Long time, no blog!

Wow! It's been a long time since I blogged! (And, btw, I hate my keyboard right now, cuz it won't paste anything, and I just wrote this, but blogger screwed up! Yuck!) Anyway, we're in the process of finishing the basement, including waterproofing inside and out due to some leaks, so we have lots of woodworking stuff going on. We also have no back deck. But we have plans now, so we're excited. And hopefully, this giveaway from High Heeled Foot in the Door will help me out! You've got a chance to win 5 gallons of Olympic Stain! Check it out!

Anyway, here are some pics of what I've been up to, craft-wise, lately. I'll have to come back to post a pic of the bench I built for my mother-in-law. It turned out pretty awesome!

This is what our old kitchen light looked like. It died on Monday night. A grand death, to give it credit, but still death. We thought that it wasn't working because of light bulbs (we've lived here a year and never changed its bulbs), so we replaced it. Still nothing. Flipped the breaker, turned on the light, got some light, but then sparks and nothing. Yeah, one of the sockets was dead, so we decided to retire the ugly, brass thing and use it as an excuse to get a pretty brushed nickel one. So, tada...here it is:

The pretty new light! Fortunately for me, I have an amazing dad who loves helping me out (he's also the one helping me with the basement...and yes, I mean me, not my husband) so he came out last night and helped install it. To be fair, I did get the old one down all by myself, singed wire nuts and all, but that darn thing did not want to work for me. Not to mention the at least 10 foot ceilings. I'm only 5'9"! So my dad's amazing and did it for me!

This one was all me, though! I was very proud of myself for my first dress that I completed 100% by myself! It was my daughter's Easter/birthday dress and she loves it! And I don't hate it at all...I definitely have things that I still need to improve on, but for a first try, and the only time I've ever sewn using patterned fabric (it's gingham if you zoom in), I didn't feel like it turned out badly at all.

This is our new growth chart. I stole someone's idea (don't know who...if you know, let me know!) and used a door from the Ikea As-Is section for this. Mine is actually held up with about 6 3M strips that I can pull off cleanly whenever I decide to paint and not have to worry about puttying holes! Yay for that! I don't have a handy-dandy vinyl cutter or access to someone with one, so I cheated in my own way. The number's are a font that I really liked on my computer (don't ask which one, I have no idea now) and I just printed it off. Then I cut them out, very, very carefully and mod-podged them on. I wouldn't recommend doing it on a light-colored door, since the ink will run a little, but for this door, it worked fine. The ruler marks were all done with a Sharpie! It was about an hour from start to finish and I'm really happy with how it turned out. It's got birth heights on it, and Bubs' most current heights. Someday I'll be able to get the boys to hold still. Maybe I'll just write their most recent doctor's appointment heights on them. But for now, I love it!