The Pit of Despair

I am not great at managing paper. My friend Julie calls it "The Paper Tiger." 

In January of 2019 my office looked like this. I spent the better part of a weekend cleaning the desk and getting rid of the junk. It was a good thing I did it. 

A few weeks later I was sent home to "work from home until this blows over." 

I pulled out an old card table and put my own papers on it so the desk was freed up to work.

Never in a thousand years did I expect to work from home for fourteen months.

In January of this year I built a pantry in the office closet. I still had to rearrange the rest of the closet, so, naturally, the stuff inside ended up in the office itself.

And then I got the brilliant idea to renovate my guest bathroom. The only problem is access to the shower plumbing is through the wall in the closet. So the pantry had to come out.

Of course it all ended up in the office, along with all the fixtures and things that were going to go in the new bathroom.

So when the plumbing was done and the closet was cleaned out, I was more than eager to put the pantry back together to get my room back.

This was a massive improvement, but as you can see, I had a long way to go.

So yesterday, two days into a long weekend, I started in on the office. My goal was to reclaim the floor space taken up by the folding table and clear off my desk.

You know you collect more than you need when you get rid of the excess and find yourself with empty storage containers (LOL) The stuff on the cat tree is stuff that's going in the renovated bathroom. I'm keeping the cat tree because I think I might someday get another cat.

Last month the town had a shredding event, so I had sorted through all my papers and brought a big box for shredding. The stuff in the corner is stuff I am planning to sell at the neighborhood yard sale at the end of June. 

So now the Pit of Despair isn't. It's now my Office.

It has been a hell of a year for me so far, and I'm looking forward to doing not a whole hell of a lot during the second half of the year.

Except in the Studio. I can't wait to spend more time in there doing my favorite thing... taking big pieces of fabric, cutting them up into smaller pieces of fabric, and then sewing them up into big pieces of fabric again.

Heh.

The Last of the Heavy Lifting

 

The backsplash on the vanity has been installed, as well as the light fixture. The round paper taped to the wall represents where a round beveled mirror will go.

I painted the door white. Because it was brown, I knew it would need at least two coats.

Here the wallpaper is done and I've put a second coat of paint on the door. I was so sore after finishing I just couldn't believe it. But I am happy with it.

So here is what the other side of the room looks. The room needs more trim, the towel racks, toilet paper holder, the doorknob and mirror need to be installed. The shower doors are due at the end of the week.

I decided the room could use a little bit of gold, so when I saw this gold colored dish, I thought it was perfect.

Lesley wanted to know if the floor of the shower was slippery. I haven't noticed that, but if I do find it to be so, I will surely get a mat of some kind. I do have a bathmat that I'll use when I step out of the shower. Normally that will dry by hanging over the top of the shower doors, but the doors won't be here for another week. so for now, I throw the bath mat over a chair on my front porch to dry.

Julie asked "Are you seeing what you hoped to see when you planned all this?"

The answer is, quite simply... Yes!

When I have had a moment, I have made slabs of my fabrics with colored prints on a black background, and cut them into triangles. You can learn how from my Scrap Slab Triangles tutorial available here at my Etsy shop.

Almost

 

The big project is getting closer to completion. The shower doors are due to be delivered next week, but the shower itself is complete, so I got a shower curtain so I can use it.

I got a combination rainfall shower head with a hand nozzle. I had a grab bar installed (you can see it in the top photo.)

I bought a shower stool also. I didn't want one of those ugly ones, so this one is teak. The whole shower replacement was designed for an aging body - mine.

So how does it work? I took a shower in the new shower for the first time this morning. 

I LOVE EVERYTHING ABOUT IT!!! 

The shower head is large, and the water spray is large. I loved being able to use the hand held nozzle to rinse my hair. I liked being able to sit to comfortably wash my feet (one of my knees is a little gimpy). I loved being able to use the hand held nozzle to rinse my lower body while seated. I loved being able to use the grab bar to stand up safely.

The end of this project is in sight, and I cannot believe how much mental energy it has taken. 

Kinda Sorta

 

I did some wallpapering in the guest bathroom. The new wallpaper is self-stick. I have to fussy cut it so it will fit. Pretty glad I have some tools to make that easier..

 

My great big dining room table was pretty handy too!

Here's the first strip. It was easier than I thought it would be. I like the wallpaper I picked. Bear in mind choosing stuff for the new bathroom required a fair amount of faith. It wasn't like I could put all the items next to each other...

But let's go back to the start, shall we?

This was the bathroom before. Low toilet, low vanity.

Here is the room with the higher toilet, but the shower curtain is gone so you can see the room as it was originally was.

What a difference! There is still so much to be done, but everything is more modern.

I actually ran out of wallpaper and had to order more. But now that work has resumed I can relax and get ready for Julie's visit. 

Actually I am counting the days until I don't have to shower in the teeny tiny shower (26" square) I've been using for the last month.

This and That

 

A couple of weeks ago I was at one of the mark-down home stuff stores and I saw these round orange pillows that looked like flowers. They were for outside, but I thought they were cute as hell, and besides I have a chair in my living room the same color. So they came home with me.

 I arranged the Whirlygig quilt on the back of my couch, and put the two flowered pillows on either side. Looks good! Whirlygig is a Scap Slab quilt. You can see a picture of the full thing here. (scroll down a bit.) 

I like the blue in the quilt and wanted to carry the color idea over to the red-orange chair, so I poked around in my stash, found some fabric that shared the colors of the quilt and whipped up this pillow cover. Now the room looks fresh for the summer and Julie's visit.
 

I rearranged the birds so they are all right side up. I don't know how I am going to arrange them, but at least this way they look like birds and we can see they are individuals. The other way the legs grabbed the viewer's attention, and that didn't make any sense. They stopped looking like birds, which is NOT what I want. I will figure it out.

You don't always know what you need until you need something. I've got an overstuffed freezer, and I'm trying to work my way through all the stuff I've got in there. I thought I'd made some pulled chicken tacos for dinner. It was 90F and I certainly didn't want to be cooking. I pulled one chicken breast out of the freezer. Perfect. I could easily make the pulled chicken in the crock pot. Only problem is the crock pot I have is one of those enormous six quart ones. Great if you are feeding a crowd. Not me. It's also good if you like leftovers (not me either, I already have too much stuff in my freezer.) I knew cooking ONE chicken breast in that big crock pot would not work. So I wondered if I could get a TINY crock pot. Sure enough, on Amazon (where else?) I could get an one quart crock pot for less than 12 bucks. And if I ordered it "in the next 57 minutes" I could have it at my house the next day. Oh glory be. Worked like a charm. The big crock pot will very likely be going in the yard sale at the end of the month.

My granddaughter and I made some Caramel Delight Energy Balls via FaceTime. She got to use her new mixer. My son had specifically asked for these. My DIL said she'd need to go to the grocery store as she didn't have all the ingredients. We'd made them once before, but they hadn't had the coconut, so they substituted chopped pistashios. This time I suggested she get some mini M&Ms to use in addition to the mini chocolate chips the recipe asks for. "They look cute and I think DGD will like them." Ok, mission accomplished.

DS helped DGD toast the coconut, then left her to shape the balls and roll them in the toasted coconut. After she'd done about half of them, my son came by and asked if he could try one. DGD proudly handed him the biggest one. "OH HOLY HELL," I heard my son proclaim, "these are GOOD!" My DGD grinned. "These won't last."

How good were they? Two thumbs, and toes, up! 

Many years ago my son's pediatrician commented about him, "There's a lotta ham in this kid." Well, I think it rubbed off.

 

Round and Round

 

I thought I'd have the birds going around in circles- sort of like concentric circles, with birds in each "row" facing away from the other.

Then I rearranged them so they were all standing up. This didn't sing for me either.

What I'm trying to do is two interlocking coils where one set of birds faces one way and the other set of birds face the other way. This isn't working either.

I finally had to get out my sketchbook. Each square represents one bird block. If I did this, I'd need 70 blocks - a lot more than I have right now, so no matter what happens, I need to make more blocks.

I've laid out the bird like the plan above, but you can hardly tell the birds are arranged in any particular way at all. 

Here when a bird turned a corner, I rotated him. It's mildly interesting, but doesn't really convey the idea.

So I will make more blocks. If you want to join me you can get my tutorial here, at my Etsy shop.

 

You may be wondering where I was all last week. I was home. I've been busy. I've been making decisions; choosing lighting fixtures (I've decided to replace them in both bathrooms), searching and getting quotes for a mirror for the new bathroom, and making other decisions for what's going in there. I also chose a new ceiling fan for my living room. The guy that has been doing the work on my guest bathroom injured his back, throwing my schedule right to hell. 

I've been reading. I just finished A Gentleman in Moscow, which I enjoyed very much. I've also been watching Top Chef (Season 19!!).

I've been continuing to go through drawers and cabinets and closets going through my excess "stuff" so I can sell it at the community yard sale at the end of June. I've also made the annual trip to the garden center for the herb garden I grow each year. I have Parsley, Basil, Thyme, Rosemary, Oregano, Chives, Mint and Sage.

Anyway.

The Hummingbird

 

The world is a funny place.After I work on legs for over a dozen birds, what did I make next? A bird that didn't need any - a hummingbird.

Later I made a tall bird, using the light legs. I'm beginning to have ideas of how I might arrange these pink birds, but I need more of them!

If you want to make birds - and you really do - you can get the tutorial here, at my Etsy shop. It's an instant download so you can get started right away. You probably already have all the tools you need, and you can make them from your scraps (I do!)

Got Legs!

 

I really liked the light legs on this bird. Usually I make the legs dark, so I decided to change it up.

Here are the fabrics I chose. The one on the far left is the fabric I used for the legs in the bird above.

This gold fabric is used on a fabric with a very slight print, so it isn't a WOW.

As you can see, these legs are a lot lighter than the fabrics I traditionally use. But here is a surprise...

Hmmm.., Wonder what it is?

 

I think it's supposed to be dragonfly wings. Just goes to show you how there is more to your fabric than you think.

Here are my completed leg panels.

If you want to make birds, you can get my tutorial here.