Sewing

The basement is now usable although still not organized. We are leaving for vacation to Hawaii on Monday.... Yay! It is cold and raining here in Portland with occasional sun breaks and snow.... which means it is cold and wet in general. Hawaii is warm and pleasant, so it should be a wonderful change of pace.
In preparation for the trip, I've been sewing up a few things. I made Elsie and couple of pairs of shorts and this great little top...




I need to make her one more in pink, of course. It is from the book on the left....



This is the first project I've made out of one of these books. All of the instructions are in Japanese, but the pictures have numbers that indicate the order you do things. I had to read it a few times to get everything right. The elastic length for the back was a complete guess, but it seems to work.... AND it sews up in about 20 minutes with no interruptions... about 45 minutes with a pretzel run, a glass of milk, and multiple diaper changes.

Painting, painting

In an effort to finish one project in this household, we are focusing all efforts on Miss Elsie's new room. My hands ache from holding a brush and roller. We put the final coats of paint on and did all the touching up yesterday. Today, the floor received two coats of paint.



The walls are, of course, pink with a brown floor. I will give the trim another coat of white paint tomorrow... and if it all dries in time, she will move in Tuesday night. The little lady is so excited! The room has an official cubby hole/guest quarters, large closet, and a little princess alcove. Once everything is together, I will post pictures.

I'm so anxious to get the kids' rooms squared away. Ewan will not fit in his bassinette much longer. I think we have 3 inches of space lengthwise. As soon as Elsie is installed, we can set up the crib and he can take over the nursery.... and the spouse and I can have our room back!

Prose to the Toes

Oh you little toes



You elude me



I squawk and growl at you



You wiggle back temptingly




Maybe someday I will catch you

First Bouquet of 2007

Spring is officially on its way!!!!
Here is the first bouquet of the year....



The daphne opens a little more each day and smells wonderful. I would love to buy a perfume that smells like it.



Apparently while I was gone last week, my hellebores came up and started to bloom, so I whacked off a couple of blossoms to enjoy inside.

Trip to the farm

The kids and I just returned from a week at the farm. It was so nice to get away.



It was feeling very spring-like there. Is was fairly warm and had rained for several days before we arrived making for some amazing puddles.



My sister and I were experts at puddle depth and mud consistency. However, we would occasionally leave a boot behind in the mud and return home with one boot and one very muddy sock.




The last day was very sunny, but windy. Elsie and I walked all over the place taking pictures and inspecting puddles. It was just warm enough and just enough sun to really feel like spring.... of course making me want to get home and do spring cleaning. Airing out the house, washing drapes and blankets, and putting away the flannel sheets is one of my favorite things. It's a signal that gardening season is coming and that the outdoor rooms will be back in use soon. I posted the rest of the photos on Flickr.




We were at the farm during Valentine's Day, so did not get to celebrate with the spouse who had to work, but was able to have a week's worth of nights of uninterrupted sleep. That clever man surprised me with these chocolate bars:



... and he made the chocolate bars to boot! These are not rewrapped store bought bars. He went to the local candy shop and bought the ingredients, took trial bars to work for people to sample, and then made three perfect chocolate bars with yummy ingredients. Of course, being a graphic designer, he made the fantabulous wrappers.
Thank you, honey! I love them.

Recovering from colds

We (Elsie and I) have had colds. She, like most kids, is recovering at a much more accelerated rate than I am. My rate of recovery has been greatly slowed by lack of sleep. The Little Man is now snacking twice at night instead of sleeping through which he had been doing three weeks ago. This morning, after another restless night, Elsie greeted me by the side of my bed with a hacking cough at 7:15am. "Hi, Mom. It's time to go downstairs." Then she walked over to Ewan and made sure he was awake too. I sent her downstairs and said I would be there soon and tried to doze off a bit. When I did manage to make it downstairs, I was confronted with this....



One entire roll of toilet paper transformed into a Ghost Fireplace. She was using her "IMAGINATION" (saying while making the shape of a rainbow with her hands). Thank you, SpongeBob. Oh well, it's better than getting into something sticky or messy that requires water and cleaning products to remove. It has remained up the entire day. We have just not used this doorway in order to preserve the fireplace.

The good news is that the stair construction crew were here today and the stairs are almost finished. YAY! Only one more day of sawdust generating mess, and it will be over. I sent them outside for the majority of their cutting, but I forgot about the sanding. At least they vaccuumed everything before they left tonight.

Moving in to the Basement!

The blog has been a little quiet lately. We've been gradually moving into the basement studio! Yay! We had to seriously clean out the guest room/Elsie's new room, because we were having house guests this weekend. Nothing like having company to make you clean... and boy, did this house need some cleaning. Anyway... Elsie's new room is fairly empty, so we are ready to commence with the floor painting. There is a LOT of stuff in the basement that needs sorting and organizing, so I'll post pictures in a bit. The stair guy is coming today to deliver the wood for the stairs. Maybe by the end of the week we will have official stairs and not these scary, temporary, open treads which, by the way, are becoming loose and wobbly.
My dearest and oldest friend, Ilena, came to visit this weekend with her family. We saw the Egypt exhibit at the Portland Art Museum, did some shopping (Anthropologie was amazing and inspiring), lots of eating, and a tour of some of the local skate parks. I completely forgot my camera, so have no pictures to post.
so I'll leave you with these images from the Anthropologie website:




I'm feeling the spring cleaning/spring redecorating urge... but I need to finish some other projects first.