First of all, I received a gift that was amazing, but made life hectic for a while. I babysit for my friend who's a painter so this is how I get paid:
Before
After
I love my new kitchen! I bet I spend twice as much time in there now, and I keep it much cleaner than ever before. It is incredible what a difference some paint (and someone who knows how to do it right) can make.
Then, I made a little gift for myself. I come from a family of musicians. We used to perform together all the time, but now it's been a really long time - like 10 years. We were invited to do a sort of reunion concert and so I had to wear something formal. Only problem is, I'm pregnant. Very pregnant. So where do you get a formal maternity dress that isn't either a wedding dress or $400 (or both)? NOWHERE! Ok, on to Plan B: find a pattern. Oh wait, those don't exist either. So my very patient and generous mother, who has sewn many a dress in her day, went to work with me creating our own pattern (a combination of 3 or 4 existing patterns, plus some good ol' guessing). We made the whole thing out of a sheet first, made easily over 50 changes, and then finally did the real thing. It turned out great! I can't believe how hard it was, and I kept saying that I would never sew again, but now that it's done, I feel pretty empowered and even kind of want to sew more stuff. Anyway, here's what it looks like:
(The best picture of the dress happened to be a really bad one of my face, so I just cut it off.)
Please note that the pleat in the front allowed for me to make the dress ahead of time, not knowing exactly how fat I would be when I actually had to wear it. I thought that was pretty smart of us. In theory, this dress could look good at various stages of pregnancy. Maybe even post-baby? We'll see.
Anyway, these things, plus some others, have kept me far away from blogging and reading blogs. My RSS Feed collection totals 508 new posts right now. Scary. But I do have a couple gifts to post, so stay tuned...
