Friday, February 29, 2008

Waiting

In that very frightening blue picture, the bathroom remodel is on the left, and the big closet on the right is now my sewing office. Or, rather, was. Now it is the stuff-everything-in-there-to-get-it-out-of-the-way-of-the-bathroom-project room. Which would be frustrating at any time, but especially with a very early Easter and several almost complete Easter sets. Since I can't list them yet, I'll give you some sneak peeks.



Tomorrow is flooring day in the bathroom. Woo hoo!

Wednesday, February 27, 2008

Miami Mist


It would be nice if I were in Miami right now; it's cold and windy here in Monkeyland!

We worked hard in the bathroom yesterday and accomplished this:

All the paneling is up, all of the outlets & switches have been replaced, and this morning the walls were painted a serene shade of turquoise called Miami Mist. Tomorrow we'll put up the trim and crown moulding, then it's onto the floors! Sorry I didn't get a better picture, but it's a very small bathroom and there's not much too look at yet.

Tuesday, February 26, 2008

What's in YOUR bathroom?

We bought our current house in July of 2004. It was a foreclosure and in need of some MAJOR updating. Fugly doesn't even begin to describe it when we bought it. My friends always think I'm crazy when they see the houses I buy (this is our 3rd fixer-upper), but what can I say? I love an ugly (and cheap) house!



The majority of the remodeling & updating was done before or shortly after we moved in, but certain projects have fallen by the wayside. Like our half bath. It is part of the addition to our house, which is a long ranch. So imagine, if you will, looking at my house from the street: from left to right, you'd have bedrooms, main living area, the addition, then the garage. The addition houses my sewing room/guestbedroom/junk storage... you get the idea. And the poor little half bath was used as a closet for almost 2 years (sad, but true!)

Now is the time for our little bath's makeover. I wish I could show you the full, hideous before picture, but we did some minor repairs when we first moved in. This is the only picture I could find (the bathroom is on the left)


Now it is completely gutted and ready for lots of work this week:

Sunday, February 24, 2008

100 years ago...

We have a local studio, Arts Alive, that does the most amazing drama productions with middle and high school age kids. The program director is a creative genius; he writes the plays and builds the sets and then directs the plays. Whew! It makes me tired just thinking about all he does! One of the moms is a professional seamstress and she makes sure that there are unique, detailed, and historically accurate costumes for every performer in every play. I want to be her someday!

This spring, they will be doing a play set at the turn of the 20th century, in the Edwardian era. You'll be in the right era if you think about the costuming in Mary Poppins or Titanic. Or if you look at these pictures:


At least I think those are right; I'll have a better idea in a few weeks.

The thing is, the studio has never done a production from this time period before, so every single costume is going to have to be made, new! Here's where I come in! I will be working as an assistant costumer to help create costumes for the 52 (yes, 52!) actors and actresses, some of whom will have costume changes. I am so excited I could explode! Costumes are my very favorite thing to sew, and period costumes to boot? I am in heaven! We'll be starting in a few weeks after they get the production cast. Until then, I just get to think happy costume thoughts.