Made by Special Request

The hubby got himself a new netbook since his old laptop finally kicked the bucket. It is considerably smaller than his laptop, which left him with nothing to keep it in. He asked me if I would make him a cover. I accepted the challenge and a few days later I was reading the Prudent Baby blog, and what did I see a tutorial for? That's right, a laptop sleeve. Talk about perfect timing. It is a pretty simple idea, so I probably could have managed to make one without a tutorial. However, this tutorial had a link to another tutorial for another way of sewing bias tape that I had never tried before. I used a fat quarter of fabric I found that looked modern and manly and incorporated some orange (our favorite color). I used my walking foot for the first time and I now understand the hype. It did not take long to put together. What took the most time was hand sewing the velcro. My middle finger pad is quite tender from not using a thimble. Lesson learned. The hubby is quite pleased with the end result. I'm happy to have a happy customer.

Next I will be making one for my Wacom Bamboo tablet that I got for Christmas. The only thing I will be doing different is sewing the velcro on before putting it together and adding a pen holder. I'll post pictures when I get that one done. I have a few different sewing projects to complete before classes begin in January. Those are for another day.

Sprucing Up the Place

Watching HGTV much too often after Fletch was born, we started to get an itch to change things up around the condo. At the beginning of the year, we installed a custom mixed mosaic tile backsplash in our kitchen to go with our newly installed marble counter tops. We were contemplating wood floors, but we are not going to be here much longer to enjoy them, so that idea got scrapped. What we have been doing lately are small things. We finally purchased a bar! We spied with our little eyes this bar at World Market, the Verona Bar.

I'd take a picture of ours, but right now it has containers of Christmas cookies on top of it. Here's what it looks like closed:

We absolutely love it. It holds all of our wine glasses, martini glasses, cocktail glasses, shot glasses...well you get the point. I promise we do not have drinking problems, and yes I know that one of the steps is denial, but really we are fine. It freed up a lot of cabinet space to get all of that stuff out of the kitchen. Now there is more room for sippy-cups and Atom's expanding pint glass collection.

In the living room, we replaced our old brown velour curtains with some lighter striped curtains. It is amazing what new curtains can do to a room. Disregard the large dog enjoying the fire.

You can't see the top in this picture, but they have the grommet holes on top. I found them on sale at JCPenny online.

Most recently we finally got a wall decal for our weird diagonal wall in the living room. We knew we wanted to add something to the wall, but our large TV is up against that wall so pictures or large paintings wouldn't look right. One of the many daily deal sites we use had an offer with a wall decal company. After checking out their designs we picked out a cherry blossom branch.
I think it looks pretty cool. Cherry Blossoms are appropriate since we live in the DC area. Plus the pink breaks up all the brown in the room.

To add some more texture to the room, I just made some new throw pillows for the couch. The ones we had were getting a little too squishy and may have been drooled on a few times. I found some really pretty flannel remnants for under $5 and threw these together.

I think we are done with the living room for now; Unless someone designs a piece of storage furniture that makes large amounts of toys disappear and re-appear when needed. Someone get on that please!

2 Semesters To Go!

After a rough Fall semester, I am happy to say that I ended up with straight A's. This keeps me on track to graduate with honors. It has taken me this long to finish school, so I am going out on top!

I still do not feel prepared to go out into the world to teach, but I am looking forward to student teaching. Hopefully that experience will lend me a few tricks up my sleeve.  I was awarded a $1500 grant by the P.E.O. group. My Curriculum Design professor nominated me and I am very grateful to get any help with tuition costs (especially when I do not have to pay it back).  I had to complete 40 hours of observation for the Fall semester. It does not sound like much, but when you have to try and squeeze all 40 hours in while your son is in daycare for 2 days a week, it can be tricky. Luckily, after placing myself, I fulfilled all 40 hours and actually had an amazing observation at Chantilly High School. I was intimidated by high school art, but I was pleasantly surprised to see how nice high school students can be. Which ever grade I end up teaching, there will be benefits and challenges. I am glad I observed all grade levels so I know what to expect.

I am so glad I had my Clothing Construction class to keep me sane. I had a good understanding of sewing before I started class. I wanted to take the class to have guidance for doing things I had not tried before, like zippers and shirt collars. My sewing machine broke in the middle of the semester, which landed me a new sewing machine for Christmas. In total, I put together a hand-sewn hat, a bag, a pencil skirt and a button-down shirt.  I learned that zippers are not as scary as I thought they were and collars on shirts are a pain in the rear. What this class really accomplished for me was getting me back in front of the sewing machine again.

Spring semester starts in the middle of January. This will be my last semester of real classes. Next Fall will be student teaching and my senior art project, which is a studio class. This will also be my last semester for buying books! I think...gosh I really hope! I will be taking Video Production, Survey of Fashion and Psychology of Individuals with Disabilities. It sounds like a weird mish-mash of classes, but  those were the last classes I needed to take. It should be an interesting semester. I will let you know how it goes and probably post some of my videos.