Catching Up

I always look forward to the summer as a time to relax a little bit, ease up on the busy schedule, and get a few big projects done. And then it never happens. We always have some type of travel on the schedule, as we have family on both coasts and are usually visiting one side or the other. Now that the kids are older they are taking trips themselves. It feels like we're racing to prepare for a trip, then catching up from the trip after the traveler returns, then starting to prep for the next trip. I keep waiting for the downtime. Sigh!

I have been remiss with the blog, and not written anything since before I went to Germany, in March! I'll never catch up with everything that happened between then and now, so I'll give a brief summary and then pick up current events.

Germany was beautiful but cold and snowy. I'll try to throw in a few pictures in a later blog.

I came home to a construction project that was still not completely done, so I had to pick up the final details of that, some of which took forever. But it's done now and the work is beautiful.

We had a brief visit from dear oldest son for a week and a half  in May, in between finals (and his trip to Costa Rica to visit a "friend") and his internship this summer in Boulder, Colorado.

Dear daughter had a rough time getting through the end of her classes and the very few final exams she had to take, but she made high honors and had a beautiful day for graduation. Great Aunt Karen flew out from California for the occasion and we all celebrated.

The family at Graduation

Great Aunt Karen and the graduate

On to summer vacation, and dear youngest son and his attendance at a Cosplay convention in Hartford, and my construction of his costume. I had promised to sew him the costume for his birthday, last September, and then with all the construction and general busy-ness of life (and the fact that my sewing machine was not easily accessible for many months and had to be "dug out" after all the construction), I put if off until the last minute and had to really scramble to get it done. Sheesh! After yelling at the kids to plan ahead for all these years, you'd think it would have sunk in to my old brain. I had not taken into consideration all the time it takes to construct the patterns, and I always underestimate sewing time. I did manage to finish up, with mere minutes to spare. Whew!

youngest son is in the long red wig and pink vest

The next hoop to jump through was to prepare the very same youngest son for National Flight Academy camp in Pensacola, FL. He applied for and won a scholarship to the program so all we had to do was fly him down. Frequent flier miles came in very handy. Got him all packed up, with name tags sewn in to all of his clothes, and he had a very good time at camp, and got home safely, despite flight delays.

Next in line was preparing dear daughter for a trip to Japan to visit Aya, the exchange student we hosted the previous year. In addition to packing, she had to bring gifts. That's what's expected in Japan, and we didn't want to offend anyone, and we wanted to express our appreciation to Aya and her parents for hosting our daughter. So in addition to buying some American candies to give to the family and any other people dear daughter met out there, we sent along a bottle of our homemade wine, and I sewed some bags.

this bag is made out of my husband's old jeans

patchwork zippered bag

machine embroidered name

cute cat fabric that Aya will like

pencil bag

the whole set

I've made the wide-mouthed zippered bags before, using an online tutorial. Here's the link again:
http://www.noodle-head.com/2012/06/open-wide-zippered-pouch-diy-tutorial.html

I found the tutorial for the pencil bag online too. http://terriesandelin.blogspot.com/2010/07/pencil-case-tutorial.html

I sewed my "an original by Shelley" tag into all of them and hopefully they will enjoy the bags. I had fun picking out fabric to use,  but again, it took longer to sew them all than I had planned on.

Dear daughter has now safely arrived in Japan. Aya met her at the airport and they took a bus back to the house. She said she slept will the first night and with any luck she'll recover from the jet lag fairly quickly. She will be there for 2-1/2 weeks.

Last but not least, we are already starting to prepare for the next trip, out to Denver, CO for my nephew's Bar Mitzvah. That's in just a week and a half, but while there we will be celebrating all the summer and early fall birthdays on that side of the family, 8 of us! So, it's back to the sewing machine to make some more gifts.

Timing is working in our favor for a change, and dear oldest son's internship ends the day before the Bar Mitzvah, so he will be able to join us for the weekend. We'll help him move out of his summer apartment, he'll stay at the hotel with us, and then he'll fly out to visit my parents in Oregon for almost a week before he has to fly back to Texas for school. Dear daughter will be flying home from Japan the same day we fly back from Colorado.

I'm excited that the upcoming travel plans actually include ME this time! I'm not really exciting about the flying, since we are flying out of New York, and it's a 2-hour drive down to that airport without traffic, and summer traffic in this area is horrendous! But once we get there, we'll get to visit with relatives (on my husband's side) from all over the country. Many of them we've only seen recently (in the past few years) at funerals, so I am going to enjoy the much happier occasion. We'll all be staying at the same hotel and I won't have to cook! Woohoo! Hopefully I'll be able to get all the gifts pulled together well ahead of time and the trip will go smoothly.

Well, I think that's more than enough for now. Happy Summer!

Shelley in CT

Begin as we mean to go on

I'm not a big one for New Year's resolutions, but I do like a fresh start, and I believe in beginning as I mean to go on. So I started early, spending the end of 2012 filing our (huge!) pile of paid bills and papers and documents. I moved old files to boxes in the basement so that the filing cabinet wouldn't be too full to access, and I cleaned up the file folders too. Boy that felt good! It'll make tax time a little easier too, because we'll be able to find the documents we need. It always amazes me how a good clearing out can lift my spirits!

The new year also started with signing up for an exercise class. I have been to this class a lot over the years, but I had lapsed, and hadn't gone in close to a year. I guess I got busy, but mostly I got lazy. The class gives me really good core-strengthening exercises, and good stretches that I never really get around to doing on my own at home.

On the house front, here's how far we've come on the construction of the three-season room. (I say "we" but really our contractor and his crew are doing all the work!)

The side of the house: the double doors are part of an extension of the garage

From the back corner of the yard

Inside three-season room (boxes are kitchen cabinets)

The other project I've started on is moving my sewing room. As the big construction project is moving along, the crew will be moving into the house soon to tear down walls, build a new laundry room and expand and remodel the kitchen. The room with my office and sewing table will be changed, and I don't want my sewing machine anywhere near all that construction dust. So, as my oldest son gets older and spends less and less time here at the house, we are ready to convert his bedroom to a guest room/sewing room. He's not really broken hearted, as he is already making plans for post-graduation (spring 2014) and those plans don't include moving back home. He IS enjoying telling all his friends at school how his parents started converting his bedroom a mere 2 days after he went back to school though. Ha!

Since I've been cleaning up the sewing area and starting to move things, I've also been inspired to take care of some of the mending that's been patiently waiting for me, along with some small projects.

 Here are 2 open-wide pouches that I made using the last few remnants of a favorite fabric. I found a tutorial for them online here on a blog called Noodlehead - quick and easy and great results. I used only fabrics and linings and zippers that I had on hand. A good way to work down the stash and get something useful out of it.

In addition to the sewing, I used up some more fabric covering boxes to use for yarn storage. I keep some of my knitting projects in the living room and the pretty covered boxes look so much nicer than old cardboard. I first tried using good old Elmer's white glue, but soon I made a trip to the hardware store and bought some spray adhesive. That moved things along much faster, though it's much messier. Notice the newspaper covering my work table in the "outside fabric" photo below.

starter box

add lining

add outside fabric

  

add grommets and handle

on the shelves

 Well, the shelves still look kind of messy, but it's a much tidier mess than it used to be.

Wishing you all the best of luck with your own fresh start.

Shelley in CT