Burpies

Helllloooo nesting instinct! So nice to meet you. My sewing machine is thrilled you decided to show up early. I went into a burp cloth frenzy last night and made 6 of them from this pattern and my stack of vintage sheeting fat quarters and some flannel scraps I had. Of course they have to be cute considering they will be my #1 accessory come July.

So close I can smell the paint fumes

Drywall is done! All that's left (I think) is to tape the seams, primer and paint everything, install the lights and plugs, and replace the door! Jeff will be moving in in no time.

MerShiim Doll

This is really fantastic. A siamese cat mermaid?? Makes my day. It's a fabric design by designer Cateanevski on Spoonflower to make a plush doll. I have to make it. For me, not the baby.

Check out her other designs here. The little red riding hood and grandma wolf are pretty great too.

Sheets

These fitted crib sheets turned out to be a lot easier to make than I anticipated. Both just took me a few hours this afternoon and I'm happy with how they turned out. I'm going to make a few more. Btw, folding fitted sheets into perfect squares is ridiculous. I tried to follow Martha's instructions online and just got pissed doing it.

You can't see it from the photos but the fabrics are 100% cotton with little flocked dots on them, which I picked up from JoAnn's with my 40% off coupons. They had one with pink dots which were a bad pink (too bubblegum), and white dots which were barely perceptible, and these grayish blue and black dots which are more my style. I love the soft texture they add to them.

I also did a modification on the changing pads I made after thinking about them a bit. The ties were a little impractical, I think Jeff might struggle with tying little bows (especially while holding a squirming baby!), so I cut off the ribbons and sewed on a loop of elastic to go over a glass flower button to secure it closed. Much easier!

Happenings around the homestead

The construction guys made a lot of progress on the studio today, a wall and a new window went  up!  This wall below will partition off the studio space from the storage space of the garage (the length of the garage by about 5 feet deep), where we will keep our bikes, camping gear, tools, lawnmower, etc hyper-organized. It's low enough so the garage door windows will act as transoms to bring light over the wall into the studio, and so it doesn't interfere with the garage door opener.

They also finished all the insulation and installed the new window. The drywall guy will be coming on Monday or Tuesday to wall this bad boy up.

The new window looks so much better than the old original one we had before. The old one was unbroken though so I'm keeping it for some project, or wall art for the garden later on. We had thought about expanding the window, but that would have cost a lot more to do the structural work and may have resulted in sacrificing a camellia tree which I was not okay with. Plus the light from the garage door windows and all of the artificial overhead lighting will be plenty. Less of a security issue too since it's a smaller, non-opening window.

And behind the soon-to-be studio... broccoli! Lots of it! It sprung to life with all this rain we've had. Pretty soon we'll be harvesting and roasting it!

 I have to keep posting pictures of the rainbow lights swiss chard. It's too pretty to ignore.

And last up, our new medicine cabinet. We had all our band-aids, medications, and medical supplies tossed in a box in the pantry and it was pretty disorganized. I picked up this metal lockable storage cabinet from IKEA today, painted a gray cross on it to signify it's full of serious medical stuff, went through all our items and organized it by malady. We also took down the skeleton poster and replaced it with an old wood painting of Jeff's, and moved Seth Drenner's piece to the other wall, above the light switch. I'm pleased with the outcome.

It's not my fault.

It's Kate's. She sent me a picture of this, with a link to purchase it for only $8:

I mean really. I wish it also came in my size because I'm tired of the baby getting all the cute stuff. I think I have a problem. With anything in gray, navy, black, or red gingham cotton in miniature clothing sizes. It's my kryptonite. Before I could control myself, I had already typed in "gingham" into the search parameters of the Carter's/Osh Kosh B'Gosh website, found these, and purchased them. Everything was 50% off plus I got an online coupon code for an additional 20% off that (type NEWBORN as the promo code) so it was crazy cheap, but still.

Those little shortalls are the coolest. I got everything in the 1 year old range because this is how I picture my 1 year old dressing.

Sooo... I think we're good on the clothing front! Please don't give us any baby clothes. Her wardrobe will be rivaling mine pretty soon.

Pears and daffodils

It's that season at Trader Joe's... A giant bag of pears for $3.99 and daffodil bunches are only $1.29. A steal for my happiness.

Studio progress!

The insulation is going up, electrical boxes are being put in (to code, thank God), and the ceiling is taking shape!

Do you know what isn't taking shape? My poor sewing room. :( Overrun with stupid Be@rbrick boxes. "THEY'RE COLLECTIBLES!!" screams Jeff. Whatevs.

RVCA/Pac Sun commercial

Jeff's going to be on TV!! He was asked to be in a commercial for Pac Sun and RVCA doing a live painting while Leo Romero (Skater of the Year named by Thrasher, and oddly enough, our neighbor- found out he lives a few streets away!) did awesome skate tricks in front of it. I would guess. I wasn't there because I was at my office job in Irvine. Not in Venice in the sunshine shooting a commercial. Sigh.

Here are some pictures of the hoopla, and the painting Jeff did:

Pictures courtesy of Matt Barlow of RVCA. The commercial is going to run on MTV (and during the VMAs!), Comedy Central, and some other big networks for a month apparently. Jeff said they'd let us know the schedule of when they're set to air so we'll be on the lookout!

And so it begins...

The contractor showed up bright and early this morning to get started on the studio renovation! They brought a giant wooden beam for the ceiling support and will be working on that, the insulation, and the electrical today I believe. I'll post pictures of the progress as it happens!

Meowoodle

Jerod just showed me this new blog, Meowoodle, and luckily it's only 3 pages long (so far) otherwise my day would have been ruined. It's a "Collection of drawings, doodles and sketches by designers and illustrators of their cats." Genius I say. We'll have to submit one of Jeff's paintings of Lily Mae. These are my favorites:

Winston by Jen Mussari

Ripley by Kali Ciesemier

Simon and Nola by John Whitlock 

Polarn O. Pyret!

I had an OB check-up yesterday and our growth is right on schedule. I've gained 12 pounds so far, and luckily in the right places. The baby is the size of an eggplant now! Everything looks nice and on schedule so I celebrated with a little sale shopping at my favorite baby clothing website, Polarn O. Pyret. Their stuff is kind of crazy expensive, but their sales are AMAZING. Like 50-80% off amazing. And the quality is so good. Lots of linens and 100% organic cottons. I've heard good things about how soft and long-lasting their clothes are. They also have maternity clothes, and really cute ones too! Here's what I got:

So graphic and awesome with the striped and polka dotted apples. And those kimono style onesies are the best. I got this one in the 4-6 month size for when she chunks up a bit.

These next two are for me. I love these plaid and pleated denim tops and they'll pair nicely with my jeggings and a little hot pink lipstick.

This shirt is so Euro, I love the colors. It reminds me of a shirt Jan and I had when we were babies. This one is also in the 4-6 month size.

And c'mon. I had to get this one. It is so damn cute. I love the buttons down the front, the little cuffed sleeves, the front pockets, and mostly the little side ties. I'm glad we're having a girl. :)

Changing pads

It was so fun to get sewing again! My Huskystar purred like a kitten, she was so happy to be tuned up, greased, and ready to sew. It's been a little while since I've made something so I started with something easy on my to-do list of baby stuff: changing pads!

This pattern came from Lotta Jansdotter's Simple Sewing for Baby book and was a simple one to whip up. The hardest part was choosing the fabrics!

I made a couple to have in the diaper bags, both made with a thin cotton quilted to bamboo batting and backed with a thicker canvas cotton. The gray fabric is from IKEA and oh-so-Scandinavian, paired with a white cotton with little purple dots. Detail shot!

This one is harder to see, but the inside cotton is a cream color with white stars and my favorite purple hippo canvas cotton for the outside.

Ta-da! Next up, the fitted crib sheets. I'm ready.

Kampei!

We hosted Sunday Super Supper Club this weekend and went with a Japanese theme. Andy and Kim hosted last month's and did Chinese New Year, so we thought with everything happening now, Japanese food might be a nice tribute. It was a ton of fun, everyone made rolls and we ate lots. Jeff was in charge of the pictures, and didn't give me much to work with. I wish we got a picture of everyone at the table with all the rolls spread out, but oh freakin' well. I'll take the pictures next time.

I did a demo roll for the class.

We had a lot of fixins, yellowfin, salmon, teriyaki eel, tofu, spicy tuna, cucumbers, daikon, avocado, carrot, and "crab". We had leftovers.

Henry patiently waiting for sushi. Or just cucumber and Pocky.

Leftovers for lunch! And dinner...

Next time will be a cowboy theme at Karen and Mark's. Which makes sense because it's Henry's birthday party.

Well hello Lily Mae!

Look who made it into today's Apartment Therapy's "Pets in the Bedroom" post! Such a looker, that Lily Mae...

Little Owl

This is kind of ridiculous, that we're actually checking out a local preschool for the yet-to-be-born baby inside of me, but it's that rad of a preschool (and only 2 miles away from our house!) so they have a long waiting list and we wanted an assurance that the peanut would be able to attend.

We took a tour of the Little Owl Preschool this morning and were blown away. The school is the coolest. Everything is eco-friendly, clean, creative, fun, and educational. They have vegetable gardens and lots of fruit trees for the on-site chef to use for snack times and lunches, they compost, and they're even getting chickens and bunnies in the spring!

The outside of the building is covered in these vertical succulent green walls, so gorgeous!

They even have mini front doors for the little munchkins to come through!

So needless to say, we're on the list. January 2014, the peanut will be 2 years and 6 months old, ready to start preschool! Sooo ridiculous we are...

Gifts from the besties...

Cubbies!! These card catalog cubbies were a birthday gift from Mandy, and if it's one thing I love, it's compartmentalization. I'm going to fill them with a lot of my sewing notions (and label each one obsessively). Loves it.

She also gifted me with this vintage Singer sewing machine. I was envious of her large collection and she's good at sharing. It's just for looks though, I can barely work my new Huskystar machine. I wouldn't even know where to begin with threading this thing. It's pretty though.

Speaking of sewing, my fabrics came! I love that swiss dot scottie dog/kitty fabric so much. And I also picked up 5 yards of this mint green cotton with little random white dots at a thrift store for $5!

And look how adorable!! Brookie picked up this little number for the peanut when she was in Ecuador. It's so sweet, I love the gauzy material and the embroidery. Thanks so much Brooke!! Call you this weekend!