sunday funday.

i really like crafting. and this weekend, i realized i have not been doing enough of it. lately, i've been keeping busy with perfectly reasonable things like cleaning and laundry and studying (ohmygoodness i haven't had to study in a long time and it is exhausting!) but none of that involves creating, or making, or ending up with a real finished product.

so i did something. i started my day at the fabric store with half a plan.

and i am so excited with what i was able to accomplish with six hours and my new sewing machine.

not dead. just not feeling wordy lately.

so. sorry about the radio silence around these parts. i'm still here. still living life, eating regularly, going to work, doing all of the important things like laundry and dishes and i think i might have even cleaned the bathroom recently so yeah, i'm pretty much a rockstar. *brushes off shoulder* but as far as writing anything? sharing my stories? documenting the life i am living right now? eh, not so much. *shrugs* and i'm kind of ok with that.

winter is tough - it is cold and lonely and dark and lasts way too long after Christmas and i'm just now realizing that i'm really only about halfway through the season. gross. but what i'm trying to say is that i feel like as long as i am surviving, i'm doing ok - even if the documentation side of things is slipping.

so just in case you've been wondering, this is what i've been up to lately:
(and i even made my list alliterative! just because i can! Cope would be so proud!)

Sister Christmas. we travelled to Pennsylvania the weekend between Christmas and New Year's to celebrate with my family. i took zero pictures of our extended family celebration at Aunt Sara's house - i figured cousin Sarah had it covered - but did manage some pictures of our mini-Christmas with the sisters and our families.

we even had a tiny tree to put our presents under!

 

 Mark's present came in a Victoria's Secret bag...

 

  don't you love my sister's new hat?

Skiing. for the second year in a row, i survived the Shifflett family ski trip. and i liked it! we went to a different mountain this year - Showshoe, WV. the trails were tougher, and it took me a while to re-remember how to make it down the mountain upright (i ended the weekend with a grand total of 12 wipeouts and one giant hip bruise...apparently i always land on the same spot) but we had a really good time. my camera spent the weekend in my purse so i don't have any pictures, but my FIL took some good ones (and at least one terrible one that i couldn't convince him to delete) so if those ever actually make it off of their camera i might share a few.

Studying. the day we got back from our long skiing weekend, we also started an online review course for the PE Exam we're taking in April. ever since then, literally all of my free time has been spent with my giant review books; either reading theory, listening to lectures, working problems, or weeping in despair because right now it feels like there is no way i will ever re-learn all of this stuff in the next 79 days.

(not) Sewing. so i got that great sewing machine for Christmas. and i have some good ideas for sewing projects. and i have created a "sew fun!" pinerest board. and because of the aforementioned skiing and studying, i have had zero time to actually sew anything. sigh.

Shopping. mostly for groceries and other necessary but not necessarily fun things.  i feel like i have spent a lot of time at the grocery store, which probably isn't even true because Mark's new job is right across the street from the grocery store so he has been doing a lot of the shopping for me. but, it started with an S so it made the list. i have been to Walmart twice in the past week to buy exciting things like lint filters for my utility sink and mini saltines and a dishpan. and ok i also impulse bought the movie Tangled just because i wanted to watch it. maybe i'll watch it again tomorrow...

Singing. the Frozen soundtrack. constantly. all the time. obsessed. have you seen this movie? is it even still in theaters? we saw it on a date night on New Years, and you need to see it too. trust me.

Sparkles. ok so this isn't really a thing i've been doing, but it snowed yesterday and it's a little windy today and all of the blowing snow outside my office window looks like one massive glitter party and it makes me smile.

a year in the making.

on Sunday, i finally made time to finish hand-tacking mark's tshirt quilt togther. yes, the one that my sister helped me with almost exactly a year ago that had been sitting in a mostly-finished but still unusable state of being since then. its finally all sewn together and is no longer held together with giant safety pins. but i'm thinking i should have looked into adding a thimble to my sewing kit before this project.

finish mark's quilt. totally worth the bruised thumb to get to cross it off the list.

naked no more.

so remember way back to my list of things that i said i want to do in 2012? well here we are now, suddenly 1/4 of the way through the year, (seriously, March flew by SO FAST) and i havent really talked all that much about how i'm doing on my flexible list of not-very-specific goal-type-things cleverly disguised as non-resolutions.

my sister recently set up a separate page on her blog to keep track of the progress she is making on all of her non-goals for 2012. i like that idea. maybe one of these days i'll figure out how to do it. but until then, you'll have to keep reading all of my rambling words about relatively trivial things that you probably dont care too much about but they make me happy and this blog is all about me so just DEAL, OK?

anyway, so tucked somewhere in the middle of my rambling list of non-resolutions, somewhere after 'make a reasonable meal plan' but before 'organize the office' was this little gem:

make curtains for all my naked windows.

this little statement really says a lot. if you know what to listen for, you can hear it screaming that
 1) we have been living without anything covering the majority of the windows in our house; no blinds, no curtains, no nothing
 2) we have been living this way for a significant amount of time, and
 3) that for some reason i think that i possess the talents and skills to create these window coverings on my own. (i should probably note at this point that, much to my grandmother's dismay, i do not own a sewing machine and the last time i really used one was sometime in middle school)

dining room: curtainless.

this project has been in the works for more months than i would like to admit. i bought fabric for these curtains last fall. we hung curtain rods before Christmas. i enlisted a friend with a sewing machine to help me out since i realized how terrified i actually was about attempting this all on my own. and then we all got busy. and the busy-ness never really stopped. and my windows were still naked.

fireplace room: curtainless.

so then i turned my attention to the idea of blinds, just so that we could have the option of having a little bit of privacy, ya know? but there were just too many issues: our windows are old and not extremely blind-friendly, Mark and I could not agree on a style that we both liked, and blinds are kind of crazy expensive, especially for the quantity that we would need.

front room: curtainless.

our solution: shears. or more specifically, thin white curtains from IKEA. i used 3.5 sets of panels to cover 5 windows (the little windows each got one panel that i split up the middle to make two skinny panels) and i had one panel left over that i just put up over the sliding glass door. i used Abi's Little Brother (her sewing machine) that she brought with her on her visit to make Mark's quilt and then generously left him with me so that i could sew the shears, because as much as i understand that iron-on hem tape works, i just like the look of sewn hems better. even the crooked hems that i managed to produce.

dining room: curtained and dark.

they're not perfect by any means, (i might have to re-do the ones that still drag on the floor) but they're progress. and progress is exciting, no matter how slow or long the project winds up being.

fireplace room: curtained.

so i guess technically i could cross this non-resolution off my list, but that would only really satisfy the letter of it and not the intent. because i still have a bunch of pretty fabric just waiting to get turned into fancy-pants curtains, but even after this month of non-stop curtain-hemming, i still dont feel qualified for the job.

front room: curtained.

PS sorry about the darkness of the after photos. i snapped them real quick this morning because i had a few extra minutes before work and i didnt bother to turn on any lights because i didnt want to forget to turn them off again. the curtains dont really impede any of the light coming in through the windows, even though these pictures might suggest that. we really like them and the fact that they make the rooms feel more finished and less like a fishbowl.

my sister is better than your sister.

and i will tell you why.

1. she came to visit me over the weekend. she even invited herself so i didnt have to. she trusted the kids with her husband and woke up super-duper early to drive down from the big city to spend the weekend with me in farm country.

2. she brought me a box full of hand-me-down clothes, effectively doubling my work wardrobe. also, a new coat. i'm in love with it, and have been wearing it every day.

i took this picture at a red light. i swear i'm a responsible driver.

3. she gave me an excuse to go to IKEA, where she was thisclose to convincing me that i NEEDED a 4-foot round tabletop for 60% off to turn into a giant wall clock for my basement. all it needed was some paint, a few house numbers, and a big clock kit. and if it weren't so heavy that it had the potential to tear down an entire wall if we actually hung it up we would have totally been trying to make that thing fit in my car.

4. she brought her amazing little brother sewing machine with her, and helped me make this:

its a tshirt quilt! made out of all of Mark's old tshirts that i wouldnt let him wear in public anymore!

we followed this tutorial, which was the best i found for our level of sewing expertise. it didnt require us to have any fancy equipment or really know how to quilt anything at all. unfortunately, i found this tutorial after i had already started, so i ended up doing a couple of steps out of order. next time i'll know to iron on the interfacing to the tshirts BEFORE i measure and cut them into squares.

by the time Abi came with the sewing machine, we were ready to roll. and by we, i mean i did all the measuring and ironing, some of the cutting, and none of the actual sewing.

and Abi did all the rest. she pieced all the squares together, she pinned together the fleece batting and the backing, (the right way) and then she sewed it all together. because she loves me.

my sister is awesome. be jealous.

i dont have a good After shot of the completely completed quilt yet, because its not quite done. i still have to hand-tie/tack all the layers together at the corner of each square. but what i do have is this attempted-almost-after shot where i posed like a weirdo and held up the quilt because hello! this is exciting!

aaand then i realized i had held it up backwards. and then my camera died. (but there's only 16 days left until my birthday and i'm really really crossing my fingers and hoping for a new camera hinthintwinkwinkMark!)

it was an ambitious weekend. it was a crazy weekend. it was a fun weekend. i would not have survived it without my awesome sister. oh, and did i mention:

5. she left her little brother with me for the week so i could do some other little sewing projects!

she's the best.

project preview.

just a sneak peek of what i'm going to be keeping busy with this weekend:

hopefully i'll be ready when my sister brings her sewing machine to visit in a few weeks!