See the footprints?

I shoveled my way up, worked on the parking spot, shoveled my way back down, grabbed my camera, and there was enough new snow to leave footprints on my way back up to take these pics. It's crazy, I tell you, CRAZY!

From the outside looking in:

Ugh. That's all I have to say: UGH.

In other news, since I am home again today, I've decided to be productive. I KNOW! What a concept! I have what I refer to as my Craft Overflow Area that takes up much of my Living Room floor. My goal today is to make it disappear. I am working box by box, pile by pile, and I will get this stuff put away if it kills me.

What made me take these drastic steps? My boy may come visit me in March, and I need to be able to open the sleep sofa. Uh-huh. So I'll be working on the overflow today and I'll post the Big Reveal later, assuming I make a dent.

Thanks for stopping by!

Snow Update

I thought I'd give you an update on my shut-in-ness. This was the view outside my back door this morning:

Just gorgeous! By mid-day, the sun had melted the snow off the tree branches and they were upright once again. We did lose some trees in the neighborhood, or at least some large branches off several of them.

The snow crew arrived mid-day to rescue me. This was my front door 'before':

Yeah, I know, the sun is glaring, but look at the bottom of the door. THAT is the problem. The snow drifted up the door and blocked me in. There is a step down when I go out, and the center of that drift measured 16" on the inside. I was trapped, but good.

Once they cleared the front door, I slipped out for some photo action. Here's my front steps, or at least the half they cleared:

And here is my dug-out car:

Phew! Now I can get out of here tomorrow. My neighbor, who was away this weekend, said the expressway is cleared in spots, but she would suddenly hit a stretch with 3" of snow. This does not bode well for tomorrow's commute.

On the other side of my car is my other car, the Miata:

What? You can't see it? See the mirror? So sad. She won't see the sunlight until March, I suspect. I told the guys they could put the snow behind the Miata since I was pretty sure I was not going to shovel it out any time soon.

Speaking of my neighbor, to the left of my Miata is her parking spot. Yep - all snow. I took advantage of that to measure:

It's official: 20" deep. It seems like more, but we did have a lot of drifting. When my neighbor drove up, she looked at her spot, shook her head, parked somewhere else and walked back. She just looked at her spot, then looked at her front walk, which was strangely similar in depth. She was miserable and her little doggy was cold.

Then we did this:

That's a path across the grass from my walk to her front door. I started it, but then I held her dog while she worked on the top foot or so. Her dog wanted in so badly, the little thing leaped between my neighbor's footprints and went inside.

I dug out the central mailbox so the mail lady can get to it tomorrow. I salted (okay, it's not real salt ... it's the no-salt pet-safe melt stuff) my walk and around my car so I won't kill myself tomorrow by slipping on ice. THAT would be a real shame, especially with my SABLE stash and all. No, the no-salt is good stuff.

That is all I have - no stampy stuff to share. I hope to remedy that tomorrow. Thanks for stopping by!

A Minor Plumbing Adventure

As promised, I bring you an exciting plumbing installment. I took the day off Thursday for my plumber/handyman to come over and take care of a list of thing's I'd saved up for him. In our communication over the past few weeks, my short list became a little longer. Remember how I've mentioned that in my world, 12 things need to be done before the one thing you really wanted done? Uh-huh. This was no different.

A while ago I broke off the handle of the sprayer on my kitchen sink, so it was dead. I wanted him to either fix it or replace it, to which he suggested I could have a pull-down sprayer on my faucet and replace the dead sprayer with a soap dispenser. So I went shopping and bought the parts, then he came over to do the installation.

Here is my kitchen sink Before:


Notice that broken sprayer on the right. Note: My kitchen sink NEVER EVER EVER looks like this. I had to clear away everything, including three paper grocery bags of stuff from underneath the sink.

After much grumbling (both of us) and trips to the store (both of us) we have this:


SWEET! Here's a profile view:


Niiiice, huh? The only problem is he said the new faucet is sooooo much nicer than the sink, I probably need a new sink to go with it. To which I responded, "Ooooh, I have always wanted one of these:


Or one of these:


This exclamation led to a discussion of the new counter top I'd also need. I'm thinking soapstone, since EVERYone has granite, and I happen to like the look of soapstone. This may not happen this year, but soon. Soon.

We also discussed a small, mobile island. I'd take two upper cabinets (not as deep as base cabinets), screw them together back-to-back, put them on casters, slap on a counter top, and it will be A-MA-ZING. Okay, HE will do all of that, but he thinks it is a grand idea, and my dream is to have the additional storage to get all the crap pantry and craft overflow off my kitchen floor. I think this will be my next project.

While he was here, he also fixed my leaky terlet and re-caulked parts of my tub. He laughed at me (LAUGHED) when I showed him the box I still had from the last time *I* fixed the terlet all by myself. So when he was done fixing things, he left me two parting gifts:

A part from the terlet repair kit:


... and the remaining caulk from the bathtub:


Then he laughed when I said, "Thank You!" He must think I am a loon or something.

That is all for this evening. I hope to get the card stock cut and kits assembled for Sunday & Monday's Stamp Camps, then maybe I'll have time to stamp so I'll have something crafty to show you.

Thanks for stopping by!

Furniture Movement Exercise - Part Second (and Last)

Well, I managed to cram all of this into two posts, so it will not be a long, drawn-out read after all. Lucky you.

Before we get back to the main program, let's look in on my helper:

Uh-huh. Do you think she could be any more-tightly wound? Yes, that is her tail draped over her own head. (Please ignore the towels I just dumped on the chair - I'll fold them later.)

Okay, let's pick up where we left off - I needed to move stuff around in the Captain's Quarters to make room for the now-disassembled card catalog. First, I moved the dismembered set of drawers next to the 4' table I have in the center of the room:

Well, would you look at that! It is the same height as the table! Lucky Duck Move #1. If I find a top for it, it can be a functional extension of my work space. YAY!

(For the morbidly-curious among you, that clutter on top of the drawers-with-no-top is a 3-ring binder with pictures of every card I have made this year. Yes, I have binders by year that contain pics of every card I have ever made*. On top of the binder are all the stickers with numbers for the cards I have not yet printed out for the binder. There's also extra stickers and some clear bags for my bag-em-and-tag-em efforts. And an emergency flashlight that I need to plug back in.)

*Why do I have binders of every card I have ever made? At one point I thought I'd need to go back and re-create a card, but that's not happening, so I may quit doing it. Maybe. Plus, I am running out of room for binders.

Moving that drawer section left an empty spot in its wake:

I vacuumed it and everything! Then I moved the 2-section storage cabinets into the empty so it is now filled:

Moving on, we get to The Test. Will that base section actually fit in the newly vacated space?

YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY! It does! Aaaaaaand, I can reach the wall outlet without becoming a contortionist! A pleasant, unexpected bonus!

Let's see how close we came:

... ooooh, literally an inch to spare. So I brought in section #1:

... just perfect. Then ... THEN ... I brought in section #2:

Would you look at that! It is the same height as the other cabinets! This is what I call Lucky Duck Move #2. I had to stop for a second and think things through. If I stopped with only two sections, I could use the top for ... more storage! I would have a place for my now-homeless Color Caddy! I could reach it!!!!

So I tried it. Instead of section #3, I brought in the top:

This was going very well. Very well, indeed. Lookie:

Is this perfect, or what?!?!

Here is what that wall looks like now:

Oh, look. My muse is showing there in the center, hanging from the light. And we are looking up her skirt. Look away, just look away!!!

Here is the wall in my Dining Room, mostly back to normal:

And here I demonstrate that I actually put something INTO one of the drawers:

Since I pre-ordered 2 of each new color of the yummy SU satin ribbon, I needed a place to put it, so this was perfect.

Oh, and that third section of the card catalog? Here it is:


I had to move a dead lamp out of the way to put it here, but it is a perfect fit. I have not decided yet what I'll do with it - keep it or sell it. Since it is not in my way, I have all sorts of time to think about it. But now I need to dispose of that dead lamp. Sigh ... a woman's work is never done.

That's it for the Big Move. I am finished for now. I also realized my Stamp Camps are NEXT WEEKEND, and I am once again sorely unprepared. I'll need to go steal CASE a few projects so I'll have something for The Ladies to do when they arrive. Hopefully I'll get to that this weekend so I'll have something crafty to show you.

Thanks for stopping by!

Furniture Movement Exercise - Part First

Ya know how sometimes in order to do one thing you need to do something else first? Or in my case, about twelve things? Since no one can figure out why it takes me forever to do anything, I thought I'd record today's activities for posterity.

Goal: Move the library card cabinet into the Captain's Quarters.

Let's get started with a pictorial of the "before". Here is the library card catalog in spot #2:

The bottom two sections of drawers are filled with my embarrassingly-large CD collection. The top section of drawers actually have index cards in them. The object of my attention today ... this whole piece of furniture must be moved into the CQ.

Now let's take a look at where we think it will fit. This is one of the walls of storage cabinets in the CQ:

Please focus on the small one to the right:

If that small section of storage were to find a new home. the space between the 3-level cabinet to its left and the edge of the door is:

... just over 36". And measuring to see how the depth of the card catalog will fit:

... see the 17" mark? That's how far it would stick out into the room/doorway. I wrinkled my nose over this when BR#2 was here, until she pointed out that the bags hanging on that door knob stuck out 20". She's right.

So where do we think this 2-section storage thing will live? Gotta find it a home, right? Well, there's this spot:

That ... thing is a part of my desk that used to support an L-shaped desk section that I took down because it took up too much room and was just a collection spot for STUFF. The drawer section has no top ... I keep meaning to get one, but, well, you know.

So if I moved that drawer unit somewhere, I could move the 2-section storage thing over here in its place and then try and fit the card catalog in the space vacated by the 2-section storage thing. Welcome to my world.

Let's measure the card catalog one more time, just to be sure:

35". Mmm-hmmm. In theory, this should fit.

Okay, now for the "gotta do 12 other things before the one you want" part. In order to take the Card Catalog apart, it needed to be empty. To empty it out, I needed to remove the drawers, which contained all my CDs. I needed somewhere to put these CDs, so why not put them back where they originated: a cabinet in my front hall. But that cabinet was moved into the Dining room:


(For those of you wondering, I actually did take that packing material and fold it nicely and stack it up in the kitchen a few weeks ago. I have a ton of it. Anyone need packing material?)

... to create a spot for this green cabinet in the front hall:

(You may recall that this green cabinet used to live where the card catalog lives now. Just think of it as musical chairs and you'll do fine.)

So I dragged (drug?) the green cabinet into the Dining Room, then set about moving the brown cabinet back to its original spot.

Unfortunately, that brown cabinet is not only a put-together-yourself cabinet that weighs about 15423 pounds without the CDs, it is old, and was partially limping before I tried to move it, and it broke totally when I moved it to this spot. Moving it back was going to be a Herculean task. And it was.

I had a hair-brained idea that if I took off the two doors, it would not only lighten the piece enough to move, but allow me to flip it over and re-attach the bottom support that ripped of when I moved it the first time. (Lesson #1: Don't ever attempt to move this stuff.) So I unscrewed the doors, one at a time, and the first one ripped off with screw #6 of 6. Did I mention these doors are heavy? The first one fell onto the carpet, which was okay with me. Most of the VHS tapes even stayed in place. Cool.

Then I got another hair-brained idea to support the second door so it would not fall off with the removal of screw #6 of 6. I am capable of learning from my mistakes. I am. No, really.

So I supported the open door on some cans of varnish I had conveniently stored next to the cans of Raid. They did not work, and that door crashed to the wooden floor, spewing its VHS, cassettes and CD contents all over my kitchen. Okay, at least both doors were off; time to re-build this baby.

The screws for the base that had ripped off had destroyed their holes, so they had nothing to grip. No way they were getting re-screwed, and drilling new holes today was not gonna happen, so my only option was to put the cabinet where I wanted it and carefully place the support where it would, well, support the cabinet. Oh, yeah, I know - this is scary stuff, but c'mon, I had 250+ CDs that needed to go SOMEWHERE, and I did not want to move them twice.

So I dusted the inside, outside and underneath of this thing, screwed the doors back on, and began to transfer the CDs out of the drawers of the Card Catalog and back into the cabinet.

FINALLY, I got to begin on the card catalog! One at a time I took a drawer out of here ...

... stacked it over here:

... grabbed the CDs out of it, and put them in here:

DONE! All back the way it started a few weeks ago.

I did move the cabinet a little to the left in the front hall so I can move a chair to the right of it in place of all the cans of varnish and paint and Raid. See? I do have a plan!

Then I took apart the card catalog itself.

Here is the base:

... and here are the heavy parts - the drawer sections:


Next up, I'll move stuff around in the CQ, then move the base into place to see if it fits. Let us all pray that it does, or I am in deep doo-doo.

I'll be back later with another installment. Are you tired yet? I know *I* am!

Thanks for stopping by!