Are we there yet?

Are we there yet?

Well…we’re here. Safe and sound in Denver — well technically it’s Aurora. We made it without incident, which is a nice change of pace for us. The only snag we ran into was when we locked Bandit into the bathroom while we ran loads of our stuff from the truck up to our second story apartment, he got so upset and dug at the base of the door. He cut his paws. He’s ok now. A little clingy, but overall, he’s doing fine. In the past, our moving trips have been nothing short of disasters; we’ve had various moving trucks breakdown along I-10 between Arizona and Texas. This time we were very lucky. Our truck had excellent gas mileage. No engine failure. No cracked blocks. No black smoke spewing out of our truck during rush hour through a construction zone in Tempe. There was a bit of drama regarding insuring our truck before we even left California, but B straightened that all out for us. I’m glad my brother and dad decided to join us. It took us several hours to unload our moving truck yesterday and if it weren’t for them, it would have taken several days to unpack it ourselves. Our truck was returned today even though it was covered until Monday. The four of us were swimming in a sea of boxes yesterday. Today, cable, phone and internet were all hooked up. My brother helped B put up the entertainment center and my dad was able to fix our vacuum and our fan today. I worked on unpacking our kitchen. The shredded paper I used to pack our fragile items got dust on everything. We stocked the pantry and fridge today. I made chicken fajitas for dinner while dad made a batch of his killer margaritas! Food definitely cooks differently at this altitude. That’s something that I will have to get used to. Our apartment is awesome. For a unit that we leased blindly, we’re VERY happy with it. There is a ton of space and we’re the first tenants. Wow! A big bonus is the proximity to campus. The Health Sciences Library is literally across the street.  The other people living here are so nice. Our apartment overlooks the pool and we were invited to our first pool party. Um did we move to Melrose Place?! As far as school goes, I need to order some books and purchase my calculator. Yep. Special calculator for class. I’m looking forward to school starting. Being here now makes it even more exciting. I need to go shopping for school. My clothes are covered in paint, have holes that are remnants of various lab classes or looks pretty bleh from years of wear and tear. I need to finally break down and get my eyes checked. I don’t know how much longer I can go without glasses. A decent hair cut and color is in order as well. But that all has to wait. We’re entertaining till Tuesday night. Tomorrow is more shopping for our apartment, some returns of faulty items and dinner at a local BBQ joint. More to come later. I’m hoping to take some pics of our place soon.

I’m failing as a blogger…

Boxes packed and stacked soo neatly!

Of course, I decided to take on a public blog at a very busy time in my life. I hope to be better soon. A few days ago, we hit some major turbulence in our moving plans from California to Colorado. Back in April, B and I flew out to Denver to check out the city and go apartment hunting. We found a place we really loved almost immediately and the staff seemed very nice. Once we returned to California, we had our packet from the complex filled out promptly, papers sent in, deposit check included! This was going to put us on the priority waiting list for a two bedroom two bath upstairs apartment. Fast forward a few weeks — we’ve kept in contact with our leasing agent probably every ten days to two weeks, just touching basis and making sure everything is ok. She constantly assures us that she understands that we’re nervous, but everything is fine. They always have tons of these floorplans available and not to worry. She stated she’d be in contact with us by weeks end. That would have been the Friday before the Independence Day holiday weekend. We never heard from her. B finally decides to call the complex. We have a really hard time getting our agent on the phone or anyone on the phone in some cases. He leaves messages to have the agent call us back. Fast forward to this past Wednesday — still nada. B comes home from work with a horrible headache and goes to call the complex. I hear him talking on the phone with a man, which got my attention because we had been dealing with an all female staff to this point. As I walk into our bedroom, I hear the guy on speakerphone say something along the lines of “I’m sorry, but we don’t have any availabilities for that unit till September.” B looks at me and I swear I almost melted. You know that weird feeling you get in the pit of your stomach right before you’re going to throw up? Yeah. That was me. Here we were just a tad more than two weeks away from heading out to Denver and we were effectively homeless. Good times, right? No. I’ll spare you the rest of the details, but in summary, our agent no longer works at that location, this man B is talking to is the new acting manager and honestly, there is nothing he can do. And really, we completely understood. It’s not like he could make a home appear for us. B got in contact with the regional manager and I lost it. We had done so much planning and this happens? What was the priority waiting list even for!? Never a duo without a plan, we ended up searching for new apartments and townhomes on Craigslist that night. A few of my classmates, whom I’ve been networking with on Facebook, mentioned a complex on campus that they were moving too. I assumed it was way out of our price range. Upon further research we realized it wasn’t. Soooooo…we found a new place. I’ve been on the phone with this poor leasing agent in Colorado who has been nothing, but very accommodating. She emailed the application to me. B and I filled them out and I sent them overnight along with a check for our security deposit and a check for our application fee. We got letter from his company verifying salary, employment dates and that he was keeping his job in Colorado. The Financial Aid office at my school sent a letter to the complex stating the amount of money I was receiving for financial aid. All documents were received today! They’re processing it now. I hope things go smoothly. We both have much better than average credit (well, what average great was about a year ago) and I recently past a criminal background check for school. B’s history is clean too. So now we wait. I’d love to hear a firm yes tomorrow. While complex wasn’t a first choice, it’s starting to become very clear that this will work out extremely well for us. I don’t have a commute now; I have just a short walk to campus. Therefore, I won’t need a parking pass or worry about driving in the snow. I can see B more now since I don’t have that commute. It’s a one bedroom, one bath + study that is bigger than the two bedroom two bath we were moving into before. We are guaranteed a washer and dryer. And the layout of the place means we can keep our entertainment center, which I love. In the other place, our living room was a niche and wouldn’t accommodate the unit as a whole.  My only concern now is that I don’t have a desk space to study at. The other apartment had a built in desk that I was going to use. Also, this apartment isn’t in the best part of town, but we can make this work. There seems to be quite a few security measures in place here.

So there ya have it. MIA and I have an excuse. We’re trucking along with the packing and the purging. Most of it will be wrapped up this weekend hopefully. I haven’t sewn in well over six weeks and it’s starting to take a toll. I’m hoping to get some stuff done this weekend though.

Unseasonably June…

From all of the blogs I read, the people I follow on Twitter and photostreams I view on Flickr, I’m very aware that we’re all experiencing strange weather for this time of year. In Northern California, we’ve been experiencing unseasonably cool weather for this time of you, but I’m not complaining — at all! There is a short list of things B and I wanted to do, places we wanted to see before we left CA. Yosemite is one of my absolute favorite places to be. I’ll never forget when B and I went a few years ago, one look at Bridalveil Falls had me speechless and almost misty eyed. Finally, a Friday off in B’s schedule!

A foggy view of Tunnel View

The original plan was to get up there a day early, do our own tour of the park and the next day, we’d meet up with some of B’s coworkers to bike through the park.  We had a wonderful time, but spent the day dodging sprinkles and foggy conditions. Actually, when we first got to the park, we actually drove through snow. Pictures were hard to come by and B and I actually took turns holding the umbrella over each other’s head while taking shots. The next day wasn’t supposed to be any better according to my handy weather application on my iPhone. We checked into our hotel and the next day, the forecast did not improve and we all decided to call off the get together. All in all, it was a really fun trip. I think the crazy weather did keep the crowds down a bit. That is always much appreciated.

Now we’re back to reality. Packing has resumed and creative fun stuff is on hold…still. I’m really looking forward to moving to Denver and getting out of boxes. I know the next few weeks will fly and that’s exciting!

By the way, if you’re reading this and are familiar with or live in the Denver area, what are your favorite fabric stores?

And why were we keeping this?

:: All part of moving ::

Even though we’re not moving till the end of July, we’ve been going through our stuff the past week. I’ve had a few magazines subscriptions over the years, including several scrapbooking magazines, Cooking Light, Martha Stewart’s Living and Every Day Food. Now I can’t quite bring myself to cut my Martha Stewart magazines just yet. However, I have hacked up my scrapbooking magazines and my Cooking Light magazines pretty well. My plan is to make an idea binder for the scrapbooking pages and a recipe binder as well. My husband will be working from home when we move to Denver and since I’ll be in class most of the day, he’s going to be doing a little bit more of the cooking. I’ll have to type up some recipes that aren’t really recipes, just how I do things (like my risotto recipe). Yum! Now that I’ve chopped up my magazines and have recycled them, I realize that while a subscription saves a substantial amount of money, I think I’d be better off actually going to a bookstore and checking out a magazine to see if I want it. The magazines are full of advertisements (which I’m fine with), but most of the layouts start repeating themselves and new products/techniques are highlighted on a lot of the blogs I read. So in effort to save space and money, I may forgo some of my subscriptions.

I found a filing cabinet filled with papers from our tenure in San Antonio. Years of statements and bills. Why on Earth did this travel with us from San Antonio to California? My husband kindly reminded me that we left Texas in a bit of a hurry. hehe So my shredder has been going full force. I’ve been saving the shredded paper and using it as packing material. It was great when I packed up some vases and glass hurricanes earlier this week.

Sadly, sewing has been put on the back burner. It really bums me out. We’re heading to Yosemite on Friday and I was hoping to make a strap cover for my SLR strap. I can’t stand neoprene against my neck. I have some small pieces of Heather Ross’ fish fabric and some smaller squares of her other prints that I was hoping to use together. Tomorrow will be my last day to do it, but our apartment looks like a bomb exploded and my sewing machine is buried somewhere. We’ll see what happens.

Now I’m off to enjoy the rain and thunder.

Oh my goodness…

One of the many WIPs...story of my life!

Ah yes. Just as I decide to commit myself to a new public blog, life gets hairy. I didn’t mean to post and ::POOF:: be gone. I haven’t really even had a chance to talk about this, but I’m getting ready to take a huge step in my life. About five years ago, during my 24th birthday dinner, my husband asked me what I wanted to do (career wise). I told him I really wanted to go back to school and eventually become a pharmacist. I had worked it out to where I could take two classes part time while I continued working full time. And that was going to take nothing short of an eternity to complete. He said I should quit working and go back to school full time. I took a big gulp and did it. Fast foward to now, I have my Bachelors of Science and I’ve just been accepted into pharmacy school at University of Colorado Denver.  After my husband completed his service in the USAF, we moved from San Antonio back to the Sacramento area and here is where we’ve been since. I won’t get into details, but the military experience and living in San Antonio was less than thrilling for the both of us, not saying we didn’t meet some great people or have some great experiences along the way. But when my husband was discharged, we left San Antonio practically in a sprint. And now we’ve started the “purging and packing” process and have come across stuff that hasn’t been dealt with since then. Oy. My sewing table has been collapsed, my fabric closet is behind stacks of boxes. I am a sad panda, but this is more important than the millions of half started projects I have. I know in about another week, I can go ahead and work on sewing again. Don’t think I’ve jumped ship just yet. Once I get going, you’ll wish I would just shush

Now I’m off to the DMV, you know…to renew my CA license about two months before I get a CO license! EEK!

Story of a quilt…

While my mom was still in nursing school and while they were still dating, my parents made a basic tied quilt as part of a sewing project for one of my mom’s classes. I remember that blanket vividly growing up. For years, I’ve seen it waded up in their garage. It’s made out of the craziest 70’s inspired pattern — red on one side of the blanket, navy blue on the other. When I got into quilting, I knew that one day, I wanted to snag that quilt, salvage the fabric and make a great quilt out of it. That’s when my dad approached me with an idea for my mom for Mother’s Day this year…

Close-up of the quilt

He wanted to know if I could make mom a quilt. Selfish little me had only thought of myself…the memories of the blanket and having something for me! One day while my parents were out of the house, I ran by, grabbed the blanket from the garage and washed it in their giant front loading wash machine. I carefully cut the yarn that tied the quilt and used a seam ripper to take the pieces apart. The red fabric was incredibly worn. It was so thin; I knew I’d need to use a light interfacing to give that fabric enough body to hold up in a quilt. Also, there were the holes where the ties pierced the fabric. The navy fabric was hardly worn, very sturdy and the holes were very small and discrete. I used an iron-on interfacing and red thread to stitch up the holes in the red fabric.

Stitches to mend the holes in the fabric

I put in many hours on this quilt and tried to do a traditional pattern. Mom isn’t one for modern quilt designs. I used this project as a diversion while I wrapped up finals. I’ve always liked the rail/fence pattern, but most quilts I see aren’t large enough to really do it justice. I kept it very simple, backed in navy blue fabric, simple quilting and gingham fabric for the binding. While working on this quilt I realized, I actually LOVE handstitching my binding!!

The finished project!

Mom was thrilled with the quilt. She was so surprised and it brought her to tears. Annndd…I have enough fabric left over to make my own!! I have a very Densye Schmidt inspired pattern in mind for it. Oh and don’t mind Oscar, my parents’ puppy. He wanted to be in the shot too.

Getting this party started…

It seems like I’ve been talking about starting a WordPress blog for some time now. I’ve been a faithful follower of Livejournal for a long time now! But the only thing that seems to keep me there is my little group of LJ friends. I’ve decided to finally branch out and take my blogging to a whole new group of readers. So here is my first entry. I’ll be talking about the shift my life is taking in about two months; I’m leaving Northern CA and heading out to Denver to attend pharmacy school. I’m excited and a little scared. Luckily, my husband, Brock will be by my side through it all. I’m going to blog about cooking, sewing and all my other little projects. So welcome to my little corner of the internet. I’m still learning how to use WordPress and hope to make my blog prettier here in the next few weeks. Cheers! Thanks for stopping by!