Some New Stuff

I uploaded these the other night at Studio Calico, but I thought I'd put them up here too.

The first one is a mini album I made for Cade. They each had Flat Stanley that they made and asked to have him sent to someone or to go with you to other places. We took him to Las Vegas when we went on our family vacation.

This one is about my son's experience at his elementary Olympics. He ended up getting athlete's foot a few days before the race and had a hard time running in the race.

I did this one about my parent's new puppy, Annie. She's quite a handful!

The last one is of my kids having fun in the sprinkler on a hot July day. As you can see, they had a ball.


All  the papers, embellies, etc. were from Studio Calico kits from the past several months.

Bathroom Part 2

I fell off the wagon with my updates on the bathroom redo at my FIL's. But now I'm back on  the case. These are shots from our second weekend at work. You can see that we got all the green board installed  along with the tile and tub. Nothing is grouted here,  but we left that for the next weekend.

The tile were just regular subway tile in a running bond. The inserts were glass tile in a variety of blue tones.We bought all of the things for the bathroom at Lowe's.

Below is  the other side of the bath. All of the wallpaper was removed and all the surface defects were fixed with drywall patch. 

View from the doorway. We kept the original layout intact because there was really no way to change things around.

Summer Mantle

I thought I'd also share my summer mantle. It has lots of my favorite blue colors.

I got these two pieces from a local antiques shops, The Antique Emporium and Wexford General Store.

The first is a candy dish (I think) and the other one with the bird on it is a mustard pot.

I also got this wonderful photo at the WGS too. I love the people hiding behind the tree!

Here's the other side. My Tiffany candlesticks I got when I got married. The large ceramic sand dollar I picked up at Tuesday Morning for $2.99, the rabbit is one of my creations, and the little vase from Wexford General Store.

My Dining Room - DONE!

While I was going through my photos the other day, I noticed that I hadn't shared photos of my dining room since I repainted it. It had been painted the same color as all the other rooms when we moved it just so it was done! Since I had to do the whole house at one time, I didn't have time to make those decisions. Now, 3 years later it is done. The wall color is Silver Fox (2108-50) from Benjamin Moore. I chose that color after seeing it in Stefanie's home here. (You can click on the photos to see them larger).

The table was acquired when I lost my round one in the trailer fire when we moved back to PA. This was a quicky replacement, but I do like it. I may repaint it and stain the top darker in the future. The flooring is from Lumber Liquidators, Bellawood Brazilian Cherry. We installed it ourselves, as we did everything in our house. The ceiling medallion is from Fypon. It was something that I wanted for a while and it wasn't that expensive. I'd like to change out the light fixture to a vintage crystal chandelier. Keeping the search up on eBay!

This is the view to the left side of the table. I bought this hutch over 15 years ago at a outlet store in Chicago. It is from Lane and has the most beautiful crackle finish on it. It houses my cookbooks, kids activity books, some of my china and misc. other stuff. The doorway you see here goes to the powder room.

My beautiful piano. I wrote about it here before. This bump out was original to the house, but it was in sad shape. The whole thing was leaning and the windows were all wonky. So, after tearing everything down to the studs, we found out that the foundation was only set on a few block a few inches in the soil. Ugh. We had to tear the WHOLE thing off and start again. This time with an actual foundation down to the frost line, new walls, and new windows.

This is the view to the right of the right of the table. The doorway goes to the living room. All of the drywall and trim are new in this room. I originally wanted a smaller crown moulding, but the small was more expensive than this big one. Can you explain that? Most of the prints on the wall are antique and the plates are from Laura Ashley. I worked there for over 5 years while I was in college and after. I wish they were still in the states!

July Flood

NOTE: This post is VERY photo heavy!

Look at what happened here at the Skuse household last Friday. We were forcasted to have some heavy rain and storms after about 10 days of no rain. It started to pour shortly after 2:30 in the afternoon. Our driveway started to look like a small stream.

Here's the shot off the front porch looking to  the road. See all the water coming down the hill to the drain and the stream of water in the front yard? At the time I didn't know it, but this was just the beginning of more water.

This is what the front yard looked like at 2:52.

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Here it is a half an hour later. Thinking that it was going to be a usual flooding of the creek, I had gone back into the house to continue my Friday housecleaning. When I happened to look out the window, this is what I saw.

We stood and watched the water come up really quickly, This is the first time I have even see the road flood.

It only took a minute for the water to completely cover the road. Logs that we had sitting on the side of our yard floated away.

And there goes my chair, never to be seen again.

I had saved it numerous times, but that was over. Who knows where it ended up!

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One hour later from the original photo.

There's our bridge. Luckily the trees stopped it from going any further. And it was not a small one, the bottom made from telephone poles!

The back of our property was just as bad. This is the view across the creek to our lower pasture completely flooded.

And further back it was the same. So hard to believe.

I am happy to report that it did stop raining and the water went down about 2 hours later leaving behind a lot of mud and debris. I just thank the farmer who sited our house like they did up on the hill away from flooding. Even though we did get some water in the basement, it was not more than usual. I just hope that we don't have another storm like that for a long time!