Goodness, graciousness! Mercy, me, I have not typed in ages. Right now I'm watching the Twilight Zone marathon (something I've been doing for years and probably defines my nerdy personality.) I'm resting on the last days of my vacation. I went to visit my relatives that live in North Carolina and to attend a wedding. I was able to rest very much over there, but it's time to get busy. I was coming down with a cold which began the day I had to fly (December 29th), but I used all my natural remedies (Boiron Cold Calm tablets, Dr. Thompson's immune boosters) and when I got home: Umcka and Alkaseltzer Cold plus, and Nielmed Sinus Rinse. I don't feel sick anymore, just a bit tired. I actually slept straight through the night with the "non-drowsy" Alkaseltzer, hah! I've been reading a lot of decluttering blogs, hoping to get inspired. I do want to live with less, especially all this paper clutter. Right now my goals are: finish my dining room walls, put up the rest of my faux wood posts, get rid of clutter, make shutters for my bedroom window, have someone install my back door, get rid of clutter, put T-moulding for floor transition, have windows installed, get a new swamp cooler and window air conditioner before summer, get rid of clutter, sew and so much other stuff. Let's see what I get done before I go back to work on Wednesday. To be continued...

Time Flies!

I just finished up the school year (I'm a 4th grade teacher). Yipee!!! It's hard to believe. I was reading my other posts and realize I haven't gotten much accomplished in terms of sewing. I did sew my grand niece a dress for her birthday (on her actual birthday), it was lined and had a petticoat. Oh yeah, I also (with a lot of help from my mother) sewed poodle skirts w/petticoats for the talent show. I was kind of productive for the month of May. I have "sew" much fabric, patterns, and now I actually have time, that it would be pure "foolishness" not to get anything done. I've got to reduce my fabric stash. Usually I make excuses like it's too hot (which it is, as I type this at 9:15p.m. it is 97 degrees, we've been having over 100 degree weather for the past week), but I feel reasonably cool in my house, so that's not really an excuse. I'm just lazy. Let's see what I get done tomorrow.

My new goal for this year, sew the stash I just bought from fabric.com. Thank you to all the enablers at patternreview.com, I now have 32 yards to add to my hundreds of yard I already have. It was a really good sale. Right now I'm going to look through my patterns to see what I will sew. Hopefully this time I'll stick to it. I hope I can sew it before I turn 40 (this only gives me a about 1 month and 2 weeks.) I need to get into my factory sewing mood. I did accomplish washing most of the fabric, I couldn't do all of it because I don't have enough room to hang it to dry. I didn't meet my goal of sewing jeans that I set in December, but now I'll just have to. I'm off to look at my patterns and take out my agave nectar chocolate cake from the oven (it was a horrible blustery day, so I didn't even venture out).

Post Christmas post

I'm sitting here thinking about doing my Callanetics (or however this is spelled). These exercises really are not that difficult and you do see an improvement in a short time. I'm too busy eating part of what was once a huge Special Dark chocolate bar and feeling very tired. One of my permanent goals is to quit wasting so much time. There goes 5 minutes. I want to sew a pair of jeans before the end of this year, I have approximately 6 days to accomplish this. I wish the weather were warmer so I could do some of my outside projects although I do have some very hardy weeds that are growing even when the temperature has gotten below freezing several times. Since this is supposed to be mostly a sewing blog, my goal this week is to finish a few sewing projects. See 'ya when I actually complete one.

Mini-blinds into Roman Shades

I just finished making an old mini-blind into a roman shade. I read about it in this blog. I'm going to make other ones for my other windows. The only thing I did differently was to sew 2 pieces of fabric together instead of gluing hems all around and I painted the slats to match the fabric, so they wouldn't be standing out so much, even though anything was better than what the blinds looked like from the outside before. Most of the slats disintegrated as I was trying to remove them, but there were some that actually had not seen the sun for 10 years, so I was able to salvage them for the project. Next I'm going to make one from black out fabric.

Finished painting my house (sort of)

I finished painting the outside of my house, mostly. I just need to fill in the spots that the roller would not paint, I will need to use a sponge to get into the nooks and crannies (textured stucco). Oh yeah, I also need to paint the trim and finish painting my faux wood garage door. I also was able to build 2 shelves for my garage and put up a curtain rod. Since I decided to clean and organize (a month into my vacation) there was a domino effect of obstacles in my way. When I started to paint the outside of my house, I found out I had 2 outside water leaks, one in a faucet and one on the roof, thank the good Lord my friend's husband was able to fix them. One of the times I tried to go outside through my back door and found out the deadbolt would not budge (this sometimes happens when it rains, and we had quite a bit of that). I had to take it apart and grease it, this was done while I watched a video on the net to see how it was done. I am so grateful for the internet. When I was cleaning out my sewing closet, the curtain rod in my other closet fell, so I decided to clean out all three of my closets. I was able to go buy a curtain rod and put it up at the same time getting rid of a pile of clothes. There is actually some good that comes out of obstacles. I also realized the amount of books I had piled up in the closets, even though I have a perfectly spacious built in book case in my living area, so I cleaned out the bookcase and placed the books in it. Now I have to go back and find places for all the stuff I have all over. Right now it looks like pure "foolishness" (I've been watching back to back episodes of "Clean House"). It's hard for me to stick to one thing and finish it, I usually have many things going on at one time, but it'll get done. I'd better go back to the "foolishness". I also took out about 15 wheelbarrows full of rocks from the area near the gas meter.

More organizing

It's hard for me to get into the motion of actually organizing and cleaning, although I am gung ho about doing it, it's that first step that is hard. I did get around to building one of those wire shelves and putting most of my fabric stash, rolled up so it would all fit, on it. I was going to do some more things (I have more shelves to build) but it is 96 degrees right now at 9:30p.m., so I just want to sit next to the fan.