This past weekend was Houston’s International Quilt Festival – always an inspiring time of year. I love seeing friends that I haven’t seen in a while and taking a couple of minutes to catch up. The quilts juried into this show and the best of the best and several members of our guild had quilts juried in this year – I am a member of an amazing guild – Lakeview Quilters Guild of Houston, TX.
One of our members just published her second book – “Picture Piecing Traditional Quilts” by Cynthia England – I was honored to quilt a few of the quilts for her new book. Check out her work at http://www.englanddesign.com
I also had a big birthday on Saturday – you know one of those that ends in a 0. We celebrated with friends and family most of the weekend. Now I get to start over at 29!
The last 50 years have been amazing – my husband and I have been married 25 of those years and we had always talked about building a home together. We purchased property a few years back and now we are embarking on a very scary adventure – YIKES! I relate building in the country to the children’s story “If You Give A Pig a Pancake”. When you build in the country, you need a well, before you can get a well you need power, before you can get power you need an address, before you can get an address you need an entrance (road) to your property, before you can get a road you have to figure out where you want your structures. At the beginning of the year we started designing our new home, once you have that design then you can figure out about where you want it on your 6+ acres, then you can orient the barn aka workshop, then you can design the road. Good news is – we have the beginnings of a road, we have a “barn” on order and it should be completed by the end of this month! We hope to break ground on our home the end of March 2014! Life is good!
And now I would like you to meat a few of our neighbors!
You are headed to quite an adventure. I do hope you enjoy it, even with three thousand decisions a month. I had thought about country about 15 years ago, small town, 700 people, etc. With each property I looked at the “town” got bigger as the reality of things like power, water, etc changed my view. In the end when a seller was talking about hearing the pump in the something I knew it would never happen as I don’t hear and was going to live there myself. I will enjoy your adventure instead.
I am very fortunate to have a very handy husband. He does ask each trip to the country if I am sure I am up to the “solitary” life. We are in a wonderful neighborhood and I know at least as many of my soon to be neighbors as I know in my current neighborhood so I think I will be just fine. I must say the calming feeling I get each time we leave the city helps make this decision as well. When you live in a city of approx. 4 million there is always an undercurrent of noise and hustle. I look forward to being a country gal!