domestic homemaking random stuff

being at home all day makes me much more interested in being more organized in how i do things at home. and much more interested in projects and skills and things i can do here without leaving the house. sounds like every other stay-at-home mom, right? but doesn't it make sense to try and make the everyday things that have to get done anyways more fun for yourself?

• cleaning: other than dishes, tommy and i used to never clean anything around the house until it was all just too messy to ignore and i was about to lose my mind--then we'd spend one whole saturday scrubbing the bathrooms, cleaning out the fridge, and vacuuming. but since i'm home all day things are getting messier more often AND i don't want to spend our only day with tommy home with us just cleaning all day, so i've been doing a bit of cleaning every day and messing around with different types of cleaning schedules. but really, i've come to the conclusion that i'm still a once-a-week-big-cleaning-day kind of gal. i hate having to do something every day. so now i'm going to assign mondays to be the big cleaning day and see how that works--and then the rest of the days of the week i'll organize as necessary and not worry about mopping or vacuuming or any of that junk.
• cooking: we've kind of been in a funk with figuring out what meals to make and what to eat for dinner lately (or at least, i have). so i've made a goal to cook my way through the our best bites cookbook--all of the dinner recipes, at least--which will give us the chance to try a bunch of new things and make it easy for me to pick something to make for dinners every week. i don't know how much it will expand my cooking skills by any means, since OBB is meant to be easy and accessible (and that's why i love it so much) but it will hopefully introduce us to a bunch of delicious meals, which is all we need right now. 
• organizing: we sold our coffee table on craigslist and it has made so much more room in our living room! i am loving it! it was also a huge space for clutter--we'd just drop everything on it--and now that's just removed. hallelujah. instant de-cluttering.
• MOST IMPORTANT: i finished the sewing class that i took at durham tech last week. there were a number of setbacks (buying not enough fabric, cutting a hole in the dress (seriously), cutting the wrong size pattern, being the world's SLOWEST sewist (?)), but i finally finished my dress! the class basically took you through one project, start to finish. we all bought the same pattern and did the same dress. since i basically knew nothing about making clothes before doing this, i learned a lot of things: how to sew darts, how to alter a pattern to fit your body better (i had to add 4 inches of length around the waist on this dress!), how to add sleeves to a dress, how to do a zipper, how to use interfacing (and what interfacing is). i felt really accomplished after finishing this . . . the only unfortunate thing is that i won't be able to wear it anywhere for a while because i'm still nursing. 

but then on saturday i also made this skirt (trying to use my sewing skills!). it was called "the one-hour skirt" on the pattern (it's just one with an elastic waistband, nothing fancy) but it definitely took me five hours to do. oh well! it's all about practicing, i guess. and i DID wear this to church yesterday.

basically, i am cleaning, and cooking, and sewing up a storm around here, around the never-ending working on dane's napping schedule. WHY IS HE THE WORST NAPPER EVER? gahhhhh i just have to get out some of my frustration as i'm listening to him cry in his crib after sleeping for 20 minutes.

at least he's the world's cutest and happiest baby when i'm not trying to get him to nap.