It’s Election Day

November 5, 2024

Hopefully, this also means all the annoying political ads will finally stop.

If you didn’t vote early, make a plan a plan to get to the polls today. You showing up to be part of the political process does count and makes a difference.

I’ll be closely following the local election returns tonight. Hopefully the candidates with common sense and ability (Democrat and Republican) will oust some of the current incumbents.

The national election results probably won’t be decided for days. If your prefered candidate doesn’t win (I agree the pickings were slim this year), act like a grown-up and go about your business. Channel your energy into positive ways to make your local community a better place to be. Remember how people came together to help one another after Hurricanes Helene and Milton? How about we keep this spirit of collegiality alive as we move forward?

Photo by Sora Shimazaki on Pexels.com

Property appeal update

November 5, 2024

Last week, the property assessor’s office sent two field techs to remeasure our home. Today, I heard back from the appraiser regarding our new value based on the corrected measurements. It’s actually better than the value I’d requested and is totally in line with the neighbor’s house most like ours. There’s paperwork to be signed if I agreed with the valuation. You bet I signed that paperwork and sent it right back electronically!

Now, we wait for the revised value to go through the approvals process and our tax bill to be revised. I paid the appeal amount in mid-October. Looks like I’ll owe them $400 more, which is still significantly less than our original tax bill.

Our assessed value will be frozen for three years. I was cautioned that the freeze might cause a significant increase once the it’s lifted in 2027. Fine by me. We’ll be at the magic age to be exempt from paying school taxes by then. Any increase in value really won’t impact us that much from a property tax standpoint.

Take away: Check to make sure your property appraiser has the correct information on file for your home. Mistakes happen. If you don’t understand how to read your property card, call them (preferably outside of tax season).

I’m glad I listened to my gut insisting something wasn’t right. The final outcome was definitely worth all the prep work.

Finally tackling a long-term goal

November 2, 2024

What you see in this photo is the first step in transforming the dozens of pattern instruction sheets I developed over the past decade into a more modern, user-friendly format that can be easily distributed as a downloadable pdf.

Right now, I’m using templates purchased from Quilter’s Candy in Canva for the layout & design and Adobe Illustrator to create my diagrams. The plan is to eventually move from Canva to InDesign to create the actual patterns. Again, I’m likely to purchase a template from a design group to use as a starting point. It’s just easier.

The learning curve on Adobe products is steep. It’s not intuitive and can be very frustrating. I’m thankful to all the YouTubers out there who share InDesign and Illustrator tutorials from a quilting/sewing perspective. Right now, I cannot justify $1500 for a self-paced course to teach me how to use InDesign and Illustrator to write my patterns. I learn best by figuring it out on my own. It may take longer, but I’ll retain the information a whole lot better.

I’m going to start with the 3 projects that I plan to use in my Beginning Sewing class – placemats, tote bag and zipper pouch – and then redo the first pattern I ever sold to a local quilt shop. Who knows, all of these basic, beginner friendly projects might all end up in a book one day!