10-5-10

Long time, no blog... I guess life gets in the way of things sometimes.

Spring and Summer have come & gone, we have jumped right into crisp & cool fall weather, too crisp & cool for my liking anyhow.

Last Saturday my daughter & I made a trip up to the pumpkin patch, along with several other family members, we visited a little, played around on all the activities, and brought home a few pumpkins too. This coming Saturday will be another nice visiting session with some old family friends... its been too long since we've all gotten together.

I hope my daughter will come with me to that too... we'll see. It will be boring for her, but everyone wants to see her.

Then by the end of the month I hope to make a long-overdue trip to Philly to see my oldest son, spend some time with him, and do some serious tourist-y things. Philly is a good place to do that. I think we'll also go to NYC for a day... my favorite place on this Earth. I am working on an itinerary... my son won't want to do all the things I want to do, but he'll be working some while I'm there, so hopefully I can get all the "boring" stuff out of the way while he works... haha

I've gotten quite a few sewing projects done, and even MORE started (but not done) over the spring/summer. In the living room, I have transformed the most ugly duckling sheer curtains and lacy drapes into a curtain for my sliding glass doors to the porch. I wanted something kinda sheer, so some light would come in, but not SO sheer that there is no privacy in the room. I think I got it just right. Although I wasn't thinking at first that I wanted such a "Victorian" look, that's not usually my style, it turned out pretty nice, I must say. I also touched up the smaller window treatments, mostly by cutting down on half their volume. They were just too heavy. I'm still not loving the fabric, but the curtains are very high quality, and everyone else seems to like them. AND, with the extra fabric I had from the original sliding glass door curtain and the extra from the smaller windows, I used part of that for a shade for the front door. I had a more "whimsical" looking one there for a while, but it didn't "go" with ANYthing in the living room, and seriously looked out of place. The one there now is a little more formal-looking, and looks like it belongs. I'm actually really proud of that shade... even tho, again, its not MY choice of fabric, but its what I have.

The "whimsical" shade that was on the front door originally? It got moved to the kitchen back door. Its more suitable for the kitchen, which is all full of light colors (actually mostly off-white, but the room is naturally more bright) and a lighter feel. And I have TWO windows in the kitchen, the bigger one had a curtain hanging that was a little too long, so I chopped off the bottom and made a valance for the smaller one. I didn't want a curtain covering the smaller one, so a valance was a perfect fit, to tie the windows together, again, like a designer swooped in and did it themselves.... haha

I'm still working on a chest/sitting thing for the living room, I'm going to cover it with the horrible fabric that I have on the small windows and door shade. But I have a TON of that stuff, and I may as well use it. The chest/sitting thing is from my grandma's bedroom... right this minute, its covered in some VERY DIRTY white & red quilted satin-y fabric, and looks just awful. I need to tear that yucky horrible red flowery stuff off right this minute, but I'm guessing the padding on the top needs replacing and I haven't gotten a piece of foam that size yet. Honestly, I haven't measured for what size I need the foam piece, but when I get around to that, I have a sewing machine and a staple gun, ready to go.

SPEAKING OF SEWING MACHINE, I made up a little area in the basement... my sewing room. Complete with my sewing machine (duh), a table and desk that I found both on craigslist, I covered the poor excuse for a "countertop" with some fabric and about 3 jars of Mod Podge, put some more lighting down there, a radio, and most of my fabrics and sewing & crafting supplies. Its almost perfect... I think I will have to rearrange the furniture again. And I'm looking for a large piece of carpet or rug (terribly affordable) to put on the floor... its friggin hard and cold on the feet in the basement. Hopefully if we ever get a terrible rain, the place won't flood on me. And I'm not convinced that the wiring is all that safe... but I have everything plugged into a surge bar, and I just flip off the power to the entire room when I leave.

I'm also working on (more like just now starting on) curtains for my bedroom. This, honestly, is going to be a chore. I have the design idea in my head, I know exactly what I want them to look like, its just measuring (done), cutting (some done), sewing all the correct pieces together, and hoping it turns out OK that I'm worried about. I have a few fabrics to use... I bought a bolt of muslin for the bulk of the curtains (there will be FOUR in total), but the top panels, tabs, and floral cut outs to applique on the muslin are all from old tablecloths from Grandma's house. The curtains will go to the floor, but I will have to use the tablecloths SPARINGLY, with no waste, to pull this one off. It will be close. It will be beautiful, if what is in my head turns out how I want.

I'm also working on a simple quilt... I have the top sewn together, just need to do the "sandwich", then quilting and binding. It was made with a bunch (I think there are 20) of fat quarter squares, then white muslin sashing in between, for a summery look. The batting I got for it is pretty lightweight, so it will be nice for spring, and it looks like it won't be done before that anyway...

My dining room I had some very high hopes for, but sadly, I have not touched it. I was very lucky to have some awesome blinds in the windows in there, but the padded square fabric covered thing across the top of the 3-window area isn't my favorite design. Its probably going to stay exactly as it is... I just don't have the time. And everyone that comes over says how lovely it is... so there ya go, why fix something when its not broke? Hmmm... where have I heard that before? I did also want to get some shelving of some sort up on the wall above the computer & printer, as the area gets all cluttered and ugly with junk. So I feel like if I had somewhere to PUT the phone, somewhere to PUT the box of tissues, etc., then it wouldn't feel like things were weighing the area down.

I also made some quickie pillowcases and pillows for my bed. They are kinda fancy, I think the fabric is sari fabric, very luxurious feeling. They almost always end up on the floor by morning. I think I have too many pillows, and since those are the "slippery" ones, they get knocked onto the floor first...

That's enough of obsessing over unfinished projects for today... I'm already nursing a bad case of the hives and I don't want to stress over something new!

In the meantime, I will try & get some pics posted in the next few days of my finished projects, and maybe even my unfinished ones... that might put a flame under my butt to get moving on them! haha