Time for a Reintroduction?

It has been three years since I started this blog.

My opening post was a bit about myself.

When I learned about my friend Vicki's

"Grow Your Blog Party,"

I knew I wanted to be a part of it.

It seemed like a naturally good time for 

some reintroductions.

Besides which, I wonder how many people

who read my blog today,

read it at the beginning?

Eight years ago, as my 30 year marriage

came to an end,

and my daughter Kate

would soon be going away to college,

my sister Nancy and I decided to

pool our resources and buy a house together.

I was ready for a change and needed to downsize.

We found our "Buttermilk Cottage"

in a nearly 100 year old bungalow.

It was "almost" perfect.

There was plenty of space upstairs

for Nancy to have an apartment

and I only needed to add a

bathroom and office/sewing room

to the downstairs for me.

Our first order of business was getting

Nancy's space ready for her.

I was committed to staying put for a while

while Kate completed her final

year of high school.

Besides some cosmetic changes,

we only needed to add a small

efficiency kitchen upstairs.

Nancy is not a cook,

but we both saw the merit 

in having both the upstairs and downstairs

as self contained units.

She moved in within a few months

of our purchasing the house.

I spent the next year making the 

necessary downstairs additions,

remodeling the kitchen,

stripping wallpaper, painting,

sewing window treatments

and generally throwing myself into

what was for me,

a huge project.

It was the most empowering 

time of my life.

Who knew I could buy a house,

plan and then manage

a successful renovation???

The house was all ready for me to move into

when we returned from Kate's

graduation cruise/celebration. 

Since then, the time seems to have flown away.

Kate has graduated college,

moved to New York City

where she still lives and works as

an editorial assistant.

Nancy and I still share and love the house.

We DO tell people what has made

it work so successfully for us is that

she has her space and I have mine.

One of her big passions is gardening,

which I must admit is not my forte.

She has developed the garden here into

such a showplace that we have been

included in the last three

neighborhood garden tours.

You can read about the garden

at her blog.

I spend my time with my two big passions,

yarn(knitting) and fabric(sewing).

I also spend my time 

cooking, reading, decorating,

managing the dogs, Daisy and Chaos,

 and blogging.

These are some of the things 

you'll read about when 

you visit Buttermilk Cottage.

Which I hope you'll do often.

In the spirit of celebrating Vicki's blog party,

along with many of the other participants,

I'm going to have a give-away on February 1.

All you need do is leave me a message

that you visited this post,

making sure I have a link back to you

so I can let you know if you win!

The winner will receive one of my handy little

"Tag Along" Bags,

similar to the one pictured.

I have several different fabric choices

and you'll select the one you want.

So leave a comment 

and then go party with

some more of Vicki's guests.