flooring!

My lack of sewing right now is due in part to the construction (destruction?) happening in our house right now. The other part is just that my kids are maniacally against me even getting the slightest sewing time in. But I have pictures of the first reason! Here is evidence of some of the progress so far. Tim made more progress today, but I haven't got any pictures of that yet.

That's Tim's manly staple gun. He found it on craigslist, and with how long it's taking to put the floors in I think the amount he paid for it will end up being far lower than what he would have rented one for. His brother has been super helpful helping Tim get started. He spent hours helping Tim get this going so I am eternally grateful. So far we have thanked him in beer offerings. Lol.

Our Rogue beer bottle collection is sitting on the shelf behind Tim's head. Lol. We've saved one of each brew we've tried. omg, just look at how beautiful that maple flooring is.

LOL. I point the camera at him, and this is what happens.

Just pretend that huge mess behind the kids doesn't exist right now. They are on the other side of the gate to the kitchen cheerleading and laying down some laminate flooring. 

Thankfully Tim moved all of that business out of my work area in the kitchen. Not being able to open the pantry door or get to my sink wasn't going to work for more than a day. 

ahhh! it's so beautiful, I'm going to die!

thrifty friday

made some thrift scores today. But I'll preface this by telling the little story about my attempt at thrifting earlier this week at Twice Is Nice. My plan was to stop at Healthy By Nature to get the girls a treat, and then check out the thrift store next door. I had been in there before and they have a sewing supply section with fabrics. I'm pretty sure they get a lot of estate sale stuff in there so old fabrics end up in that thrift store. I'm going to make a few aprons for Craft Hope I was hoping to find some interesting fabrics in there to work with. 

 

The last time I went to Hope's Treasures I got reamed out for letting Clover be loose in there to play with the toys in the kids section, so heading into Twice Is Nice I loaded the girls into the Phil and Teds double stroller. There is always a lot of delicate looking stuff down low in there, so I was pretty terrified that the kids would break everything if they weren't strapped down. There was an old lady hovering at the door when I entered the store, and she stopped me to say "oooh, we don't typically allow those in here." Meaning the stroller. She added on "people like to hide things in strollers and steal them." 

 

I was pretty taken aback. For one thing, the only storage area in my stroller is tiny and highly visible if you just LOOK at the thing. So what do you expect all the young moms to do (which I would think is a significant portion of the people who shop at thrift stores). Would they prefer I let my kids loose to break all the things they think I was going to steal? Come on.... So I got kicked out. Of a thrift store. For putting my wild kids in a stroller. For half a second I actually considered just letting them loose to wreak havoc, but it wasn't worth it. The irony of getting turned away as a potential shoplifter when I was going there to gather supplies for CHARITY is pretty hilarious. Anyway!.....

My whole thrifting trip on Friday (at a different thrift store, obviously) came in at just over 20$ total. High Five! 

 

I had been in need of a salad spinner, and I found this awesome vintage looking spinner. It seems really sturdy and says it was made in France. I think it came in at less than 3$

 

Somebody was getting rid of some pyrex, and I was in the market. The yellow dish on the right is vintage pyrex. The one on the left is something else, but I can't remember the name. I'm 99% sure the pyrex is supposed to be a small baking dish, but I'm using it as a really big butter dish. It's a butter dish for people who loooove their butter. You don't even want to know how much kerrygold we go through here in a week. It's Violet's favorite. She eats it off of a spoon.

 

These Japanese tea sets are something I have been looking around for since before last Christmas. I'm just in love with the colors and style of this one. It was the most expensive item yesterday at almost 9$, but it's really nice. Made in Japan. 

The pot is just the tiny size I wanted, and it comes with 5 cups. I'm pretty sure that the pot won't fit enough tea to pour into all five cups though. LOL! If I ever find a cast iron set I am going to snatch it up too. Because I was so excited about taking pictures of all the things I found I didn't wash any of it until after, so you can see all the dust on the tea set.

 

What? A wooden mushroom? No, I just had a hard time getting any good shots of my wooden salad bowl in the glaring noon sun, and this was my solution. It's sitting on top of my salad spinner. I almost got some wooden salad servers to go along with it but I thought they were overpriced.

v neck raglan

victory is mine! after leaving the shirt to sit for a day, I picked it back up when my kids were sleeping and I calmly finished the neckband. with a beer. IPA, to be exact. Northern Lights from Starr Hill. We had to break the beer out a bit ahead of schedule last night because the NFL draft was happening and you can't have a draft with draught...ok so not exactly draught. Unfortunately this meant that we both finished our beer before Person Of Interest was even half over. Anyway, back to the shirt.

I made the 4/5 size (Sewing For Boys), which was a mistake since she is really swimming in it. I should have just lengthened the smaller one a bit since she only grows up and down. Her shoulders are super narrow and she is like a bone with skin. Oh well. She took one look at it this morning and started panicking, backing away, and saying "it's too big!! I don't like that one! I need a tiny shirt!". *sigh* She ended up consenting after I put a shirt on underneath it to help fill her little body out.

 

I didn't get a great shot of the reverse applique patches on both sides of the front, but you can see it peeking out there under her arm. She thought they were pockets. Oops. Fail. But it's done, and no longer the unfinished shirt on the table that haunts me every time I look at it.

coffee sleeve gift

This week wasn't a total sewing fail. Yesterday, I finished a coffee sleeve as an overdue birthday gift to my sister. 

I thought some Lotta would make the perfect coffee sleeve. And the button that I pulled out of the stash goes really well with it I think. It looks like alabaster at first glance, and alabaster is one of my favorites.

For mother's day I think we are going to trek out to this incredible antique shop in Lucketts so I can poke around and find something I like. My hope is to find some old buttons or some other sewing supply. On a semi recent outing I found loads of buttons at an antique mall in Leesburg but they all seemed to be really expensive and not nearly awesome enough.

 

Violet was helping me take pictures while she made an almond latte. After chewing a huge wad of almonds for long enough to turn them to chunky mush, she then proceeded to spit them all over me.

The sleeve is insulated with natural cotton batting. The lining fabric is some linen that I bought ages and ages ago to make kitchen towels with. I think I managed to painfully extract two towels from the fabric before giving up. This was probably one of the first things I tried to do with a sewing machine. I still love those towels too. Linen is the best. Linen + Lotta = even better.

 

 

KCWC day two: the end

well, I didn't finish my shirt. I didn't get an hour of sewing in. I did figure out and wrangle a V neck into it, only to have to rip it out because it was too small. Then I looked around me at the disaster afoot and decided to clean instead. Turns out that tearing your kitchen apart produces a lot of dust. And my kids are messy, fast, and destructive. Not a good combo. Though there may be just a few less items to clean up now that Violet figured out how to pull up the heating vent and throw things down into it.....

Later, I tried to quickly whip up a gift that needed to get done, only to make a big huge dumb mistake. And now, frustration and other duties are shouting at me to just give up! 

So KCWC is officially over for me. The obstacles ended up being too much. But maybe I can make my own week up later on when our house is put back together, my Figgys patterns have arrived, and we have dislodged the HOA from their current position of crawling up our butts.

Today I feel like putting clouds on everything. Put a cloud on it! 

Source: Uploaded by user via Alecita on Pinterest

I don't want to launch into complaining in vivid detail, so I will just say that it's only Tuesday and it's already one of those weeks where it feels like nothing can go right, and my natural state is bummed out and tired. Like I'm surrounded by dripping faucets and broken pencils. Like, I stared uncomfortably long at the St. John's wort at Trader Joe's today before turning around and going the other direction, if I may be honest.

The only reason I was there again today was because the charcoal that I paid for with the groceries yesterday never made it back into my cart, and thus got left at the store. When I got there today, I realized I had forgotten my receipt. Good thing the fine folks at TJ's are super nice and didn't even hesitate to just hand another bag over to me. And there I have: something to be thankful for : ) 

Actually, there is a lot to be thankful for. Including my inaugural lighting of the coals and grilling of the meats on my charcoal grill. That is if you can call a Trader Joe's hot dog a "meat". I decided it was the easiest thing to try the first time around. Turns out I used too little coal, but they turned out fine anyway. And I got to make the neighborhood smell like burning paper when I lit the chimney, which was pretty sweet.

 

So, goodbye Kid's Clothes Week Challenge. I really wanted to take part, but circumstances dictate otherwise. So I hereby declare myself a ditcher and a shirker. Boy was it tempting to toss my stupid unfinished shirt in the coal chimney!....

KCWC day one

Day one of KCWC....not the best. The upside is that I'm pretty sure I pieced an hour of sewing "related" activity in there, between tracing and cutting my pattern pieces, cutting out my fabric, sewing, ironing, winding my bobbin back up etc. 

It was the inbetween that made things feel like torture. For example, fending off my children while they led a dual assault on my pattern tracing with their crayons. Normally I wouldn't attempt to do this around them, but I didn't have a choice. They were like bombers, attacking me with their crayons from all directions, as I squawked and protested and made threats. 

Source: chilp.it via Stefany on Pinterest

The process of including my 3 year old as I cut out fabric for her raglan tee was....interesting. I love that she is interested, and I am theoretically delighted in getting her involved. Theoretically. At least when I'm not pushing through brain fog and the ticking clock of a poorly sleeping baby. You know.....the kid never. stops. talking. Or moving. Sitting on the floor with her is like sitting next to a compulsive break dancer. 

As I cut out the fabric from a thrifted tee, I began to realize that I didn't like it as much as I thought I would. In fact, once everything was cut out, I was SURE I didn't like it as much as I thought. By the time I a) realized I had jacked up the sleeves and had to recut different ones out of another t-shirt b) began piecing things together and c) losing my foggy mommy mind I had decided that I might even hate the fabric. It was this marylin monroe print tee that I had thrifted, thinking that it might be fun to throw some pop culture in my kids clothes. A bit of the unexpected....But the color of the shirt and the little blingy sequins that were clustered in one spot were just starting to claw my eyes out. 

There was a fork in the road. 

Source: google.com via Lindsey on Pinterest

Abandon the work I had already done?

Press on on principle?

So I pressed on. Made some tweaks along the way. Found a way to ditch those sequins. Decided halfway through that I hated the shirt so much that it was getting a reversal and the inside was going to be the outside. 

 

The place I decided to make my sewing home in the midst of our floor remodel was on the kitchen counter next to the coffee machine. The steam from the dishwasher was rising into my face. Lol. My mini ironing board was sitting on some pieces of flooring. I felt a little adventurous. A little like a pioneer. Right before I got started on the sewing, I went to see what Violet was upset about in the living room, bashed my shin into a pile of flooring, and wound up with a skinless goose egg. Cute.

 

 

Do you see how I'm fleshing out the story? It's because I didn't get a whole heck of a lot done. I've still got one side of the shirt to stitch up and the neckband to attach. That could be an adventure, because I decided to attempt making a V neck. My favorite! I also have to reverse applique the right side of the shirt. 

 

See, when I tried ridding myself of the dreaded bedazzling, I cut out some striped fabric (an old gap shirt) to experiment with. Maybe make some pockets. But once I attached it, I realized I just couldn't have the outside be the outside anymore. So now it's a reverse applique. My raw edged raglan is now not raw edged. And I accidentally attached the back body piece the wrong way, meaning the "right" way if I was using the printed side.

 

 

 

 
so there it was. KCWC day one!

 

kids clothes week challenge

Source: elsiemarley.com via Sandra on Pinterest

kill me now. KCWC starts today and I never got any prep done for it. 

FYI, if you aren't familiar, the KCWC is a seasonal challenge to spend 1 hour a day for a week getting a bunch of clothes banged out for your kids.

Between painting my dining area, having my sewing area ripped apart, haircuts, and taking care of a teething baby who won't sleep at night, there was no time to really prepare. I'm still going to try, mind you. But I'm still not so sure how. I'll have to find a place to cut patterns where my kids can't torture me. And the sewing machines have to be relocated. omg, my brain is melting.

Sewing outside

what to do when the sewing machines are unplugged? sew outside! 

we headed out to dump some dirt and seeds in pots that my neighbor loaned me for the growing season. 

Clover was planting some dirt in the ice tray

 

they were kind enough to fill my mop bucket up with dirt too. 

 

a few rows of lettuce

 

gloves. very helpful while sitting on the table. 

 

Violet decided to go swimming in the lid of the sandbox. after that, she became a walking mudball.

 

It occurs to me now that there are almost no pictures of the planting process. They are pretty much all of the girls acting like wild animals.

 

mmm, is this dirt organic? 

 

Violet had inhaled water off the sandbox, cried, and then went back for more. There is seriously something wrong with my kids. 

 

like a beautiful dirt cocktail.

 

OMG I am covered in dirt, and I got a piece of dried paint on my fingertip!!!!!

 

she's just making sure she got all the dirt off the high chair

 

this was my pot marking choice. I just shaved some bark off with a potato peeler and wrote in sharpie. done!