18 Days Left

I can't believe there's less than 3 weeks before my official due date. We aren't ready yet but then again, what parents are truly ready? Jamie and my dad have been working on finishing our laundry room and baby room so that we can get the dresser and such set up. I feel pretty useless because I'm just waddling around the house doing odds and ends. I can't get all the baby clothes and linens ready because we have no washer and dryer. I wanted to catch up with my Project Life but I've only printed photos up until August 2012 so I'm still 2 years behind. This week will be my last week at work. If baby cooperates, hopefully I'll still have some time to get last minute things done. 

On Dramafever, I've discovered that they have some good old Hong Kong Cantonese dramas (only 3 though) so I'm on my second drama. It's nice to play those in the background while I'm doing things because I don't have to read subtitles! One episode showed the gang having a HK BBQ with hotpot meatballs so I was craving them yesterday. We invited some friends over and stuffed our faces full of meat and marshmallows. It was the first time we used our fire pit this year and might even be our last. Hopefully I can fit in one more fire pit before baby's arrival because I've forgotten how tasty s'mores can be. Top it off with a preggo belly and I've got zero guilt binging! Cheers to not counting calories! 

53 days to go

I know anyone who's ever been pregnant tells me that towards the end, the baby can't seem to vacate the womb fast enough but right now I'm mighty happy that the little peanut is content its ever shrinking temporary room. We've been kept busy trying to get the house ready and the biggest job was definitely our kitchen renovations. We've been "working" on the kitchen for the last 5 or so years and it wasn't until baby's imminent arrival that really pushed us into action. 

We lived with exposed 2x4 walls, our newly purchased appliances sat in our living room for 4 years, engineer drawings sat in a filing cabinet, it just wasn't a pretty sight. Fast forward 4 years, a baby on the way and a hired contractor later, we finally have a fully renovated fully functioning kitchen. There's still a lot of settling in that we have to do for the kitchen but it's so great having that big burden off our back. Now we are just left with the 100 other little odd jobs to finish off. We have accumulated a massive amount of clutter and we're slowly working our way through the mounds of stuff. While the de-cluttering is happening, Jamie is working on the laundry room with my dad. In his spare time (ha!), he's working on framing and drywalling the baby room closet. I've been on a sewing frenzy. 

Jamie and I decided to embark on a cloth diapering adventure, mostly because the idea of throwing hundreds and hundreds of diapers into the landfill doesn't sit well with me. We aren't the greenest people and nothing against the mommas that use disposables. Since we were going down the cloth diaper path, it only made sense to go down the route of reusable baby wipes as well. I had loads of old flannel that I've accumulated over the years so I set out to sew some cheap wipes. 71 of them to be exact. I would've loved to use a serger but I don't own one so google told me I could just stitch close to the edge with a regular machine and it'll be just fine. I ended up leaving way too much leftover border fabric so when I washed them last night, I had threads everywhere. 

I thought about trimming the fabric closer to the stitch line, but they just looked so cute with the little border. Bad decision. I ended up with fluff, string and lint over all our cloth diapers and everything in that load of laundry. I also wasted time plucking all the loose bits of thread that had started coming off. Lesson learned. Lesson learned indeed... 

Onto a bit more of a successful project now. I've been doing weekly quilt nights with a couple friends. A while back I purchased a large amount of fat quarters when it was buy 1 get 1, with no project in mind of course. I finally found this lovely pattern called, Yellow Brick Road. At first I wanted to make a twin quilt because my first quilt really isn't big enough to snuggle with. That twin soon turned into a, "Well I might as well make a queen so it'll fit on my bed!" queen-sized quilt. It wouldn't have been so bad if I wasn't pregnant, which is what I'm blaming all my screw ups on. I'm still not done yet because I need to border, quilt and bind it but no big deal. I still have 53 days...

What's Occupying My Time Lately?

Bless the public library.

Crafting Area Overhaul!

Hehehe, I totally copied and pasted this post from my crafting blog! 
So much for crafting today... I decided to move my crafting area! Why you might ask? Because I used to feel the need to craft in front of the TV but then realized that I actually like crafting to just music. I also got used to using a normal desktop computer that was sitting oh so nicely on our dining room table that surfing the web on my little netbook laptop just wasn't cutting it anymore. My eyes get tired! 

This is my original crafting area. I know it's impossible to actually see where I craft but I sit in between all the stuff so I just swivel back and forth to get paper/stamps etc. Directly in front of me (and Jamie in the photo) would be the TV. 

That desk to the left is where I wanted to have my new crafting area. That desk is about 10 years old already and I've been meaning to sell it but then I figured I really like the pullout keyboard tray. 

It might not look idea because the desk hutch is sorta hanging out in the middle of nowhere but for now, it'll have to do. Jamie started talking about building a wall behind it... Yah, like we don't have enough projects on the go...

I only managed to set up the computer and the biggest accomplishment of the evening? Since the desk was 10 years old, it had accumulated a lot of crap in the drawers. I mean stuff from like junior high school/high school that I've stored in there. I found super old "Best Friend" jewelry where I have the "Best" portion. I even found my old Visa receipts stapled together from 2002, sorted by month!!! I know it doesn't look very different from pictures 3 and 4, but trust me. Jamie even called me out on not going through that desk when we moved almost 4 years ago. I just hauled the entire thing over from my parents straight into the UHaul, into the basement. At one point in the night, I had to get Jamie to stand there and remind me to throw things away because I am a mega pack-rat. More sorting needs to be done tomorrow because if I don't, I have nowhere to craft!!!