shopping shopping shopping

I'm unusually excited about some shopping I'm going to be up to soon. Stereotypically, I do enjoy shopping but I have a surprisingly hard time spending money if the purchase isn't completely planned. It looks so pretty in my wallet, and I love seeing the numbers grow in my bank account. So shopping is fun, but also stressful.

Fabric shopping, though? That has become a whole different ballgame and there's a load of shopping coming up that I am overly excited about. Which of course means getting close to finishing projects, and gearing up for some new ones.

This weekend I'll be buying batting, backing and some new quilting thread for the Scrappy Trip. Because it's just teasing me right now, sitting in the other room where I can't do anything because I don't have fabric. (I've been working on the orchids cross stitch in the mean time. It's more of an attention suck, and it's not quite as fun for that.) So I'll be getting the finishing bits for that so I can get started on the endgame. I'll also need to choose my binding soon, but not until I've got it quilted.

I've also finally, I think, decided on prints for the quilt I'm making next. I'll show them to my niece sometime this weekend to get her a-ok, and then I'll get out the charge card ('cause I'm buying them online).

This is my favourite kind of shopping. What's yours?

closet fight

It has become apparent that it is time to do my seasonal closet changeover. Because Bunny and I don't have very much space in the wardrobe, I have most of my warm weather clothes packed up in a suitcase and just my winter sweaters and blazers and a few dresses hanging up. This isn't working for me, as clearly evidenced by the half hour it took me to get dressed this morning.

I'm not down with a half an hour to get dressed. I was trying to wear this super cute navy pencil skirt, and I could find a top to go with it (though it was a stretch in the fit department), I could find blazers and cardigans to go with it but for the life of me I couldn't come up with an actual outfit. I know I have other options packed up somewhere, but clothes only do me good if I can actually, well, wear them.

So this weekend I'll be packing up sweaters, taking a look to see what won't make it through another season, and pulling out more summery clothes. Hopefully once I have my summer wardrobe out I'll feel a bit better and it will be a matter of just continuing to search for those few key pieces that make things just perfect (I'm always on the hunt for a blazer, of course) and less "I have nothing to wear". I have plenty of clothes. I have lots to wear - I just need a decent layout of my options.

When do you know it's time to re-organize your closet? Are there any organizational schemes that work particularly well for you?

my scrappy quilt has a top

I'm being mean today. There's no photo with this update, mostly because I'm trying to save it for the big reveal at the end. But hey, I finished the quilt top. I have this big piece of scrapped out quilt top hanging out over a table in the basement waiting for me to collect some binding and backing fabric and get sandwiching. Once I get that done the quilting process will be a lot quicker than the piecing process. (Good thing, because I started this one back in January.) Bunny and I are also devising a plot for the big reveal picture. (And I still need to get a picture of the baby quilt, too, I know.)

I did end up ripping out that seam I was talking about, by the way. Even though it was just a minor scuff up, I knew it would bother me pretty much forever so I just bit the bullet and gave it a do over. Still not perfect (a lot of the seams aren't) but it's no worse than any other matched seam I've given a pass.

The rest of this week is twiddling my thumbs, really. I've pulled out my old orchid cross stitch for busy work for now, as I won't get a chance to work on the quilt again at least until the weekend. The long arm service/quilting store I was planning on buying my batting from (I have a gift certificate) was closed when we went on Sunday so I'm at a bit of a dead end right now until I can get my hands on batting and then buy some fabric for the back. I'm thinking maybe I might just use a sheet? I haven't decided, fully.

Finishing that has also given me the opportunity to work on the design for the next round, a quilt for my niece. The design is done, and I have my fabric requirements now it's just a matter of shopping. The solids will probably come from my local Fabricland (it's hard to mess up simple black and white solids, no?) but I can't find turquoise prints I like in person so I'll be ordering online. There are a couple of possibilities, I just need to hurry up and choose what I like and then order it, so I can get started cutting and sewing.

Also, I lied at the top. You get a picture. Mostly because my cat was being cute this weekend and I had to share, but you can see the back of part of the pieced quilt here as well.

So much for clean clothes.

flowery daydreams

As the idea of buying a house starts to look more like it might become a reality for Bunny and I in the next year, more and more of my daydreaming energy goes towards what I would do to make a generic house into our home. Some of it's simple stuff: print out and frame our favourite pictures, dust off and hang our art, get our furniture out again to enjoy, maybe new dishes in the kitchen and just general decorating. Finding display places for the model cars and motorcycles Bunny's working on. All that's the easy stuff.

But we also want outdoor spaces. We want a garden. Gardens, actually. Nevermind the fact that I'm allergic to springtime, I can deal with a few sneezes. We're both pretty set on having a productive vegetable garden, growing squashes and beans and peas, potatoes and beets and carrots, lettuce and spinach, tomatoes (for Bunny) and brussel sprouts (for me). Asparagus and some berry bushes, because both are delightful and perennials make life easy. A big pot overflowing with our favourite fresh herbs.

There's something about being connected like that to the food you're eating, you know? About putting your time into cultivating something and getting to enjoy the fruits of your labours. When children eventually come it's also a tool that we'd like to use to teach them about food, and about the value of caring for the land and work. Plus I have a handful of childhood memories that sneak into the back of my mind and remind me just how delightful peas fresh of the plant are.

Friday though I got sucked down the flower-gardening rabbit hole. Since I felt crummy and wasn't up for much more than sitting around reading listlessly between trips to the washroom I somehow started googling how to grow lilacs from cuttings. Because those lilac trees I mentioned loving at my mom's house? I fully plan on cloning those to grow in our yard.

As much as I want vegetables I'd also love to be surrounded by the pretty colours and scents of flowers. The lilacs, of course, but also other plants that bloom later into the season. Given that we plan on focusing on growing vegetables, I'd prefer to focus my perennials than annuals. A handful of rosebushes artfully spaced around the front and back yards. A lily bed, hopefully with a variety of early and late blooming varieties. Lilies are, after all, my favourite. Daffodils for their bright yellow colour and trumpeting blooms, and tulips. While they're not my favourite bulb flower, a field of tulips is rather stunning and I love the history of tulips in Canada. A tulip bed is also a little bit of a shout out to Bunny's family history, so there's that.

Do you garden? If so, what are the most rewarding plants you grow?

missing the food love

There hasn't been any real cooking or baking going on at my house right now, and I'm a little bummed about it. There are a lot of things I want to make, both meal wise and treat wise, but the world isn't on my side in that respect lately.

Last week I was working evenings, and getting home at nine doesn't lead to me wanting to make dinner. Bunny tries to help out when I'm busy like that, but his freelancing is in high gear this month so his time is in high demand. As for my mom? Well, that's not a reliable source of food. So we've had a lot of quick pasta dishes, and a few days of whatever Bunny threw on the grill.

Then, just as I was gearing up to a weekend in the kitchen life caught up with me. Cramps came pretty intensely, accompanied by one of the nastiest stomach bugs I've had in awhile. Sitting in the bathroom crying at three in the morning because I'm pretty sure my stomach is ripping itself to pieces does not make me want to bake (or eat, really ... thus the multitude of rye toast I've since ingested). Luckily the worst of that has passed and I can think about eating again ... but I'm on to another week of late shifts.

I feel so out of practice that I don't even know where to begin. Try a new recipe? Revisit a tried and true favourite? A variation of a an older one? Maybe I'll start just by putting peanut butter on my toast, next time, and go from there.

things, stuff, miscellaneii

Bunny and I like looking at old things. Other people's cast offs, second hand and vintage furniture, old houses. Of course give the man a chance to look at anything old that comes with an internal combustion engine and he's just hooked. For me, old houses and old neighbourhoods make me swoon.

We each have very distinct tastes, though there's an overlap. I love dark, heavy woods and have a fairly intense dislike for light woods and whites. They will not make it into our house, one day. He likes intricate carving and scroll work, out of an appreciation for and understanding of the skill involved. I find old chairs, particularly wingback styles, to be just luxurious and we both agree that old couches, while pretty are terribly uncomfortable.

I could spend an hour looking at old teacups. He could spend hours looking at old toys. It would not be unfair to say that our eventual domicile, when we purchase said home, will be quite a collection of things that go but don't match. New, overstuffed couches, old chairs, lots of old wooden furniture. Old art, one of a kind blankets.

This desire for the old, the pretty, the unique leaves both of us underwhelmed at the house opportunities in our city. Near the downtown centre, where the houses are 150-200 years old? They are gorgeous, unique and in various states of repair. Anywhere else in town? We're plagued with cookie-cutter, subdivision style mass market homes. Where every house looks just the same as the house beside it, just with a few different options. There's this one style of uniquely ugly home I've only ever seen in Barrie and it's quite horrible, really.

I'm confident that one day we will quite easily curate a home that caters to our own personal style and blends our old and new tastes. What I'm not so sure of is whether or not we can actually buy a house that has any interest, or whether we're going to end up in a cookie cutter house.

summer style on the way

It's been a week since I last wore pants. Well, I had yoga pants on yesterday but really I considered that pajamas, so I'll stick with my original statement. One week. No pants.

Of course I haven't been walking around with my girly bits hanging all everywhere. The lack of pants is part of the transition to spring and summer wardrobes. Snow is off the ground, humidity has crept into the air and the temperatures are regularly above 10*C (although this weekend we passed the 20* mark). One of the many delightful aspects of that is that I can walk around in skirts and tights and not freeze my tuckus off. Actually I'm even about to be ditching the tights, it's getting so warm.

So out comes my summer wardrobe. Dresses! Skirts! Shoes (instead of boots)! Cardigans and blazers for work instead of sweaters. Oh it's glorious. It also maybe lets me ignore how tight my good jeans are getting. I could stand to lose five pounds, but I'm the only person who notices right now.

I love this shift in my wardrobe. Even when I'm sticking with the exact same colour palette that I've used previously I just feel so free and fresh with skirts and dresses. It's amazing how much more like myself I feel when I start to slip into the summer clothing. My warm weather style feels genuinely me and I feel genuinely pretty wearing these clothes; it's a way I don't connect with my winter wardrobe. Oh I mean I love my skinny jeans and knee high boots ... but I don't feel completely myself in them. But dresses and blazers? Yeah that's me.