Days 11 & 12

Okay, so posting last night didn't work as well as I'd hoped. I don't know why I thought it would, since I had a craft night at my church last night. At which I did NO crafts!  I know!  I'm horrible. Oh well. I didn't want to pay for the craft that I was the most interested in. It was mod podging a picture onto a painted board. Well, I have boatloads of boards that I can paint here (which is what happens when you finish your basement yourself!  TONS of leftover small boards that are good for nothing...except crafts!) and then I can print the picture to the size I need. They were using 2x6's, but I'll be using 2x4's, so their picture size wasn't going to work anyway. So I'll print pictures in the size I need. I know that a 2x4 seems small for putting a picture on, but when you consider that my kids share rooms (or one room at the moment, I should say...though that will change SOON hopefully!) a 2x4 is the perfect size for them to be able to put next to their bed and say it's theirs.

I finished the dress lately...or at least the main body of it. It still needs buttons and a sash put on. But I WON'T be going to do pictures with my volunteer model today. Mostly because it won't fit her. Because when you print out a pattern that comes in PDF form, you should always make sure that your printer doesn't scale the pages to fit the "printable" area. Or you'll end up with a dress that looks like it SHOULD fit a 12 month old, but in reality, won't fit over their head...or their diaper. Not so much fun. So I have a GORGEOUS dress that won't fit any baby I have to shop for for Christmas.  My friend might be getting it. Because I know she'll let me have it back for a while if I ever get another girl, but I really don't want to store it in the hopes that that will happen someday. I really should start making a ton of boy stuff. Then, when I do get pregnant and am FINALLY ready for a boy before I get pregnant, it'll be a girl. Because that's how these things work, right? ;) So that project would definitely be my epic fail for the week, as far as crafts go. Pay day's on Friday and I'll try again with a 40% off coupon for Hobby Lobby. I think I'll stick with the same color, since I love it SO much, but I'll make it the right size this time. ;)  And I'm borrowing my mom's sewing machine. Because my mom bought me a new one for my birthday a few years ago and I picked out one that I liked and family members gave her their money and it was a big group gift (that I organized myself because I REALLY didn't want to pay for a new machine, but my old one was older than me and not working so well anymore!) and she got me the next step down from the one that I picked because, and I quote, "you're a beginner and you won't need those functions for a LONG time." Which is great...except that this machine doesn't even let you really control your stitch length, so I can't run a basting stitch!  Which doesn't work well when you have yards of ruffles to do! So she has to give up her machine for a week since she didn't listen to me. That'll teach her. ;)

My goal for the day is to pack up my craft room. I'm not sure it'll happen with two sick kids and...Baldy. He's not easy, I'll tell you that! But I have to get it done so that I can have drywallers come finish the basement drywall next week. I'm SO excited!  I'll have to share my plans on here at some point. We were given a set of house plans when we moved into this house and the basement plans were HORRIBLE! So horrible in fact that there were two bedrooms (which is great) but you had to go THROUGH the closet to get into the cold storage room under the porch!  What kid wants people traipsing through their room constantly to go to the storage closet!  Oh, and you had to go through the bathroom to get to the furnace...which is right in front of the cold storage room. And they left a giant empty spot for "storage" on the other side of the bathroom. So I learned how to use Google Sketch Up to make plans and drew up our own floor plans to have approved by the city. It involved ripping out concrete just to move pipes over 8 inches to where the new toilet would be located (because the old one would've been IN the wall), but we now have a nice big bathroom down there that will have built in cubbies for towel storage and toilet paper and all that fun stuff, plus we have a door right next to it that goes to a utility room and a hall back to the cold storage room!  And the other useless storage space in the basement is now my craft room, or hall, depending on how you look at a space that's 20 feet by 5 feet. But it's almost done, after a year and a half of weekends working on it (while Hubs was deployed. Basically my dad and I have finished that basement and I'm REALLY proud of that!) and I'm so happy!  It'll be nice to have a little room to spread. And be able to empty our outdoor shed back into the basement, since that's where all of the stuff that WAS in there went for the last year, and then we can take the shed apart next spring and take it to my father-in-law's!  And we'll have room in our backyard for things like a swingset!  Woohoo!  (All that to explain why I'm packing up my craft room!  Woops!) I'll post pictures of the basement next week.  I think I have a few before-ish pictures, so I'll share those.