Still Here and Still Scheming

Has it really been 6 weeks since I posted?  Has anyone really noticed?  Well, I'm now back from a 3 week trip to see my family and I'm all energized to reboot our house.  I've got big plans, as usual, but we'll see what comes of them.  My latest idea is to work on a reorganization of the house bit by bit.  Many closets and shelves have not been touched since I got pregnant with the princess, who is now 17 months old. 


I've become discouraged with the constant mess the kids leave behind, but in thinking about it, I came to the conclusion that I can't expect them to take care of and respect their things if their dad and I don't.  Our office area looks like this right now. 

So is it any wonder that the toy area looks like this (and it's actually pretty clean)?

I've come up with two concepts to focus on for the short term:
1.  I need to respect and care for my things so they respect and care for theirs.  That means doing dishes in a timely fashion and cleaning up and putting away books, magazines, projects, receipts, phones, etc. before I have to take them from little hands.

2.  The floor is NOT a place for anything to be stored.  Not trash in the office in need of a trash can, not graduation gear in the bedroom that no one is sure where to put, not books in the bedroom that I haven't gotten around to putting away.

We'll see what comes of this, but hopefully at least a few full garbage bins will give us some much-needed breathing room.

Our New Friend

We have a new little buddy at our house.  Almost every day at lunchtime, this guy makes his appearance to putter around the patio and eat bugs. 

The kids think he's really cool.  Today Christopher decided he was going to draw a picture of the lizard to show him. 

 Patrick, of course, had to follow suit, so here is his masterpiece.

Even Elizabeth got into the fun, banging on the window and pointing to the lizard for anyone who would pay attention to her.

This pretty much proves that boys + anything Mommy might find vaguely gross = good fun.

Great Sewing Room Cleanup

OK, maybe room is pretty generous for my little sewing space, perhaps corner would be better.  Whatever it is, it got cleaned within an inch of its life this weekend.  I was going crazy losing things under the piles of fabric and having everything tangled around random lengths of elastic.  So, I spent an embarassingly short time (far shorter than the time I've spent putting it off) cleaning up and throwing out snibbles and threads, filing patterns, organizing notions, and folding fabric.

First, the before:

And behold, the after: 

Complete with OCD-inspired labeled boxes: 

OK, really I was trying to keep the kids out of Mike's hair so he could brew beer, and they LOVE to play with the label maker (are they my kids or what).  As you can see, there may be no money for fancy organizers, but we have no shortage of kids shoe boxes.  And now that I think of it, I'd rather have little feet growing out of shoes faster than I can buy them than enough money for fancy organizers.  Although both wouldn't be too bad :-)

Chair Cushions Finished!

I finally finished the new cushions for our patio chairs. It was pretty boring, easy sewing times 6, so I'm glad they're out the door, literally. They fit nicely and look much better than the old ones, which were literally crumbling to dust when people sat on them.

 They are just plain box cushions with no welting, because as I said before they'll just get baked.  The fabric is from Hancock's sun resistant line, which means they have a prayer of lasting a year.  The ties are just brown twill tape also from Hancock's, which is a better color match in real life than it appears in the pictures.

 Of course, since I was complaining about how easy the sewing was, I goofed.  They always say "measure twice, cut once" when woodworking, but here it should be "read the notes you made and cut the pieces the right length."  I inexplicably cut the edge bands two inches too short (despite having the right measurment calculated and written down), and had to go back and piece in a little bit at one corner.  I had enough fabric left that I was able to match the pattern, so it's not really noticible, just annoying to me as I hate making mistakes, especially stupid mistakes.

I spent this evening working on my Vogue 8295 skirt, though I've taken it back to more like a 3/4 circle and reworked the yoke to be more of a wide waistband since I didn't like where it was hitting my hips.  It should get a zipper tomorrow and hem soon after, so hopefully I'll have that up soon as well.  Then it's on to some seersucker I got a few weeks ago that I need to find a pattern for.

A Gypsy Skirt

This little skirt for Elizabeth is actually from a month or so ago, but I forgot to take pictures of it then, so when I put it on her today, I snapped a few pictures.  The fabric is a linen blend I picked up at Hancock's at the end of last year.  The pattern, as such, is the Gypsy Skirt from The Handmade Dress.  It's actually what she calls a sewing recipe.  It's a collection of proportions and formulas to give you a garment of a certain shape.  In this case, it's a seven gored skirt just right for a little girl who never met a meal she didn't like :-)  And yes, every shot is an action shot with this girl - sorry!

On her, it's a really cute style and I like the extra fullness in the back to compensate for her diaper-clad bootie. 

On her, it's a really cute style and I like the extra fullness in the back to compensate for her diaper-clad bootie.  I also drafted it for myself, but after seeing hers, I think I'll make a few changes for mine.  I'm going to take out the extra gore in the back (and adjust the other measurements accordingly) and maybe take a bit of the fullness out of the waist.  I like the easy elastic waistband, but I don't want it so bunchy on me.  Is it something I could've come up with myself, yes, but Sam's recipe gave me a great starting point and confidence in the outcome.  Plus, she's a super-sweet mama of 4 with a really cute blog with great ideas - that's worth the $6 right there!

After I finish the chair cushions (more on that mess later!) and my little skirt, I think I'm going to do  matching cousin dresses for Sarah and Elizabeth from her Miss Madeline pattern, so look for more extreme cuteness coming soon!

Parting shot - here's my super reader who was very miffed I wasn't taking pictures of him!

Home Dec Sewing - At Least It's Easy

I have to say I can't get very excited about home dec sewing.  I try, but mostly it just turns into me fighting with very large pieces of fabric and nothing ending up quite square.  Which is why I was less than overjoyed when our patio chair cushions started to fall apart.  After scouring every conceivable store for replacements under $15 each, I decided to bite the bullet and make new ones.  By waiting for a sale at Hancock's I was able to get all the fabric for 6 cushions for about $40.

Last night in between putting a sleepy girl with a runny nose to sleep again, and again, and AGAIN, I finally cut out all the pieces. 

They will be simple box cushions with no welting because welting would take just that much longer and this is Arizona after all. The sun will bake and fry these babies in a year or two anyway. And yes, I'm way too lazy to take them off and put them away after each use. Are you kidding me?! 

Hopefully I will get these done or mostly done this weekend so I can get on to the skirt I want to make myself.  I cut out and decided on alterations to the pattern the other night, but then decided I needed to hold it out there as a carrot or the cushions will never get done.

My photo assistant was helpful, as always.  I think she wanted to make sure you had a sense of scale!

VERY Low Budget Bedroom Update

Sometimes I find myself getting really tired of my things and rooms and brainstorming crazy makeover strategies a la Trading Spaces.  Usually this is a sign that I need to spend some time in the offending room tossing out the trash, replacing the wayward Legos, and cleaning the dustbunnies.  Case in point, my $0 bedroom makeover from Friday.  It was my birthday, so I spent it cleaning my room, and now it is once again a little bit of calm in my chaos.  I wiped the walls, put away the clutter, cleaned the baseboards, and vacuumed the dust bunnies out of every corner (seriously I filled my vacuum canister twice, it was so bad).  Of course, I have no before pictures, because that's just the sort of lame blogger I am, but here is an after picture of my nice cleaned off, shined up, prettied up nightstand.

The Holy Family statue was left out after Christmas, but I decided what better reason to keep the nightstand clean than to keep Baby Jesus from getting crowded out by knitting.  Not to mention, having Mary watch over Jesus and I can only help, right?

The roses are from my little backyard rosebush, which I still haven't managed to kill.  Yay for me!