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!

Quilt Progress

So I'm a few weeks into the rainbow quilt project now, and I'm pretty excited about the progress I have made.  There have, of course, been some setbacks (there always are, aren't there?), for instance, not being able to find my rotary cutter.  I looked in every place I thought I would have packed it, and I kept finding all these extra blades and even a couple of blade sharpeners, but no cutter.  So eventually my sweet hubby just ordered me a new one.

Once I got my new cutter, I could get to work cutting all those squares (1008 to be exact).  Of course, being that I am trying to use up a bunch of scrap pieces of fabric, I didn't really have a definite plan of how many of each color I would need.  So I just kind of winged it and started cutting away.  And of course I didn't keep track of how many squares total I had cut (what fun would that be?!?), so I'm at a point where I need to start laying them all out to see where I stand.  So for now, here are the rainbow quilt squares:

Oh, and that missing rotary cutter?  I just found it in my box of thread.  :\

The Redecorating Begins

We were pretty fortunate that when we moved into this house there weren't any redecorating projects that we felt we would need to do immediately.  Sure, some of the paint colors and wall paper wouldn't have been my first choice, but they certainly wouldn't have been my last choice either.  So it was nice to just move in and get settled before diving into redecorating.  But now that we are getting more settled, I'm itching to get started!

I promised little g that her room would be the first room we would do this spring.  Since we're still a ways off from being warm enough to open up the windows and paint (it was a balmy 42 degrees today), I've been thinking about bedding.  She recently saw a quilt I had made for someone, and was fascinated by it, so I decided that I should make her a new quilt for her new room.  In typical me fashion, I scoured the internet for some ideas (collecting them on a Pinboard, of course).  After first she had said she wanted a frog quilt, then she saw one with ladybugs and daisies that she liked a lot, but then she saw the rainbow quilt.  She got really excited and said, "I want that one!".  So rainbow quilt it is.

So I started digging through my fabric stash.  I didn't really have a proper workspace at our last house, so my art/craft/sewing supplies were scattered around (a few things in this closet, a few things in that closet, some in a corner here, some packed up in the basement, etc, etc).  Now that I have everything all in one spot, all I can say is wow.  I didn't quite realize how much stuff I had accumulated over the years.  After the initial shock, I was pleasantly surprised at how many fabrics I found that could work for this project (using up my stash and saving money...can't beat that!), and I had a pretty good start on a rainbow:

But it wasn't quite complete, so we headed to the fabric store to pick up a few more fat quarters to fill in the gaps:

So now we have this:

Now that I'm looking at the stack, I'm not sure if I'll keep that dark green in there or not.  Looks like it might stand out a bit too much.  But all in all, I'm pretty please with the rainbow.  Now to start cutting!