Love Affair

I have a confession ... I have a love affair with fabric. Do I sew, you ask? No. Do I re-upholster, you ask? No. Hasn't your mother sewed for years? Yes. Didn't she teach you? I wasn't patient enough to be her student when I was younger. Now, I'm wishing I had. So, I have no skills that I could apply to fabric at all but I still love, love, love fabric.

Like all affairs this one is doomed. I can't commit. I look at a print and think ... "Oh, how I would love to see you hanging from my curtain rods" and instantly follow that up with "But, this one would look nice, too." The choices are endless. I adore so many different styles and patterns that narrowing it to just a couple is virtually impossible for me. I just have the hardest time committing.

In the beginning, my home decor color choices were limited to solids or stripes in the blue-green family because my husband was anti-anything that might be construed as too feminine. It was the "honeymoon phase" and I gladly went along with it because I liked those colors enough to use them and was really just ready to make our house feel like home. Flash forward 7 years and I'm ready to mix it up. It took me awhile but I've gotten him to agree to ... wait for it ... a floral! Gasp! Yes, he agreed and I was so super excited that before he could finish his stipulations ("Nothing too Grandma-y... ") I began scouring the Internet, as I always do, for the perfect print. Problem is that I couldn't pick just one. At this very moment, my desk is covered in 11 different swatches of fabrics that I'm considering for our family/dining room make over. I showed restraint when I picked out just 11 and, honestly, I'll be ordering a few more because I'm just not sure.

I haven't strayed too far from the blue green family but have chosen more vibrant colors and more accents to work with.

My main fabric is this gorgeous floral, for sure ...

I love the big, bold print and the color scheme. I think it will brighten the new family room up nicely and works well with a lot of our existing decor so I won't have to do a full blown make over. It will be more like a mini-face lift. This fabric gives me so many options to work with. I'm thinking of this for curtains for the slider and/or valances over the family/dining room windows.  Not sure though... that's a lot of floral. Ugh! I hate loving something and being so unsure of where to use it!

Anyway, the other fabrics I'm leaning toward are these patterns: 

 

The pea green in the mini chevron shows a little yellow in the image but the swatch matches perfectly to my floral. I didn't get a swatch of the yellow Ikat Dot but I plan to purchase one to make sure the yellows aren't too different.  I'm thinking these for pillows and maybe some place mats. I do have an ottoman that needs recovering but I don't know how I feel about either of these on it. Maybe the mini chevron? What do you think?

I'm loving the spiced carrot in the floral. Orange is such a hot color right now and I'd like to use it but I haven't figured out how to work that in yet. It might simply be with accessories or if I can find the Ikat Dot in that color that could be an option too.


I am 99.9% sure this is what I'll go with but ... I am not sure enough to buy the fabric yet! It's going to cost a pretty penny and, let's face it, I'm, at best, a beginner when it comes to sewing and I don't exactly want to practice with expensive fabric. I'd be a very unhappy camper if I ruined it. Very unhappy. I've considered hiring someone to bring my visions to light but I've said that before and still have a cabinet full of fabric that never got used plus there is extra cost involved. Purchasing this fabric will be my big splurge and I don't want to break the bank so I need to make this work.

Guess, I need to sign up for some sewing lessons. Stay tuned ...

Re-established 2012

Project Reorganize is well under way. Our garage sale is coming up this weekend as long as the weather holds out! We are hoping to off load a bunch of stuff and make a little money. Packing is in full swing and is as organized as packing can be. We spent an entire day prepping meals for the next 2 weeks that will help with the chaos. We're making progress. I know I still have a few more weeks of organizing before I can feel that the goal is accomplished but I'm feeling good about where we are at and am ready to get the ball rolling on Goal Two: Re-establish.

One result of our lack of time and jam packed schedule has been the unraveling of our family routine which is the first thing to be reestablished post move. Over the holidays we had so much going on and the constant visitors seeing the baby and Gramma and then our daily house hunting, moving and packing, it has been hard to keep up with any semblance of a routine. J., our toddler, is a creature of habit and has probably suffered most from the craziness. He's a toddler so he's pushing boundaries as it is but with multiple people to turn to for direction, distracted parents and a major upset in his routine his behavior over the last couple months has been less than desirable. With my Gramma now having moved and the holidays long since over, the visitors have tapered off tremendously and we've been actively working on figuring out and adapting what works for our family so we are hoping to see some improvement on that front. In fact, it is improving already but we're a long way from where we'd like to be.

One-on-one time with each of the kids is also at the top of the list. Having two older kids and two younger ones proves to be tough at times. A. is of an age where she'd rather be solo and  hang in her room which is OK because quite frankly the teen attitude is rearing it's head and I'm not a fan. N. still hangs with us and his brothers but often wants time with just Dad that is hard to give when the little ones are in need as well. Incorporating T. has been harder than I expected. He's tougher than J. who took to a schedule and routine very easily. Little T. needs a little more time to adapt which is making meeting everyone's needs overwhelming at times. J. is still very attached to his Daddy and rarely gets to spend one-on-one time with me because if Daddy is home so is everyone else and when he's gone I've got both boys by myself.  We are trying to carve out some time for us to go to the library for story time just the two of us. I'm hoping to make it a regular thing once we are settled again. Little T. probably gets the most one-on-one time because he needs me so much.

And not to leave anyone out of this ... bringing up the rear (not because it is any less important) is one-on-one time with the hubs. Simply put ... re-establishing our date night. Parents know that it isn't always easy getting out for some alone time with the spouse but it is uber important. Our children learn how to treat others by watching how we treat each other. I want my kids to see the love we share when they look at us and then I want them to take that with them out into the world. So, in the name of the kids, I'm making date night mandatory! :-) We're aiming for at least one night away from the actual house to start.

We did go out once already this month and it was sooo nice. Funny thing was it had been so long since we'd gone out we spent hours trying to figure out what we wanted to do. We were like kids in a candy store... "Oh, we could go for a movie... or down to the beach for dinner ... or... " I'm stock piling a list of date ideas so we don't have to waste so much time figuring out what to do next time. Once we made it out of the house we realized how much we missed the time together. When we aren't able to get away from the house we are trying to make sure we carve out a few hours after kiddo bedtime to sit quietly, share a drink and talk without interruption.

This goal is going to probably take the most effort. It requires us to be actively thinking of this goal all the time and admittedly I've become quite absent minded since my children were born. We get so caught up in the daily grind that it's easy to lose sight of your goals. Our first step is to simplify and slow down. Now, that's a step I can manage. 

Ringing in the New Year ... in early Spring

So after months of hibernation, I'm back to posting. At least I hope. I logged in this morning only to discover an incomplete blog that I started in, um, January. Yes, you read correctly. January. It was all about how I love the New Year, almost as much as I love the first day of school, and my goals yada yada yada. Seems slightly inappropriate now that it's mid-March but since it is driving my focus right now I should touch on it. So here's the slightly adapted version for the Spring.

Spring has sprung peeps. Pollen is in the air and my allergies are going haywire. I feel like my head is going to explode and I sound like Gilbert Godfrey. Not a pretty picture. Nonetheless, I'm excited. I love the Spring. It's a time of new beginnings, of refocusing and reorganizing and with that comes office supplies. Yes, office supplies. One can not reorganize without organizational tools and office supplies. It's a fact.

I know I'm a dork but being organized is almost a religious experience for me. When I'm unorganized I feel like my days get off to a false start. I sort of stumble my way through the day waiting for the synapses in my brain to start working so I can remember what in the Lord's name was I supposed to do today? Maybe I should take this as a clue that I need to jump on the coffee band wagon. Organization offers me clarity and a clear vision of my plan and as I have said before I'm a girl that likes to have a plan. It really does renew my spirit to know that I can start over fresh with the purchase of a new calendar and planner.  Just buying office supplies makes me feel good, productive and excited about what I can accomplish. 

I'm a little slow to get my organizing started this year but I'm cutting myself some slack since I've got a newborn in the house. I used to have a "To Do" list as long as my arm and would routinely cross multiple items off my list each day. Now, it's challenging having two babes in the house so I pick a max of 3 items and try my hardest to get to those. If I do, it is a successful day. If not, oh well, there's always tomorrow. It seems that I can't get them to nap at the same time or long enough for me to accomplish any one task. In fact, as I write this I'm chicken pecking the key board because I'm cradling the littlest while my oldest is driving a toy truck up my leg. Ah, motherhood.

I have taken (3 months ago) the same approach with my New Year's Goals as I do my daily "To Do" list--pick 3 things to focus on. I've got 3 items in mind--reorganization, reestablish and renew. We are about to reestablish ourselves again with another move but before we do that we are tackling the reorganization issue because another unorganized move might send me over the edge.

My biggest problem starting out 2012 is that we ended 2011 with two chaotic months with multiple hospitalizations for my Gramma and myself, the holidays, the birth of my youngest son and a challenging breast feeding experience that literally had me planted on the sofa with either T. or a breast pump attached to my breast. As a result, we've had little time to do much of anything so I'm back logged on just about everything--bill paying, filing, housework, laundry, shopping, etc. This is problematic because a cluttered space equates to a cluttered mind for me and I have a hard time identifying what needs to be done let alone focusing on (or finishing) one task. So, Goal One is to clean up and figure out what needs to be resolved and then stay on top of it. This is a daunting task and has resulted in a massive "To Do" list which was being written on the white board in the office so the hubs can help cross some things off. However, that proved too difficult since we moved our office downstairs and no longer have a constant visual reminder of the whiteboard that is still hanging in the old space. Simple fix is to move the whiteboard but we just haven't gotten around to it. Instead, I have spent hours scouring Pinterest for clever solutions to this problem and in the meantime have concreted my addiction to the Internet. No, really people, I need a support group. Yes, I do understand that I might have spent my time more productively actually DOING things instead of reading about HOW TO DO things but while my addiction can be distracting it has proved to help out tremendously with Goal ONE since I have come across so many tips and tricks to help keep me sane. I have discovered a system that I have put into play and it is working beautifully for my family. It also makes me happy because I got to buy office supplies.

I spent the better part of a day compiling my cleaning list and transferring the tasks onto 3x5 cards. I labeled the tasks that were appropriate for the kids to help out with and then sorted them into and labeled them in categories: daily, every other day, weekly, every other week, monthly, seasonally or quarterly. I purchased a note card holder and a set numbered of tabs so I could file each card into an appropriate day. Each day we pull out the cards under the day, complete those tasks then refile them in the appropriate spot. It's still a work in progress as I plan to add refiling directions on the bottom so the kids can refile without asking "where does this go now?"

Reasons I like this:

1. I have one place for all my tasks and it's not on a notepad that is going to get thrown into the pile of papers that has taken up residence on my counter and forgotten. 
2. The cards make it easy to delegate tasks without having to write another list. I can just put them on a clip on the fridge and remind the kids to check their cards.
3. I can write all the clever, why-didn't-I-think-of-that cleaning tips on the cards so whomever is doing that task knows how to take care of it. 

So far, it's working and I'm kinda excited about it. In the last week, this system has focused me/us enough that I can keep up on my housework and tackle the Spring clean out one task at a time. We've already gone through every room in the house to put things back where they belong (in preparation for the packing set to commence next week) and to purge unnecessary or unwanted items. We've also  done a few of the cleaning items, which is leaps and bounds better than last year when I didn't do ANY of them. We're scheduled to have a garage sale which I hope will fund my reestablishment/renew efforts in the new place. I normally am not a fan of garage sales but I'm really looking forward to it.

I guess I'm spring cleaning out life right now and not just my house. It feels good.