Necessary, but boring sewing

As much as I don't want to spend my precious child free days doing something boring like cleaning, there's no denying how much can get done when there aren't little people around wanting attention or worse, undoing what you've already done.  But with us planning to sell our house later this year it must be done, so I've decided to dedicate one day a week to clean a room each week.  Ah the joys of being a grown up with responsibilities!

A few weeks ago I decided to organise the bathroom, which I've only just finished because I sort of flagged halfway through and really had to force myself to go on.  It's unbelievable how much clutter can accumulate in such a small bathroom.  I threw out two large garbage bags of empty and nearly empty bottles of toiletries, old and well past it cosmetics and moved some less than fluffy towels into the laundry for dog washing duties. A trip to Ikea and Howards Storage World for some little boxes and containers and a frenzied session with my label maker has mostly corralled all of the bits and pieces in there.  I also managed to incorporate some sewing into the bathroom declutter, although it's just pretty boring but useful.

When we bought our house 10 long years ago now, the bathroom was original meaning it was about 50 years old with the only work done on it comprising a toilet squeezed in sometime in the past to replace the outdoor loo.  It was teeny tiny, literally the length of a bathtub, there was no storage and it looked dirty all the time no matter how much I cleaned it.  And it was all shades of green, with a lovely view of a fence and our neighbour's house through a poky window:

We rearranged some bedroom doors that were adjacent to the bathroom door in a foyer area so we could use the foyer area to make the bathroom bigger, and then we totally gutted the bathroom to come up with this:

One of the best things we did was to build a huge linen cupboard which you can see in the photo above (so that we had enough room to accumulate all that clutter of course!).  My husband built a slide out rack to hang some laundry bags from in the bottom half of the cupboard, all that was needed was for me to sew some laundry bags.  We did that bathroom renovation in 2005 or 2006, and I'm ashamed to admit that I only just sewed those laundry bags today.  I have no reasonable excuse or explanation, just pure procrastination mixed with laziness!  It seriously took me only a couple of hours to make these so I don't know why I didn't make them earlier.

Before: big jumbled mess with mounds of washing, a foot spa and some bath toys shoved in there out of sight.

After: well organised and pretty space, but still the same mounds of washing though!

still haven't removed the price tag stickers off those doors yet either!

They are literally just some square bags sewn from some bleached calico which I happened to have in the stash, and I used iron on transfer paper to put those 'light' and 'dark' labels on the front.  I used some snaps on the tabs that wrap around the pull out timber frame so that I can take the full bag from the bathroom and out to the laundry on wash day (which these days seems like it's every day).

Anna is so interested in the new laundry bags that she is actually going hunting through the house for dirty laundry to put in them, although she does have to check with me on each item which side to put it in.  Her dad is still pretty bad at putting his washing in the correct bag (seriously how hard is it to tell what is light or dark), so I shouldn't be too hard on Anna I guess!

Checking my calendar today I'm quite dismayed to see I only have two weeks before I'm back at work. Time certainly flies when you're having fun, especially so when you're trying to cram lots of things in each day.  Plus my husband has been travelling a bit for work lately so I've been doing some solo parenting which is hugely time consuming not to mention tiring.  He's off this weekend to the F1 Grand Prix in Melbourne for a boys weekend away (well more than that - Thursday to Monday) so I'm planning on getting plenty of me time next weekend to make up for it!

I won the Sew Retro contest!

Yay for lucky old me, I've scored a $100 gift voucher from ZipZapKap Vintage Sewing Patterns etsy shop for winning the party dress competition over at Sew Retro! I can't believe it, I seriously never win anything except for one time I won $800 at bingo but a little old lady had all the numbers as well so we had to split it :(

Even more unbelievable is that I actually finished my entry on time - there's been quite a few that I attempted but just didn't quite get there in time. Too bad this was randomly drawn, 'cos otherwise I would be talking up my phenomenally exceptional sewing skills.....

But anyway thanks to Anna at Sew Retro for organising the competition, and thanks to Katherine from ZipZapKap for the fantastic prize. I'm having buyers paralysis trying to pick which patterns to buy with the voucher, there are too many to choose from!

Carolyn - don't remind me about going back to work! Now that I've got Anna sleeping regularly in the day and through the night I am enjoying being home and doing crafty type things. But I'll only be working three days a week, so plenty of time to get sewing done as long as I ignore the housework, exercise and my husband!

Miss Sews It All - if I tried to finish all my UFOs before starting anything new there's a very strong chance I would never sew anything new ever again! But to assuage my guilt about the waste I do force myself to finish one every now and then.
Pammie - don't be too jealous of our warm weather, it has been unbelievably hot lately and it's only just the very beginning of summer. Sadly our house needed rewiring if we wanted air conditioning so we just swelter on days that it gets well above 30c degrees (86F).

And thank you to the lovely Eileen who emailed me to say she loves reading about life here in Australia and Anna's capers and hopes that I still have time to blog when I go back to work. Don't worry about that Eileen, I'll probably have more time to blog when I'm back at work, I'd say about three more days LOL!

And since I don't like posting without a picture, have a look at my dining room at the moment and see if you can spot what is wrong with this picture:

Yes that would be my kitchen sink and stove top sitting in what is my pantry cupboard lying sideways on the dining room floor. And yes that is the entire content of my kitchen pantry on the dining table, the contents of other cupboards are strewn throughout the rest of the house! We are having a new stone benchtop and some extra cupboards installed in the kitchen at the moment since we enlarged the kitchen during the recent remodelling of the house. So yeah, add this to the post I did the other day of 'this time last year' because this time last year I was still stupidly optimistic it would all be finished before Anna was born. Ha ha ha silly old me....

But look very closely and you'll see two drops of the curtains that I've been putting off hanging there in the background. They aren't quite finished yet as the hems are just pinned up at the moment, but it's a start!

sewing in rewind

Is there anything more disheartening and energy zapping than unpicking your sewing mistakes? Tracing off a BWOF pattern comes a close second, but for me spending quality time with my seam ripper is almost tantrum inducing..... I had made 14 of these:


for this little munchkin:

and since I now have a laundry and clothesline again I was ready to start using cloth nappies full time. However instead of a 'ta-da' moment, I had a major d'oh moment when I realised I had completely stuffed them up. The logic behind modern cloth nappies is that the outer layer is waterproof, the inner layer is moisture wicking and the insert is absorbent. Well this doesn't work so well if you accidentally switch the fabrics around, in fact it doesn't work at all! So I guess I'll be spending the next little while unpicking, recutting and resewing, which is even more annoying because I got the new BWOF mag (well the 2/09 issue) in the mail and would rather be sewing from that instead.

Oh well, on to more exciting things. Our backyard presently looks like this:

My husband (and his spotty four legged supervisor) was busy the last two weekends building a retaining wall. All it needs is some turf and landscaping and it will be done for now - next summer we'll get busy painting, building a deck and putting up a shade sail, but not right now because I don't want my handyman to get burnt out LOL! Oh and moo-i-made-it, if you're reading, our flowering gum tree there in background has finally flowered. After several years in the ground being well looked after it gave us nothin', and then six months of neglect and abuse by the builders it not only survived but came out with some beautiful orange flowers! So to reward it we built the retaining wall around it's root ball to let it keep growing and hopefully flower again soon.

And when it rained on the weekend my husband also finished putting the flooring down in my sewing studio - here's a sneak peek of it:

On to the comments to the last post - Mary Nanna I'm still cracking up at your puppies in a sack comment, I think we could all do with someone that honest in our lives. Vicki stop telling me the harsh truth, I wanna live in blissful denial! Jean, Kath and Kim the Australian version is a funny tv show about an aspirational Aussie family (thankfully it's all tongue and cheek and we Australians are not like that, well not all of us anyway). And I've been well and truly put back into my box regarding using pattern tissues for anything other than cutting out the patterns, I so didn't think of those patterns with pieces missing or ones that are falling apart and unable to be used. If I did have some of those, then I definately would use them for decorative pieces.

Excitingly Anna slept through the night last night - she went down at 8pm and woke up at 6am which is just brilliant! She is actually a good sleeper at night, she usually only wakes up at 3am for a feed and then goes back to sleep really quickly, with her next feed at 6am and then we both sleep in until 9am (how luxurious!). However, she is a terrible day time sleeper, only napping twice a day for about 45mins at a time which doesn't leave me much time to get things done - this is when I spend all my time walking her around trying to get her to sleep so she doesn't get overtired and ratty by the evening. But I shouldn't complain because at least I'm not tired and worn out like some new mums whose babies still wake multiple times a night.

Happy sewing all, may your seam rippers be resting in peace rather than working overtime like mine will be....

fabric feasting

So I have broken my fabric diet in a sort of big way. I haven't bought any fabric at all this year, in fact the last I can remember purchashing some was last October although I have a tendency to push it to the back of my mind so who knows..... Anyway, I say 'sort of' big way because the amount purchased was a lot, but only a little bit is stash bound so it's not so bad really!

First up a few weeks ago the nice people at Spotlight sent me a coupon for $40 off any purchase over $100, and who am I to throw away $40 (just ignore the fact that to save $40 I had to spend $60!). I've been wanting to recover a timber chair and footstool in a nice snuggly fabric for winter because it is currently covered in a heavy cotton, and the fabric I've had my eye on was $30/m, so this voucher was the perfect time to make the purchase. It is a heavy upholstery weight chenille, in an eye popping fuschia pink colour which to my husband's credit he didn't blink an eye when I told him what it was for - he knows better than to question me in a fabric store! Now I just have to get on with making the covers before winter actually gets here.....

The next purchase last weekend was 20m of sheer white cotton voile with a self stripe that I bought, washed, ironed and made into curtains within a week of purchasing it so I don't think it really counts in guilty fabric buys since it was for a useful purpose. Making the curtains has taken me all week because even though they were simple to make because I used that easy peasy ruffle tape at the top, all that ironing, measuring and hemming was a complete bore. But they are done and here's a semi bad photo of them - it is so hard to take a photo in this room because it is so bright!:

The triangle windows above are still unpainted and unwashed at this stage, and coming up with a curtain solution for them has me stumped. I think I will leave them unclothed because they don't really contribute to the glare I was experiencing sitting on the lounge but they still let lots of light pour in. Anyway these curtains are only stage one for this room, for winter I plan to make some heavy drapes to go over the top for warmth and energy efficiency reasons but for now this is all that is needed in this room.

And the final purchases this morning were based purely on cuteness factor and because they were on special:

Some cute cotton prints from Spotlight for only $3/m that are destined to become some little dresses for Anna next year. How long before my stash is made up of cute kids fabrics instead of the dress and suiting fabrics I usually buy? I give it less than a year.....

Well my husband is out painting my soon to be sewing studio, and then some flooring will go down next weekend before I do the monumental task of moving the fabric stash up there. And this afternoon we're off to buy a new lounge suite and floor rug because our new living area is a little bare at the moment. Although little Miss Anna's furniture and things are rapidly filling up the space, but when she looks like this I quickly forgive her:

Have a happy and productive weekend everyone

little sewing

This week I only managed a little bit of sewing, but I did trace off three BWOF patterns from the November and December issues in preparation for our coming winter. The sewing I did manage this week were making little things for Anna finally. We've been having sort of in between weather where it's been too cool for the sleeveless body suits and little bloomers Anna has in abundance but also too warm for the hand me down winter pants I was given, so I decided to make some long pants for her in lightweight cotton interlock to get through this crazy weather period. They were so easy and quick to make I managed to make 4 pairs during one of her naps using fabrics from the stash of course. Here is my favourite, a pair of pink polka dot pants:

I used New Look 6310 pattern size, which has sizes for new born to large. I used the small size which according to the pattern sizing is for babies 6-8kg (13-18lb) since Anna was 6kg at her 2 month weight check (yes even my doctor calls her a little buddha!). Well I should have checked pattern review first, because this pattern is HUGE, which the reviewer mentions. So note for anyone else making this for their baby or as a gift, size down for sure. I thought the pattern sizing on women's patterns from the big 4 were way off, but this is crazy - in the photo below the pink stripe pants are size 000 bought from Target that fit perfectly, and the light grey pair are the ones I made that are supposed to be 'small':

In the end, I even had to reduce the new born size a fair bit, tracing off the Target pants to get ones that will actually fit her now, not in years to come..... What I'm extremely embarrassed about though is that I made these pants and top for a friend last year for her baby and if she tried them on her little girl they would be way too big and they must think I'm bonkers or have no idea about babies (which would be right actually!).

Now check this out, my lounge room and dining room have floors thanks to my parents staying at the weekend to help us put the floating floors down:

All that's left to do is put the skirting boards down, paint them and the architraves around the window and get busy decorating with some light fittings, furniture, artwork etc. We're still undecided about the staircase, we may change it for a more modern design but for now it will stay as is.

Outside though is still a complete disaster zone though, with the builder still to remove some rubbish and then some earthworks to be done before we can turf and landscape. But thankfully the builder wil soon be finished his work and will go away, because frankly I never want to see or hear him and his dopey offsiders ever again, they've been hanging around for far too long already.

Of course we still have a mile long list of things to finish off, like painting the outside of the house and garage (eek!), some additional cabinets and new benchtop for our enlarged kitchen, and some more painting in the rest of the house as well as fitting out my sewing studio (which incidentally is at the top of the list!).

Anyway must go and check Anna's nappy - I've become a bit obsessed with her poo habits lately because she hasn't gone for three days which is unlike her so I'm worried she may be constipated. Oh how exciting my life has become.....

how to instill a love of sewing in the very young

By replacing the sound of lullabies and those pesky Wiggles songs with the gentle hum of a sewing machine:

This isn't as bad as it looks, trust me! I haven't completely overtaken my daughter's bedroom just to set up my sewing machines, she has been sleeping in a bassinet beside my bed while we temporarily used her room firstly for the inlaws to sleep in when they were here and then for general storage when our third bedroom (which was being used for storage) had the wall linings replaced. Believe it or not this is the only table in the entire house at the moment, the dining table and all other desks are packed up in storage, but it has turned out to be a good spot to sew because I pop Anna in her cot during the day when she's awake and she generally falls asleep to the sound of my sewing machine.

Hopefully this early exposure will mean she will become a world famous fashion designer with loads of lovely fabric for me to play with! Of course the fashion game will be in between her making oodles of money playing professional golf but only when she's not carrying out brain surgery LOL!

Anyway we are getting so close to finally finishing the house, probably another week or two (fingers crossed that saying that out loud hasn't jinxed the progress). Here's the current status of the house extension:

The inside has been painted, but we are waiting for some faults in the concrete slab surface to be rectified before we can get the timber floors laid. There is some major rubbish removal to happen in the back yard but thankfully that is the job of the builder.

And here is the garage, all that is left to do in the garage is for the plumbing in the laundry to be completed, and a bit of painting inside and out:

That room on top of the garage is going to be my new sewing studio, there'll be room for my machines, a whole wall of shelving for the fabric stash as well as a big cutting table. Doesn't look like much right now, but I'm already planning the decor and I can't wait to get it all set up:


So where has February gone people? Anna is two months old today already! She has just started smiling recently, and she now has tears when she cries too. I'm sure I'll see a few those later this week when she has her immunisation shots, but for now here's a little smile that she has been cranking out lately:

And thank you all for your lovely comments on the skirt, I am still losing the weight quite easily at the moment yay for b/feeding! Although I have started more regularly walking because I still can't get my pre pregnancy pants and skirts past mid thigh so I know that I still have a way to go......

Finally some sewing

Well I have officially upgraded my birth experience from painful to traumatic: I spent most of last week back in hospital after suffering a post partum haemorrage due to some retained placenta. It was an extremely scary few days but it has all been resolved now without the need for a further operation (a D&C). On the bright side however, Anna and I got to stay in the airconditioned hospital during the hot weather Sydney has been having (I feel for you Vicki, Melbourne has been ever hotter) and whilst the hospital is pretty noisy what with those annoying buzzers going off every few seconds it had nothing on the noise my builders create around here so a few days bed rest in hospital wasn't a bad idea in the end.

But the enforced rest gave me some time to finish sewing a top I have been making for the last two weeks and just needed to do those pesky handsewing of hems that we all seem to put off. I've made this pattern a few times before and I can get it done in about 2 or 3 hours, but now with all the interruptions thanks to a certain little miss who has suddenly taken to exercising her vocal cords loudly and often it has taken me two weeks. But slow and steady gets you there in the end, just ignore the lack of hair brushing and make up in this photo!:

I really need some half decent breastfeeding clothes to wear out on the few occasions I do leave the construction zone that is my home, and while I did make a few dresses that are b/feeding friendly last year, I wanted to make some seperates that I could wear with pants and that would be ok for the rest of the year as well.

For Elizabethe who is having her own baby in 5 months and expressed interest in seeing how I would modify patterns for b/f clothes (there's a challenge if I ever I heard one!) or for anyone else who wants ready access to their breasts (the mind boggles but you never know.....) I based this top on an Elizabeth Lee design. This pattern company are one of the few that do specific nursing patterns, and whilst I think the patterns use really clever techniques to enable access for nursing, the actual styles themselves aren't really me, so I decided to modify some patterns I already had inspired by these designs.

Using Simplicity 4589, I modified it based on this technique:

source: Elizabeth Lee designs

I used a crisp cotton pale yellow with khaki green leaf print fabric that I've had in the stash for a few years, from Spotlight originally I think. I also changed the pattern by making the sleeves a little longer because cap sleeves aren't so flattering on my chicken wing arms, and I also lengthened it a litle, but added slits to the bottom of side seams for movement ease. The print fabric was a good choice too, because by lining up the leaf print the opening is barely visible, especially since I topstitched the opening closed at the top and bottom along the vertical black lines:

I tested it out and it does actually work so I am pretty pleased with the outcome. I gave it a generous overlap so that there would be no peep shows, but it hardly gapes at all. I will make this again, but I will delete the gathers across the front and back under the yoke which are part of the original pattern because I think it adds volume around my middle and since my stomach is going back to pre-pregnancy shape (not my rear end though) I don't really want clothes that make me still look preggers! Of course if I'm going out somewhere fancy I could always put on a belt and cinch it like this:

And in exciting house news the works are nearly finished except for a little bit of wall lining and electrical work to do. Then we get to do the fun bits: painting, laying the flooring and setting up furniture. Well it's fun for me because all I have to do is pick out the colours and sit back while my husband and dad do the hard work LOL!

the last of my maternity clothes

Well with only a week or so to go before this baby makes it's way into the world, I guess it's time to stop sewing maternity clothes. But since I'm at home with plenty of time on my hands I decided to do some last minute maternity sewing. First up is a shirt which was my husband's but I pulled it apart a few months ago to refashion it into a shirt for me. It came close to becoming a maternity UFO, surely the worst kind because it would be years before I have need to finish it if I didn't do it now! Plus I had bought a maternity pattern earlier this year at a sale which I never used, so I wanted to use at least one of the patterns from it.

The pattern is Simplicity 4704, which is one of the few button front maternity shirt patterns offered up by the Big 4. I left off the ties at the back because that look is a bit naff but put some darts instead to give it some shaping (there is so much ease in the back of this shirt), and I also re-used the collar and cuffs of the original shirt to save some unpicking and sewing. I also kept the front placket, buttons and buttonholes of the original shirt so this was rather quick to sew up in the end. The original shirt itself was plenty big because my husband likes to wear his shirts loose, so it was quite easy to cut new pieces out of the existing pieces. It is a cotton waffle weave, and I made long sleeves although since it's so hot here at the moment I will probably wear them rolled up, which is a more casual look anyway since I'm no longer working in an office (yay!).

It's a very comfy fit, and being light weight cotton it should be cool enough to get through summer. Plus being button front it will come in handy for nursing, although I guess it has high embarrassment potential for leakage stains....

Last week I also did a quick but so small adjustment I can't call it a refashion to a blue graphic print polished cotton dress that used to be my grandma's - it fit nicely around the belly but was too big under the arms and across the bust, so I lifted up the facing and took in the side seams, and also put two darts in the back to give it more shape. This used to be a very bright colour, but is now quite faded from years of wear and washing. It's funny though, I don't remember my grandma being a large lady at all, I guess I remember her most as the frail, little lady she was for about 20 years before she passed away at 90. Anyway faded or not, I still like the print and the dress is a good fit and it certainly came in handy last weekend when it was extremely hot:

In other good news our lazy builders finally installed the windows today, check out the expanse of louvre windows in the living room, with fixed glass triangle panels above them:

This photo is taken from our living room to be, looking out into the back yard, with the garage at the back of the block. The garage is accessed from a rear lane, because as Vicki noticed our block is quite long, but rather narrow which is typical of the subdivision patterns of older inner city suburbs. Eventually that wasteland between the house and garage will become lawn and garden area, but for now it's likely to stay like that for a few more months given the building shutdown over Christmas paired with the extreme laziness of our builders! Laying the guilt on them hasn't worked so far, every time I talk to them I rub my belly and adopt a concerned look when they talk about scheduling but it hasn't made them work any faster - maybe I need to go all pregnant psycho hysterial woman on them!

And as for baby news, the baby has dropped quite a bit so I feel the need to pee about, oh every 5 minutes and I am having a lot of groin and pelvic pain which the doctor assures me is normal but isn't a sign the baby is imminent. Apart from that I'm healthy, just hot and getting a little impatient (as probably every pregnant woman does at the end). Nearly there though....

secret santa sewing (and house pictures for you Jenny!)

I realised today that Christmas is only 10 days away (how could I forget that?) so this morning I headed off nice and early to the shops to get my chrissy shopping over and done with in one foul swoop. But since I'm the crafty and frugal type, in addition to making a baby this christmas I'm also making some christmas presents but these aren't very good blog fodder since the people the presents are for read this blog so I can't post them!

But I can share some early chrissie presents I bought myself, although not overly exciting - sensible shoes! It has been quite some while since I bought shoes, and who knows how long since I bought flat shoes, but today I bought two pairs conceding to my current state (ie blimp like) and future requirements for outfits during the next year as a stay at home mum. Plus I have the biggest blisters on my heels from walking around in the heat on Sunday even though I was wearing what were formerly quite loose fitting ballet flats! Yes, my feet have swollen a little, and my fingers are little sausages, so much so that I've put my wedding rings in the safe 'cos it's gonna be a while since I'll be able to get them back on! So here they are: a pair of dark brown slip on sandals and a funky pair of red canvas shoes that remind me of my converse wearing university days (although these were a bargain at $11 from Kmart):










Well we had our first medical emergency on the weekend, albeit with the fur baby which is probably good practice for the real kid because I'm sure we'll have a few tears and accidents in the years to come. Somehow the dog managed to slice his ear right where a vein is, but he didn't cry and I didn't realise until I saw blood spattered on the walls and pooling on the floor! After an emergency dash to the vets who cleaned him up and wrapped his ear in a bandage, he was given a sedative so that he would sleep for a few hours instead of trying to get the bandage off. And now the big sook is walking around with his head on the side and he even jumped up on my bed to have a sleep when I was in the shower, which he's not allowed to do and has never tried before so I think he's really trying for the sympathy attention! Well what about me scrubbing blood off the walls and floor, or my husband cleaning it out of the car and off the newly installed baby capsule? Here he is, looking sorry and still quite bloody, including blood stains all over the mat covers I sewed for him just last week:



And just for my friend Jenny who ordered me on the weekend to post some photos of the building works, here is where we are up to now (I have been trying to ignore it because it is annoying me). First up the extension to the house which will eventually be a big open plan living and dining room with a very high cathedral ceiling: the framework is done, the roof is on and we are waiting for windows, sliding door and wall cladding to go on this week according to the builder (yeah right!)



Here's the garage: downstairs is room for two cars, a bathroom/laundry and a workshop area, and upstairs is my sewing studio/home office, which will be gloriously light and airy and spacious with plenty of room for my stash to accumulate even more!
Yes the backyard is still a complete disaster zone, but doesn't our dwarf flowering eucalypt look great? It's been in the ground for five years and never flowered, but somehow it has managed to bloom despite the builders breaking off branches and leaving building materials all around it. According to our original building schedule, all works should have finished last week and we should be happily painting, decorating and landscaping but that is all going to have to wait until next year now...


Hope everyone had a good weekend and for those who are making their christmas presents remember only 10 days to go! Better get your skates on....

still no baby....

unfortunately all your predictions that my spurt of cleaning last week meant birth was impending didn't come to fruition, and the baby is still firmly ensconced on the inside. I saw my doc today who told me the baby is engaged, but is only at station 4 out of 5 - ie it's head is only just in my pelvis. Given that yesterday I did hours of (light) lifting and moving things out of our garden shed to stash throughout the house and under the house so the backyard can be further excavated and that didn't bring on early labour, I'm pretty sure I'll go full term. Oh well, I'll have this baby for the rest of my life, so I should cherish the last two weeks of just being me....

No sewing this week except for making more covers for the dog's bed out of an old doona cover, made just like giant pillowcases. I have been doing heaps of cleaning again, not due to any nesting instinct but out of pure necessity this time. We've had new windows installed in all the rooms of our house which created so much dust and plaster not just around the windows but in the whole room, I guess all that hammering loosens any dust in the ceiling and it all falls down. The new windows are great, they don't rattle like the old timber ones and are much easier to open, but this is what they now look like from the inside:

And from the outside:

The house is supposed to be reclad in new weatherboards this Friday but with heavy rain forecast its doubtful. And who knows when the lazy builders will come back and fix up the inside walls around the new windows? We may do the baby's room ourselves just so it is finished in time for the little monkey to come home. That picture above is a sneak peek of the baby's room in progress - yes the green is a very strong and deep colour, all I can say is that sample pots are sold for a reason!

and the craziness continues.....

ok, let me recap. This is me at the present moment, 7 months pregnant:

and this is my house and backyard, at the end of week 1 of the building project:

add those two together and yes it probably is pure insanity, but these things happen! Unfortunately Jean we didn't come into an inheritance, and in fact the reason that we waited so long to start building was so that we could save up enough money to pay for it rather than refinance the house and take out a bigger mortgage. Given the current financial situation world wide it was a wise decision even if it means cutting it fine timing wise.

Plus it is giving me something other to think about than the baby and I have begun 'virtual' nesting - picking out colours, light fittings, floor coverings, furniture, drawing room layout plans for furniture placement and generally sending my husband batty with my constant "what do you think about x" when he knows full well the only answer is to agree! So even though the baby's room (and the rest of the house) is a complete shambles at the moment, in my mind it is already painted a calm and restful pale sage green colour, with all white furniture, cot sheets and change pad cover made from a white and fine green stripe cotton (made by me of course!), white curtains and some lovely wall decorations of some sort (still to be decided). Thankfully my parents are talking about taking some time off before Christmas to come up and give us a hand in making this reality because by that stage I doubt I'll be able to do much at all!

Unfortunately no sewing photos at present, I did take photos of a new dress I made last weekend and wore to work on Wednesday, but my most skillful photographer of a husband didn't realise that the camera had no memory stick in it when he took photos of me, so I'll have to wear it again next week and try again. I don't know how much sewing I'll get done this weekend though, now that I'm without a laundry I'm heading off to my parents to use their washing machine and possibly some op shopping in between loads since there are a few close to their house, and then on Sunday we have day 1 of a 2 day antenatal class which goes all day. I am prepared to be shocked and horrified though, because I have been warned it's all pretty graphic but it's a little late in the stage to do anything about it now!

Have a great weekend everyone