Ok. I loved Rango. I know I’ve been going on about it on twitter and Facebook, but for everyone else in the world? Go see it. Don’t worry about if you have a kid to go with or not, they won’t enjoy it as much as you anyway. I took Ari yesterday and practically gave myself a hernia I was laughing so hard. Maybe it was stress related, I don’t know, but I’m going to see it again, hopefully in the theatre. And it’s NOT in 3D! Woo!

And I also loved The Adjustment Bureau. It’s a smart movie about love. About waiting for love and being true.

We watch Bob’s Burgers each Sunday and I just said to Shannon how much I like it because it’s odd and funny and very silly. The voices are great, it’s a good show. Especially compared to the rest of the crap you get to watch on Sunday night. I haven’t enjoyed an episode of The Simpsons in at least 8 years. And I don’t like Family Guy and I loathe Cleveland. It’s awful.

I’m still going to the gym twice a week but I think I’ve lost the fever for it. My legs hurt when I use the treadmill and it makes the rest of my workout pointless. So yeah, I use the elliptical (or cross trainer as it were) and that hurts way less but still. And swimming is hard. I love the swimming part but I hate the wet hair afterwards part. And swimming caps don’t help. In fact, I don’t really know what a swimming cap is for.

Ok, so other than sewing like crazy (like, literally, CRAZY) I still do knit sometimes and I’m working on a couple other things.

I’ve also been enjoying cooking more lately, I often find myself thinking about how delicious roasted cauliflower is (very!) and what goes well with quinoa (almost anything). Shannon and I ate at Rawlicious last weekend while Ari was at her Oma’s house and I’ve been thinking about going back soon. I had this zuchetti thing, zucchini spiral shredded with tomato sauce all raw and I loved it. And then we shared a piece of ‘cheesecake’ and died and went to the moon. So very delicious, wow. So I’ve been thinking abut making that and then thinking that it’s the type of food best left to the professionals. Like sushi. And pad thai.

On top of everything I haven’t been sleeping much lately. Every night I go to bed and sleep for a couple hours then wake up at about 3:30 and stay awake for about 2 hours. Or longer. Then when I wake up for real for work or…sewing, I’m exhausted. I feel dead. I know why. But I feel more secure if I have my ipad in bed with me. RAH. It’s the IPAD’s FAULT!! But you know? When you’re like, ok, sleep time, good night pillow, good night duvet, good night ipad. Oh, what? Did someone tweet something witty? Is there an email for me? Grr.

Technology will clearly be the death of me.

Ok. I love you all. I’ll post real pictures soon.

I also made shutters and window boxes with leftover pieces:

I’m fully aware that I said before that I’d planned to do a grey scale theme with this one. OH WELL!

Nothing is glued permanently in place yet, I have to paint all that yellow siding out. I might do a different colour for each wall, I don’t know yet!

The interior will continue with the paint chip theme, using larger pieces. And I got some wood laminate for the floors, I’ll dye it to match.

Exciting!

Olivia! I love Olivia!

Mother is in the living room with baby William.  New couch!

Father is calling up to Mother, he’s on his way into the washroom. Ian is playing with toys in the bedroom.

Olivia is showing her cat, Edwin, her latest painting in the studio.

Need to do work in the bathroom and kitchen.

Lining up that window on the second floor was fun. Not. I haven’t finished the opposite end, both sides have windows and I’m pretty much dreading it. I’m sad I don’t have any exterior pictures of this house before I papered it, oh well.

Also, living room update:

Chairry! And Jambi! And Cool Cat and Chicky Baby (but no Dirty Dog, couldn’t find him)!  The rug is 3 coasters from the dollar store, sectional sofa made from foam rubber and upholstered in dark green velvet, flat screen tv is a piece of glass painted with silver with black electrical tape around the edge and the wood furniture is more foam rubber with ‘wood’ tiles stuck on. 3 plaid wool cushions. “Glass” table made of acrylic with clear thumb tack (minus the pointy part) legs.

Giggity!

The bedroom is not finished but it’s more finished than any other room:

The wallpaper is Japanese, the curtains are nautical and the floor is construction paper that will most likely be replaced. Beds, babies, babysitter, blankets. The rugs are just fabric scraps with the edge threads pulled out to create a fringe. The bathmat I crocheted and the wallpaper in there is  so cute, love it. All the baseboards are made from snipped up zip ties. The ceramic fish are from Red Rose tea.

The photo on the wall I cut out of the envelope that Ari’s school pictures came in. She thought it was weird (“Why is SHE on MY pictures?!?!”) so I made it into art.

The artist’s studio is coming along too:

I’m leaving the walls as is and I like light blue for the floor. I need to figure out paint and shelves. Shouldn’t be too hard, I have plenty of spools of thread that can be used.

The upper floors are pretty bare still:

The kitchen has awesome flooring, it’s crocodile skin textured paper that I love-I’m getting more in white to do the outside of the house tomorrow. I’m also going to get green paper for the walls.  I want to turn that window into a door but…I don’t know how.

Living room:

Just the floor is done. The tiles in the back are not there any more and I’ve made a sectional couch that’s covered in dark green velvet.  The walls will have a textured, grassy paper covering in a light, neutral colour.  I’ll make more rugs for that room.

More work tomorrow!

The small table in the centre has a pile of old purses/bags I’ve made over the years, with the very festive Santa beard purse on top. I was going to take pictures of them but didn’t bother.

The dollhouses.  There’s also a small mountain of almost finished acorns. I’m on the lookout for small threaded eye hooks-I think-to screw into the top of the acorn cap and then they can be hung on necklaces.

I really do need to start working on those houses, I know.

Here’s a little something:

Little, eh? They are teeny tiny (see? goes with my love of all things wee) buttons and zippers, destined for hand made Barbie clothes. I don’t know when they were made, but they look old to me, like, real old.  The buttons themselves are so small, miniscule, maybe the size of a Barbie’s eyes. A while ago I’d been looking for them for some crafty purpose and now I can’t remember what, but I’m glad I have them. Super glad!

Um. I made warm hats for my 2 babies. It even seems funny to me, but it’s just something to do when I’m relaxing at night, watching tv. I can crochet at the same time!

I also made one a diaper. It was going to be pants, but it’s body is shaped strangely and hard to work around. Below them is the new bathmat. It needs to be blocked so it will lay flat. Those hats look so ridiculously funny to me. Even Shannon agreed that they were cute.

Ok, but in the real world: we went to the new space and put up all those stickers in Ari’s new room. I have to say they look amazing. Again, thank goodness she got these as a gift, otherwise I doubt we’d have done much at all.  I still need to hang the paper sun above everything, then the decorating here will be done.

Shannon had other work to do so I stuck around and cleaned up, vaccuuming (my worst chore in the world), organizing, tidying in general. I dragged furniture from point a to point b. I even created a little reading nook for little people to snug up on and read to themselves.

I also moved a counter top to where it belongs (that was easy, it’s on casters) and hung some storage things we brought from here. And I hung some paintings from the upper rail, just to see what it would look like and I think it looks great.

I swept and put the red rug from here under the coffee table. Then I met 2 of our new neighbours who signed me up to be on the tenant’s association. It’s funny that despite the fact we haven’t even moved in yet, it already seems like home to me.  I guess I mean it’s a step in the direction that I feel I’ve been steering towards for a long, long time.

It’s hard to guess the correct size, but with afghans, I think it doesn’t matter too much. I’ve also been considering making tiny sweaters.

I’ve also been occupying my commute time by making more acorns. When I got home last night I figured, oh, there’s probably 6, maybe 8. No. There were19. So, maybe I ought to start thinking about what I am going to do with them.

That’s the second floor. There’s a window there now, but I think I will try to convert it to a door, filling in the old window with masonite and cutting a new door. Because I don’t have a proper Lundby door to replace it with, I have to get creative and I am thinking of doing a sliding ‘glass’ door. You know that corrugated plastic stuff? Use that for the door and make wood sliders to run it across. I think it should work and look cool. I will also be building a wooden ladder (painted black) for people to use to access the rooftop. This door leads to the kitchen. I know, most houses have kitchen and living room on the main floor and bedrooms upstairs, but this is not a traditional house by any means.

All walls will be painted with white primer that has sand in it for texture and the plastic edging will be painted black. Or maybe just covered in electrical tape.

This is the main floor. I think I might do a little trompe l’oeil and paint (or something) a door on the side of the house where the car port is. Car port! Ha, I know.  It just seemed to me that if I was going to make the garage into the artist’s studio, and there was the over hang which I may add pillers to, but maybe not.

The whole thing will be put upon a wood canvas (like Shannon paints) with grass and a driveway and so on. I may skip the side door, however, and build a removable front also out of masonite.