Saturday, July 17, 2010

My Sewing/Craft Room Is Done

Just a short post, it is late and am ready to take a soak and get some sleep. I am so happy I finished setting up my sewing room today.

This is the before photos.

This is wall one. This is the wall with the closets. This is a view of some of the wallpaper left still to remove. Apparently it strips in layers. I have come to a major decision about wallpaper, no more is ever...and I do mean no more ever...is allowed on my walls. That goes for stickers and scotch tape as well.

Now then, after removing all that wallpaper and painting and shampooing carpet, my sewing/craft room is all set up. At least ready to be used that is, still have some things packed away that need to be brought out, am still hunting the thread rack, but the next job is cleaning the bedroom up and making the changes I want in there.

Thought you might enjoy the after photos to see the end result.
This is the view as you walk in. That was my dad's chair there in the corner.

This is a view of my shelves that I brought in from the bedroom with all my scrapbooking, stamping, and bead supplies. The famous Cricut is there with all the cartridges and you can't see it, but the bottom shelf is full of my Sizzix stash.

This shows my blue wall. Had to play with the colors a bit. I like the mountains and the beach, so ended up using the colors of the ocean I guess. Sand colored walls, blue wall, then green trim and on the closet doors. Doubt it would win any designer type awards, but it works for me. So nice and calm in there. The thing, I repurposed a lot of storage containers and such so it only big expense was the paint.

And, back to the beginning, but this shots shows off the green doors a little.

Hope you enjoyed the tour. I hear that bath calling my name.

Sunday, July 11, 2010

Daughter's Room

Guess with all the talk about the room should show some photos of it.

We have the shelves up, but not the name on the wall yet. I will be doing that later on as have had to prioritize the little jobs so I can get the big jobs done on time.

Everyone that has seen the room has commented on how good the closet curtains look. I am glad she wanted to take out the doors, I can swap them out for the ones in the sewing room. The ones from her new room are in much better shape.

This is the opposite wall from the window.
and the portion of wall that is set back a bit above it to form what is called a planters shelf we did in dark purple as an accent.

Well, the closet is dry now. Why paint the inside of a closet which no one but me will see is beyond me. I am claustrophobic to begin with so finally gave up caring if the corners didn't quite get enough paint. Just spent about 2 hours loading drivers on daughter's laptop for the printer, ate a bite, so now am ready to go make room to start stripping the wallpaper. OH JOY!

Check in later with progress.

Friday, July 9, 2010

Today was a great day. I started out as tired as when I went to bed, sore from all the redecorating and moving things about, then started out on some errands.

I took a large bag of clothes to a consignment shop to try and sell them. They took two shirts. Out of all the name brand clothes which was mostly jeans, they took two shirts. First thing that happened was that out of one pair of jeans fell a baby spider. I mean tiny. I have no idea how that happened, I washed the whole bag of clothes. After that, the clerk didn't even want to look through them much, she told me that the jeans were all too old. They were name brands so I know that son bought them in the last year or so. So, after that dismal start, I went to JoAnn's and hit a marvelous sale. Shadow box photo frames (well all photo frames) were 60% off. I still have each outfit from each of my children's baptism. We are Lutheran so they were all four infant baptism. At any rate, I have for years thought it would be so wonderful to frame each outfit to hang on the wall. Just never really got around to it and honestly, the outfits are stashed away in all different directions. Now that I am going to have a sewing room all for myself, I am determined to hang some of my prizes as art work. The outfits being one, some Dresden plate quilt blocks made by my aunt in the late 30's are another. I have some needle craft projects that I plan to finally finish and hang as well. At any rate, the original price of the frames was actually less than I was anticipating, but seeing the sale sign I just went ahead and bought four of them, one for each child's outfit. Also, found some cute wooden words to paint and hang on the wall that were in the clearance bin for less than a dollar. Of course, I also found the sign that said the Butterick patterns were on sale for $1.99 each. Good thing that since I have been invaded by the sewing bug that most of the patterns were sold out. I can remember in my younger days dumpster diving the fabric stores on days they discontinued the patterns. Only the envelope is sent back, the tissue pattern and directions was tossed. I would come home with huge black trash sacks full of patterns, grab some tea and sit down to go through them picking out what I could use, then tossing all the others. Those were the days. Thinking of the past, last night I was reading over some blog postings regarding vintage sewing. I love looking at what people come up with. They were just awesome. I am envious of these seamstresses that can get those dress patterns for a quarter at garage sales and then make the pattern fit them. I am hopeless at altering a pattern. Realize, back then, women were smaller. Limited under garments tending to make a woman's bust a little differently shaped as well. I am small on top, large waist, large hips and doubt that anyone even visualized some of the plus sizes we have today. While I am not as large as I was, still working on that as well, I am definitely not a size 6 from the 30's or 40's era. Not sure I was ever a size 6. LOL Any way, I took the plunge today and bought a Butterick pattern that is called a "retro" because it is style inspired from 1947, at least I think that is what the 47 means.
I think it just lovely. Nice and cool for summer, a jacket for cooler weather or in my case modesty in church. I just can't stand my bare shoulders being seen. The pattern is such a clean, simple, classy style that I am really excited to have it in the "to do" box. I also can't help but wonder what some of those ladies would have thought of some of today's fabrics. Am even pretty certain just which fabric I will use from my stash as well, just have to make sure there is enough of it. Feel there is since that piece was bought to make pants, skirt, and top and that particular fabric also happens to be 60 inch wide. Thinking ahead to Christmas, I bought a baby boy pattern and plan to make a whole little wardrobe for the new grandson. It will be fun making the clothes and any one that has had children will agree that by the time they are about six months all the gifts from the shower and well wishers will all be too small for the quickly growing baby. All in all, JoAnn's was a great shopping trip.

Next, I went to Walmart. I posted previously about the work we have been doing in youngest daughter's room. I had decided that I would use my Cricut to cut out her name and then attach it to the wall over her closet. That plan changed as we found a better spot to put her name and would make larger letters. I have one font. That font would be wonderful, but thought I would use it as an excuse to add to my cartridges. After all, it was just one and Walmart carries them at a price that is really good. I had the font all picked out, so I thought. As I was standing there, looking over the script styled font to make sure that it was the one I would buy, after all, I was about to spend $40 and could only pick one, I ran in to the lady that works the scrap craft area. She told me that the ones on the other side could be discounted and asked me how many I would buy if she did. I told her it depended on the final price. OH MY GOSH, I came home with 7 cartridges. She had marked them down to $5 each because they were considered out of date. Heck I didn't care about how current they were and ended up with some great cartridges, four of which are fonts, one of which has a princess crown (baby daughter is her daddy's princess you see) and of course will be the choice for the name. I had two Cricuts, gave the smaller one to my oldest daughter who is a teacher. So, at this great price, I figured I would grab a couple of them for her as Christmas gifts. For her I got the Sports Mania (all kinds of sports shapes and words - good for her bulletin board and the scrapbook she is making for oldest son and will make for the son due this month) and Opposites Attract (a font that looks like cursive writing). For myself, I bought fonts called Jubilee, Alphalicious, Opposites Attract (had to keep one for me too) and Calligraphy along with another one named Graphically Speaking which has all kinds of great shapes not to mention the great butterfly. Since I was still $5 ahead of what I had planned to spend, I bought some extra blades. Wish I could have gotten the tool kit on sale. LOL

Oh yeah, and at Sam's Club I came across this package of Rum Fruit Punch, already has the rum in it and a little spicket on the package. It is a bit strong, but taste wonderful. I know, it really isn't as strong as I think, when it comes to alcohol I am a total lightweight.

I am off to do dishes, get a night's sleep so I can start on cleaning out the now empty room and getting a start on pulling wall paper. Until then, have a great day, or night.

Thursday, July 8, 2010

Anticipation - killing me.

The anticipation of life is killing me at the moment. First is the waiting for the new grand son due to arrive later this month. I want to see him, hold him, hug him, know that my daughter is okay as well. I want to see my older grand son who will be moving to the roll of big brother. I miss them terribly.

Next is the anticipation of finally having a room of my own to sew in, work on embroidery, or crochet, or paper craft projects. I have been working like crazy getting my daughter's new room all painted (purple) with new curtains, new blind, new closet doors (although they are fabric curtains instead of the wood doors) so we can finally get her moved in. Don't get to put new carpet in, no time or money for it, but I shampooed them and they are at least clean now. The big items should be moved this evening. Then, it will be my turn for my new room. OH HAPPY DAYS! Lot more work, but will sure be worth it. I have the crafting bug sooo bad. I am constantly planning how I want to arrange things in there, now that I found out I will also have to place a couch in there. But, it will still work out. I won't have enough room to fix it all the way I want to, but hey, I used to have a corner of the bedroom so now to have a whole bedroom and closet is just so...I am giddy. I think it will be so much fun just pulling my supplies out and finding everything once again. I was making the curtains to go over my daughter's closet door when I realized that I couldn't even find a box of pins, sewing thread or such. I just stared at the sewing machine for a moment taking it all in that I was finally sewing. Not a quilt like I want or machine embroidery work, but it is a start. Only, it sure makes me want to drop everything and work on a project. Then I catch myself wanting to short track the jobs at hand so I can get things set up quicker. But, I am holding strong and firm to do this right. I will post photos of things when we are done. And of course when the baby gets here.

Good thing is I have been so busy I have not been spending all my time on Facebook games. Okay, just wanted to post once again, which I have, so now it is off to make supper, check on the waterbed draining, install a set of shelves in daughter's new room, then get her moving in there hopefully for her to sleep in the new digs tonight.