Busy Summer

Somehow this summer has gone flying by!  I don't know how it got to be September already!

I've been working on multiple projects... both inside and outside... that have been consuming a lot of time.  My running has also picked up during the summer and I'm running 45 minutes two days a week with a longer (~1.5 hr) run on the weekends.  I've gotten more fit, which I'm happy about.  I haven't quite broken the 30 minute barrier on a 5k, but I chalk up the last one to running when it was 77 degrees and 95% humidity.  Yuck!

Here's a few of the various projects that are on-going....

1. This is a quilt called Heat Wave by Judy Laquidara.  Its been stalled a bit due to working on other projects, but its in good shape.  I have to make a large pieced border yet in a snail's tail pattern, but I've made those blocks before and know how to get them to come out right.



2. The reason #1 is stalled.... a friend at work had a second child earlier this summer, so I've been working on a pair of quilts (one for child #1 and one for the new child).  Sadly, I'm WAY behind on this and I'm still not done with either quilt.  The baby was born in June, but the way I see it (or rationalize it) is that they won't need the blankets until it gets cold anyway.  :)




#3. In late May/early June, we went on a vacation to Myrtle Beach.  It was absolutely gorgeous and we had perfect weather.  The first photo is from the first morning there.  We had a tropical storm that was heading out from the prior day (hence the clouds), but the rest of the week was perfect.




#4.  I've gotten my groove back with needlepoint.  This is where it was earlier in the summer and the second photo is from the past few days.  I'm finally on to page 4... of 20+ pages.  A ways to go yet....




#5.  With the great weather we've had this summer, there's been a lot of work being done outside.  First and foremost is the stone wall that my husband has been building.  He picks out the rocks... I help him cement them all into place.  This is only one half of the wall.  There will be an arbor on the left of the picture before the second half of the wall starts up again.




All in all, its been a good summer.  It went by quickly, but hopefully we will still have several weeks of good weather before the true cold starts to set in.

Happy Crafting!
~Sarah at upstateNYCreations

Heat Wave Continued and Water Update

Its been quite a while since I last posted... life definitely seems to get in the way these days!

The past few months have been hectic to say the least with a lot of things going on both at home and at work.  The company I work for (a very large one) acquired a competitor last year and we've been struggling for the past 4 months to try to integrate the two businesses.  For years we built up walls to prevent knowledge transfer, and now we're trying to figure out how to take down all those walls.

The water issue is semi-resolved.  From a standpoint of clean water, it is resolved.  The well system that we had put in is doing the job and we've had the water tested a few times to make sure it is doing what it is supposed to be doing.  We have clean, drinkable water that we don't really have to worry about.  However, we don't know the long-term effects on the well and whether we will have water in a dry-spell or not.  We are trying to remain hopeful that the aquifer is good and we won't have any water issues.

On the non-resolved side, we are still fighting with the well driller's insurance company.  I swear these people are the dumbest folks I've run into in a very long time.  They tried to get us to sign a form to release water tests results from a consulting company that we never worked with.  Come to find out, the well driller had used that consulting company...not us.  We couldn't sign a release form for a company that we never even contacted (but the insurance company couldn't figure that out on their own without us explicitly telling them...TWICE).  Then when they did send us the form to sign for our own water testing, it was riddled with mistakes.  We had to mark it up to them and send it back (unsigned) so they can fix it before we will sign it.  I have a feeling this is going to be a very drawn out event and maybe...eventually... we will get something out of them.

On the quilty front, I made progress on the Heat Wave quilt and started (ahem) two other quilts.  Oops! :)

Here's where I left off the last time, with my paper-piecing blocks.  I was able to get all of them done in fairly short order once I got the rhythm of it.


Then it was on to assembling all the pieces into the blocks that make up the center of the quilt.


Overall, three different blocks with the green corner squares in different places depending upon the final placement in the quilt.


Here is one set of blocks completely sewn.


I do have them now all sewn into the center section of the quilt, but I'll save that for another day as well as pictures of the two new quilts that I'm making.

Happy Crafting!
~Sarah at upstateNYCreations

Organizing and Cold

This year has been cold, but sadly, non-snowy for upstate NY.  If its going to be cold, it might as well snow and be done with it!  I think we've had a total of maybe...and that's a BIG maybe... ten inches of snow this year.  Its downright pathetic.

However, we have had cold, which makes it perfect sewing weather as there's no way I'm going outside when its well below freezing!  With all that cold weather, I did do a bit of organizing in the sewing room.  I realized that my various strips (ranging from 1.5" to 3.5" wide) were just all over the place and not organized in any fashion.  Its very difficult to get yourself to use your own pre-cut strips if you have a mis-mash of colors.


So I spent a little time one weekend to organize my strips by color and make an attempt to be able to use them better in the future.  My 2" wide strips were able to fit into a smaller shoe-box sized bin.


But my 2.5" strips are still piled up in the big bin.  Since this picture was taken, I did sort them by color as well, so they're all "prepped" and ready to be used in some pattern in the future.

I also was able to make some decent progress on the next quilt (Heat Wave), but that will be for another post.

This past weekend was just all about trying to stay warm.  Saturday night/Sunday morning we bottomed out at about -25F....and that was without the windchill.  I don't know the exact windchill values we had, but the forecast was for values around -35 to -40F.


You can bet I spent my weekend by the fire as much as I could!

Happy Crafting!
~Sarah at upstateNYCreations

Water Saga

Another post without pictures... but a post nonetheless.  :c)

For anyone who is new, just prior to Christmas, we had some problems with our well water.  All the gory details, and a few pictures, are posted here.

The well driller did put in a filter to catch the sediment and we're waiting for our water tests to come back at this phase to make sure we still have clean water to drink.  However, the water straight out of the well (non-filtered) is still cloudy.  It is definitely better, but not crystal clear like it used to be.

This is where it has gotten a little annoying.  The well driller calls us once every week or two and says "I've sold that filter and I'm going to need it back".  Our response all along, and they agreed when they put it in, was that it will stay until we have clear water.  Thankfully, our neighbor (who is ultimately paying this guy) is on our side and has also called the well driller to tell him no, he can't take the filter yet.

The good thing... the filter is inside the house.  They can't come and get it without us letting them in to take it.  :D

The bad side... we're getting tired of the phone calls.  AND.... we found out the neighbor's well is only producing 2.5 gallons per minute.  Code in our area is a minimum of 3 gallons per minute.  So we don't think he's done messing with his well yet since he needs to get at least another 1/2 gallon out of it in order to put a house there.

We are truly hoping that there hasn't been any major damage to the quality of our well, but we really won't know until we have clean water and we go through a hot and dry summer.  Then we will know if our well is truly stable again.

I do have some crafting/quilting stuff to post again.  I've been doing a lot of clean-up of boxes of scraps.  Eventually I will use all my extra fabric for some scrap quilts!

Happy Crafting!
~Sarah at upstateNYCreations

Happy New Year!

At the start of a new year, I typically do not feel different or invigorated to try something new.  No New Year's resolutions for this girl!  I usually try to make it a point not to do something "special" for the new year as I want the things that I choose to do to be things that I want to do regardless of what time of year it is.

That being said....

This year I do want to be better with blogging.  I got out of the habit of regularly posting last year, and I'd like to try and change that this year.  I may not have pictures to show on every post, but I'm going to try to share a little more of what goes on here in my little world.

The last two weeks of the year were busy to say the least, but I'm glad I was fortunate enough to have two full weeks off from work.  I used the time to visit with family, spend time with my spouse, and in general just unwind for a hectic work schedule.

I was able to get a few quilting/crafty things done over the break, but most of my time was spent visiting with family and just generally enjoying life.  I'll be sure to share some more of our winter-break adventures this week.  :c)

Happy Crafting!
~Sarah at upstateNYCreations

Water Woes

I've been quiet lately with a lot of things going on both at work and home.  However, I felt the need to share this one...

Our neighbor has been trying to put a well in for a few weeks.  They are down to about 400ft and still no water.  Our well is only 250ft deep and we have great water.  It really comes down to WHO you use for digging a well.

Anyway - the well-driller next door decided the next route was to do hydro fracking.  This is a standard method that's been done for years for water wells, but apparently there are no real "rules" around how close you can be to an existing well without impacting it.  On Friday, they started hydro fracking and the only reason we knew was because my husband was home that day.

We thought everything was fine until we woke up Saturday morning to discover that our clean, clear water was now murky grey.  The hydro fracking opened up a fissure into our well and disturbed everything.

Thankfully, we still have water in the well, but we were pumping it out continuously over the weekend to try and clear out the muck.  The picture below pretty much tells the story.


Thursday night we had nice clear water and Saturday morning you couldn't see through the glass.  The picture of the glasses was taken this morning (3 days after the water was put into the Saturday morning glass) and the sediment in the water STILL hasn't settled.

We ran the well all day Saturday and Sunday, which is why the Sunday night glass is somewhat see-through.  On Monday, the well driller came and put in a temporary filter such that we can use our water again.

We honestly don't know if our well looked as murky when it was first dug or not.  Our builder ran if for a week straight just continuously dumping the water out of the well to flush out all the junk.  We weren't trying to live there at that point, so it wasn't a big deal.  Now that we live in our house, it is a big deal when you don't have potable water.

Thankfully, both the well-driller and our neighbor are being very good about this and making sure that our water gets fixed.  We spent the weekend using bottled water and doing laundry at a laundromat versus in the house.  An inconvenience, but was OK for a weekend.  I'm definitely happy to have decent water back.  We still have to test every few days to see if the unfiltered water is coming in clean yet, but we have the filter (free of charge) in place until the water is clear.

Happy Crafting!
~Sarah at upstateNYCreations

Heat Wave!

I wish we had a heat wave right now.  As it stands, we've had to use our fireplace the past few nights to take the chill off the air in the house.  Sunday we definitely needed it though as the overnight low was down to 24F and the daytime temp only reached about 45F.


We even had it... S N O W!!!!  I was not happy to see these little babies on the porch and the little white things flying in the air.


So what's a girl to do???

Stay inside and quilt!  I purchased Judy Laquidara's book Nine Patch Extravaganza several years ago and even bought the fabric to make her quilt called Heat Wave.  I decided to finally pull it out and get to work!


I have similar colors to Judy's original quilt and started cutting up all the pieces I needed.


My "OCD" factor is coming up high on this one while I was cutting things out.  LOL


And all the pieces cut for the center portion of the quilt and the non-pieced borders.  All neatly lined up and ready to go.  Sometimes when I stack this stuff up, it makes me not want to do anything more so I can keep it in the nice and neat little piles.  Thankfully, that feeling doesn't last too long!


I have about 20 of the 80 flying geese blocks made so far for this quilt.  There are a lot of bonus HSTs as part of making those flying geese, so i'll have to figure out something to do with the tan and gold-ish HSTs.

Happy Crafting!
~Sarah at upstateNYCreations

Vacation

Last week, my husband and I both took the entire week off from work.  We didn't really have any plans to go anywhere, but we both needed to just not be at work.  Sometimes it isn't about going somewhere on vacation, but just being able to relax.

I always feel like when I travel on vacation that I need a secondary vacation to make up for the energy spent traveling somewhere.  It was really nice to just be home and relax.  We did make the most of our time and got a fair amount done around the house/yard.

When we purchased our piano a few months ago, we decided to convert our formal dining room into the room with the piano.  This ended up meaning that we had to change the table in our eat-in kitchen area to be one with leaves in it so we could seat everyone for large families dinners.  I don't have a picture of the new table yet, but it was delivered last week while we were home.

In addition to the new table, we then had to find some comfy chairs to put in the room with the piano.  We both hate furniture shopping.  Most of the time you don't find anything you like and you end up frustrated and feeling hassled by the sales folks at the stores.  This time, we did find some chairs!



This chair was at the 3rd furniture store we went to (over 2 weekends), but we fell in love with it.  Its comfortable to sit in and looks very nice.  One of the best parts.. its actually a recliner!  It looks like any normal chair (even from the back), but that square section on the front...that's the foot rest.  They will be perfect in the room with the piano and will let one of us sit and relax while the other plays.

Besides a bunch of yard work being done last week, we also spent some time at my in-laws where they live on a lake.  We went up twice and enjoyed swimming and kayaking.


Finally since I haven't shown many garden pictures this year.... The catchfly is flowering and is a very pretty orange-red color.


My orange coneflowers are also finally blooming.  They seem to be happy this year, which is good considering we thought we were going to have to replace them since they just didn't do it last year.



I hope you all are enjoying your summer and those of you in the south aren't wilting from the heat too much yet.  I did get a small amount of quilting done on vacation, but not enough to even consider taking pictures.  Hopefully I'll get my mojo back soon and will start making progress on a few things.

Happy Crafting!
~Sarah at upstateNYCreations

Spring!

It is finally here!! :c)

We had our first truly nice weekend weather-wise this past weekend.  We had one day last week, but both Saturday and Sunday were nice here.  Much of the nice weather has been spent raking the yard to remove the dead grass....definitely not one of my favorite spring-time chores.  I'm sore from all the raking.  Half of the yard was done two weekends ago and the rest of it was done this past weekend.

However, my plants are starting to grow and its really nice to see some green! One of the "weaker" lupine plants below.  For some reason it is struggling a little in its current home, so I may decide to move it later this summer if it continues to struggle.


I have some silver mound that I split last fall and now have four plants.  They are all a bit smaller, but will definitely grow a bit this year.  You can keep trimming them all year to keep them nice and tidy, so they provide a nice accent to the garden.


My clematis are starting to show signs of life as well.


You do have to look closely to see some of the green...but its there.


I think these two plants are called columbine.  They were a bit over-crowded last year, so I did some re-arranging in the fall to try to give them some more space this year.  Hopefully it will help and make them happier.


These ones are campanula.  They produce very pretty purple flowers...and lots of them.  These were also moved last year as they were crowded in with the columbine.


These next two are my happiest lupines.  They have more stalks than I can count right now, so they are definitely in a happy place.  I can't wait to see how many flowers I get out of these guys this year.


So this next picture is a bit odd.  You all know that I do quilting (or at least attempt to do it when I can find the time to get into my sewing room).  Aside from taking care of the garden, I also help split the wood we use to heat the house in the winter.  I started splitting wood last fall when I was going through a stressful time at work and I've found that I absolutely love it.  It is a great workout and is amazing at stress relief.  Beating on a big hunk of wood is very satisfying!  :c)

Since my husband also splits the wood, there were times last fall that we would both want to split, but we only had one axe.  So one of us would have to find something else to do, or just stand there and pick up the wood pieces.  I decided to fix that this year and put a new axe on my birthday list.  Its the same length as the old one, but is a tad bit lighter and had great reviews on Amazon.


I didn't get a chance to test it out this weekend since we spent all of Sunday raking (Saturday was spent doing some family stuff).  I'm hoping to be able to test it out this coming weekend and see how it splits.  The reviews on Amazon said that it was really easy to split wood with the axe and has plenty of power to it such that you can actually get through the larger logs.

I do expect to get some quilting in this week as the next three days have nothing but rain in the forecast.  Hopefully I'll have something to share later this week.

Happy Crafting!
~Sarah at upstateNYCreations

Snowy Day of Quilting

Last weekend, I spent a little bit of time in my sewing room.  My husband had traveled the week before and was exhausted after arriving home late on Friday.  He slept most of Saturday, which meant I had time to play.  :c)

I was perfectly happy to be inside was we had snow showers on and off all day.  It was just before the "blizzard" hit New England last week.  This was the view out my sewing room window.  It is a little hard to see the snow, but it is coming down lightly.


This next picture shows what it looked like with one of the snow squalls coming through.  Lots of white stuff in the air.


As you can see, I was making progress on the Mariner's Compass.  It has definitely been slow-going and I'm sure the few people who read my blog will be bored of this quilt very soon.  Quilting small little pebbles all over a center portion of quilt just takes time and I haven't been able to devote as much time as I would like to it.

After doing pebbles for a few hours...yes, a few hours... I decided I needed a change of pace.  Last spring I purchased a quilt kit that was similar to a Block-of-the-Month (BOM).  In the fall, I was able to get the first block done and all the appliques fused in place, but I never actually got around to doing the stitches to actually applique them in place.  I decided that since I needed something different besides quilting pebbles, I would do the appliques on this piece.  It took about 2 hours with the thread color changes, but its done now and back up on my design wall.


I've also been doing a lot of needlepoint lately.  Its nice to be able to do it and sit by the fire at night.  I don't have any pictures yet, but will share when I remember to take one.  LOL!

So the "blizzard" from last week didn't really impact us here in upstate NY.  On Monday night the weather folks were forecasting 8-14" of snow overnight.  We woke up Monday morning...without even a dusting of new snow.  There were a lot of disappointed kids that day!  However, we did end up getting snow during the day on Tuesday...about 6-8" worth of it.  It was just enough that we had to clear our driveway and the commute home was a little exciting for some folks.

With the AWD Subaru, I just don't worry about snow anymore.  It performs fantastically in the snow.  I've driven through 6" of snow on the roads without any issues whatsoever.  Its a standard shift car and it didn't even have any issues starting up on a hill (as anyone who has driven a standard shift car, that's usually the nemesis of driving a standard).  I absolutely love the car (and the heated seats are REALLY nice this time of year)!

I'm also trying to re-design the closet in my sewing room.  Right now its pretty much a standard bedroom closet that we added some free-standing bookshelves to such that I could store my fabric and patterns and thread.  However, its really not the best setup.  I want to have pull-out draws for my thread so I can more easily see the colors and to also keep dust off it.  I'd also like to have better shelving for the books/fabric as right now its not really enough and the shelves are bowed from years of having books on them.

I'll probably try to post some sketches on here for ideas/suggestions, but any thoughts on good storage options are definitely welcome!

I hope everyone is enjoying the winter and getting lots of quilting/crafting done!

Happy Crafting!
~Sarah at upstateNYCreations

Goodbye....and HELLO!

It has been another hectic few weeks here.  I have been getting some quilting done, but there's not a whole lot to show.  Stitch in the ditch quilting is very boring for photos!  It will be good in the end, but its time consuming and doesn't really photograph well.

I do have some other news though.  Living in upstate NY makes things challenging at times, especially in the winter with the snow that we receive.  This past winter, we had a higher than normal amount of snow, which mean my little Mazda 3 didn't do to well.  There were several days that I was stuck at home because the car just isn't good enough in the snow to risk driving it.

Here's my cute little Mazda:


It has definitely served me well over the years, despite not being all-wheel drive.  Its a pretty sporty car to drive and was a great car to learn to drive standard shift.  Since I really did need an all-wheel drive vehicle, we recently started looking around for a new car.

I knew I wanted to try out a Subaru since they have the best all-wheel drive cars for the price you pay.  Their vehicles are very reasonably priced compared to other all-wheel drive vehicle options.  My husband has a 2009 Subaru WRX, which we both love to drive, so we decided to try and find a new 2015 WRX for me. 

It took a bit of patience as these cars are a hot commodity right now and they are a bit hard to find even to be able to test drive one.  However, we did find one that we were able to test drive and I fell in love with it.  That particular dealer was not willing to give us a fair price for the trade in value for the Mazda, so we ended up walking away.

However, not even a week later, I found another dealer within 100 miles that had the exact vehicle I was looking for.  We ended up putting a refundable deposit on the car and drove the 100 miles 2 weekends ago to get the car.

An here she is....  :c)



I absolutely love the new car.  It is extremely sporty and can handle just about any curve you throw at it.  I've been very good at driving it so far and not pushing the engine too hard.  Since it has a turbo, you need to break the engine in a bit before you really start pushing it.

We'll end up getting a spare set of rims and tires for the winter since the car comes with summer performance tires, but I know from experience that this thing will be able to walk up walls in the winter once we put the snow tires on it.

So if you're in the upstate NY area, keep an eye out for a blue streak....it may be me. :c)


Happy Crafting!
 ~Sarah at upstateNYCreations

A little of this... and a little of that...

The weather lately in upstate NY has been pretty miserable for spring time.  We have a lot of cold and rainy days so far this spring.  Most nights we're still down into the lower 40s and during the day, we've been lucky if we hit 60.  So my garden is very slow going this year and we haven't really been doing a lot outside yet since its been so yucky.

For anyone else in woodsy areas and areas prone to ticks, please remember to check yourself after being outside in the woods.  The tick population is definitely increasing here.  In the past 3 weeks, we've found 5 ticks on us after being outside.  My husband had two that were just crawling on him.  On one weekend in particular, I found 2 crawling on me while I was still outside and then found a 3rd one later that evening that had attached itself.  We gently pulled it free and kept it in a baggy (just in case) out in the garage. 

Aside from the very limited outdoor work, I have been doing quilting.  There isn't much to show for it, but I spent several hours today prepping a quilt for quilting.  It is the Mariner's Compass quilt that I plan on doing a lot of custom quilting on.  So today was spent marking some details in the corners of the quilt prior to layering it with batting and backing.  I've found that its easier to get straight lines marked when its just the quilt top versus all the puffiness of the batting.  I also had to cut and press backing material for the quilt.

In the meantime since I don't have any recent pictures.  I realized I never showed a picture of my completed wool applique project.  Here it is below.  The stitching on the bears' heads is embroidered on as well as the dangling stars.


I quilted it very simply and outlined most of the bear shapes.  In the end, I didn't really care for doing the wool applique.  It turned out fine, but it just didn't spark anything for me.  I could see making something out of wool felt if you want to do a mat for a candle or something like that.  Otherwise, its pretty boring.

I hope to share some pictures later this week of another sampler quilt that I finished up the binding on earlier this winter.  I did a lot of custom quilting in different blocks to try out different techniques.  Some I ended up liking others...not so much.  Its all a learning phase though.

Hope everyone had a great weekend!


Happy Crafting!
~Sarah at upstateNYCreations

Time....

....is the one thing I wish I had more of lately.  That and maybe some extra energy! :c)

Its been another hectic two weeks here in upstate NY.  Just after I posted last time (about 2 weeks ago), I ended up picking up a nasty cold.  I spent 4 days straight not doing anything but drinking tea, reading and sleeping.  I'm still fighting off a cough from the cold, but it seems to be getting better.

Work has also been crazy the past few weeks.  Its the time of year that we have to do appraisals.  Originally, we didn't need to get them done until the end of April, so we (myself and two other managers) had plenty of time to get things written up and then to hold the meetings with the individuals.  Then on March 10th, HR told us that we needed to have EVERYTHING done by the end of March!  So I have 30 reviews that I had to write up and then schedule meetings and I only had about 2 weeks to do it.

Sadly, the reviews have not been going well.  The prior managers were very generous with the appraisals and the average for the group was 4.7 out of 5.... not really an average.  So this year the manager of the group decided he wanted to "fix" it...so all the ratings are lower.  We have some very unhappy people now simply because the number changed.  The text of the appraisals still say they're doing a good job, but people like to focus on that number.

Needless to say, its been stressful trying to get through these reviews.  I have 4 days (counting today) left of reviews and I'll be done by lunchtime on Friday.  Friday afternoon can't come fast enough at this stage!

I'm hoping that I can get back to some quilting soon.  Due to dealing with the reviews, I have been neglecting my quilting in the evenings.  In fact, I don't really get anything done in the evening but try to relax so that I can sleep at night.

I have some projects in the works.  Not that I needed another project, but I bought this applique quilt kit from Quilting by the Bay.  It looks really cute and I needed something that was fun and not too terribly difficult to piece.  All the appliques are fused, so it should come together rather quickly.  Plus, the overall design has some really great opportunities to do some custom quilting on it.

I also have some smaller projects in mind and a few finishes that I'm almost done with.  I have some binding to sew onto a few things and then they are done.

Hope everyone is enjoying the start of spring.  Its been cold here in NY still, but we have spurts of spring every now and then.  Hopefully the 50-degree weather later this week will help get rid of the 6+ inches of snow we still have on the ground.


Happy Crafting!
~Sarah at upstateNYCreations

Quick Update

Somehow it was a busy weekend despite not really doing anything.  I did some quilting over the weekend.  I have 80 square-in-square blocks to make for the outer border of the Mariner's Compass wall hanging.  As I was trimming up a bunch of them.... I realized I completely forgot to make some with a green center.  Argh!

Back to pressing and cutting strips so I could make the 14 green square-in-square blocks.  I cut all the fabric, but then ran out of steam and just didn't have it in me to actually sew up the blocks.

There have been a lot of people out sick at my work.  I think that's part of why I feel run down, but I'm hoping that I don't get this cold that's been going around.  It typically has been knocking people down for 3-4 days.

On a good side, I thought I'd share a picture of my parents' Christmas tree from this year.  They used to get real trees when I was kid, but then my mom found out she was allergic to mold.  Surprisingly, evergreens are absolutely covered in mold...no wonder my mom was always sick around the holidays!  They ended up finding a very nice artificial tree... which is hard to do when you're looking for a 12-foot tree!!

Hope everyone is having a great week so far  :c)

Happy Crafting!
~Sarah at upstateNYCreations

Snow!

About a week ago, we had a pretty hefty snow storm come through the northeast.  Here in upstate New York, we ended up with about 15" of snow.

This was the view out my back door after the snow finally stopped




And the view out the front door....


The trees are absolutely beautiful after it snows.  :c)


All the time while it was snowing and bitterly cold... our cat had the right idea.


Completely zonked out in front of the fireplace.


In the picture below, you can see the ash on her feet and legs.  We're going to have to really wipe down everything after the winter since she tends to carry the ash with her wherever she goes.


All the while she was sleeping, I was thinking it must be tough to be a cat in her position. ;c)  Her biggest worry is having to get up from the fireplace to go eat or use the litter pan.


Hope everyone is staying warm this wee!

Happy Crafting!
~Sarah at upstateNYCreations

COLD!!!

This morning we woke up to the nice warm temperature of -6F outside.  Today would have been an awesome day to work from home, but sadly no, I had to go into the office.

My car was definitely not happy with the cold temperatures.  It didn't feel warm in the car until I actually arrived at the office 20 minutes later.

We've also gotten a fair amount of snow lately.  The past few years, we haven't really had a lot of snow in upstate NY.  Even my parents who live in the "snow belt" didn't get a lot of snow the past two years.  I guess mother nature is starting to make up for it this year. 

This past weekend we had a storm come through that dumped about 14-inches of the white stuff.  It was nice that it was light and fluffy snow versus heavy, wet snow (aka heart attack snow).  My husband cleared our driveway with the tractor (we have a snow thrower on the back of it), while I shoveled the sidewalk and back porch.

Afterwards, we came into find this...


Yes, that is our cat.  As CLOSE to the fire as she can get without actually cooking herself.  We're still not sure if she maybe roasted her head a little bit since she was so close.


She actually picked her head up a bit when we came and then we could watch her drift off again and slide back down to laying sideways.  We did have to get a wet paper towel when she woke up so that we could wipe the ash off her.  The side of her head was gray from the ash on the hearth (standard by-product of a wood-burning fireplace).

I hope everyone else is staying warm and those of you in the warm parts of the country/world.... ENJOY IT!  :c)

Happy Crafting!
~Sarah at upstateNYCreations

It's Been A While....

...since I last posted.  Somehow things got a little crazy at Thanksgiving and I've been playing catch-up since then.  In the last 3 weeks, the only time I spent on the computer was to pay bills!

Over Thanksgiving, my older sister came to visit.  She's from Florida, so traveling up north this time of year is always exciting. :-)  The hubby and I went to my parents to visit with the entire family for two days, and then my older sister and one brother came to stay at our house for a day.  It was going to be longer, but a winter storm came up and we all decided it was best for them to go back a day early so they didn't get caught in a lot of snow.



I have been getting some quilting done, so I'll share those pictures in another day or so.

We've also been enjoying the fireplace with the colder temperatures lately.  The kitty has also been enjoying the fireplace. :-)


She routinely now lays right on the hearth next to the fireplace.  She typically sits or lays on the gloves since apparently the hearth is too cold for her. Hahaha.

A few months ago, I mentioned a problem with her meowing all night long.  We think we've finally solved it!  We took the cat to the vet and they found nothing physically wrong with her, so they suggested using Melatonin.  Its a natural supplement that promotes sleep.  They suggested giving her 3mg per day just before bed, to get her sleep cycle back to sleeping at night.

The stuff actually helped!!  She stopped meowing at night almost immediately.  The standard Melatonin is available pretty much everywhere and its about 90% effective with the cat.  We've recently purchased some that is a timed-release version from Amazon.  We're hoping it will be a little more effective since it slowly releases the melatonin.  On the regular version, she would get up around 4 or 5am and would occasionally meow.  So far, it appears that the time-release version keeps her asleep all night.  Yay!

Happy Crafting!
~Sarah at upstateNYCreations

Back from Travel

Phew!  It feels good to be back home!  I'm ready to be done with travel for at least this year.

I spent all of last week in Mexico for work.  I have a small set of designers who work for me and are located in central Mexico, in the city of Queretaro.  I had a great time on the trip and it was wonderful meeting everyone.  I had talked and worked with many of them for several years, but this was my first opportunity to meet them in person.

Somehow we were able to squeeze in 5 days of work in only 3 days of being in the office.  It was tiring!

I have a handful of pictures on my phone that I will share once I download them.  This is just a quick post to say that I'm back and should be able to get back to some posts this week.  :-)
 
Happy Crafting!
~Sarah at upstateNYCreations

Traveling.....Again!

Next week is likely to be another light blogging/commenting week.  If you don't hear back from me on any comments, don't take it personally, I'm just not able to respond immediately. :-)

After just getting back from a training class for work, I've had two weeks to:

1. Get caught up from being out of the office
2. Get ahead because I'm going to be out of the office.

Yuck!

So next week, I'm traveling to visit our designers and engineers who are located in Mexico.  Thankfully, the actual business is located in the middle of the country (about 3 hours northwest of Mexico City), so it should be alright from a security standpoint.  We are flying into Mexico City and then driving 3 hours to the business location.  On the way back, we actually stay one night in Mexico City, but its in the airport, so it should be fine.

I'm sure it will be a good trip and hopefully we won't have any problems.  I'm a little nervous since I haven't been there before, but I'm sure it will be good to meet everyone that I've only talked with on the phone.

I'm going to try to schedule a few posts this weekend, so at least the blog won't be completely stagnant!  :-)

Happy Crafting!
~Sarah at upstateNYCreations

Fieldstone Wall

One of the projects my husband has been working on is building a beautiful stone wall at the edge of the grass on our property.  He's made a lot of great progress this year on it.  Eventually, we plan on planting flowers along the front of it. 

Here's the progress this year:



We plan on planting black-eyed susan flowers behind the wall as you're looking up the driveway.  We won't really have to take care of the flowers and just let them spread and do their thing.  The backdrop of yellow will look really nice though.


Looking from the base of the driveway past the wall towards the house.  I think it already looks great and can't wait to see what it will look like once it gets further along.  It will be a long time before its finished since it takes a while to place each rock and make sure its supported the way you want it to be.


Happy Crafting!
~Sarah at upstateNYCreations