New Butterick Sewing Patterns

Butterick seems to have put out some new sewing patterns recently. I haven't seen many reviews of them so I thought I'd do one myself. Perhaps there haven't been many reviews because the patterns are pretty basic.

In the "I'd make that" category is:

B5781- The dress looks a little like a skating dress, which I like quite a bit. 

B5778- I can see myself wearing this dress a lot. I like the seams on the front and the gathered skirt. I think it would be great with sleeves as well, as a winter dress. 

B5770- This is a See 'n' Sew Pattern. While its not terribly original, it does look like it would make a nice shirt for work. I can see myself picking up this pattern and making it several times.

B5785-  This is another shirt that has probably been done before, but I really love how it looks in the drawing below. I can't see myself wearing the tunic version, but the regular length one I would wear in both sleeve lengths.

That's all I found to be noteworthy. What did you think of the new Butterick patterns? Did I miss anything?

Garden Progress

Where we left off last with the gardens had them looking kind of like this:

But some significant progress was made over Memorial Day weekend! With the help of my dad and stepmom, we cleaned out the rest of the rocks from the two front beds, put down dirt in both beds, planted flowers, weeded around the back of the house, moved around some plants and put down mulch. Sounds like a lot of work, huh? Well it was!

The garden to the left of the door used to look like this

After digging up most of the lava rocks and planting some flowers, it looked like this-

Around the side of the house was looking better too.
What before was an overgrown jungle is now much cleaner!

AFTER:

I have plans to add in some annuals with color in that empty spot, and of course mulch.

And around the front of the house isn't looking so bad either.

Before:

After:

Also my dad got a little crazy with the hedge trimmers, and took the back of the house from this:


To this:

In about an hour.

Now I just have to remember to water the flowers about every day, and maybe even water the grass a bit so its not so brown.

Have you done any gardening lately?

New Windows!

I knew from the inspection before I bought the condo that the windows would need to be replaced soon. You see, the mechanism that held them open was broken, so when you pulled a window up and let it go, it slammed shut. I had my own little guillotines all around my place. At first I didn't think this was a huge deal- I would just use some sticks or what not to prop the windows open.

Looks Innocent enough, right?

The particular window above had a rotted sill, that had been removed and never replaced. This is a bad, bad thing because water could get in there and cause the wall to rot. No good!

More old windows!

Well, one week of really nice weather and I was ready for new windows. Between having to find things that could hold the weight of the windows, worrying that my cats would hurt themselves, and Franklin actually getting outside via one of the broken windows, I knew it was time.

In addition to the windows being annoying, they were original. So 35 years old. They had storm windows and  were not at all energy efficient. I could hear every little sound from outside.
I decided to go with windows from the Home Depot. They were a bit more expensive than I expected, but thats par for the course with house projects.
They have now been installed and are working wonderfully. I'll be back in a couple days with some pictures of the beautiful new windows in situ.

Gardening: The Plan and some Initial Work

I have two/three separate garden spaces. One to the left of the garage in this picture, before you get to my front door.

It looked like this when I moved in, and up until today. There are a lot of different flowers in this spot, including a rose bush, azaleas, and possibly hollyhocks. How do I know this? There is a master gardener in my neighborhood who offered to help me prune the bush you can see in the above picture, and I also picked her brain about the rest of my gardens.

The next garden you come upon is to the left of the front door. It looks like this:

Here you can see the overgrown violets and the shrub, along with the lovely lava rock that is being used as mulch. I'm planning to remove those bad boys and replace them with regular mulch. I think I'd also like to plant some pretty flowers in the open space. We shall see, as I am not an experienced gardener!

The last garden is along the whole south side of my condo. It is by far the largest.

It has three huge shrubs, that here look like one right in the middle of the picture, and then some smaller shrubs to the left. To the right of the monstrosity is a rose bush and some other random flowers.

There really is a lot of work to do here. First, those three shrubs are blocking the living room windows. Second, the beds in general are a mess of weeds and regular grass from lack of upkeep over the past years. The woman that lived here before me for 35 years was 90something years old, and I'm certain she wasn't outside weeding gardens. 

This is what the same corner looked like after about 30 minutes of pulling vines out of the ground. Now the window is unobstructed and the azalea and rose bushes are visible!

Azalea bush. So pretty.

Can't remember the name of this guy.

Can't remember the name of this either. Should have been taking notes!

Ahh, one more look at the clean bed.

Before

 

After:

I am generally overwhelmed by the gardens I have to take care of here, so I am going to start slowly. My goal for this spring is to get the two corner gardens in good shape by removing the lava rocks and putting down mulch, and then next spring I can focus on the longer back garden. I want to remove those large shrubs from the back but need to figure out how exactly that can happen. Dig them up? Cut them down?

May Punch List

It's been a couple months since I've updated my punch list, but here goes:

Here is my room by room punch list. It's still growing.

My focus for May is going to be 

• Removing the lava rocks from the garden and replacing with mulch
• convincing Mike its time to start the baseboards
• Possibly getting a new dishwasher
• Continuing to replace outlets and switches throughout the whole house

Throughout whole house:

• Replace lightswitches and outlets with new, white ones- Done about 8 of them! Getting there.
• Replace lightswitch covers and outlet covers
• Have GCI outlets installed in bathroom, kitchen;- scheduled for Dec. 22
• Purchase and install programmable thermostat
• Purchase and install new smoke detectors and carbon monoxide detector
• New Windows! Details soon.
• Paint trim on new windows- In progress
• Replace old gross air vents with new ones

Kitchen

• Paint Cabinets (in progress)
• replace counter tops?
• replace floor- purchased! Installed!
• Decide on color and paint walls
• paint trim
• Install under-cabinet lights
• Replace Fridge, Dishwasher, Range <- New dishwasher is in the works. Current one died last week! :(

Living Room

• Paint Walls "Wild Aster"
• Pick out, buy and Install baseboards
• Paint Trim
• Replace carpet with laminate!?? <- Purchased! Waiting to get installed!
• Hang Curtains
• Get new Couch
• Hang Art, mirrors- Still some work to do here
• Hang blinds?

Bedroom

• Decide on color and paint walls
• Paint trim
• Paint Closet
• Redo Closet system
• Hnng Curtains
• Hang art, mirrors
• Replace carpet

Bathroom

• Remove shower doors
• Hang shower curtain
• paint vanity
• paint trim
• Replace or Frame mirror
• Remove Wallpaper
• Decide on color and Paint walls
• Clean grout or regrout?
• Replace Faucet AND sink!

Second Bedroom

• Decide on color and paint walls
• Paint trim
• Redo closet?
• Replace carpet

Basement

• Paint paneling white <-!! Details coming!
• fix water damaged walls (probably a contractor will do this)
• replace carpet
• Finish basement bathroom (what a nutty set up!)
• organize and set up sewing area
• replace washer and dryer? Ordered! Delivery Dec. 6th!

Gardens (writing a whole series of posts on the gardens right now)

• Prune shrub <- done with help of Master gardener neighbor. Deets soon.
• Remove ugly vine
• Remove lava rocks and 
• replace with mulch
• Pick out and plant flowers for two side gardens

Light!

Continuing my progress in the bathroom is the replacement of the ugly 60's style light above the mirror. Unfortunately I don't have a great before picture...how did that happen?? Here are the two best pictures I have of it. Hard to see because the light is on!

I found a similar light online- mine looked like this except no starburst pattern, and frankly this looks like a nicer version of what I had.I'm certain this light was original, so from the mid-70's.

I replaced it (all by myself!) with this light I found at the local re-use center. I paid $12.50 for it total, including the three glass shades. I recently went to Lowes and saw the same fixture for sale there for about $55. I felt pretty smug about that.

It's a huge improvement. In addition to it looking more of-this-century, the added light from the 3rd light bulb makes a huge difference. The bathroom has so much more light now!

Of course I wasn't happy to stop there. While the shades on this fixture are ok, I don't love them. I found these seeded glass "bells" at Home Depot, for about $7 each and put them up in place of the shades that came with the fixture. Even now, I've only spent $33 on this light fixture total, still more than $20 less than what the cost of this fixture new is, so I felt ok spending the extra money to get the look I wanted.

It looks kind of blue here, but I promise, its clear.

It was clear immediately that I need clear light bulbs in the fixture instead of white ones. I bought some recently but they are way too bright, so I need to try again. I had a hard time finding the ones I got (which are Halogen) so hopefully I can find similar ones with a smaller wattage. 

Regardless I'm psyched about how my bathroom is looking. The counter top is getting closer and closer to the top of the list!

New Bathroom Cabinet

Where we left off last, my bathroom looked like this:

Big empty wall, and a tiny little medicine cabinet. I thought about doing open shelves in that area, but ultimately I wanted to be able to hide some of my things out of sight so I didn't have to throw everything under the sink when someone came by.

Enter this cabinet!

I got it for $59 at Home Depot. I tried to find a similar cabinet at various resale stores instead of buying a new one, but I had no luck and I was running out of patience. Home Depot actually has a reasonable selection of these types of cabinets- more shallow than a regular kitchen cabinet and yet the same height. The guy at home depot told me these are called "Over John" cabinets. Lovely.

The cabinet stayed in my car until the weekend when Mike and I could put it up. We watched several youtube videos on ways to install cabinets, and decided on a basic approach of drilling pilot holes in the wall and corresponding holes in the cabinet, putting anchors in the wall and then screwing through the cabinet into the wall. I just have to show you how we managed to keep the cabinet at the height we wanted without breaking our arms, AKA I didn't buy all those textbooks for nothing!

This is the junk I'm talking about. 

Now you know what I read.

Mike is really excellent (and exact) at tasks like this, so I'm certain I could hang off this cabinet and it wouldn't fall down (not that I'm going to try) but also it is perfectly level, and even with the top of the mirror. Well done, Mike!

I want to pretty up that area now with some unnecessary accessories like a plant and maybe some pretty candles or something, but for now, this is what my bathroom looks like. I'm quite happy with the outcome!

The two things left that bug me are doing something with that dang ugly counter top (perhaps painting it), and making a curtain of some sort to cover the strange open space under half of the counter. Actually, I would really love to find the same fabric that my shower curtain is made of. The shower curtain is from Target, about 3 summers ago. Anyone have one kicking around that I could buy? I've tried to find one on Ebay, etc but have had no luck.

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