In The Blue House

Can You Spot the Sandwich Thief in this Picture?

This is the Big Spring Cleaning Weekend which is necessitated by the Big Termite Inspection later this week. We figure the inspector will need to be able to actually get through all the rooms to inspect them, and that isn't possible with in my son's room or my bedroom. My bedroom is really mostly my husband's office, and since both my son and my husband have a super power that enables them to create catastrophic chaos without even trying or even noticing they're doing it, those two rooms are pretty horrifying. I generally avoid them. I know this makes me sound like a terrible homemaker and that's because I am a terrible homemaker. I'd rather pretend they don't exist than constantly clean them and have a tidy house. Used to be I'd go in there and clean until I found their floors and the guys would promise they'd never, ever let them get like that again and swear they'd clean a little every night to keep the mess under control and then a couple weeks later I'd walk in and want to cry at the mess. At which point I'd yell at them, which never changed anything but made me feel like crap. So now I avoid those rooms as much as possible and yell a lot less- unless a termite inspector is coming for a visit. I've promised myself I won't yell, but I don't know if I can stick to it. Tonight my little dog Pete snuck upstairs and came back down with an old sandwich in his mouth! He's scavenging food from my son's room! What is that boy doing in there?! Doesn't he clean up anything? All that stuff about respecting your teen's space and privacy goes right out the window when you find out there are old sandwiches molding in his room. I'm going in there with lots of garbage bags tomorrow.  If ya'll don't hear from me again- send help!

Birthday Gal

M.E. had a lovely birthday. I took that picture on our way to go out for her birthday dinner. Big brother gave her the kitty ears.

I stayed up late the night before finishing her Knitted Babe. I had fun making her clothes and accessories and I was pleased with myself for only using materials I could find around the house, but I can't say she's my idea of a really cute doll. I know lots of people love the Knitted Babes, but I think they kind of look like aliens. M.E. thinks their spaghetti like arms and legs are creepy, so I made my doll's a little larger and lightly stuffed them. But M.E. liked her present and has played with her right along with the two adorable Groovy Girls Grandma gave her, so I consider my first doll a success. She's been looking through the Knitted Babes book and is excited about making more clothes and accessories for Bunny Sunner  (M.E. picked the name).                                                                                                                                                                                           

Here's a close up of her face. She looks awfully snooty for a girl named Bunny.

I'm having camera problems and I really wish I had a working camera to take a pic of M.E. in the apron Kelly made for her. It's perfect! My mom was here this past weekend and she looved it! Said it reminded her of an old table cloth of my grandma's. It was my favorite present for M.E. I'm going to see if I can borrow a camera to take a photo to post later this week. An apron that adorable deserves to be seen on the internets.

M.E. had a special dinner out on her birthday and a kid party at a play place this past Sunday. I'm exhausted! Next year I'm pushing for small and quiet celebrations.

How to Not Clean Your House

The kids went to Grandma's yesterday afternoon and instead of cleaning my shamefully messy house, I turned this:

into this:

 

Took forever to sort all that stuff, but the key to really taking up a lot of time was deciding I needed to make scissor covers to match my needle book. After which I still had some child free time left to clean. Lucky for me I also had some cheap felt leftover from a kid craft. Looks simple, but it took a loooong time to make that felt divider for my sewing drawer. All in all, cleaning and organizing that one little drawer got me through three episodes of Cold Feet.

Still here

I haven't posted in so long. M.E.'s cold turned out to be a respiratory flu that lasts forever. I came down with it Valentine's Day  and then it got Lee and Bee. As of today, M.E. seems finally over it, Lee still has a cough and I still have a touch of pink-eye (this plague came with fever, congestion, cough, sore throat, pink eye an mouth sores- I'm not making that up!). I'm tired all the time too. I'm looking forward to a healthy spring.

Speaking of spring, my spring-time baby is turning six on Thursday. Six! She's grown in to such a lovely big kid. I keep thinking I'll miss the little one she was, but I like the person she's become. So funny and friendly and neat with a needle. I like to craft, but I seem to be unable to be tidy about it or to follow a straight line. That's why I gravitate towards the more forgiving textiles like wool. That's also why I asked my friend Kelly (of Modern June) to make an apron for M.E.'s birthday. I kept thinking something as simple as an apron I could make myself, but the thing is, I wanted it to look good - and Kelly's aprons not only look good, they're well made. Bee and I are former restaurant people. Bee especially. He bartended  for years. When M.E. helps him cook they play restaurant. M.'s usually the sous chef or a waitress. Since Bee works from home, she loves to make his lunch and pretend to be his waitress.  I asked Kelly if she would make a special apron for M.E. She's posted a picture of it on her blog. It's the cute little cherry patterned one on the bottom of the page. M.E.'s going to love it! Kelly made sure to include nice big pockets for M.'s ordering pad and any other assorted waitress items (napkin, silverware, etc) she might need to carry.

I did plan on making something for M.E. too. I was going to finish a play quilt I started a long time ago (I won't say how long. It's too embarrassing) but the plague knocked me way off schedule. So instead I'm finishing up a doll I started to make for M.E. last summer. She's from this book  and you can see my WIP at the top of the page.

I leave you with Cotswald curls:

If I had the time before Thursday, I was going to needle felt a little something for M. too. I don't think I will now. Being sick forever has put me so far behind.   Still, I plan to have lots of fun with all those pretty colors.