here's to wishing...

...i had a good camera. not that i'm in any way a good photographer. but it would be so nice to have good pictures to post on my blog. and to have good pictures of my kids instead of the typical red-eyed grainy mediocre stuff i have filling up file upon file of my hard drive. ah, well. maybe someday...

nursery works in progress

it's been awhile since i've posted anything on here--not that i haven't been busy. moving meant being busy in a not-fun way, but now that we're settled i've been able to work a bit on some decorating, including finishing up some half-finished projects. i'm really excited about the baby's room--it still needs paint (ahem, no fingers pointed at who is supposed to have done that...husband) but so far i'm really enjoying having a space to work with. my poor other kids never had a real nursery so this is like delayed gratification for me.




front of the baby's quilt. i like it.



back of the quilt--i like it more than the front, actually. weird, i know.




some weird art i did for the nursery walls. somehow i'm just not a dinosaur, car, or zoo animal nursery person, so i opted to create my own creatures. i have several more on the walls already, but i already varnished them which makes them too shiny to capture on film.



the crib. i did buy the bumper (it was cheap, brown, and so soft!) but i made the bedskirt to match the quilt. that was fun.



the dresser was a hideous oak-colored hand-me-down with giant square knobs until i revamped it with some new knobs, a little spray paint, and some sawed-off drawer slides (why can't they just make them the right length to begin with?). the shelf i got from goodwill and i already love that i can keep little things in those baskets like socks and pacifiers. i was always losing socks with my first two. i was happy the changing pad fit perfectly on top of the dresser, and a cute white basket from homegoods means i can chuck pooped-on clothes somewhere separate from my normal laundry. yay!

now all we need is paint (call me crazy, but navy blue and beige just don't do it for me), and for me to make some curtains (out of old ones, of course.) fun!

stacked coins, part one

so i guess the reason i can't get anything crossed off my to-do list is because i keep adding more projects to it...

the other day i got a package in the mail that included moda's arcadia fabric in jelly roll form. i LOVE this fabric. so i decided that i HAD to make a stacked coins quilt. that's right. i HAD to. so i spent a few hours yesterday sewing all the strips together, and today cutting those strips into smaller strips. then i made the awesome discovery that a flat sheet i had (we don't like flat sheets in my house, except for using as scrap fabric) matched the browns in the moda fabric perfectly! i love when things come together like that. so here is part one of my newest creation:



since i started this thing i already decided to make it into a duvet rather than a traditional quilt. i've got to find a way to cover up the hideous tommy hilfiger hawaiian comforter that has been uglifying our bed for the past six years. we'll see how that goes. ha.

favorite things

the last couple of weeks i've discovered some new favorite things, some of which include bath and body works "rainkissed leaves" body wash (i love smelling like grass in the summer), anna maria horner fabrics, and baking soda.

baking soda?? yep. i'll tell you why.



it all began with an experiment. every once in awhile i decide to take my fence-walking naturalness to the next level. sometimes it works out, sometimes it doesn't. for example, last year i tried the master cleanse. i lasted exactly 1.5 days. something about maple syrup and cayenne just doesn't do it for me. last fall i decided to try my friend mary's cranberry cleansing drink, and despite the fact that i despise vinegar i started to love it. i lost 2 inches off my waist in one month just from drinking a glass or two a day. not a bad way to lose some weight if i do say so myself.

and then, just recently i decided to go "poo free" for a week. no, that doesn't mean i was constipated, it means i stopped using shampoo and conditioner. as per the general info available on the process via the internet i began to wash my head with baking soda and rinse with apple cider vinegar. my husband got on board, too. well, for him it works great but for me...not so much. i've got fine, straight hair and i ended up with dog-fur-esque hair for a week. yuck. granted, i've read that it can take up to a half a year for the hair to "normalize" on this routine, but i'm just too vain to walk around with dog fur on my head for six months waiting for gorgeous natural hair to appear. just being honest.

however, i did notice that baking soda really does work great for other things. like a face wash. i, like most other females i know, have tried a million different kinds of face wash in pursuit of that perfect skin. well after three weeks of soda-only scrubbing my skin feels amazing. it's soft, it glows, and not a zit in sight! and for less than a dollar a box baking soda is an awesomely cheap alternative to expensive soaps.

we also started using baking soda as deodorant. last year i gave up on antiperspirants permanently--mostly because as imperfect as they are, i'd like to keep my breasts and there is just too much info out there citing aluminum antiperspirants as a big cause of all this breast cancer floating around. so i just started wearing deodorant. man deodorant, actually, because they don't seem to make any for women. well my husband decided to try rubbing a little baking soda on his armpits (we really are weird with the experiments, i know) and he doesn't smell anymore. ever. it's weird. now i'm on board and not looking back!

of course there are tons of other applications for this little powder (toothpaste, cleaning your sink, etc.) but i'm just so oddly excited about my cheap new face wash and deodorant that i can't keep quiet about it. yes, i know this is not an original idea (are there any left, really?) but still, maybe you've never heard of it.

and i'm really not a dirty hippie. i swear.

so behind...

...and it makes me feel useless.

i just realized today that it's been over a year--a year!!--since i've finished a painting. okay, well, i did those watercolors awhile back but those were just goofing off. what happened to my insatiable need to slap oil paint on canvas? what about all the great ideas i've got stockpiled in my art journal? i don't know what happened to my inspiration (perhaps yet another long distance move followed by pregnancy?) but i want it back! i mean, sewing is great and all but painting is my LOVE. and i miss it.

ah well...perchance after little man #3 arrives my inspiration will deign to visit me once again...