Busy Busy Busy

I got over to D's sisters the other day and grabbed Tweety, let me tell you, she sews like a champ!!

I made the mistake of stopping at Sally's (Salvation Army, for those who don't know) on the way back. It's amazing how four little letters can change your day. What four letters you ask??  S-A-L-E! Yes, sale, at a thrift store!

As soon as I walked in the door, I saw this:

Covered with frickin contact paper!!!! Argh!

Sweet little sign on it says.... BUY TODAY FOR .49!  Must take today! As soon as I get the FREAKIN' contact paper off of it, and get it painted and stenciled I'll be able to swap it for the end table to match the one in my bedroom.

I also scored:

• sewing basket
• 2 hugeish bags of fabric
• 2 frames
• 1 bean bag pillow

All for under $15. The basket has already been fixed up:

Before

Even has a handle now!

And it's pretty on the inside too!

I can't believe some of the fabric in those bags! Big time score! I have already made 2 pillows for D's Mom, a bag for Mantha and 7 pillows for me, including 2 floor cushions!

I've also been moving around the middle room (junk drawer) and I've got a sewing corner going on. I even went so OCD as to cover a bunch of boxes with fabric so my shelves are not only cluttered, but prettily cluttered. I'll add pics to picasa as soon as I get it finished.

I've got a list of things I must do within the next week as long as my arm. I scored the perfect fabric for my kitchen this morning, so new curtains and tablecloths are at the top of the list! Pictures will follow! I'm also going to redo the bench. After D coming home with grease/diesel/uck covered items and then touching my bench, I have discovered I need sturdier fabric on there. Luckily, such items just happened to be in the fantastic grab bags of fabric that I got from Sally's! :)

I've been organizing my attic whenever I get a chance. I'm toying around with the idea insulating up there and making myself a mom cave. I was reading this post over at Thrifty Decor Chick, and since I'm destined to win the gift card that'll be a nice start. It'd be nice to have a whole room to myself! I've just got to talk to D about electricity though. I don't mess with that stuff!

Ok, I'm off to be domestic.

Till then...

Obituary

I'm heartbroken to tell you this, but at 8:37 EST The Beast died. She had a long, purposeful life, and will be sadly missed and lovingly remembered.

The Beast
1950ish - 2010

Yep, went to sew some lining into my living room curtains, plugged her in and POP, SPARK, SIZZLE were her last words. I'm heartbroken. And right after I dragged my old sewing cabinet out of the attic so I wasn't taking up the whole kitchen table.

I'm only going to be out of commission for about 12 hours. D's sister is letting me borrow her sewing machine (in honor of said sister, we shall name this sewing machine Tweety after her obsession with, well, Tweety). I'll head over there in the morning with shiny bribes (she wants a hanging candle holder) and be sewing by noon.

Good night all, I'm off to mourn.

Till then...

Uberfail

Have you ever had an idea, it looked fabulous in your head, you think on it and think on it, and you're convinced it's going to work out even better than you imagine?  I did, and it didn't.

My living room furniture has survived 3 kids, 2 cats and D. Needless to say, I'm surprised it's still standing, much less not looking as good as I want it to. For the last couple of years I have just draped whatever blanket, fleece or afghan has caught my eye and it's been functional. I have managed to hide most of the cat's handiwork, but it just doesn't look good.

I am not a fan of storebought slipcovers, it all seems like granny stuff. Let me get my plastic covers before you sit on that 7 inch flower design and ruin it...  Over the years I have looked for material to recover the furniture and if something has caught my eye, it's been about $12.00/yard which is entirely out of my price range. So I have a few choices,  (a) everyone I know and half who don't know me can send me small gift cards for JoAnn Fabrics and I can buy what I want, (b)I can hope to luck into a fantastic sale, (c) I can settle for something that's affordable but I hate it, (d) I can live with the mismatched fleece/blanket/afghan look, (e) I can hit the Powerball and buy whatever I want (f) this is way more than a few choices, I'm quitting, you get the idea.

Ok, point of this post, I'm getting to it, really. I lucked into 4 yards of Navy Panne and thought, Wow, that would work great!!   I love panne (for those of you who aren't sure, it's the crushed velvet looking stuff, if it was a skirt, Stevie Nicks would wear it, sumptuous, wonderful, almost erotic); I would roll around nekked in the stuff forever if I could get away with it. Well, I'll tell you, what looked fabulous in my head, and passable this morning, looks hideous now! I put it on the love seat and it's horrid.

What gets me is there was a light at the end of the tunnel and it's gone. I'm bummed. I suppose I'll find something fantastic to do with the fabric and that'll make me feel better. And eventually I'll find the material I'm supposed to for the furniture and it'll be perfect. I think what's killing me is the bedroom, kitchen and bath are looking great. I think I'm doing pretty good in those rooms. The middle room is my catchall/multi-purpose/everything, I guess you could say it's my junk drawer, just on an entire-room-basis, so it's supposed to be ugh. But nothing is happening in the living room and it's driving me nuts.

Oh well, enough venting. If you made it to the end of the post, congratulations! Not too many people sit through all of my rants. I'm off to destroy something!

Till then...

Getting Reacquainted With My Sewing Machine (or the day I officially became my Mother)

My first sewing machine was an ancient one, with the cabinet, at least it was electric! No bells or whistles but it was great. D's mother gave me a sewing machine a few years ago and I have never touched it. Between work and everything else I never had the time or energy. I finally got it out yesterday, and I was a little rusty, but I didn't do too bad!

It's Fall in Erie, which means one day it could be 80 degrees and sunny and the next is dreary and about 3 degrees from freezing. My apartment is older, which means drafts appear everywhere, places you didn't even think drafts could exist! I decided my first project with the beast (I like to come up with loving nicknames for all my stuff) would be draft stoppers. I have had quite a few over the years, but with cats and kids and a couple of moves they have disappeared. I made just simple tubes of some leftover navy fleece I had. (I was a bit nervous about using fleece with the cat hair, but that's what I had scraps of) Ah, now time to stuff them, what to use? I don't want to waste my polyfill, what do I have? I seriously dislike plastic grocery bags, I own about 20 cloth shopping bags but I still end up with quite a few of them. I save them up and then throw them in the recycling but they haven't gone out in about a month. That's when I got the brilliant idea to use them to stuff the draft stoppers. They came out great, I was thrilled but then I heard the voice in my head (which always sounds like Sam Elliot) drawl "And this was the moment Jennifer realized she had become her mother". 

Little side note about my mother. Ever catch those "Hoarders" shows? My mother has earned her "HOA" and is well on her way to getting the rest of the letters. Growing up it used to drive me crazy the stuff she would save, You never know when you're going to need something. My mother is wonderful, she's the type of person who will show up at your house with 2 bags of groceries, some clothes, some dishes, whatever she finds in her warehouse  (or what the rest of the world calls a dining room). On the downside of that, whenever you walk through her warehouse you fear a little for your life, afraid that one of the piles might fall on you and you'll end up trapped for months. Then again, going to her house is like hitting a garage sale, you never know what you're going to walk out with!

By this time I felt I was comfortable enough to move on, so, with this:

The Beast... She's so perty!!  And so mint green!!

I made these:

The purple one matches my curtains!

My new favorite type of pillow to make is this:

Harem!!  Don't ya love the name?

I just love the way they look, the way they feel! Eventually my place will be filled with them and I may be able to do away with most of my furniture!! My daughters had two Harry Potter floor cushions they have outgrown and I'm thinking of recovering them. I love floor cushions. Hell, I love any kind of pillow. It's an addiction and I have yet to find a 12-step program for them. I will probably spend the next week sneaking in a pillow or seven between other projects!

GirlChild#2 walks in last night amidst the pillows I've made and starts eying them up, deciding which one she was stealing. So Not Happening. We ended up going through the fabric I have and she picked these for her pillow:

And no, she is not on drugs

I ended up making her a half body pillow, and if you're eyes can get past the patterns, this is what we ended up with:

Cool on one side, Warm on the other

She's happy with it, that's what counts. I believe it's the multiple child syndrome, now she won't have to share it with anyone else because NOONE else will want it!

Now that I've got the beast out, I've got a few hundred things I want to do. Seat cushion for my vanity-to-be, pajama pants for yule presents (my family lives in them! Right now I'm sporting the sexiest fleece Eeyore ones! I have never been very good at making clothing but I'm going to master it this month!) I want to pull down my living room curtains and line them for a little extra insulation and about 97 more things!

The last time I left Momma's, among the goodies I scavenged were two white cotton full flat sheets. I'm going to dye those black and make a table cloth or two for my kitchen. I have practically no counter space in my kitchen and it is not big enough to add any so quite a bit happens on my table. I figure two tablecloths for the big table and two for the side table will be good enough. I'm sure I'll figure something out.

Oh well, I'm off to class. Then back to find more things to sew!

Till then...

Surprise & Update!!!!!

Drumroll please!!  Do you know what this is??

It's driving you nuts, you're salivating with anticipation, aren't ya??

Admire all the silverish beauty on the back of this miracle.  This, (are you ready?) this, ladies and gentlemen, this is a FIVE DOLLAR 16X20 POSTER FRAME FROM FAMILY DOLLAR!!!!! Yes, you read that right a mere $5.00 will get you that surprisingly sturdy poster frame from Family Dollar. Who needs a footlong sub from subway when you could get that frame!!!! (Can you tell I'm excited???  Maybe just a tidge, I'll admit it.) So, I ran right home, and only after doing the next surprise, I framed yet another blockposters.com special. This one is an enlarged Tarot Card (The Moon).

While we still have a drumroll going on (and this is costing me good money, but the situation is well worth it) I FINISHED the pot rack. D's mother, blessed woman that she is, sent over 4 hooks she found at Dollar Tree (I believe they were intended as coat hooks) and they work! I hit Dollar Tree this morning but alas, they had no more. I was told they are a sporadic item, I was out of luck. I tried Valu Home Center and got a pack of 3 hooks, these are silver, but they'll work.

Who'd have thought something so small could give me so much pleasure?? (And please, I know the obvious jokes going through your minds, I just snorted a bit of my coffee typing that!! LOL)

So, it's done!!  After hanging my cookware on it, I have come to the conclusion I must scrub the bottoms of my pots and pans much better. So I got the steel wool out, scrubbed, scrubbed and scrubbed some more and here it is!!!

TAA-DAA!!!

Well, I'm off to be domestic! Got that mirror painted, deciding whether or not I want to stencil it.

Till then...