Eat your heart out, yes, I have a crafting studio. I had the bulk of the basement for a while. But with a new one on the way, dad decided that I needed to wrangle my space. It’s probably a good idea, I’m like water, I just try to take up all the space I possibly can.
Let’s start at the beginning. We we moved into this house, there was a room in the basement and some open space. The room was office for a while. I had parts of the open room. Early this year, we took out about half the wall between the open space and the office. (we as in we hired someone to do it!) The kids had a play room in the office, and I had the open space. The idea was that the kids could have a room to stay wrangled in, I could work, and we could all see each other. The wrangling part wasn’t always so successful.
Then with a new one joining us, Dad decided the kids needed a bigger space. Me and the kids traded places. This makes it sound so simple. All toys went upstairs, then a closet in the office got torn out, then the carpet went and was replaced by linoleum. Most of moms stuff moved in. (The loom, even while being small, is not able to fit.) Linoleum went into the rest of the open space. Then new desks for the kids AND dad. New chairs for the kids. Toys move back down. While we were at it, we took out the old solar water heating system (which was so old, inefficient, and not even connected!) and moved the washer and drier down about 6 feet, opening up the open room even more!
I was quite sad to move into a smaller room, I did have to get rid of some stuff. But now I love it. I only have the stuff I am activly using. It’s pretty streamlined and useful. My husband is a brilliant man, all this was his idea!
I’ve take pictures. I posted them over at flikr, and rather than move every single pict over, I’m just going to point you over there. The pictures have notes on them!
I moved most of my frequently read blogs (FRB!) over here. Look! they are in the side bar. Some are for info, some are to keep up with fam, and some just make me laugh.
I adore Halloween. I love to make costumes and play dress up so this is an IDEAL holiday for me! I also have two very enthusiastic youngsters who love to dress up and are full of ideas. I’m going to ride that one as long as I can! Early October I talked to the kids about who they wanted to dress up as. Last year Cupcake (formerly known as Tiny T) had a great suggestion to be ‘scarecrows’ so I was hoping to have great ideas this year. Cupcake picks up the dvd box for Star Wars epi 4 and says ‘I want to be Princess Leia!” Little brother quickly chimes in “I wanna be Luke Sky-Walker!!” (That’s how he said it; with MUCH enthusiasm in the ‘walker’ part.) Aw, sweet, I think. Not only can we do this, we can WORK this. See, Luke and Leia are twins, the offspring of Padme Amadala and Anakin Skywalker, or Darth Vader. In case you didn’t know. Mom (me) is pregnant with twins. So that means if the kids are Luke and Leia, I HAVE to be Padme. And we will have to talk Dad into wearing his Darth Vader helmet.
T and K’s costumes were pretty simple. I made T’s dress in two pieces (front and back) and literally just laid her on the fabric and traced around her. It comes in a little too much at the waist, but it gets on. I made her a belt with some brown scrap I had laying around (not accurate, I know). I decided to make K jedi Luke instead of whiny Luke. All I made for him was a vest, the turtle neck and black pants were purchased at the thrift store.
hm, I have a picture of the kids in their costumes right after I finished them. I obvously haven’t uploaded it. Found it!
costumes finished!
Mom’s Padme outfit was a bit more difficult.
I decied to go with the brown outfit that she wears at the end of the move. It can actually be made a little warm and the shirt can be used later, and isn’t a hiding the belly outfit. I hit the Padawans Guide for help. There was a recommended pattern for the top, and I was able to find it. That was quite an adventure, BTW. It appears most pattern companies have pulled their maternity patterns. Um, why? Of course, we decided to move our basement around (and give mom a new studio) so there was a little worry about actually finding all the pieces and getting it all done. I managed to get it all together pretty quickly once the moving dust settled. I attached the sleeves to the outfit and tucked them under so I could pull them out later. I was planning on hitting the thrift store to find two belts to go across the chest but then a huge snow storm hit and we were stuck inside for two days. And so I improvised. That same brown that I made T’s belt from became my belt too! Sadly, my serger suffered in the move (Seriously? I picked you up and put you down. That was all. Why did you break?) so the belting didn’t get done as fast as I wanted to. It was ok, remember the snow? Wasn’t going anywhere….. The belting was all safety pinned so that it is removable after the fact. The collar was also added separately, and would have been easier with the serger too. The arm warmers were done before the serger break, gratefully, but I swear they kept shrinking. I ended up just using the brown maternity pants I own.
We never did get Dad into that Vader helmet, though.
How did we all look? FANTASTIC!
The kids were so excited to run around with lightsabers and tell everyone who they were. They got lots of compliments. People thought it was great. And my greatest compliment of the night came when I opened up the door for trick or treaters and a little guy yells “Nice Padme costume!”