Creative Withdrawal...or, Having An Art Attack.

Last November, after our Thanksgiving trip to AZ, we started in on the house, getting it ready to sell.  It wasn't in bad shape, it just needed to be decluttered & depersonalized, because when we live in a house, we really LIVE in it.  So all the stuff was packed away, the bright colors neutralized, and (this was the hardest part) both of our studios put into storage.

Big mistake.  I did leave out paints and paperclay, a little lace and some sewing thread.  But I put away all the fabric.  Box after box of fabric.  Yeah, someday I'll enroll in a program for fabri-holics, but for now, let's say I wasn't really thinking things through.  It's easy to stand in the midst of chaos, knee-deep in boxes and packing tape, and think "Oh, I won't really need this stuff until, what, next June?  July?"

Aside from the fact that I have several requests for dolls to sew, stuff, sculpt, paint, and dress...there is the move itself.  I'd forgotten what Nesting in the New Place does to my creative mind.  It's NOT a matter of hauling furniture from one place to another, and plugging in the toaster.  When we move, I always have an Art Attack.  Sometimes several.  Here are some examples from over the years:

Painted child's rocker...it has bugs all over it. 

A box with a Celtic Green Man...my Mother In Law keeps cloth napkins in it now.

My daughter's room, the year she wanted clouds.  And vines.  And butterflies.

The entryway of our house up in North TX.  Note the painted footlocker, lower right.  Ancient and rickety, but colorful!  I painted the urn and grapes while the hubby was on an errand for building supplies.  He didn't make me paint over it.

I often pull down closet doors and install curtains.  This was my son's room; textured and painted to look like a dungeon.  Not my fault...it's what he wanted!

A purple hall closet curtain, and the entertainment center my hubby & I built together.  I had a blast carving the knotwork down the front. 

This was Florida, and I'd been bitten by the colors on the beachfront boardwalk.  Hubby wasn't thrilled about a pink kitchen.  I'm wasn't thrilled about that awful picture of myself.  But the table on the freezer behind me was fun to paint and sold at a local art fair.  We were in base housing, so I had to put it all back to white before we moved.

Lady Sydney, on our bed.  She loved towels warm out of the dryer.  Phil made the headboard and I painted it.  The Cat in the Hat was a gift, and I made the sock monkey (who is in storage and whom I miss a lot)!

When we bought land in New Mexico, I found this chalk-ware lady...so I made her a little shrine-house.  Phil still shudders when he thinks what an awful woodworking job I did...but the painting was fun.  See the orange and purple shed off in the distance (upper left)?  We've left a trail of sheds from Florida to Montana and everywhere in between.  Now it's time to built another one at our new place!

Sooooo, we've found a house, and have it under contract.  Supposed to close toward the end of April.  Before we found it, I stayed busy enough, what with the yard work and the house work, but with a new house on my mind, dreaming has turned into a tortured sort of planning, and I MUST PAINT SOMETHING NOW OR I WILL DIE!!!

I must analyze the new-house spaces for best use, repurpose (repaint?) dressers, chairs, tables, etc. for their new rooms and new uses.  Sew new curtains and maybe crochet funky tie-backs with beads and buttons and whatever.  And that doesn't even count the possibilities of a brand new yard!  Oh the bird houses and wind chimes and silly garden whiz-gigs that need making!  But the studio is packed!  The furniture has to stay as it is while we sell this house!

Oh my.  I need a creative outlet, or I really might explode.  What a mess that would make...and here I am trying to keep this place tidy.

Yesterday I cut out fabric for twenty dolls, and if buyers don't like our house a little "busy" with ongoing projects, well then too bad.  Better a prospective buyer sees a clothesline of painted doll parts than me, hunkered in a corner, muttering with a mad gleam in my eye, like Ophelia counting paintbrushes instead of broken flowers.

You might ask, "But I thought you stored the fabric?"

Well...what're a few more yards in the grand scheme of things?  The rest of it can wait til I can get to it...and it won't go to waste, I promise.

Here's to my spousal unit!

This weekend I had a doll show, (it went well in some aspects, and less-than-stellar in others) and while I was gone, Phil had people in to see the house.

When we have a showing, we get kind of militant with the white glove thing, because why list a house if you're not going to show it at its personal best?  But I was gone, and while Phil is very dedicated--sweeping and straightening and all--he is not quite as, well, perhaps manic would fit--as I am.  I turn the towels around so the tags don't show.  Shine the faucets.  That kind of thing.  My inner control freak worried the whole time I was up north, with all that crucial stuff possibly undone!

But Phil went above and beyond.  Not only did he scoop the cat's poo-palace, he HGTV'd the bed.  Seriously.  With the throw thrown and everything.  I think I will marry him all over again.

We have bought and sold a respectable number of houses, he and I...and now that we're launching as partners into housing for others, we'll buy and sell a considerable number more.  I've missed our common career thread, the shop-talk after a day of same-but-different jobs on the Air Force Training podium.  With realty, we already know our strengths and weaknesses, how to work together, and we LOVE shopping for houses.  What's not to love?  Okay, yeah, there's paperwork...but I confess some of it is kinda cool, in a sort of obsessive hide-the-tags way.

This weekend  I got to take pictures of Phil all dressed up in a suit for business cards, and I wanted to share my favorite.  It was fun messing with the backdrop, making him turn this way and that while I fiddled with lighting. 
The cat goosed him a few times from behind the backdrop, so I got some involuntary smiles--all that Air Force training is hard to overcome.  

He's got more lines and gray than he had when we met twenty years ago, 

and every bit of it is dear to me.

Finally ready to list!

It's been forever since I posted anything, but we've finally got the house decluttered, repainted, recarpeted, gussied up and ready to present herself to the market.  Yes, it took a long time--we started the first of December, but I had a 2,148 sq. ft house in which every room was painted from crown molding to baseboards in vibrant colors.  And have I mentioned the green carpet?  Oy.

We now enter the Seller's Phase of Tidy Living which will go on until we close.  That's that part where you run around wiping every water spot on every faucet and straighten towels to within an inch of their lives.  The dog and cat don't understand why I keep putting away their toys (so far they think it's a fine game) and the husband is learning to be patient when I keep hiding his little drifts of paperwork/keys/needfuls clutter in inconvenient places.  But that's what it takes--we've sold a few houses and this is how it works best.

The neutral walls and carpet would work so much better if I had brighter stuff out, but all my bright stuff went to storage in the Decluttering Campaign, so for the now, it'll just be Move In Ready Neutral.  I hope buyers have plenty of imagination if they like color.  But as neutral as it is, the house shows pretty well this way--wide open and almost ridiculously spacious--without all my millions of little tables, baskets, boxes, etc. to clutter it up.  So.

Here's our house, in her MLS glory:

Our house (admittedly this was taken in greener times.)

From the front door.

A view OF the front door.

Dining room and my collection of adopted chairs.

We have really loved this floor plan.

Kitchen from the dining room.

Kitchen from the family room.

Family room off the kitchen.

The office (aka Command Central).

Bedroom A. (Hubs made the bed for our SCA camping.)

Bedroom B.

Bedroom C. (was my doll studio, now HUGELY reduced.)

Master Bedroom.

Master bath & garden tub. 

Peaking out from under the carport in the back.

Grandpa Live Oak and a yard where we've spent some good times.

 We'll miss this place--four years is our record for living in one house.  

But we've got a new chapter coming up, and we are ready to begin it!  

Hope your week is busy being fabulous.