Sleep, Room Rearranging/Redecorating, and the Rainbow Quilt

 First, a mini celebration because...

I finally finished piecing the rainbow quilt top!  Woohoo!!!!

This is a pretty big deal for me, as I started this quilt about a year and a half ago.  I started off with a bang, made some progress, then it sat there, half-finished and lonely, waiting for me to pick it back up again.  So this summer I set a goal to at least finish the top, and with only a couple weeks of summer left, I'm happy to say that I have met my goal!  Yay, me!!

Now for the sleep issues and room rearranging.  When we moved into our new house a year and a half ago, I was excited that the girls would finally be able to have their own rooms.  In an effort to get her excited about the move, I promised G that we would paint and decorate her room first.  But then reality hit.  No one could have prepared me for the struggle we would have trying to get the girls to sleep in the new house.  (Six months before she slept through the night again - yikes!  And as for B - let's just not go there.)  After a few months of both girls being up multiple times a night, we were frustrated, exhausted, and at our wits end.  In a moment of sheer desperation, we decided to have them try sharing a room.  Maybe being in the same room together would help them sleep better?  At first it didn't seem to make much of a difference, but a few weeks later, things started to improve.  And then, it happened:  we got one child to sleep through the night.  Woohoo!  Two would be ideal, but we were thrilled that at least one was sleeping good again.  So for the next year, the girls had their "bedroom" and a "dressing room".  Not having any idea how long this would last, all plans for bedroom redecorating were put on hold.

Fast forward to a couple weeks ago, and big sis finally got fed up with little sis getting all of her things, and decided to try having her own room.  Realizing that this may or may not work out, I made a deal with her:  I would move only her bed into the dressing room, and she had to sleep there every night for one week.  At the end of the week, she could make her final decision as to whether she wanted to stay or move back in with her sister.  The transition went relatively smoothly (for her, at least - for B...not so much), and at the end of the week, she decided to stay in her own room.  So we moved the rest of the furniture, and that night:  disaster.  Both girls up half the night.  Ugh!  Fortunately it seemed to just be that one night, and now G is back to her usual good sleep.

So...time to redecorate!  We've been looking at paint samples together, trying to come to an agreement about colors for her room.  Of all the colors we looked at, Rainforest Mist was her favorite:

Which I had to veto for the walls.  Don't get me wrong, it's her room and I want her to have say in how it's decorated, but given the very bold floral wall paper in the hallway, I couldn't live with this color on the walls.  It would just fight with the nearby wallpaper too much, and would drive me batty every time I walked by her room.  So, I made some other suggestions, and we've decided on Daisy for the walls:

And she really liked some pinks too:

 

So we've decided to go with Daisy as the main color, with accents of Prairie Rose, and some version of this blueish-greenish aqua color that she loves so much:

I think we've come to a good compromise with this, and I can't wait to get started!  I picked up the yellow paint today, so maybe I'll even be able to get started on the walls this weekend!

Spring Clean Up and More Quilt Progress

We've been pretty lucky weather-wise so far this spring. With some unseasonably warm days last week (in the 70's in March?? Usually it's still snowy!), we were actually able to get outside and start cleaning up the yard a bit. So we raked up some leaves (9 bags full, to be exact), and unveiled some of the landscaping.

I knew we had a few crocuses, as they had already made there way up through the covering of leaves, and I was excited to see some daffodils popping up too. I think there may be some irises and lilies as well, but it's a bit early to tell since they are just barely coming up out of the ground. It will certainly be fun to see what else we have growing.

Then over the weekend we got a reality check when the weather went back to more typical March temperatures (40's and even some snow this morning!). So I decided to go back to my big indoor project of the rainbow quilt. Getting it all laid out was quite the task (1008 squares and no definite plan for how they'd fit together...what was I thinking?!?). I had to shuffle the squares around a lot to get the stripes even and blending together nicely. And of course I hadn't cut quite enough squares, and of course I didn't have quite enough of one of the colors, so I had to go pick up one more fat quarter to fill in the gap. But all in all, I'm quite happy with the progress, and also with how much of my fabric stash I have been able to use in this project.

Anyhow, I did finally get it all laid out and have even started sewing! Yippee!! And in the process, little g is getting her first sewing lessons. She was very curious about my sewing machine and iron, and asked me all kinds of questions them, wondering how they worked. I guess it's time to find a simple sewing project for her to do and start learning some mad seamstress skills. But for now, she's happy to help line up the squares after I've sewn them together. It's nice having a little assistant!