We’ve had a couple of lovely sunrises the past few week.
When I wake Isabel and pull her blind up the sky has been almost on fire. The added cloud cover creates an explosion of colour across the sky.
In a few weeks we won’t see the sunrise when we get up or when we drive to school or work.
But let’s not dwell on that.
I finally finished Sofia’s dress this weekend. It turned out better than I had hoped.
I used a fairly thin cotton with white elephants on a pale pink background for the dress and some hot pink Heather Bailey for the waistband.
I thought the dress would be too thin and see-through so I sewed up a little slip in the same elephant fabric.
The dress ended up working without the slip so she has started using it as a nightgown instead.
Sofia asked for snaps in the back because regular buttons would catch her hair. Had I had the time I could have figured out how to add a zip instead. I ended up frankensteining a covered buttonhole placket instead which works ok. At least her hair isn’t tangled up on the buttons.
My SIL has a birthday this weekend and has rented a house and invited us all to celebrate. It’s not even an hour away from home so when Isabel asked to go to a school dance on Friday night we figured we could make it work. We wouldn’t be all that late arriving even of she went to the dance and we didn’t leave until after 7 pm.
The sun was setting to our left as we drove north and the (just past) full moon was rising to our right. It was amazing.
This morning after breakfast we took a walk on the beach and collected sea shells and just enjoyed the nice weather. The dogs enjoyed being able to run free on the beach.
The beach was full of pinkish and cream coloured shells of all sizes. We all got back with bags full of them.
My niece picked a flower and made me a ring. Sweet thing.
We went away for the weekend to celebrate my SIL’s birthday. We’re still away and I am taking a “nap” and updating while the rest of the crew is resting too.
Instead of bringing duvet covers I brought the girls’s quilts for them. So much handier and no need to use duvets you don’t know where they’ve been.
This morning i asked Isabel if hers wasn’t a bit short for her.
A bit, but not too much, she said.
Well, maybe I should make you another one?
Sure. If you want to.
I have some nice blue fat quarters we can sew up into a nice big quilt for your new room, I said.
Yes, please! That would go so well with my blue wall!
So there’s that settled. It’s not like I mind. I should just figure out what pattern to use for her. Nothing with too many angles or points meeting.
Thursdays are shaping up to be a bit hectic this autumn. Sofia has dance class at 4:40 pm in town and Isabel plays the flute at 6:15 pm 15 minutes via car from home, in Oxie.
Isabel needs to be driven there so with a bit of creative planning I can manage to be home and hand over the car to Rickard at 5:45 pm so he can take Isabel to her class.
Today however, he is busy with a work thing all evening so I have to make it work myself. Thus I pick up both girls at school at 4 pm. Drive to town and get Sofia ready for dance. Then Isabel and I will go to Subway and get her a sandwich for dinner and buy one for Sofia to eat later. Then back to the studio to pick Sofia up. Drive to Oxie where Isabel will play the flute and Sofia will eat her sandwich.
Then I have a lovely parcel waiting for me at the grocery store from Amanda (at least I hope it’s from her) that we will have to pick up before we can finally drive home and do a cursory cleaning job in prep for tomorrow when both girls will have friends with them home from school and Isabel’s friend is staying over.
Isabel cleaned up her room the other day and it’s still looking good, but Sofia’s room is a disaster area and needs to be cleared or she won’t have any room to play with her friend.
Once the cleaning is done I hope to make myself some dinner while the girls veg out in front of the tv/do home work and maybe then I can finish Sofia’s dress that I started last night.
To add to all the delights of my coming evening, I have a sore throat and a stuffed nose and I pretty much just want to fall into my bed and sleep for a day.
I finished cutting out a dress for Sofia yesterday. I was going to drive to the fabric store and get some fabric for it but decided to have a look through my cupboards and see if I didn’t have anything at home.
Turned out I had a 4 m piece of pale pink elephants that would be perfect.
I cut out a Library dress from Oliver + S in size 8, but have since realised I probably should have cut out a 10 instead. Ah well, this will have to be a “wearable muslin” then. I have the interfacing pressed on the facings and I hope to take the first stitches tonight.
I also ordered two new prints from Heather Bailey’s new fabric line, Lottie Da for a second Library dress for Sofia. I’m thinking I could get ahead on the Christmas sewing. This one will be a size 10, just to be sure. I plan to make the dress in the dotted fabric. (It’s actually small squares.) I’ll use the flower print for facings and accents like the waistband. I also ordered a piece in solid fuchsia that I hope will match.
We spent the weekend driving to and from activities and drop-offs and pick-ups and in-between it all we were trying to get some work done on the 3rd floor.
We finished the felt layer in the closet and with a lot of stops and starts we got almost all of the vertical walls (as in non slanted walls) in Sofia’s room done. There is one piece on one of the gable walls that needs filling in and then we can get started on the slanted walls as well.
However, this coming weekend the girls will stay with their grandparents because it’s supposed to be our weekend “off”. We’ll see if we can’t get some stuff done before going to town for dinner and a movie – which may end up being take-out and some television on the couch.
The felt layer was a bit fiddly but once we figured out an approach it went together very quickly, and since the felt is 1 meter wide it fills up fast. We need to put up 7 lengths on the slanted walls to cover the whole thing. Not so bad.
We still have the hall, stairwell and Isabel’s room left and with the speed we’re going at it won’t be done before October.
I suppose we could break our principle not to do work up there during the week just to get ahead. However the firm Rickard works for starts its yearly “educational new products”-tour this week and he will be gone twice this week, two nights next week, three or four nights the week after etc, which just illustrates the reason we want to keep the weeks free of attic work.
I keep calling it attic but I think we need to change that.
Our house is three stories high now that we have started work on the girls’ rooms.
There is what we call the first floor where the kitchen and living room is. Then we have the second floor where all our bedrooms are now as well as my sewing room and our bathroom.
The girls’ new rooms are in what we used to call the attic but really should now be called the third floor?
Or – is it bottom floor, first floor and second floor?
I get so very confused.
To add to it all when we added a ceiling to the new rooms we were able to make room for storage above it. We have taken to call it the attic-attic or fourth floor – but is that right?
What would you call it? It will be interesting to see if there are geographical differences to your replies.
(Also: I have started posting to http://lattemamablog.wordpress.com instead with a cross-post to my Blogger-blog. I’m actually liking WordPress better these days so you may want to add or update your readers?)
Rickard did the last sanding this weekend in the attic. We put up this old bedspread to keep the dust out as much as possible and I guess it’s worked. We still have dust everywhere but I’ll bet we’d have more if this hadn’t been up.
There is still a little bit of sanding to do – it seems we find a new place we forgot to plaster every time we go up there. But what is left now will be sanded by hand.
The girls’ rooms are pretty much done. We vacuumed the walls and floors and ceiling this weekend in preparation for the strengthening (and smoothing) layer of felt we’re putting up before we paint.
Since neither of us has done this by ourselves before we started in the closet and got three lengths put up. It took quite a lot of time and I dearly hope we’ll get better at it or it will take forever. But the result was acceptable. The back wall is done.
Once the felt is put in we’ll paint it with a base coat and then again with our selected paint – speaking of which, we’re still agonising over that part. I have paint chips everywhere and some more coming in the mail.
The girls have picked their colours for the focus walls in their rooms. We just need to decide what shade of white to pick – or if we should just do white-white.
