Navaho white

I offhandedly said to Scott that after the new slip covers I'd been making for the living room, it might be nice to paint the room. We looked at several paint chips at the hardware store and narrowed it down to Benjamin Moore's "Navaho White", a creamy warm off-white, one that I have been wanted to use on some room for years. Well, after I had to make a long trip to Texas, he surprised me by painting the room himself! Not only did he paint the walls but all the trim as well (it really needed it, lots of discolored patches where I had tried to cover up scratches and scuffs). The whole room is much brighter, lighter, and crisper, while still being warm (it is the fireplace room, after all). 

The mermen

 I saw this picture on Pinterest one day and thought "How cute, I'll bet I could make one of those." And so I did. 

After some research on YouTube on how to make soft dolls I took a crack at it with my 'new' sewing machine. Using muslin, I made a first attempt with a pattern I based on the photo. It was a disaster. Wrong proportions and tight in all the wrong places. Back to YouTube. Amending the first pattern I tried again and it worked like a charm. I set this one aside as it didn't have the tat arm like the reference dolls. The first successful attempt sorta came out looking like me! I used an old piece of bandana for the tail fabric. After I finished it I thought it would be fun to do a second one based on Scott (I used the first form that came out nicely). To make sure it resembled him I made the eyes blue and added one of his signature hats and vests. It was my project while he was away for 10 days at his share on Fire Island. I surprised him with it when he got back. He loved it. Now they sit on the sweater shelf in the bedroom. 

After a while I decided the cutest thing would be to make a Travis "merdog". He turned out adorable too. :) 

My slipcover is showing

 The next big projects I wanted to tackle with the sewing machine were slip covers for several pieces of furniture, items that were in sore need of updating or repair. I researched how to make them from several YouTube videos (thank God for the internet!) and one in particular recommended using cotton drop clothes for the fabric. These are very durable, large canvases that painters use. When they're washed they get super soft and the best thing of all is that the upholstery 'fabric' ends up being very cheap, just a little over $2.00 a yard! I just buy the 9' x 12' size right off of Amazon and they show up in no time.

The first thing I tackled was the kitchen bar stool. It had a 'pleather' seat and it had gotten severely worn with age. I chose not to do piping on it, but I did close up the back with several ties. It's much better than the make-shift piece of fabric I had on it previously.

The next project was the 'Martha Washington' chair in the living room, the one from Ethan Allen. It had a red slipcover that was perfectly fine, but I was in the mood to lighten up the color scheme in that room (the eventual project is to lighten the wall color in there, I'm hoping to get to this in the coming Winter).

This week I finished a slipcover for the long window seat cushion in the bay window. This was very challenging. It was the first time I had really undertaken piping, and there was a LOT of it. The piping here went all the way around the top and bottom edges. There are some very minor boo-boos here and there, but overall it came out pretty nice. I'm proud of the effort. 

Cherry picking

 In this house we prefer cherry tomatoes to regular tomatoes. You never seem to need a whole big tomato for a recipe or salad and then you're left with a large chunk that gets mealy and ends up being thrown out. The solution? I always have a basket or two of cherry tomatoes on hand. It allows you to use just the right amount of tomato and there's no waste. But the downside is that they need to be kept at room temperature on the counter and they come in those ugly plastic containers that are so unsightly. 

Who wants one or two of those things sitting on the counter? NOT ME. So I finally decided on a solution. A nice ceramic holder that looks like a paper container that you get at a roadside farmstead or farmer's market. So much nice to look at. I found one on Easy that was nicely priced and I was quite happy to see that it was much larger than I had expected from the picture. It can hold up to two containers of tomatoes. It sits nicely on my kitchen island, I love it. 

The power trip

 I bought Scott a new toy the other day, a power washer. He had been telling me how great they were and when I found out you could get one for only $150 or so I thought 'why not?' 

It arrived by UPS one day shortly after lunch and within an hour he had it unpacked and had started his first project, washing the mold from the front blue stone steps. They now look like the day they were installed. 

He also blasted the trim around the porch door. He still has to finish the rest of the screens on the other sides. Yesterday he tackled the old teak bench in the back yard, the one my father and I assembled almost 20 years ago. It looks brand new.

Lastly, he took on the little brick path on the side of the house. It really evened out the color as one strip of the bricks I put down this past Spring. Now they're all the same color. 

This thing is worth its weight in gold!

Winter water views

 I ran across an aerial view of Sag Harbor online the other day. I realized that just out of frame in this shot IS MY BACKYARD. You can really see how close I am to the water, it's something I should really push if I ever decide to sell. I could bill it as "Winter Water Views" because if you get up on my roof you can see just a little bit of the bay! 

The Robe

 I've been doing small projects with my 'new' sewing machine, the one I got FREE from a yard down the block...mending towels, enlarging bandanas, making a quick slip cover for a chair back. I felt comfortable enough to jump feet first into a big undertaking, a garment using a pattern. I decided a robe would be a great thing, something comfy but not too fitted, so the sewing wouldn't need to be too exacting. I wanted a robe with a hood. In the colder months I like waking up and having my head covered. I found the exact thing I wanted in a Simplicity pattern that I found on Amazon. I needed five and half yards of fabric. There was a nice blue-green, very masculine. It took me a whole day to lay out the pattern on the fabric after it had been washed and then to cut out all the pieces. Then another day to do the pockets and belt loops. The third day I got most of the body of the robe done and the last day I finished the hood and the hemming. At first I thought that the fit was a little too big (I chose to go with LARGE as the size), but on reflection I think it's fine. If I were to make another one I might try the MEDIUM. I learned A LOT about patterns and garment construction thru this process. Thank God for YouTube also. I watched a ton of how-to videos and picked up a lot of tips and tricks that helped a lot. I can't wait to try my next project.