Friday, August 29, 2008

I need lists

See previous organization post . . . .

I need lists. It's very bad for me to go shopping without them. I inevitably arrive home without some of the items I need and with superfluous items that looked good. For example - today I went to Costco twice and Super Wal-mart once. I did not get body spray or vitamins or apple cider vinegar (that was even on my list for the grocery store yesterday and I forgot it.)

I do however have 2 new pairs of shorts, 1 new pair of jeans, People magazine and a bottle of wine (well, 2/3 of a bottle of wine now. yum.).

Thursday, August 28, 2008

organization

I love to be organized. I usually don't have a problem with this professionally but things at home are not always as organized as I'd like them to be. So I've taken a couple of steps to treat homemaking a little more like I treat my professional interests. The first is a binder that is broken down by months with places for grocery lists, household tasks (daily, weekly, monthly) and more.

The second step was to organized the many (many, many) magazines I had laying around the house. I never wanted to throw them away because there were so many great recipes, decorating ideas, etc. But how would I ever know which idea was where? So a couple of months ago when Christopher was out of town, I bought a file box and folders and went to work.
I went through every magazine and pulled out every page that was of interest. Then I sorted and filed into categories (i.e. recipes, holidays, decorating ideas, playrooms, kitchens, etc.). As I was doing this I discovered so many recipes I had already forgotten about and I'm looking forward to adding some great new items to our menu this year.

A busy week

Some weeks I feel like nothing gets accomplished all week. Other weeks I feel like I've gotten a lot done. This week falls in the latter category and I'm so happy. It's Thursday morning and so far this week I've done all the laundry, made 2 great meals, had 2 playdates for Joseph, reupholstered a chair, blogged, organized and executed an event for Chick-fil-a and managed to keep my kitchen fairly clean. Today is grocery shopping day. I have my list and coupons ready.

The 2 great meals this week:

Boursin Chicken with apple butter sauce, saffron rice with craisins and asparagus

Beef & Vegetable soup with homemade rustic Italian bread

so yummy!

Wednesday, August 27, 2008

selfish projects

Sometimes I need to take a little break from creating for others and make a little creative something for us. Here are a couple of blankets I've made in recent months.
This one is made from all of my Nashville t-shirts. If you look closely you'll see Jacks BBQ, Tootsie's Orchid Lounge, Tin Pan South, Fan Fair and the Marathon among others. The pieces between are made out of old blue jeans and Titans fabric.The blanket below is one I made for Joseph (although I really love how soft it is and find myself snuggling with it in the evenings). The fabrics were all remnants I had at the house already. Muslin, blue jeans, seersucker, t-shirts, Titans fabric and flannel. I did have to buy the batting and the flannel for the backing. I also did a little monogramming on a couple of the pieces. And instead of quilting, I knotted blue yarn through all the layers to make it a little more whimsical.

more chairs

The previous project was a joint effort with my upstairs neighbor Matt. He is an extremely gifted wood-worker and restorer. He beautifully restored the antique table and chairs that I recovered.

Here is another project that we are working on together. We were given 3 more antique chairs from the same owners of the previous project. Matt tore them apart and refinished the wood. I am reupholstering.the bare chair. . . . the fabric that will go on the back, seat and arms. . . I rewebbed the back, stuffed the back and seat and covered with muslin.next - covering the arms in the same way and then adding the chosen fabric and finishing touches. Stay tuned . . . . 2 more to go. . . .

dining room chairs

This project involved recovering the seats of some antique dining room chairs. I thought it was going to be pretty simple but ended up being quite involved. The hardest part was tearing them apart since the owners wanted to use the original fabric. So I removed hundred of antique nails, removed nasty stuffing, re-webbed the chair bottoms, restuffed and recovered the chairs. original chair - you can't tell how horribly it caves in.stripped chair - beginning the re-webbing process.re-webbing almost done. . . some of the hundreds of antique nails removed and reused on these seats. . .after I re-webbed, re-stuffed and re-covered. . . I put on a thin backing.and - the finished product below.

Expanding blog

So I've decided to expand my blog a bit to include more than just the sewing projects I've been working on. Who knows what will be end up as a post . . . . could be anything! :-)