Sewing and Beyond with Mary Anne Ciccotelli

Last night was the last time this bed will ever be slept on. Today our new beds (guest room and our bedroom) are going to be delivered. This morning as Tom was getting ready for work he just wondered what stories this bed could tell if it could talk. I started wondering and reflected on the history this bed and where it had been.

June 1977 – Salem, Idaho: My grandparents celebrate there 50th Wedding anniversary. That evening they go to bed (in separate bedrooms). During the night they are both awake at the same time and sit at the kitchen table and talk about what a wonderful celebration it had been and then both go back to bed. The next morning my grandma had passed away very peacefully in this bed.

Four months later, my Grandpa died. Even though my grandparents had bickered and fought, I guess they could not live without one another. Their home was emptied and my mother got my Grandma’s bedroom furniture. Since all my siblings were settled in their homes I was given this furniture to use when I had a home.

Summer 1983 – Rexburg, Idaho: we (Russ, Mary Anne and Emily (4 months old)) move to Rexburg for the summer to work for my father. We lived in one of the college housing apartments that my parents owned. Since there were only single bed in these apartments we used the bed from my Grandmother’s bedroom set.

Fall 1983 – Provo, Utah: We move back to Provo for Russ to start Law School at BYU. We decide to leave the bedroom furniture stored at my parents in Rexburg, Idaho and just use the beds until we are more settled.

Fall 1985 – We move to a small one bedroom home in south Provo. I answer the business phone for a handyman (who owns the house) as payment for our rent. Emily’s bed is set-up at the back of the living room and my grandmother’s bed is set-up in the only bedroom. Jennie is born March of 2006 while living here.

Fall 1986 – Littleton, Colorado: Russ gets a job with a law firm in Denver, Colorado. We rent a home here. While living in this home I went to a garage sale and purchased a full-size bed for $3.00 to have for our guests.

Spring 1987 – Highlands Ranch, Colorado: We purchase a brand new home on Ridgeglen Way. My parents come for a visit and drive the pick-up so they can bring the bedroom furniture with them. My father also builds my living room furniture during that visit.

Summer 1991 – Rockville, Maryland (townhouse): Russ has decided that he wants a divorce but we decide that I should move to Maryland (he is now working for the IRS as a tax attorney) so he can help raise the girls. He takes the $3.00 garage sale bed and I take my Grandmother’s bed.

Summer 1992 – Rockville, Maryalnd (townhouse): The owner of the townhouse that we were living in decides to sell it, so the girls and I move to a townhouse about 1/2 block away.

Summer 1993 – Gaithersburg, Maryland: I purchase a brand new townhouse. The girls and I watch it being built and are excited when we can finally move in. The bed and bedroom set look wonderful in the large master bedroom (with its LARGE bath tub in the master bathroom).

Summer 1998 – Bronx, New York: Tom and I are married on June 20. The week after our wedding we load our (me and girls) belongings into a rental truck and headed up to New York. Since the renters in the house that we were buying would not move out we had to put our belongs into storage. Tom and I lived in the attic of his parents home where there was only a twin size bed. The girls spent most of the summer in Utah, Idaho and Maryland.

August 1998 – Pelham, New York (our bedroom): The renters are about to be evicted so they move out and we are able to move into our home. Because of the limited amount of drawers in my Grandmother’s bedroom furniture we opt to let Emily use it in her bedroom but Tom and I use the full-size bed in our bedroom.

February 2009 – Pelham, New York (small bedroom): We moved the full-size bed into this bedroom to enable us to paint our bedroom more easily. The bed is reunited with the bedroom furniture and headboard.

This bed has served it purpose and is passed its time of usefulness.

On Saturday Tom and I went to the paint store and I was reminded of how differently our minds work. While looking at paint chips for our bedroom I was busy comparing colors and he started to comment on the names of the paint colors. I hadn’t even thought to look at the names, the color is what I was concentrating on. Tom wanted to do something alittle darker than we usually do in our home, so I kind of let him have more say in the color. He actually liked the name “algonquin trail”, reminds him of scouting here in New York. He thought it would be fun to tell the boys while camping that is bedroom was painted with “algonquin trail” (this color was actually a darker color than the one we purchased). I told him that I thought that it would be too dark, so we went with up one to the next color – “sherwood tan”. I was still alittle unsure of this color, but was willing to give it a try. Therefore, we only purchased one gallon and I would return for a second gallon when the color was determined to be what we wanted.

Well, I put alittle on and this color is really dark also! We decided that it was to dark. So now we are going with “sea urchin” (two lighter than the color that we purchased).

Anyone need a gallon of “sherwood tan” paint?

Here is a before and after of a window and my closet door:

Before and after of the ceiling:

Today I am planning on doing the second coat on the ceiling and wood. Tommorow I will be ready to paint the walls.

This morning I worked on doing prework on the baseboards and wood in the room. The enrichment class at noon kind of cut into my painting schedule. After my enrichment class I stopped by the paint store and bought the needed supplies. Taught my three children’s sewing classes and had dinner. Then I painted the first coat on the walls. One more coat and then on to the fun stuff – sponging the walls. I bet you can hardly wait to see what color I am going to use. Maybe the sponging will be done tommorow night after my sewing classes. I think the hold up to finishing this room is going to be the carpet we orded on Tuesday. It is suppose to take 2 weeks.

I am thankful for little miracles that happen in my life.

This past week I have been thinking about my Patriarchal Blessings. In fact a couple of days ago I started looking for it because I had not read it in a LONG time. I thought that it was in the front cover of my journal (which I don’t use very ofter). I have looked for my blessing before, but to no avail. Well the same was true this time. I found a couple of journals, but no Patriarchal Blessings inside the cover. I started wondering what I was going to have to do to get a copy of it from the church headquarters in Salt Lake City. I was not looking forward to this process.

On Friday I received a call from a neighbor saying that see looked up in the attic and saw that we had some stuff on her half of the attic. Our homes have a common center walls, but there is not wall in the attic. We have lived in this home for over 10 years. I think this is probably the first time she has been in attic. In fact, one day I opened the door to the attic and I saw daylight, a man was up on the roof taking the old shingles off the roof and replacing our neighbors side of the roof. He apologized for making such a mess on our stuff but said that our neighbor had told him that she did not have access to the attic so he did not need to worry about covering the attic up with plastic to minamize the mess. About a year or so after that we had a bunch of empty boxes (from computers, stero, pots and pans, and big stuff like that). Tom and I decided that we would just put the boxes over on her side. On Friday I received a call from our neighbor say that she had gone to put some stuff up in the attic, but saw that we had some stuff on her side and asked if we would move it.

So, you guessed it, on one of the coldest days in five years Tom and I were up on the attic breaking down those boxes and moving anything that we had put on her side.

While doing this, I opened one box just to see what was in it and there was an old journal of mine. And, just like I had remembered, there was a copy of my Patriarchal Blessing. Thank you Heavenly Father for opening the way for me to find this.

This also reminded me of another miracle that I had in the attic around Thanksgiving time. A couple of weeks prior to Thanksgiving Autumn had called and asked if I had any fabric from her “Cow Blanket” that I had made her when she was born. This was over five years ago. I did not remember seeing any of the fabric around and told her I didn’t think that I had any left. But on Thanksgiving week-end I was up in the attic doing some organizing and I decided to combine two smaller boxes of flannel into one bigger box, and there were the scraps from her cow blanket. I was so excited. Emily and I decided that I would just make up the small blanket and PJs for her doll and give them to her on Christmas.

Here she is opening her present and starting to get an idea of what it might be. Can it really be the cow fabric that Grandma said was all gone?

Autumn with her much loved and used cow blanket and baby Atticus (her doll) in the cow PJs and matching blanket.

Does Heavenly Father watch over me and bless me, YES!