In Which We Ponder Pomanders

So this morning I dropped Connor off and headed over to the shopping center that my doctor's office is located in, where I sat in a coffee shop for a bit to while away the time before my check-up.  I moseyed on over to the clinic half an hour ahead of the allotted time, only to discover that my appointment had been scheduled for yesterday instead of today.

Whoops.

So apparently while I am obsessed with getting to the childrens' various appointments on time to a point that is borderline unhealthy, I have no compunctions about completely missing my own appointments.  I rescheduled for Wednesday.  Hopefully I'll be able to remember to, you know, actually show up.  I'm sure the doctor and staff whose time I wasted yesterday would probably appreciate that.

Anyway, then I went out and picked up the last odds and ends I needed for Christmas decorating, which will be happening in our house on Friday.  Eden and I will be picking out a tree, stringing the lights on it and making cranberry garlands.  I'll put the house lights up if I have the time too, and we'll put out all our other decorations except for the Christmas tree ornaments.  We're going to wait until Jer's home to put those up, so we'll have something to do together as a family.

After the kids came home, Connor napped while Eden and I made pomanders.  For those of you not familiar with pomanders, basically you take an orange (or in our case, a clementine), poke it full of holes with a skewer and stab a clove into each hole.  Then if you choose to, you can roll it in other spices, like cinnamon and nutmeg.  Somehow the clove-and-spice mixture magically causes the orange to last 8,000 years and also to smell delicious.  I have no idea how this works.

Stabbing cloves into an orange is not only entertaining and strangely mesmerizing work, but it's also sneaky fine motor skills practice.  I'm a huge fan of Sneaky Therapy That We Don't Refer To As Therapy Because It Is Fun.  It was interesting enough work that Eden, the self-purported Hater of All Things Crafty, actually made four of them, and since I'd already made quite a few before she got home we now we have a big bowl of pomanders sitting on the dining room table.  If you buy the cloves in bulk at an Asian foods store this is actually a fairly inexpensive way to make your house smell ridiculously good.

After that it was off to drop Eden at swim practice.  Then Connor and I went out for some quality time at the local bookstore, where we shared a piece of lemon tart while snuggling and reading a book.  It was nice to get a bit of one-on-one time with both the kids today; that doesn't happen very often!

~Jess

In Which I Try And Start Yet Another Project Because Evidently I Don't Have Enough To Do With My Time

So today after I dropped off the kids off at school, my mom and I took a trip up to Seattle to visit a huge architectural salvage place.  I was looking for a way to build a nice looking desk for my bedroom that would fit both computers (once Jer gets home we'll have two), and also have more room for files.  Currently I only have one nice, neat file drawer in my desk, and then a huge pile of file boxes stacked in the corner of the room with all the other various insurance and adoption and whatnot papers in them.  Since I don't think I'm going to find anything ready-made or custom built in my budget that will work, I need to make my own desk/work table.

It's a really long space-- 103 inches-- and I thought the salvage place might have a counter or a slab that would work well for the top of the desk.  We saw a few things that would have been really cool.  For example, they had a huge beautiful piece of hand-cut, inch-and-a-half thick tempered glass that was exactly the right size and was really reasonably priced, but it just wouldn't be practical in the space as it weighed something like 400 pounds.  Not only would I have serious trouble getting it into my house, but if I managed to drop it the thing would probably make a glorious hole straight through our floor.

So that was a no-go.  We browsed through long aisles of doors and iron gates, lingered on a scaffolding top for a while but determined it was too narrow to sit on top of a filing cabinet, and then finally ran out of time and had to go pick up the kids.

I didn't find anything today, but I'm not in a hurry.  Jer and I can make things work if we need to, so I've got time to find something that will really work in our space and isn't going to break my floor or empty my wallet.  I'll keep looking!

~Jess

In Which Connor Is A Night Owl

Last night Connor decided to stay up until the wee hours, and then for some reason he didn't feel like getting out of bed this morning.  Surprise surprise.  I think he's putting us through training in preparation for having a teenager. 

I hauled him out of bed and off to school anyway.  While he was there, a friend and I took a trip down to the gigantic bead store south of my town.  We spent about two hours in the store and didn't get lost and die of starvation or anything-- though I did bleed on their floor a bit.  I accidentally dropped a glass ornament on the floor and managed to cut my finger picking up the pieces.  Luckily the cut was extremely minor-- I didn't even realize I was bleeding until I saw some on the ornament.  Oh well-- otherwise we had fun!

I'd hoped to take Connor out to the pumpkin patch this afternoon,  but he conked out in the car on the way home from school so I canceled his play date.  He didn't sleep for very long though, and now it looks like he's planning to stay up late again.  Seriously, I don't know how that kid does it.

Hooray for night nursing! 

~Jess

In Which We Throw A Party And Connor Is Not Amused

Connor and I slept in a bit this morning, and then we hopped in the car and drove off to the farmer's market for some fresh fruit, bread and cheese.  I was hosting a group of crafting friends today, and so I wanted something tasty for us to snack on while we worked on our various projects.  You can't go wrong with fruit, bread and cheese. 

After that I cleaned up the sadly neglected house a bit, and when my co-host arrived I put Connor down for his quiet time and she and I got to crafting while we waited for the rest of the ladies.  Everyone either brings their own project, makes something with what other people brought, or just hangs out and socializes depending on their mood.  I felt like doing something a little bit different than the sequin-filled stocking and the costuming I've been working on recently, so I got started on one of the stockings based on botanical prints that I'd drawn up a few weeks ago. 

I decided to start with the poppy stocking; it's the most complicated and was inspired by some poppies drawn by Alphonse Mucha.  I've got some hand dyed, mottled felt in various colors I've been dying to use, and this seemed like the perfect time.  It's fun trying to figure out how to use the variegation on the sheet of felt to suggest shading-- I've got to cut the piece out at just the right angle to give an illusion of depth (though some of the pieces are lightly stuffed for added effect).

Because this stocking has no sequins and will only be beaded around the center of the poppies, it's going really, really fast.  I might actually be able to finish the front piece of this one up tomorrow, depending on how the day goes.  I've got the first flower laid out but not sewn down yet, so we'll see how quickly the detail work goes.

So crafty day was a big success; there's nothing I like more than sitting around a table with a bunch of friends and working on fun projects!  Connor was not nearly as thrilled with the whole thing, though, once I got him up from quiet time.  This was because there was a baby on the premises; one of my friends brought her adorable five week old girl.  If there's one thing that Connor likes less than a baby, it's a baby invading his own personal house.  Horrors!  I didn't even hold her and he still declared that he was sad and that she needed to leave.  He refused to sit up at the table with me, and instead hung out on the floor, where he didn't have to look at the baby and could therefore pretend she didn't exist.  The second she left he suddenly was perfectly fine with sitting at the table and being part of the gathering.

Silly little guy.

~Jess

In Which We Visit Some Animals

We had a busy day today!

This morning Connor and I hit a couple of thrift stores looking for supplies.  I needed a fake fern and some leaves for this year's Steamcon (the local steampunk convention) costume, and if there's one thing that thrift stores carry a ton of, it's fake flowers.  Since my studio is mostly set up now, I know where everything is and apparently that compels me to make stuff.  Lots and lots of stuff.  My costume's headdress is mostly completed now and I've started work on a wire nest that will hold a bird and a couple of clockwork eggs.  We'll see how it turns out.

After the thrift stores Connor went down for a brief nap and then we hopped in the car to meet a couple of friends at Northwest Trek!  Northwest Trek is a wildlife conservation center focused on native species of animals, and it contains a huge free-range area for animals like bison, elk and caribou.  It reminds me a lot of the Arbuckle Wilderness theme park I used to go to with my family as a kid, only minus the ostriches trying to eat the inspection sticker off the car.  Ostriches will eat anything.

It was a beautiful day and the temperature was just about perfect for Connor, so we didn't have to take any breaks.  He could have cared less about most of the animals (except for a sleeping raccoon curled up in its den near the glass, which he seemed to appreciate) but he loved the wind on his face in the tram and was pretty good natured as long as we kept walking.  I'm glad he enjoyed himself; we'll have to go again sometime soon!

This evening our new potential respite care worker is here for orientation as well.  I'm hoping that she'll be a better fit for our family; so far, so good!

~Jess

In Which My Sister Takes Off And I Do Creative-Type Things

My sister had to leave today, which was sad.  I miss her already!  We always have such a great time when we're together, so I was sorry to see her go. 

We got word today that the nursing agency might have found another respite care worker for us, which is pretty exciting! She'll be doing her orientation next week. Hopefully things will go better for us this time around; it would be so, so nice to be able to hit a bookstore or coffee shop every once in a while. 

Other than a lovely walk around the park and a drive around town to delay having to take Mary to the airport, we otherwise spent a quiet day at home.  Connor seemed to be feeling a wee bit under the weather, so he snuggled up on the couch with a blanket while I got out my art supplies and sketched up a series of stockings inspired by botanical prints just for fun. 

The butterfly stocking I'm working on is moving right along, and I figure it will be nice to have something fun to work on when I'm not doing other projects.  This is what happens when I spend too much time leafing through our Alphonse Mucha coffee table book; I go all crazy and start needing to create elaborate projects for myself.  I haven't gone so far as to start wanting to craft elaborately draped art nouveau gypsy women out of felt yet, but that's probably because I've been getting enough sleep lately and aren't working in my customary half-delirious state. 

I'd gotten out another sewing project to finish up today; I wanted to sew the monster felt applique I made a while back onto Connor's flannel poncho.  Cricket had other ideas, though-- apparently she finds this poncho just as warm and snuggly as Connor does.  Also she and the monster needed to hold hands for some reason. 

Crazy cat.

~Jess

In Which We Are Shipwrecked

We spent today out on the town! 

After sleeping in for a bit (Connor stayed up until two in the morning last night), we grabbed some lunch and then drove down to Olympia for some shopping and general tooling around.  Once we'd exhausted our shopping opportunities there, we headed towards home.  On the way, we popped into Shipwreck Beads, and by "popped in," I mean, "spent a couple of hours tooling up and down every single aisle of beads."  Shipwreck has a 22,000 square foot bead showroom, so that takes a while.

The bead store is completely overwhelming, and basically I end up grabbing a bunch beads that I have no idea how I'm going to use-- I just think they're pretty.  In a store with 30 some odd aisles worth of beads I have to be careful because I think a lot of things are pretty.  It's really easy to go overboard.

Mary and I bought many, many beads, and then we came home and spent the rest of the day pairing them with the 80 bajillion beads I already have (I used to live ten minutes from Shipwreck, so I accumulated a few beads) to make lots of jewelry. 

I now have six new pairs of earrings, a necklace and a bracelet to add to my wardrobe.  I think I'm going to experiment with making felt flowers to go on beaded necklaces in the future.  I might be able to come up with some fun pieces.

Yay for sister time!

~Jess

In Which Connor Snoozes And I Pick Up A Needle

Connor didn't feel terribly well today, so we spent most of the day at home.  He snoozed on the couch while I did exciting things like organizing my collection of sequins, sorting seed beads and emptying out my card catalog so I could move it to the garage.  I've labeled the drawers by color and I'm storing my rolls of felt in it.  If Connor's up to it, I'm going to stop by the hardware store tomorrow so I can pick up some cedar moth balls.  I have quite a bit of 100% wool felt, and the last thing I need is to get my studio beautifully organized only to have moths eat all my supplies. 

I've gotten far enough into the studio project that I can start doing a bit of sewing again, so I figured it was past time I got back to work on my current Christmas stocking project.  It's a butterfly themed stocking, and I basically got as far as cutting out pieces when we moved all my stuff out of Ellen's room and it went into storage.  I spent some time experimenting with different ways to decorate the wings, in the end I decided to just go with the old standby and cover the whole mess with sequins.  My current motto seems to be "When in doubt, use more sparkly things."  Sequins solve all problems. 

Of course, I didn't end up working on the stocking in my exciting studio-to-be.  I worked on it on the couch while Connor napped and Loki tried to see just how close he could get to my sequin jars with a paw before I ran him off.  Oh well.

The design is pretty simple for this one, so unless I get carried away and add a bunch of crazy things it should be done in a couple of weeks.  Since I started on it, oh, last December, and it's actually for somebody instead of a random project, it might be nice if I actually got it done before Christmas. 

Me?  Procrastinate?  Never!

~Jess

In Which I Get Crafty

I've been sitting on my craft room project for a while, but I really want to get it finished up before Connor is in school so I can finally get back to sewing, dang it!  I have a ton of projects I need to finish up and I have to have a place to work on them that the cats can't get into.  It's really hard to finish a project when every time you leave it for more than three minutes at a time you have to dig it out from under the refrigerator when you get back.

So I've got the main painting done, and I'm starting to move the furniture in and figure out where I want everything to go.  I was originally going to go with the same gray that our bedroom and the outside of the house are painted, but I decided that I wanted something a tad funkier.  The color I picked out is by Sherwin Williams and is called "Stunning Shade," which has to be the most unoriginal name for a color ever.  It's basically a deep gray with purple undertones.  On my wall it looks either gray or deep purple, depending on the time of day.  I know most people prefer their studios to be white, but I like color! 

I laid down a carpet remnant left over from the house remodel as a rug, and started putting the major pieces of furniture in place.  I've still got one wall to cover (I'm not sure in what yet, but probably fabric) and I need to hang all the shelves, but it's at least a beginning.

So things are moving along.  My next big project in there will be putting up the ceiling track.  I need a Cozy Little Nook kind of studio area, not an Inescapably In The Garage area, and if I don't rig up a partition between my space and the rest of the garage I'll be stuck with the latter.  I've got some huge canvas drop cloths that, by the time I'm finished with them, will hopefully be fabric walls provided I don't screw them up.  We'll see how things go.

I think that getting the studio itself ready won't be the part that takes the longest-- it will be organizing all my craft stuff.  Today I tackled my bead collection; I'm fond of making jewelry and spent three years living within twenty miles of the largest bead store in North America, so I have a rather extensive stash.  This, of course, is the bead collection that Loki helped me organize a few months ago by dumping the entire tray on the floor.  So I spent about three hours over the course of the day separating out all the beads and organizing them in their new home; the antique printer's tray I found in an antique store a while back.  It's now safely out in the cat-free garage, so if this one tumps over I'll have no one to blame but myself.

I can't wait to get back to making things!

~Jess

In Which Connor And I Keep Our Cool

Today got hot enough that I left the house with Connor and took to the mall.  There's a huge mall up the highway from us that's a good air conditioned place to hang out.  We're still getting price quotes on having the AC installed in our house, but the sooner, the better!

After we spent some time circling the mall we ended up in Seafood City; the huge Asian supermarket near the foodcourt.  I picked up all the ingredients for som tam (green papaya salad), which I've made enough now that I don't need a recipe anymore.  And I picked up a large bunch of lemongrass too, which I'm going to try to make some sachets from.  I've discovered I really love the sweet citrus scent of lemongrass, and Connor doesn't seem to react to it.  I think using it to make my clothes smell good would be rather nice.

I bought a large package of Thai chili peppers too, but that was less because I think I'm going to be using that many in my cooking over the next week or two (one or two of those goes a long way) and more because you couldn't buy them individually.  I think I might have to get out the dehydrator and see whether or not I can dry them to store them longer.  If that doesn't work, then I can always pop them in the freezer.  With a few exceptions (like som tam) dried peppers should work fine in my recipes.

After our expedition to the mall, Connor and I dropped the groceries off and then headed to his physical therapy appointment.  We're doing some trouble shooting right now; the little guy needs a new TLSO (Torso Lumbar Sacral Orthotic-- basically a back brace) for his scoliosis, but we have to figure out a way to make one that isn't going to cause him to overheat-- a real danger in the summer time with this kid.  Hopefully we'll be able to figure something out that he can wear enough to help slow down the progression of his scoliosis.  We'd like to hold off on surgery for a few more years!

~Jess

In Which I Paint And Paint And Paint Some More

Print by Iveta Abolina

Hoo boy I did a heck of a lot of painting today.

I've put one coat of primer and three coats of paint on Ellen's desk in the last two days, and despite my best efforts at screwing everything up it's actually starting to look pretty cute.  I'm going for a vintage, slightly worn look, which involves priming and painting and sanding and painting again and then sanding and painting one more time and then glazing and waxing the whole mess.  Who knew making something look old could be so much work?  Heck, most days I look way older than I really am and I'm not even trying.  I finished all the painting today, but I still have the glazing and waxing to do. 

Then I have to pick out some cute knobs for it, line the drawers and I can show you the finished project!

Anyway, in the process of doing this desk I've learned a bit about paint-- mainly, that the paint base you use makes a huge difference in how the paint goes on.  Since I got the paint colors I'm using at three different times in three different places, they all have a different paint base.  The mid-range priced Sherwin Williams paint base goes on like butter, covers like a dream (only one coat needed on my walls with no primer!) and looks like a million bucks.  The relatively inexpensive paint base from Home Depot behaves itself if you ask really, really nicely, but you're going to need at least two coats of the stuff to get a nice finish.  And last (and also least), the dirt cheap bottom-of-the-rung Sherwin Williams paint base openly laughs in your face and then leaves to go hang out in the back alley and smoke cigarettes with all the other delinquent paint. 

That paint is a total jerk.

So moral of the story-- if you are covering a large area and want it to look nice, go for a slightly pricier paint base.  It all looks pretty much the same and may initially seem more expensive, but the fact that you don't have to put six coats of the stuff on will probably end up saving you money-- not to mention all the quarters you won't have to put in the Swearing Jar once you realize just how much work it's going to take to get the stuff on the walls.

Luckily I was just painting topcoat on the desk with the cheap stuff, or I'd be totally broke today.

 So besides completely covering myself in paint, I also went to Ikea today and picked up a dresser for Ellen's clothes.  Except I forgot to get one of the shelves.  Then I managed to break one of the hinges on the thing while putting it together.  So guess where I'll be going back to tomorrow?  Sigh.

I also picked up the one print I bought for her room from the frame shop.  While she'll be picking out the rest of the decorations for her walls when she gets here, I didn't want them to be totally blank when she arrives.  If she doesn't like it I'm sure I can find somewhere else in the house to put it. 

The fabric in the picture is going to be used in a variety of small projects, like lining her desk drawers and for a throw pillow or two.  The poppy fabric is one of the ones being used in her bedspread, and the cream fabric is also being used in her bedspread, but in a different colorway.  I already had the little vases, and I picked up the silver jewelry box at a local antique store for a song.  I'm redoing the liner, and then she can use it for bracelets and whatnot. 

Despite all my complaining, I'm having kind of ridiculous amounts of fun. 

~Jess

In Which We Have A Great Day

So I went to the sewing expo today, and it simultaneously awe inspiring and really depressing all at the same time.  It was awe inspiring because of the sheer amount of talent concentrated in the space; I've never seen so many gorgeous quilts, christening gowns, art dolls, and hats in my entire life.  It was depressing for the same reason-- I was completely overwhelmed by the glorious creativity of these people and the stuff I've made doesn't compare well. 

Oh well-- I'll keep plugging along!

My favorite booth by far was one called "Treasures of the Gypsy," which is based out of New Mexico, and if you live in New Mexico I seriously envy you right now because they don't do online sales so I have to wait a whole entire year to go shopping there again.  The entire top of the booth was covered with beautiful art dolls of every shape and size, and the booth was full of silk, antique saris, trim and ribbon of every variety imaginable, and about fifteen different colors of sequins.  I didn't take any close up pictures of the art dolls because they're someone else's work, but believe me when I say that they were stunning.

I may possibly have bought a ridiculous number of sequins, but hey, they are really, really hard to find.  The last time I went to the craft store and asked for sequins the employee had no idea what I was talking about.  Really.  Apparently the only people who use sequins now are me, figure skaters and drag queens.  So I was pretty excited to not only find some sequins, but to find them in some unusual colors. 

Other purchases included some mirrors and rings for shisha embroidery, and a large piece of glorious hand-dyed felt in blues, purples and greens.  I'm intrigued by the idea of incorporating shisha mirrors into my felt projects.  I have all sorts of ideas, but of course my crafting supplies are scattered all over the place right now while we work on the studio and also I have several projects I need to finish up before I start anything new.  I might sketch a few things out for later, though.

So after I finished playing at the sewing expo I ate some lunch, came back home and we all went out for a nice walk around the neighborhood.  The sun came out today and the weather was just beautiful, so it was the perfect day for a walk.  Once we got back home I picked up a spade and did a bit of gardening.  I got a few plants in the ground and was happy to see that the garden only suffered a few casualties over the winter.

So overall it was a lovely day!

~Jess

~Jess

In Which Connor Tries For A Doctor Appointment Record And I Have Some Crafting Fun

So Connor has a patch of skin on the inside of his arm around an IV site that looks like it's infected.  Despite putting antibacterial ointment on the patch several days in a row now, the nasty red patch is continuing to spread.  So unless something drastically changes tomorrow, it looks like we're headed back to the doctor yet again on Monday.  If we end up going that will make the seventh visit to the doctor's office in the past month.  Glorious. 

The little guy spent some quality time with his daddy today; I had some friends over for a crafting session and so the guys holed up in the back bedroom to hide while we ladies chatted and crafted away.  The crafting and social time was a ton of fun; it was so neat to see what everybody else was making!  Also everybody brought yummy food, which was like a bonus to the already awesome social-time-and-crafting activities.  I might possibly have done more eating than crafting.  Oh well. 

I did manage to make a complete idiot out of myself by not recognizing one of the guests and introducing her by the wrong name.  No, really-- I'm totally not making this up.  Who does that at their own party?  She was very gracious about it, which was really nice of her because I felt like a complete jerk. 

But other than my awkward hosting things went well, and I'm hoping I'll get the chance to do it again soon!  Except minus the making-a-complete-idiot-out-of-myself part.

~Jess

In Which Connor Is A Sickikin Again

Well, Connor lasted all of a week and a half before getting sick again; he started running a fever this morning and by the time he went to bed he'd had four seizures and was throwing up at the drop of a hat.  I guess all of his friends brought their holiday bugs to school and shared them with the rest of the class.

So that was fun and exciting.  I spent some time at the pharmacy this morning and escaped for a little bit of shopping in the evening after Jer got home from the gym, but otherwise I was pretty much a comfortable pillow for the little guy. 

So I passed the time by making another felt pincushion.  Because what the heck, you can't have too many pincushions.  I used a crème brûlée cup I found at the thrift store for fifty cents as the base, and while there are some things I'd do differently next time I think that overall it turned out pretty cute.  It feels really weird for me to do a project that I can actually complete in one day-- I'm used to them dragging on for weeks.  Anyway, I have some other little cups and whatnot, so I might experiment with more pincushions sometime if I want to do a short project. 

I'm probably going to be doing quite a bit of sitting around over the next few days, so I might as well be productive while I'm at it.

~Jess

In Which I Have A Crafty Sort Of Day

Today while Connor was at school, I drove downtown to browse the antique stores. 

I've started to think about exactly what I want my craft/art studio to look like, and so I'm shopping for some of the things I'll need to make it look like it does in my head.  I already have a lot of the things I'll need, like my card catalog (I'm lining the drawers with aromatic cedar and using it to store my felt), some apothecary jars for odds and ends, a large work table, and so on and so forth.  I'm still missing quite a few things I'd like to have in my space, though.  Because this will be a relatively small space we're carving out and I'll be using it for my creative pursuits, I feel like I should really go all out to make it pretty.  That means the plywood shelves held up with huge grey brackets that currently are above and below the window in the space aren't going to cut it.

So my mission today was to find some wrought iron shelf brackets to anchor my shelving in the craft room.  I didn't find any, but tucked up behind some other things in an out-of-the-way corner of one of the stores I found this glorious copper boiler, marked down to such a good price I knew it had to be mine.  I'll need a gift wrapping and shipping station in my space if I'm going to try and make things to sell, and I figure this will be the perfect container to store my wrapping paper in. 

I want to paint the one actual wall of the space (I have grand plans for room dividers made of unbleached canvas paint drop cloths, but we'll be here all night if I get started on those) the same dark gray as our bedroom, and use moss green and copper accents.



Speaking of which-- after Connor went down for bed tonight I decided I could get another quite project out of the way.  The walls in the garage are currently painted dingy, ten-year old beige and have matching dingy, ten-year old outlet and light switch covers.  I'm a total cheapskate, so I figured that rather than buy new outlet covers I'd just make over the ones already in the room.  I had a bunch of copper paint and patina maker left over from my steampunk roller derby costume, so I figured I'd just try a little sanding and painting.  These aren't the best pictures and the patina will continue to develop over time, but already they look a ton better than they did before. 

After.  Not designer, but vastly improved.



Before.  Ew.





So anyway, while the first coat of copper paint was drying I figured I'd tackle another quick and easy craft project I've been meaning to do.  The cats keep stealing my Makeshift-Scrap-Strip-Of-Felt-With-Needles-Jabbed-In-It pincushion and running around the house with it like it's a toy, which is not exactly good for the health of all parties involved.  Something a little more substantial was needed.  I dropped a clay cup a few months ago and chipped the rim of it, but thought it was too pretty to throw away.  So I put a cardboard base inside it, sewed up a quick ball of felt and presto!  One little mossy green pincushion.  Jeremy says that with the pins in it "looks like a plant of death," which I'm taking as a compliment.

Ta da!  Total work time: five minutes.  Now that's my kind of project!

So it felt like a very productive day, even if I didn't really do all that much besides paint stuff and make a felt ball.  Oh, and laundry of course.  Every day is laundry day in this house the way Connor goes through shirts.

I can't wait to get my craft room up and running!

~Jess

In Which We Go On A Date And Plan A New Project

Today Jeremy and I took advantage of our respite care to actually go out and see the second Sherlock Holmes movie.  We don't go to the movies very often; I think the last one we probably saw in the theater was the first Sherlock Holmes movie.  At any rate we enjoyed ourselves, though we both didn't think it was anything spectacular. 

We also spent some time discussing what we'd like to do with the garage over the next few months.  We have a two car garage, but we can't keep the van in it because we wouldn't have enough room to get the ramp down.  Also our garage has stairs up to the house so we'd end up having to take the little guy up the front walk anyway.  Someday we'll put a lift on the garage stairs, but it hasn't been a priority.  Actually right now we can't fit any cars in it because it's full of stuff from our remodel and also Ellen's bed, which has yet to be assembled as we haven't gotten rid of the futon currently occupying that space in her room yet.  But I digress-- the point is that we have a two car garage and only one car that we can put in it.

So we've decided to devote the other half of the garage space to a craft area for me.  My former craft space was Ellen's room, which we are ever so slowly cleaning out.  I've been trying to do my sewing on the dining room table instead, but this is proving to be sort of difficult because the cats are also highly interested in my craft projects. 

This means that I either have to put absolutely everything away every time I'm going to be away from the table or else resign myself to the fact that my embroidery thread, felt, needles, etc. will need to be retrieved from underneath various pieces of furniture before I can resume work.  When I'm in the middle of a project I like being able to pick up immediately where I left off, so this isn't working out well for me.  Not to mention the fact that one of these days a cat is going to swallow the wrong thing and we're going to end up with a very expensive vet trip and/or a very dead cat. 

We're not going to actually enclose the garage for a number of reasons.  First of all, there's no way I want to do that much work.  Secondly, we don't want to increase the square footage of our house and have to pay more taxes.  Also if we decided sometime years and years down the road that we needed to sell the house for whatever reason, buyers would generally choose to have a two-car garage over a craft room.  Luckily we live in an area with a pretty temperate climate.  I can heat the garage with a space heater when I'm out there in the winter time, and I can open up the garage door in the summer if I need some air.  Our garage actually has a large window and good lighting too, so working out there shouldn't really be a problem. 

But even though we're not converting the garage to an enclosed space, there are plenty of things we can do to make it a great crafting studio for me.  I'd like to stain and seal the concrete floor, put down a rug and hang some curtains, paint the walls and add some more shelving and storage and a picture or two.  The craft space could still be easily converted back to a regular garage in the future if we needed to, but it would make it much more pleasant for me in the meantime.  And of course the garage is a cat free zone, so that would solve that problem.  While it probably won't be the ideal space, it's certainly better than the dining room table!  And I really need an area to exercise my creative pursuits somewhere in my living space; I've pretty much always had a corner somewhere and it would be fantastic to stretch out a bit!

I'll be sure to take some before and after photos and let you all know how it goes!

~Jess