The first afters

So I really am quite close to being all finished with my main level. Here are a few of the afters from the front living room and dining room.
Before: One wall was a huge mirror. It was a little over the top, plus the corner of it was pulling away from the wall, so we either needed to take it down, or re-secure it. I decided we'd take it down. It came off in one piece, but then it had to be broken to get it out of the room. No idea how they got it in there unless it was installed by the builders.

 But here is what we have done with it. This is my room that is going to be clean all of the time. No toys go in here, it's a place where, if I have an unexpected guest, I'll have a place that I can sit with them. (you know, as long as they don't look over and see the dining room, which may or may not be clean at any given moment.)

We even got new furniture for this room. It's the first time that we've ever bought new furniture (unless you count mattresses.)
And here is the dining room. I love that these two rooms both have crown molding, and the dining room has the chair rail. I didn't love the wall paper in the dining room. The day that we signed the papers, we headed over here, and Jesse and his dad worked on that mirror, and I started peeling wall paper. It was a beast!!! But, by the end, I figured things out, and had a pretty good system going on with the steamer, scraper and sprayer. Good to keep in mind as I need to strip the wall paper in the rest of the house. (powder room, and one bedroom.)
After I got the wall paper off, the wall was in bad shape, so my friend Colleen came over and helped me to basically Spackle the walls. It worked, and after some primer, they were ready to paint. I can't thank enough the friends that I have who came and helped me paint one day.

 And the after:

My friend Cindy came and helped me to hang the shelves, and many of the other pictures in the house. That is always a scary thing to do in my opinion.
So there you have it, a little bit of what I have done with my new house. I need to get up from the computer and start working on putting books on she bookshelves in the family room, and we have the mini-blinds to replace the ones that are kind of broken out there, and then that room will be finished too. Then maybe I can focus on some of the bedrooms and the powder room. :)

today

Today I unpacked my sewing boxes. Let the procrastination of unpacking begin!

Back in the habit

So running..... Sometimes I talk about it over here. Not so much lately. It's been a rough past 6 months when it comes to running for me. Ironically enough, it was running the marathon last October that started things off. I had spent the previous year running non-stop, and also doing Weight Watchers, and I was just burned out. So I thought, I just ran a marathon, I deserve a break. So I took a few weeks off. Then I was ready to get back into it, and the great stomach bug of '11 hit our house. 2 weeks of non-stop fun. Then I thought, OK, now let's get back to work. But then I got this chest cough that just would not go away. About 6 weeks with that one. We finally got to January, and I think I ran a few times then, and in early February I found out I was pregnant. I was determined to run through this pregnancy, even though it was difficult for me to run in my previous ones. But then I started spotting, and I didn't want to run then. By the beginnning of March I had a miscarriage, and by the time that was over, we were in full on packing mode.
So yeah, it's not been a great running time for me, and add to that the insane amount of hormone and stress eating I've been doing, and I'm a mess! But now things are settling down. I went for a run around the neighborhood last week, and on Saturday I even went out and got a new pair of running shoes. I even have a goal in mind. After running the marathon last year, I thought it would be kind of fun to run all of the races in the Baltimore Running Festival. I already have the 2 hardest out of the way- the marathon and half marathon, so now all that is left is the relay and 5K. The two annoying races to run. The problem with the relay is that you train with your friends, and then you have to run it alone. And the problem with the 5K is that it's a lot of money, and a long way away to travel for a little 5K. But I thought that we'd try to get around the problem with the relay by putting 2 teams together. I certainly have enough running friends, so we'll just pair up according to pace, and we can do the relay without running alone! Yea! So that is the plan this fall. Pregnant or not! I have a friend who would like to be pregnant this fall as well, so our plan is to run/walk it together.
So we have this new house, and it's really close to the C&O Canal, which is a runners dream! I thought since I don't have to worry about hills, I'll be able to take Graham and Olivia out in the jogging stroller 3 days a week and run on the canal. Today I tried that. I think I'd rather die. Maybe I'll get used to it. Maybe it was a bad plan to take my 70lbs of stroller and kids out on only my 2nd run in 4 months. Either way, yuk! I remember why I ran in the evenings.
Anyway, so now I have a goal again, and I'm going to get back into it. It's time to get a little bit more discipline in my life!

The first thing on the walls

So yesterday we finally had our final walk through with our land lady in the old place, and we are out of there for good!!! It feels so good. Today I only left the house to go for a run along the canal. (More on that to come.) My children and I sat down to a lunch in the kitchen at home that was not fast food. It's like my life is finally beginning. We have now been living in our new house for about 2 weeks, and we are unpacked enough to get by. Most days I work on a box or two, but I've also been focusing on getting out of the old house, so things have not been going very fast. I don't have much in the way of after photos to share because most rooms have boxes in them still, and I have no curtains or pictures up. However, I did hang up my first thing yesterday. This quilt was at the DC LDS Temple Visitor's Center for the past month on display, and yesterday I got it back. So here it is in the dining room. I love it!

At Christmas time it will be replaced with a Christmas tree quilt that I have, but other than that, I spent so much time and money on this thing, it needs to be prominently displayed!

Later on this week I have a friend coming to help me hang pictures. I really get nervous about that. I may start working on curtains today as well. We'll see. I need to install all new curtain rods. We have the Bishop coming to visit tonight, and he will be the first non-friend to come and see us in our new house. When friends come, they know me, and my cleaning style, and are very understanding about the boxes abounding 5 weeks after buying the house. :) So anyway, I have work to do today while Olivia naps.

Buggies

So the road show was this past weekend. I know a lot of people have been saying that they no longer do road shows anymore, but at the opening of our evening, a member of the stake presidency read something that President Monson had said about don't deprive the youth of a road show, so I think that at least while this Stake Presidency is in, it will probably happen every 4 years or so. Anyway, it was a long evening, but all in all, it was fun to see all of the wards have fun and do a great job. I was still on "team Frederick" since I had worked with the costumes, and they did a great job. I have my own opinions on why they didn't make the top three, but well, I'll keep those to myself. The costumes turned out great, and our ward won the award for best visual creativity, which I'm pretty sure means costumes, sets, props, etc.
Here are the lady bugs. They were my pride and joy. They turned out so well, and the girls that were lady bugs were so cute. I didn't do the antennae, and the one little lady bug dies during the production, and comes back as an angel, and I didn't do that part either. the capes: All of the spots were different

Here are the bees. They all had yellow shirts on for the show. I did the skirts, and then I thought that the vests needed a little something extra, so I did the yellow flower pins.

On Tuesday night I have the chance to go and get what I want to keep. I'll tell you, I would like to have some of this stuff, but I know that the girls want some as well, and well, I do feel a bit bad about taking some away from them. But I really want at least one of those lady bug capes..... Of course, it's something that now that I have made it, I can easily make it again. Anyway. Maybe we'll see if there are any girls who don't show up on Tuesday night.

So there are my bug costumes.

Progress

Today I had 4 wonderful friends come to my new house and help me paint my main level. We got 4 rooms painted in 3 different colors. I still have to go back and do all of the trim, and then I need curtains, and furniture, etc, but here is what we have so far.
This if you recall was the dining room. That wall paper was thick textured stuff and was terrible to get off. In many places, it pulled the paint right off of the wall, and drywall was exposed. It left a very pocked, scarred surface. So my friend Colleen came over and helped me to get it all smooth, and then I primed it, and we painted it today. Here is the after.

This is the front living room. There was a large mirror that made up practically one whole wall. It was starting to come away from the wall, and we worried about the kids pulling on it, and well, it was just a little much, so we got that down. It left large spots where the glue pulled the paint off of the wall. So Colleen and I fixed that too.

You can see the lighter green contrasted with the darker color in the dining room.

We also got the family room painted in that same lighter green color. My mom came and helped me to do that the other day, and then today we just needed to do a quick second coat. The nice thing was that we had so much to do today, that we were able to go back and do second coats in the areas that needed them before we finished for the day. First priority is to get the trim in that room painted, (there is only baseboard) and then I can start moving furniture in there. We don't even have the furniture for the other living room yet, so that's not a huge rush, and the dining room is easy to get the trim done, even once we have our table in there. I'm excited to get things done and put together and show the full "afters."

Road Show

So I am dying to tell you all about these bug costumes that I am making for the road show, but just in case there are spies out there, who could be tipped off to just how adorable they are I'm going to wait until after the shows go on, which is in a few weeks. At which point I will be living in my new house. I haven't been doing much sewing lately, because I've been focusing on packing (you know, in the past 2 days I actually have started to pack!) And working on the new house, etc. etc. But when we get settled in I need to make a bed quilt for Graham's new big boy bed. He'll be moving into a twin bunk bed graduating from his toddler bed, and I have ideas from that. Since we just bought a house it will probably be largely a stash quilt though, but that's OK, it's actually perfect for what I have in mind. So long story short- check back here in about a month.

Valentine treats

This year I wanted to be an over-achiever and make a bunch of different candies for my valentines. They all turned out really well, and most of them were super easy to make. Most of them I found on Pinterest. I made peanut butter cups from the Hershey's cookbook, Strawberry fudge, peppermint patties, 3 Musketeer bars, and mint cookie truffle balls.

BeAttitudes

I finally finished it! It only took forever and a day, but it's finished! I think that the major reason that it took me so long to finish this was because I wasn't sure what to do with it when it was finished. It's got so much applique that it is not an ideal blanket to have lying around and possibly getting washed, and worn. But at the same time I didn't have any place to display it. But now we're moving, which means a million blank slate walls. Right now I think that the plan is to put it in the dining room. For the most part, I did an awesome job on this quilt. Since I was feeling this way, there needed to be a few humility areas. As I was finishing the quilting on the borders, there were several places that just did not work out quite right, and the fabric was quite pucker-y. Plus well, I'm not a professional quilter, so there are a few places that the quilting is a little awkward. But all in all, I'm quite pleased with how it turned out.

Child's crown tutorial

Today is a twofur! Since I had my felt out to finish up the Valentine's wreath this morning, I thought I'd go ahead and finish the crowns for the pigs and then I can pack up the felt and fleece. I don't think I'll do any more projects with them before I move. So I made these little crowns for the pigs, and then I had this stiff interfacing and yellow fleece staring back at me, and I thought, what the heck! I'll go ahead and make the boys some crowns. And I'm going to try to do a tutorial. Let me know if it makes any sense. (Oh, and can you see the corner of one of the place mats sticking up there in the back of the picture?)

So first I cut a zig zag pattern out of the heavy interfacing. (Mine is really stiff, it will stand on its own easily.) I did mine free hand, but it would probably be more even and uniform if you drew it out first.

Then I cut a piece of yellow fleece that would cover the crown. This is folded over, you need a front and back, so make sure that you have 2 pieces of fleece to one crown.

After that, I just set it all there together, and carefully cut about an eighth of an inch or so outside of the crown. I was planning on having my seam show, so I didn't need a large seam allowance. If you wanted to turn yours inside out so that there is no seam showing, then you'll need more. But that's just an extra step.

I wanted the crowns to be adjustable, so I sewed a strip of velcro onto either ends of the crown. Make sure that you have it on one end of side A, and the other end of side B!

After that, I sewed along the top and sides of the crown, about an eighth of an inch away from the edge.

Then I stuffed the interfacing into the cover. You have to work it a little bit to make sure that everything is flat.

After that, you sew the bottom edge together, same as you did the top, and then you're done! Easy peasy lemon squeezy as my son would say.

Happy Valentine's Day!

OK, so first off, please don't be jealous that I have such amazing helpers at my house. It's how I'm able to finish so many things and have them all look fabulous! Hurley can measure and cut like you would not believe! (And he does it all while on the phone!) But now onto Valentine's Day. I may make a few more decorations, because I am putting off working on some other projects. (But I got the binding sewn on one place mat last night! Only 7 more to go!)
But I made this wreath to celebrate Valentine's Day this year. So far this is the extent of my decorations. But I have seen lots of cute things on Pinterest, and I'll maybe see about making some more. I don't know. I don't have a good space to decorate in my house. But I am starting to think ahead to the new house and decorating that.

Hence these guys:

This one will be for Olivia's room. So cute, and the fabric flowers- same as in her quilt. And I have to say, this was my first experience with Mod Podge.

And then I tried out these melted crayon art ones. Did you all know that I'm into Modern Art? Piet Mondrian is one of my favorites. So this is kind of right up my alley. This will hang in the boys room.

Once we move you can expect to see a lot of the transformations of the rooms in the new house. I can't wait!!! :) I'm so excited to have a space of my own, something that I don't have to worry about wasting time decorating nicely because we'll just move in a few years.

Late Christmas

So yesterday Jana finally got around to giving me my Christmas present. I know, she's lame, because I only gave her "the best present ever" (her words!) the Our Best Bites cookbook. But it's OK, I forgive her tardiness. I mean, how could I not forgive a one month slide, when she and Colleen "made me a quilt" for my birthday a year and a half ago, and I have yet to see the finished product! :)
But she made me this "jelly roll" It is made out of bunch of Riley Blake fabrics that she got last fall when she went out to the Riley Blake headquarters as part of the design team for the Quilted Fish. It's lovely. I spent the rest of the day yesterday thinking about what I wanted to make with it. Part of me is tempted to make a Bargello quilt, since I've wanted to make one of those for a while, but I also think it would be nice to make my "headboard" out of it. I don't have a headboard for my bed, and I was thinking of making a quilt and hanging it above the bed to give it the illusion of a headboard.
She also gave me a cute wallet pattern, and these M&Ms. When I looked at them I said that I had the perfect person to give them to! (Cause I'm a joker like that.)

And here is what I have started to work on. I'm making a scrap quilt, like I had mentioned before. So far I know one thing for certain- it's going to take me forever! This is just a small amount of the fabric that I have to use, cut into 2 1/2, 4 1/2, 6 1/2, and 8 1/2 inch pieces.

I am working on this only because I hate sewing the binding onto things- especially small things like place mats, which is where I am with my place mats. The binding is made and ready to go on, I just have to pluck up the courage and do it!

Confession

OK, so it's confession time. Sometimes I think in Facebook status updates. Does anyone else do that, or am I way too plugged in? (OK, the obvious answer is that I AM way too plugged in, but just humor me for a minute.)
For instance, last night it was 5:00, and the boys were fighting, Olivia was crying, I was trying to change laundry, and get dinner on the table. In my mind, I though, my Facebook status right now would be, "It's 5:00 and the world is falling apart." Fortunately, I had the sense, at that moment, not to hop right on the computer, ignore the falling apart world in my house, and update my Facebook status. I really do try to sensor myself, and not let the Facebook community know every time my children to any sort of thing ('cause I'm THAT Facebook updater- all about my kids.)
But am I the only person that tries to come up with clever status updates to describe the events happening in current time? Perhaps I'm just too much of a nerd who thrives on simulated human interaction, as opposed to real human interaction because I'm so socially awkward in real life. (Not that I'm any less awkward on Facebook, as my friends can attest to.) And on that note, am I the only person out there that thinks there ought to be a designated sarcasm font? Right there on your tool bar next to bold and italic. It would make my life so much easier! (And that is nothing to be sarcastic about!)

cake pops

For Christmas this year I got a cake pop maker, and when I haven't been sewing, I have been making cake pops and donut holes. YUM! I recently did a shower for my friend Julia who is having her first girl after 2 boys (I know what that feels like!) And I made some cake pops for the occasion. After making them a few times, I think I finally have gotten the process down. First, you need to dip the stick into melted chocolate before you stick it into the cake ball. Then you need to freeze the whole thing. When they're frozen, then you can dip them in chocolate. This worked so well! It made for a beautuful dessert spread!

This week's finishes

This week I finished my watermelon place mats. That binding was a pain! Mostly because the amount of white that the kit gave me to make the binding was only like 10 inches long, so I had a million 12 inch strips to sew together, in addition to the green ones, and then I had to sew the green to the white, and all of that before I was finally able to sew it on. Since it was on the bias though, it was not too difficult to get it to go around the curve.

And I finally finished the angry birds. Except that the boys both want crowns on their big pigs, so at some point I'll probably make those. I only made one of the big white ones because I ran out of white fabric. And of course, now there is the new orange bird, and the boys think that they need some of those too.

I have another set of place mats that need to be bound. The binding is already sewn, but needs to be ironed and sewn onto the place mats. Originally they were going to be birthday place mats, but I'm thinking I may use all except for the cupcake one on a daily basis. Olivia has figured out that it is neat to bang her fork on the table, and it's taking a beating!

Then I have one more project that I am thinking about starting, but I'm not sure about that yet, and then onto my scrappy quilt. After that I think we'll focus more on the packing aspect. We have finally agreed on a price with the bank, so now we have to see what the home inspection says...

Progress

So I've made a little progress towards my UFO goals of 2012. But first, a non UFO, but it's OK, because it's not like it's a quilt or anything. But I made a wreath that I'll hang either in Olivia's room in the new house, or on her door. I made it now because I'm doing a baby shower on Saturday, and I wanted to have it to use as decoration. Some of the fabrics that I used for the flowers were from Olivia's quilt. I'm crafty like that. And then there is this:

I think that Jana and I got these kits and pattern about 3 1/2 years ago. We started immediately. There are 12 blocks, and they are kind of month themes, so we were going to do one block each month. There is a lot of applique and blanket stitching, etc. It was quite an undertaking. We got through the first few blocks, and then stalled. And eventually I picked it up again, and got through a few more blocks. At one point I'm pretty sure that I finished all of the blocks. I then sewed them all together. In one "cleaning out my sewing table" episode, I cut the borders. And there they sat. Probably for a year. Last night I sewed the borders on. This is going to be a big undertaking to quilt it too, but I hope to do that in the next month. It will of course depend on Jana's schedule, because I could not do this with out her mega quilter.

Speaking of Jana. I'm headed to her house in a bit, and hope to make progress on my watermelon place mats UFO. I bought that kit like 3 1/2 years ago as well. At this point all that needs to be done is the hand sewing of the binding. Hooray!

Next up, my birthday place mats. I have 4 done (excluding binding) and 4 more to go. One will be the special "birthday person" place mat, with a cupcake on it, but I still have to figure out the design for the other 3.

After that I'm going to have to go through my work space and see if there is more to be found. If not, I have an idea for a scrap quilt. I need to go through the huge bag of scraps that I have and decide which ones were stupid to keep, and organize them and cut them for my needs. If I get ambitious enough I may even use up all of my scraps. Because I'd rather move a quilt than a basket full of scraps. And of course all of this is brought to you by packing denial. But hey, we don't even have a closing date, and are not 100% sure what house we are going to buy. I just know that I have 3 1/2 months left on our current lease, and we have to be out by then. That gives me plenty of time to quilt instead of pack!

baby girl quilts

So a week or two back, I was going through the mess that is my sewing corner, and I looked into a bag that had some of the fabric that I bought last year when I had my big splurge. (Something I do once a year or so, although I don't see it happening this year.) I started to love on it so much that I was trying to think what I could do with it. Since my favorite form of quilting is to make baby quilts, I was thought that I needed to have a friend have a baby girl. And then I thought- wait, I do have a friend having a baby girl! So off to work I went. I set out to copy this quilt that I saw on Craftsy, which was just simple strips on the diagonal, and it wasn't too bad to make, but I didn't know how many strips I was going to need, and ended up with several extra strips. So I was inspired by a quilt that Jana showed on her blog and copied the pattern. I had just the right amount of strips cut to make another baby quilt. I think that this is the one that I'm going to end up giving to my friend Julia.

So in case you were wondering what it takes to have me make someone a baby quilt, it really is mostly up to chance. I didn't feel like quilting last year, so none of my friends got quilts. I put so much effort into Olivia's quilts, that any friend who had a baby then didn't get a quilt. It really is a situation that I think, OK, I'd like to make a quilt, who can I make it for, and someone happens to be pregnant at that time. I have many friends that I would say are at the same level of closeness, and some have gotten a quilt from me, and others have not. It's all just luck of the draw!

2011 roundup

So you'll have to excuse the quality of these photos since they were all taken with my iPod. When I take them there, it eliminates a step before I can post them to Facebook. And sometimes the camera is just not handy!
This is a quilt that I made for my sister in law. It is a memory quilt, in honor of the baby that they lost due to complications at 18 weeks. This was the tutu for Olivia's Olivia the Pig Halloween costume.

Here she is on Halloween. I couldn't find a red tank top, so I had to dye a white one red.

And finally here are the ties that I made for the boys, using this tutorial.

I also made those little hair clips for Olivia. My mom made a Christmas dress for Olivia, and the ties and the hair clip are made out of the same fabric as the bodice. We were all matchy-matchy.