hello again

I took the train up to Baltimore for a week which was a blast but left me feeling pretty tired!  I've been back for a week now but I still have to get the photos off of my camera so I can share the excitement of my trip properly, so a post on it will be coming soon.

I spent Easter in a total house cleaning frenzy... I'm talking sweeping, vacuuming, and even moving everything off of all the furniture and *gasp* dusting.  Very necessary since I've spent the last month with the windows open, letting in a nice layer of pollen on everything.  More importantly, it also involved relocating the general layer of clutter that settles on all of our horizontal surfaces like a fine powder.  It's so peculiar/annoying because I CANNOT function in a mess, yet I seem to leave a mess behind me wherever I go.  The den has been a disaster since Christmas.  That room is like a black hole (literally it is because the back half of it is so dark you can hardly read movie titles in the blazing afternoon sun) and it seems to accumulate all the things that have nowhere else to go!  I also moved things around a bit in the office, getting ready for an exciting new little desk-ette (aka secretary)!

I spent this morning in the yard working on planting a couple of things, weeding, and pruning.  I saw several baby perennials coming back from last year!

Yesterday and today have also been spent working on my final project for the draping class.  It's going well and it was refreshing to start on Sunday and not feel too rushed.  I still have some work to do and will post photos when it's all done!

!!!!!!! ugh.

Apparently I'm always very excited to be sharing what I'm up to!  I just realized that 11 of my 13 post titles contain an exclamation mark!  (and now as of this post, it's 12 of 14 How embarrassing.  I'm going to make a concerted effort to cut that out : )

I've lived my life as a solid and well practiced procrastinator, but I've just recently decided that my habit is rooted in my problem with perfectionism.  My idol, Hellen Buttigeig, the fabulous organizer and host of the Canadian show 'Neat,' posted an article about perfectionism on her blog 'Organizing with Hellen' and I completely relate.

I finished my taxes last Thursday and will just be mailing them tomorrow (I can't explain why I didn't mail them last Friday).  This is a project of note because this year I have to file in 9 states, 1 city, and federal and I couldn't e-file them (according to TurboTax).  Yes folks, that's 11 income tax situations to deal with, and being such a control freak, I still felt compelled to do taxes myself even though most people who have worked on a tour use accountants.  But I don't trust accountants to do taxes right, I've seen it go very wrong a couple of times.

A pretty flower made of tax envelopes... good thing we have leftover 61 cent wedding stamps, no way are these are going to make it into the regular postage weight limits

And like a miracle, I've finished my homework by 1am the night before it's due!  Woohoo!  The project was to make a sleeve, something nice and refreshingly quick compared to the dress without a waist seam last time.  But in true Claire fashion, my best laid plans got mixed up... the arm I made for my dress form is on the right side, the regular side I drape on - however the bodice from my collar project that I grabbed to drape my sleeve on was draped for the left side.  How annoying!  I just draped it with the bodice inside out and then cut and stitched the muslin to be the right way round.

What a messy girl!  

It turns out, the new peninsula in the kitchen is the PERFECT drafting table

See?  The arm isn't doing me a whole lot of good over there!  Looking at this picture, I now see that the socks that I stuffed the bust of the form with last time are starting to sag.  yikes!

We're Famous! (well kind of)

Our wedding photographer just told me a few days ago that our wedding was featured a few weeks ago on the Dream Green Wedding Blog!

You always remember your wedding, but it definitely takes a backseat to real life once it's over - particularly our real lives which involved going back on the road, working the remaining 6 weeks of our tour, closing that, going to New York for 3 weeks while Bob did shop prep for another tour, and then coming home (but going on trips every month) and working at a bridal shop, where other girl's weddings started filling my mind!  So it was a total surprise when our excellent photographer, Sarah Whitmeyer, sent me the link to our wedding on that blog!

Woohoo!  So fun to look at the pictures again!  Now that I'm a housewife, I'm hoping to work on the remaining wedding projects - printing photos and making an album!

A Busy and Restful Day!

Somehow, today I managed to hit the fine balance of staying busy without really getting anything done!

I spent a long time on the Amtrak website weighing out dates and times for upcoming trips to Boston, Chicago, and Hartford but still haven't decided.  I tried to cancel my Southwest ticket to Baltimore because I'm taking the train instead - but the wait time on the phone was going to be 15-20 minutes, so I hung up.

Did some menu planning for my upcoming Royal Wedding Party on the 29th.

By merely taking a scenic walk around the yard, I got estimates on some major outdoor projects and we just have to decide how much work I am going to do and how much work we should pay someone else to do (and when we want to shell out the money to get it done!)

-power washing the shed
-power washing the shed and house
-power washing the shed and house and scraping/reglazing/painting the window trim on the house
-fixing the cracked window pane on one of the windows
-tearing down the pergola with and without haul away
-building a new safer properly designed pergola
-building the new pergola and screening it in (take that, mosquitoes!)

The exorbitant cost of fixing the cracked window pane tells me that if we decide that the pane needs replacing, I will soon become familiar with glazer's points and putty and the nuances of replacing glass in old windows!  The piece is 8"x32" and the quote was from Glass Doctors for a minimum of $175  *choking*  We could get some other quotes but I imagine that they'll be high too since it would be coming all the way to our house to do one tiny piece of a window.  Good thing the crack is at one corner and only about 3" long.  I've had it covered with painter's tape for 6 months and that seems to be doing the trick : )

I'm really hopeful about the pergola project (particularly with screens added in) but I'm nervous about hiring someone to do it!  The most major project I've hired out is having the electrician put 3 pendant lights where we used to have one chandelier!  This is a whole different situation, involving things like liability insurance, checking on contractor licensing, permit pulling, etc... and there are so many horror stories on tv about people getting ripped off by contractors!

A Wonderful Weekend!

I feel like I had a great weekend!  Friday night I made potato soup and blueberry muffins (not together as a meal)

It was amazing to be able to get the soup ingredients together and chopped up on my counter that's NEXT to the stove!  My kitchen rearranging project from this past winter is wonderful and a month later, it's still AMAZING to me!

yep, that's my Martha Stewart knock-off SlapChop!

Making the blueberry muffins was great too.  I still get so excited about making something all in one place in our kitchen, and I really love it when I use the new peninsula.  Check it out - all of my ingredients AND my cookbook are together on one single surface!  And then the muffin pan gets to join them too!  Wowza!

Most importantly, I'm feeling a lot better and seem to be doing well on regular old Motrin!  I'm still anxiously awaiting the results from the battery of tests they did on my blood last week.  I'm hoping for something nice and relatively simple like a random virus or Lyme.. not rheumatic fever or anything else scary (though rheumatic fever does conjure up some kind of romantic Gone with the Wind type of thought)

I didn't get much done, but going to work at the ballet this weekend was fun (except for the sauna-like temperatures that the dancers want!)  I've worked on and off with the ballet for over 7 years (wow that's a long time!) and I love getting to see the dancers who I've known since the beginning.  I haven't really been around much in the past couple of years and there are so many new company members who I barely know, so it's a fun mix!

After our show today, I zipped over to Durham and visited some friends who are in town with the Shrek tour.  Then I headed home and my Mom came over to check out the new look in our backyard in person!

Yay for the TreeMan!

I got up early thinking it would be a nice relaxing ho-hum day at home.  I'm feeling mostly better except for pain in my wrists and hands (which is better than yesterday, so that's great!)  The day turned out to be far from ho-hum though!

I picked up some sub work at the ballet this weekend, so that will be two shows Saturday and one show Sunday.  I feel pretty good about going to work for a couple of days and am desperately hoping that my hands feel normal tomorrow.  Luckily there isn't really any shoe tying or buckling during ballet costume changes, so I should be ok with my sub-optimal fine motor skills.

I spent the morning looking around online at area rugs.  Our beloved dog Tommy is getting older and HATES to walk on hardwood floors.  I got a runner for the hallway a few months ago and he's finally deemed it safe to walk on.  He decided to sleep on our bedroom floor last night (which only happens about 3 times a year and usually just during a storm) so now I'm thinking again about getting an area rug for the bedroom floor so that he'll feel safer and more welcome.  I found an option from FLOR that I'm really excited about!  I don't need a rug quite that big but I love the shape and I could cut it myself out of an area made of fewer tiles.  I feel like this rug has a slim to none "husband approval" chance but I went ahead and ordered a few swatches to look at, so we'll see.  Did I mention that the swatches are pink?  Pink is the new black, it looks good with every other color, even orange which is the color of our bedroom!

I also started tearing apart the cushions on the patio furniture so I could soak the foam parts in bleach.  They're ugly and I want to make new covers for the foam inside them (which is about as gross looking as the chair seat in the before photo.)  I also tried cleaning one of the chairs and it turned out really well!

before

after... like brand new!

Towards the end of the outdoor furniture / bleach project, the TreeMan called and said he could come over in a couple of hours because of a cancellation this afternoon!  This was VERY EXCITING because he just did the estimate yesterday afternoon and said it would probably be a couple of weeks.  He knew I was eager to get the gnarled redbud down while the cherry tree was still blooming, so he snuck us into the schedule when they got the opening!

The guys took out the 2 gnarled old dying redbud trees, all the Bradford Pear babies behind the fence, a fully grown Bradford Pear baby on the side of the yard, 3 GIANT overgrown boxwoods in front of the shed, and the saplings by the house.  (for those not in the know, Bradford Pear trees have pretty but stinky flowers, the bastard spawn of Bradford Pear trees do not flower and are pokey with thorn type protrusions on the branches)

before - with the 2 extra large rotting redbud trees in the foreground

after - what a great view!

The redbud trees were dying and hollow inside!  Good thing we took them down!

shed before... with 3 GIANT shrubberies

shed after... one good power washing away from a spiffy new paint job!

Somebody come make me sit and relax!

I had a busy day!  My Aunt Annette graciously took me to the doctor to get my blood taken and then took me to class and spent some time in Chapel Hill waiting for me to get out of class.  We had a lovely lunch and then she took me home.  I felt super exhausted once I got home... it was a busy day for someone who hasn't really left the house for a week!  I need to go finish my tax stuff but I felt too tired to deal with it, so what did I do instead?  After laying in bed crying for a few minutes about how I couldn't do anything and was tired of trying to arrange car rides to get around (I'm on prescription pain meds and am not supposed to drive -and it's only rides yesterday to the doctor, today to class, and tomorrow for taxes), I got inspired...

I thought that posting our tin roof scrap on Craigslist would be a great non-energy consuming project!  I took some photos and measurements and posted it in the free section.  Within minutes, I had received several emails from people who just couldn't wait to come get the roof.  (Why didn't we do this 5 years ago when we demolished the shed???)

What I didn't think of with this genius idea of mine was that
1) anyone would want it
2) we don't want strangers traipsing around the backyard to get the thing
3) how was it going to get into the driveway so someone could pick it up?

Well, unfortunately, I'm unstoppable.  Despite being ill with this particular thing for a week, and with other things for the 3 weeks prior, I thought... maybe I could move it.  (mind you, at 92"x106" it's approximately the size of my car and it still has the little wooden beams nailed underneath it)  My body is hurting a lot less and it's really hard to admit to myself that I'm still pretty ill and need to take it easy.

I dragged it a few feet and thought "this sucks but I could probably go a little further."  I got it to the gate and thought I'd go ask my neighbor for help getting it through.  He didn't answer the door so I went home dejected and wondering what to do.  Bob called soon after and I hesitantly told him what I was up to.   I told him that I'd gotten it halfway there and couldn't go through the gate alone and that I'd scratched my finger on one of the many nails sticking out.  "I'm unstoppable" I said as my voice cracked into a teary one.  After we got off the phone, I went to take another look.  (I should put in here that Bob in no way is supporting me doing stupid stuff like this!  He wants me to rest!) This time (with gloves), I figured out that if I turned it 90 and opened the other half of the gate, and then used my Jedi mind powers I could get it through.  Well, I did.  Actually, I went around my car through the yard so it wasn't totally a Jedi mind trick, but it looks like it in the photo!

Yay!  Sorry Mom!

So basically, today's lesson is that I probably need 24 hour supervision to prevent me from potentially getting myself into trouble by getting off the couch.  I'M JUST NOT A SITTING ON THE COUCH PERSON!  Aaahhh!

On the Mend!

I'm feeling a lot better and am on the road to recovery!  I wish I knew what was going on, but the doctor hasn't really figured it out yet.  I'm getting more blood stolen from my arm tomorrow morning and they're going to run more tests and hopefully we'll find an answer soon.

I'm SO READY to start doing cool stuff again!  I'm not one who ever gets bored, but this past few days I've really been getting close to boredom since I'm at home with all the time in the world to do stuff, and am unable to really do things.  My hands are working better, so I'm thinking the map project is next!

I'm also thinking that this is a great time to work on the projects that we need to hire other people to do!  I love this gnarled old redbud tree, but for the first time, I've noticed that we have a completely gorgeous giant double flowering cherry tree behind it!  The redbud is dying and has dropped two large branches in the last year, so I'm going to have it taken out so that we can better see the cherry tree, dogwood, and Japanese maple behind it!

can you find the double cherry behind the ivy tangled gnarled redbud?

This is another project I'm hoping to push through soon... our treacherous but totally awesome pergola.  Hey carpenters, see any structural issues?  hehe.  I'm thinking that adding lots of screws and replacing the cracked and bowed columns will make it safer.  We love the size of it and it seems costly to try to build a new one.

it's listing out just a little : )

we have 3 of these holding the 20' x 20' structure to the fascia board (hopefully they're also attached to the roof joists or something as well)

some of the pretty flowers growing in our yard right now!

This is the latest of my grandmother's orchids to bloom!  Mom soaked all of the orchids for me on Friday night, and she took this one down which I never do.  It just gets water poured into the plastic tray underneath so I just leave it hanging.  When she took it down, we were both amazed to see 3 fully formed flower stalks just days away from blooming that had been growing facing out the glass door out of sight!  She put it back with the blooms facing us and today they popped open!  I'm thrilled and I guess getting to see these blossoms this is the silver lining in my mysterious illness.  I never would have seen them if she hadn't taken the whole basket down!

My walking iris plant bloomed again today!  The blooms only last a day so it's a precious fleeing excitement!  It's growing lots of little buds and this is only the 3rd day in 2 weeks that I've seen blossoms, so it's still very new and exciting.  This was also my grandmother's plant.  It's HUGE, about 3' across and all spiky and tropical looking.  It's really cool!

If I believed in that kind of stuff, I would think that my grandmother is still looking after her plants.  They were pretty much her favorite thing and she had LOTS of them!  We split the plants up amongst the family and we all seem to be having good luck with them so far.   She died in November and so far, I've had blooms on the walking iris, cactus, and 4 orchids (one of which bloomed from November until the end of March!)

Mostly Mobile!

I can get out of the bed all by myself again!  Woohoo!  I'm so excited to have turned the corner and be on the mend!  I'm not really hobbley today and while I am still in a bit of pain, my body is mostly mobile!  My very kind mother in law spent the night last night in case I needed help.  It's been a weekend of mom sleep over parties!  My main project for today is making waffles for breakfast!

My new favorite App!

I saw this app listed in a magazine last night and downloaded it immediately... it's called "Painting Walls" and it's amazing!  You snap a photo of your room or house and then try out different paint colors on the picture!  If you're a really visual person like me, it's perfect because you can actually see how that room would look before you commit to painting!  What a fun app, right?

So far, I've just been checking out different colors for our shed that's in desperate need of real paint (it's currently whitewashed, like Tom Sawyer's fence... when you touch it, white powder comes off).  I think that I'm going to remove the shutters (one fell off a few months ago anyway) and put a cute painted trellis on each side of the window so I can plant some climbing flowers!  And the removal of the giant ugly boxwoods goes without saying...  they will be replaced with some pretty azaleas!

I'm feeling a little better today which is great!  I can lift my right arm above my head!  I was so pitiful last night that my mom stayed over... I literally needed help getting out of bed in the morning  It's so charming that I get to try out a sample of feeling totally old and decrepit since I am just months away from a benchmark birthday!

Sick of Being Sickie!

In an extremely unfair turn of events, I woke up yesterday morning with pretty painful muscle soreness in my right hip and hand.  I figured I had slept funny because the night before I was up late working on homework like it was 1999.  Even though I'm taking just one class, I still feel compelled to wait until the day before to do my homework (a die hard procrastinator much to my mother's chagrin).

I started draping the dress around 7pm and I figured it'd be done by midnight (I'm a constant victim of my own magical thinking).  Right.  I finished my drape and paper patterns around 1 and then still had to cut the pieces out of my fabric and sew them.  I got to bed at 4:30am.  It felt like it took forever, but I think that starting from scratch with draping then patterning and ending up with a finished dress in 8 hours isn't too bad.  I'm pretty pleased with the dress though.  I need to let it out a tiny bit in the hips to fit me more attractively, but it fits really well considering that I used socks and felt to pad out my dress form (which is why there is t-shirt under the dress) to account for my weight gain since I sized it to fit me in college, several pounds ago : )  Thanks again for the dress form, Mom!  Squishy is still holding up well 8 years later!

"Designing" isn't really in my skill set, so I usually look around online for inspiration for my homework projects.  This week I picked a cute Lilly Pulitzer dress, minus the shoulder bow!  I didn't put enough flare in the skirt but I was worried about running out of fabric.

it definitely looks cuter on the Lilly model, but she's about half my size!

So naturally I figured that the sleepless night was to blame for feeling off yesterday morning.  As the day progressed, I started hobbling around and by bedtime, my upper arms, left hip, and left hand were starting to get in the game.  It took a while for me to muster up the motivation to lay down once I sat on my bed, and it really took some doing to get out of the bed this morning because of the pain.  I went to the doc and since I've been recovering from the other illnesses, it's hard to say what symptoms are new and which are old (other than the mobility issues).  So basically they took my blood (which is still ridiculously upsetting even though I'm nearly 30) and are going to check it for tick diseases, mono, and some other kind of bacterial thing.

That was a really long-winded way of saying that I'm sorry I'm so boring and not crafty or projecty this week.  I started a blog because usually I'm working on lots of stuff and traveling all around - but not this week : (