Long story short, we've had a new oven sitting on a pallet in the middle of our kitchen for about two and a half years. The oven it was meant to replace was dying and then it died fully and completely about 2 years ago. So we've been living without an oven for 2 years because I couldn't find anyone to install it, and we kept hitting road blocks every time we attempted to move forward with DIYing it. (The huddle that we ran into a year ago was the need to move a gas line for the cooktop above - something I was not going to DIY!)
Anyway, we unexpectedly were able to get the oven installed by someone about a week before Christmas! I finally have the ability to bake things again - this time without a computer brain and with a convection option (which turns out is just the old-fashioned term for "air-fry" ).
Now that the oven on a pallet is out of the way, I've been going through the cabinets and trying to reorganize and "lazy-proof" everything. If I can just find a home for everything, we might actually keep the kitchen from becoming a nightmare.
I don't have an actual pantry, so we bought a metal shelf unit for storing all the big things like water, paper towels, etc that don't fit inside the tiny cabinet openings with fixed shelves and put it in front of the pointless door we never use (see photos 3 & 4). Someday, I might wall off the door and put in an actual pantry in the corner, but that is a long term dream for later.
Lazy-proofing involved setting up an organized coffee station for my husband (the coffee drinker) and pulling all the tea options out of the cabinet for easier access since he now enjoys hot tea with me as well. (It used to be an avalanche of boxes and too many things got buried and forgotten in the mess.) Now we can easily see what we have with the tea caddie shelves on the counter (pic 5).
So my kitchen is still a mess because I have to make a bigger mess before things actually get better, but it's almost there. I got a breadbox and a coffee maker slider with a drawer for pods that I haven't taken photos of yet. I refuse to tackle the spice cabinet until after I get everything off the island. Fingers crossed I can get it all put away nicely this week and be basically finished with it - I'm sick of spending time in the kitchen!
I spent the day priming things for paint and then I remembered to shoot a quick video. #SewingStudioBuild
I started cutting all the edges while Janet was away yesterday morning. When she got back after lunch, she pulled out a roller and started filling in. I'll put a pic below in the comments. #SewingStudioBuild
We broke for lunch and then came back with a portal ac unit plugged in to an extention cord from the house. Can't wait until they finished hooking up all the electrical and we have the mini split cooling the room for us - it was stupid humid today! #SewingStudioBuild
I thought you all might be interested to know what happened to the original treadle base on my antique Singer. This was all my husband’s doing, as he’s wanted to try this project for years. He’s gotten into woodworking this past year, so he’s got more of the skills now. The table portion is from a fold-down IKEA table that used to be my cutting table, back in the pre-kid days when I had a whole room for sewing. (It’s been living in the basement folded up for years, mostly used for garden seed storage and a few small tools.) He added the sink basin and faucet. We’re debating about me making a small curtain underneath that would hide the pipe work, while still showing the treadle base.
This project sparked another room makeover, though this one is our half-bath so it isn’t nearly as involved as our kitchen and kids’ rooms have been. Several of the other items in the picture came from a couple of local antique shops, though the old milk crate belonged to my husband’s ...
I haven't been sewing since a big project finished about a month ago - I'm just burned out (will post photos at some point).
After a couple exhausting weekends of installing a new dishwasher because my 29 year-old mechanical stopped rinsing properly 😥, I was motivated enough to start reorganizating the rest of the kitchen. It's always a domino effect, and I'm still not finished, but I washed the curtain I made a million years ago and properly dusted/washed all the pitchers and decorations on the window shelves. (I even polished the formica tabletop!) So the window area was photo-worthy.
Back when made the curtain, I was smart and used velcro instead of a curtain rod. I put a male sticky-back strip on the top of the mini-blind housing and sewed a soft female strip of regular velcro onto the curtain. The curtain itself is all one piece gathered to that strip of velcro - easy to pull off and throw in the laundry (not that i overcome laziness and actually wash it regularly but whatever).
I ...
Been so busy, I forgot to share photos of the final Paquita costume! Well, most of these photos are “semi-final”—after the photoshoot and first dress rehearsal, his teacher asked me to tweak the front seams below the waist so they would stay close to the body (not flare out like in the photoshoot) when his arms were up. This involved re-doing the bottom trim but the final result was worth it, so! The full sleeves were not as dramatic as we thought they were going to be, but still a nice effect. I really love the elbow sleeve detail and maybe will post more about it later.
