Adventures in Home Improvement

So my initial blogging endeavor didn't get enough momentum going but I'm still an avid lover of blogs and lately I've been loving Young House Love. They've inspired me to start blogging again and to get me motivated to finally fix up our house after living here for so many years! Really DIY home improvement is crafting on steroids. I've spent so much money on craft supplies, I realize I need to improve my rate of return on my investment so I'm channeling my energies toward fixing up our home.

We have one huge project going on and that's finishing our basement. Unfortunately I don't have any pictures of the totally unfinished product but here's after all the framing is done. My husband's super handy Uncle Steve, did the framing for us and we are pleased with the results. Uncle Steve did a great job framing out the basement and working around all the little imperfections of our house.





Now that we've embarked on this project, we realized a few benefits of having the builder finish the basement:

1) Cost: If we had the builder finish the basement when we initial were designing the house the cost would have been rolled up into our mortgage. As it is now, we are having to pay large sums of money to get the framing, plumbing, electrical, etc... It really adds up even with us acting as our own general contractor.

2) Schedule: The builder would have done it faster and we would have had use of the space for the last, oh 10+ years!

3) Resources: A very large chunk of my time is spent on this project. From scheduling the various trades people and making arrangements to work from home, to researching bathroom fixtures that are affordable but that both DH and I like.

However, there are definitely some nice benefits to doing the basement on our own:

1) I get an awesome home office: we're planning large french doors on my huge den/home office/study to be. In addition to pretty doors, I'm going to have two nice sized walk in closets again with double doors. I'm a pack rat (as my husband can attest to) and so these nice size closets are a must for me.

2) Bathroom we will love: Yes, I'm spending entire Friday and Saturday nights studying up on different types of toilets (elongated or round? 12" rough in vs 14"? left or right handed trip lever?). Sometimes just having two choices is a good thing. With some patience, we finally did decided on a toilet, tub and sink that I'm excited about and my husband is happy with. Something must be wrong with me for being excited about the toilet :-).

This space is going to be awesome! I can't wait for it to be finished!

Sewing

Ever since I got my iPod, I've been addicted to Podcasts. My favorites are CraftyPod and Material Mama. Material Mama in particular has inspired me to take up sewing again. I know the very basics of sewing - enough to make pillows, curtains, etc, but I wanted to try making clothes for Monkey. I've been somewhat uninspired by the kids clothes in the stores and I've always envisioned Monkey in cute A-line dresses. So with the help and coaching of my MIL, I made this dress from a Simplicity pattern. It only took a few hours and included a zipper which I had never done before. I'm going to reuse the pattern and make lots more dresses :-) I purchased some really cute fabrics from Repro Depot this week just for this purpose. The best thing is that this dress only needs one yard of fabric!

April Sampler!!

April Sampler!!, originally uploaded by sim-san.

I received the April Sampler today and of course I love EVERYTHING in my package!!! I adore the embroidery patterns in particular from Sublime Stitching. Coincidentally I also received the Sublime Stitching book from Amazon this week. I already am working on my first piece for a birthday present which I'll post when complete.

Other projects in the works are another A-line dress for Monkey and flannel hello kitty pjs. To be blogged about in the future :-)

Apron Adventures

So I finally finished making my apron to send to Aly for the Spring Apron swap. I started out with a plan which quickly fell apart. The swap had a link to several apron patterns but I wanted to make the retro 1/2 apron and I just couldn't understand the instructions I found online. The part that threw me was the gathering since I've never done those before. I ended up caving and buying The Apron Book on Amazon - a move I don't regret at all.


It took a while to ship and so when I finally got the book last week, I was a bit rushed to finish the apron. The instructions were really easy to follow though and there were lots of helpful tips (like add your embellishments before you do the gathers). I'm pleased with my results - I just hope Aly likes the apron :-)

Cupcake patch for apron

I made this patch for the apron I'm making for an Apron swap. I'm debating whether to add a cherry on top or not. I've noticed that lots of cupcake items have cherries on top but in reality I rarely see cupcakes with cherries. I'm over thinking this I know but it's something I've noticed :-)

Mobiles

I got into making mobiles when I joined a mobile swap. This is the first one I made but was way too big and with too many strings to mail. However I loved how it turned out. We have it hanging in Monkey's room and it gentle rotates and very sootheing.

Cloth Baby Shoes

I got the pattern for these shoes from Stardustshoes' blog. They were easy to make, required very little fabric, and came out so cute. I'm giving these as a baby gift this weekend at a shower and am also making several more pairs as gifts. So many people I know have babies or babies in the works that this pattern will definitely get used over and over.