Catching Up

I've felt so remiss in my lack of blogging lately - it's certainly not because I don't want to! I've had the unfortunate experience of my laptop deciding to not work, so it's off being fixed - thankfully I have my phone for internet or I'd go insane, but it's not great for blog writing. So, I've been quite active on Instagram the last few weeks. I figured I'd use my IG pics to report on what I've been doing, so prepare to be inundated!

I've had a serious lack of knitting time of late because I've been doing so many home improvements. They really are addictive :) The most time consuming "improvement" for the past few months has been painting my kitchen cabinet doors.

As we speak, these 9 doors are all that is left to paint - I'm crossing my fingers that they are done on the back and that I can flip them and do the final coat on the front this weekend. Then they would be done! I'm honestly curious as to how it will feel when I can officially break all this down and not have a painting station in my living room. It's been so long!

The nastiest part has been this final cabinet base. We always thought we would have to just replace the cabinet since it was so disgusting from water damage. Obviously the previous owners had to do some plumbing work in that hole they so beautifully cut out. I have to get a piece of wood to cover it, so technically I will have to paint that as well. The picture on the right is what the cabinet looked like "cleaned" and the left is after I painted it with Kilz Oil Based Primer to cover over the old mold (gross). Since this pic was taken, I have painted it with one coat of XLM primer and 1 coat of paint  and it is AMAZING how much better it looks. I mean, it's still not perfect because of all the crap from the sink and what not in there (plus the big hole), but Oh My Gosh what a difference! I will be painting the final coat tonight and I seriously can't wait!

The doors and this cabinet are all that remains to getting my kitchen "finished" for now. I call it a Phase 1 Remodel because I definitely have further plans, but things like counter tops and appliances get a whole lot more expensive than a few gallons of paint, so at least I will have the basics covered (like finally having doors on my cabinets after 2 years of living without them, lol).

I also gave myself a decent little splurge of sewing time over the past month. Not only did I tackle the Peggy Skirt, I also made a cute pair of PJ pants (which I still have to photograph and blog about), and went straight into making a new dress pattern. I chose Simplicity 1419. I made a muslin of the bodice first and boy, did I have a hard time. I knew basic alterations I needed to the front pieces from the fitting work I did on Simplicity 2444, but I still have gaping at the back neckline of that dress that kind of drives me nuts, so I decided to buckle down and figure it out. Turns out I have a dowager's hump (lovely to know, isn't it?), so after an hour or so of pinching out darts and what not to no avail I pulled out Fit For Real People and consulted the experts. When I read the instructions, it didn't make any sense as to how that would fix a gaping back neck, but I tried it anyway and (amazingly) it worked! Who knew the experts would be right? lol I know, I'm ridiculous.

Once I got the bodice fit sorted, I picked a nice springy fabric to make up my dress :) I have it all cut out and marked, but have yet to sew it together. I kind of hope I can get this done for Easter, but I won't be devastated if I can't finish it. We'll see.

I also got experimental in the kitchen and made these s'mores (which were delicious!). I just used Aldi brand graham crackers, marshmallows and milk chocolate (their Chocheur brand with hazelnut paste in it - oh my gosh). I set the grahams on a tin foil covered cookie sheet, plopped a marshmallow on top and put them in the oven at 350F for a few minutes until they puffed up and started to get just a tinge of brown. I took them out and pressed the marshmallow down with a fork (so it covered more of the cracker). Once they were cooled off, I melted the chocolate in a double boiler and spooned/spread it across the tops. Oh man, these were so good and very easy to make, if a bit time consuming. So worth it though!

This past Thursday, I decided to finally try dying a few items of clothing I'd accumulated. It was an interesting experience, but not completely awful, lol. I'll report more on that later.

Later that day, I decided to tackle a big reorganization project. My good friend Leigh gave me an awesome Ikea shelf unit thing she had used with a tabletop on it, but no longer had space for and it had been sitting in my living room for a day. Originally I hadn't planned on tackling it yet, but I had some time and wanted that stuff out of the living room (it took up a lot of space). So ... I dug out my whole closet in my sewing room and situated the cabinets - I kid you not, they fit exactly - like, if they were even 1/2" wider, they wouldn't fit in there. The two piece together are 60" wide and 24" deep, so the tabletop Leigh had wouldn't fit (it's cut to overhang them), so I have to get a top piece cut and painted for it, but check out what I did in the meantime...

HOLY FREAKING GOODNESS! I guess I have just a little bit of fabric, huh? Those shelves are stacked two rows deep, so there is even more you can't see. I unloaded 5 Rubbermaid tubs and 1 large box (it was bigger than the tubs) full of fabric onto this baby. I still have one file box that I couldn't fit (sigh), so I will be weeding through my stash and eBay-ing some of my less-loved pieces. In my defense, I did not purchase all of this myself. I got quite a bit of this when others destashed and just gave me a whole box of fabric. Anyway, it's AMAZING to see all of my fabric like this! Some of these fabrics I haven't looked at in at least a year. I organized each shelf by type of fabric, so I will be able to "shop" my stash for my projects instead of ignoring my buckets and going to the store. I used to have to literally unload my entire closet to get to my tubs, and then pull everything out each tub to find what I needed, so this will be kind of life changing. I'm hoping it increases my productivity :) Since taking this photo, I have also cleared all that junk from in front of the closet and tidied up about 2/3rds of the rest of the room. Once I get it all cleaned up and have a topper on this, I am planning on a new tour of my sewing room post!

And why not round off this post with a gratuitous sexy shoe photo? I'm a total convert to Swedish Hasbeens, folks. I have a black pair and this pair, which I figure should serve me well until I find more on super-duper sale like these were, lol. Wooden shoes FOR EVER!

So, if you've made it this far, thanks :) I know it's just a bunch of random-ness shoved into a post, but I just really wanted to update my goings-on. Once I get my house projects finished, I will be doing some before and after posts of epic proportions (no joke, my house looks SO different than it did just 2 months ago), so check back for that soon. Now I'd better get back to cleaning ... or painting ... or knitting ... you know, the essentials.

Here Is Why I've Been MIA Lately...

So, I know I have been a bad blogger the last few weeks. Everything with my house has my brain all gooey. I've been working so much that I honestly can't think when I'm finally finished, so I just read a book (while hanging out in my awesome sewing room) and then go to bed. Serious.

On the bright side, we have officially moved in! Yay! No more feeling like I'm working two jobs and then going home at night, lol. Now I just work at the place where I live which somehow feels different. Just go with it! So, moving was exhausting and I am still all bruised up from the full 4 day experience. I have been living off of ibuprofen and aspirin ever since last Tuesday (especially going up and down the stairs - my poor knees!), but it is so nice to be in my very own house :)

At least we make it a point that the bedroom is kept fairly tidy and put away, so we always have a comfy place we can just flop down at the end of the day without any additional work. Here is what it looks like with our furniture in it:

Doesn't it look serene?! Ah ... I just breathe a sigh whenever I go in there. I have plenty of further plans for in here (i.e. hang our pictures, extend the curtains to hit the floor so they don't look like high-water pants, get closet doors, etc), but it's one of the most "put together" areas of the house at the moment and I just love it.

The rest of the house is pure bedlam. Just so you can all share in the craziness that is my living situation right now, I am going to actually show you pictures of my cluttered up, post-move rooms. Brace yourselves!

First up - the office (top two photos). It's one of the worst rooms, for real. You pretty much have to move a stack to be able to walk through it. The lounge (bottom photos) is full of stuff too, but mostly blocked by the weird placement we had to do with our 3 (yes, 3) couches that are currently hanging out there.

My poor, poor kitchen. It's weird enough that I don't have doors up on the cabinets yet (I have yet to get the molding and paint them, so they are staying off for now), but add to that the bags and boxes and crap everywhere and it's pretty difficult to make dinner, lol. I did prevail though and I made a delicious corned beef on Sunday - thank heaven for crockpots! I can only imagine what this room would be like if I still had all the kitchen stuff in boxes instead of the cupboards. Yikes! Thankfully, we needed to reuse the boxes, so I unloaded them the first night we moved.

Ah, the garage. At least there is a walkway to the door, but that's pretty much all I can say about it. I can hardly get to anything let alone actually work on cleaning up any of this furniture in here. We are working on what can be put where inside the house just to create some work space in here. It's a catch 22, people. On the bright side, we did get our freezer and stand-up toolbox moved, also we moved the fridge and freezer against the wall where we wanted them; too bad you can't really open up their doors due to all the other stuff.

At least my sewing room is still mostly clear :) This room is my refuge at the end of the day. I'll work on unpacking and putting away and whatnot, but there comes a point in the night that I need to unwind and just hang out and this room is perfect for that. I even tried out a little embroidery over the weekend:

I'm working on the first project from Doodle Stitching :) I'll show my results when I have more done. So far, I really like embroidery and I'm enough of an anal perfectionist that it comes out looking pretty nice (if I do say so myself). I have plans for cute embroidered wall hangings around the house, as well as a few delightfully inappropriate ones - I was inspired by this shop on Etsy. How fantastic is that?! I definitely see raunchy embroidered gifts for my sisters this Christmas :)

So, that is why I have not been as good at blogging lately. I have done a fair amount of reading though. I am contemplating posting reviews of the books I read, is that something anyone would be interested in? Or would it be the moment you click over to another blog? Let me know! I can't decide!

House Update: Painting My Cabinets

In going along with my plan of attack for tackling my house, my mom and I started painting the kitchen cabinets last night. My cabinets are made of what we like to call glit (glue + sh**), but I believe the rest of the world calls it MDF and cheap plywood. They were so dark and so boring ... I just had to change them. I'm making them lighter and since I'm going through all the effort, I wanted to make sure I do it right so I won;t have to do this again for a good long time. Enter Pinterest and many MANY DIY blogs. I have read so many different tutorials and recommendations for painting cabinets, I can't keep them straight anymore. What I have gleaned is that if you are painting any kind of laminate, you should:

1. Wipe them out really well - you want a clean surface to paint on.
2. Prime them really well with a stain blocking and gripping primer.
3. Paint 2 coats of your paint (make sure it's self-leveling or use Floetrol).
4. Make sure you wait the recommended amount of time before each step so the paint can properly cure.
5. *Optional* Paint with Cabinet Coat.

So, last night we accomplished step 1 and 2 on about 2/3rds of the cabinets :)

 Looks a little different, huh? (You can click the pictures to see them larger)

I'm honestly pretty surprised with how much brighter and bigger the room feels. I know people always say that, but already even with it still looking like crap from the primer it's a huge difference in the feel of the whole room.

I'm working up there this weekend too, so I plan to finish priming all the rest of the cabinets and then working on taking down more of that blessed wallpaper. Seriously, curse the 90s and its wallpaper. It is EVERYWHERE in this house! Even if it's not the whole wall (like in the kitchen and hallway), every room has at least a border in it and it just doesn't want to come down.

Something kind of funny I figured I would share...

I'm a big believer in painting a swatch in your room when trying to pick a paint color. I just can't to those paint chip squares - I would rather spend the 3 bucks and know for sure I love the color in my room than regret the $30 for the whole gallon. Anyway, so at first I was thinking of using a purple for the kitchen - my kitchen in our condo is purple and I really like it so I figured that would be a good choice. Once we painted a bit of the purple in a few spots, the husband and I agreed it was just too dark for the room (this may change once the cabinets are painted, but that's another story). So, then I was looking at paint colors online this week and saw Sherwin Williams' "Color of the Year" called Aloe. I totally love this color, so I had a sample mixed of it at Lowe's (in Valspar paint - did you know they could make each others' colors?!), just knowing I wanted to use it somewhere. I painted a swatch in the kitchen just to see, and we both really liked the look of it in the room. We still want to wait and choose a paint color once the cabinets are done, but tentatively the aloe will be the winner.

You may be thinking, "Ok, Megan. So why is that funny?" Well, the funny thing came later. While Justin was taking the hinges off the cabinets on Wednesday night, I was ripping wallpaper down in the kitchen. The top layer of the paper came off like a dream, but that blasted under paper just won't come down willingly; so most of the room looks beige at the moment. In between the pieces of wallpaper though, you can see just a smidge of the original color from the 60s that the original owners of the house had painted...

It's a slightly lighter version of the aloe color that we like! How crazy is that? That same night, I painted a swatch of a light blue in our office too and then found almost the exact same color under the wallpaper in the entryway. I find that pretty bizarre - it's like we are unintentionally restoring the house to its original colors :)

So, there is a little update on what has completely consumed my life lately. I'm excited to see how it looks after this weekend when I have more time to devote to the house :) Stay tuned!