I heart books shirt

My it has been a busy few weeks.  I'm not really clear on where November went.  Not much time to sew, or thing really.  But the next few weeks will be crazy busy for sewing as I have a not too short list of Christmas / Birthday / Sinterklaas (Dutch St. Nick) presents to sew up!  And it will all be awesome!

But before I get started on my gift sewing, I thought I'd procrastinate and make myself a shirt.

I really love books.  I have a ton of them.  And while trying to declutter (and update on which will come soon as progress has been made!)  Books have been the hardest.  I packed a TON of them away, and have 4-5 boxes to give away, which is pretty huge for me!

So in a nod to all those books, what could be more appropriate then for me to make a shirt with books all over it!

I picked up this fabric in the summer, it's a Victoria and Albert Museum print actually, so historical to boot (and we all know how much I dislike history :P)

I really want to work on bettering my sewing skills for me, as I tend to avoid making anything for me that is too fitted.  I am a skinny thing (despite my love for all things fattening) and even the smallest pattern size is too big.  I'm not very confident on altering patterns yet, so I find patterns with elastic and ties!  That way if it's just a bit to big (which this was) I shorten the elastic, and voila it pretty well fits!  The fabric is a bit stiff for this, so this shirt might make me look pregnant again from some angles, and I did sew it up pretty quick, so it is far from perfect, but too bad.

I like the books :)

Oh and the pattern is just a Butterick one (can't recall the number right now!).  I like the little pleats at the shoulders.  If I use this pattern again, I'll need to use plain fabric so you can properly see them!

Back to gift sewing now!

Progress and a few steps back

So we succeeded in selling some stuff in the last few weeks.  Joined in our neighbourhoods annual garage sale and had some success.  Said goodbye to an old teak coffee table that my parent bought some 40 years ago.  But also said goodbye to a good chunk of books and records, two things that make up a lot of our clutter.   Also made some good money selling records outside of the sale to local shop in particular.

And on a heritage note, while I did not plan to buy anything from anyone else, I did snag to transom latches to replace a couple of broken ones on our casement windows.  Nice! (but please excuse the crappy photo, I'm still working on my picture taking stills)

But there is still way too much stuff here.  Trying to decide wether we should have another sale, or donate.  I think we'll wait a bit and see.  it's all stacked away in the basement for now.

Or most of it is.  Some of it is still strewn around the house, which is not looking clean and free of clutter at all.  So a few steps forward and a few steps back!

We did make a dent in our office.  two bookshelves are now empty (with many of the books stored away, can't quite get to parting with them all yet)  It just now needs a bit of a reorg.

But I realized I took no pictures of any of this!!  Well I suppose I could take a shot of the partially empty bookcases, but there is still other clutter around, so I think we'll wait till it's more tidy.

I've also almost finished two other crafty projects :)  I will blog about them shortly!

But for now, I must get cleaning, I'm back at work in just over 3 weeks, and I'm determined to have most everything pared down before then!...

Mini cleanse!

So we've been slowly sorting and cleaning our house in our quest for simplification.  It sure is slow going through.  We seem to be making a lot more mess before we will have less!

However we have two small success areas to report on for now, with more to follow very, very soon!

First up: the front entry way.   This is it before more or less.

It was home to just about anything.  The stroller in particular cluttered it up and because I use it very little it tended to more be a holder for bags and junk then actual baby transport.    We did have two boxes to help organize stuff but even when properly used they still looked cluttered (and were mostly full of stuff we don't actually use!  Minimalist Mom had a nice post about baskets you can read here.  Also, you can't see it this photo, but between the outside door and the inside door, there is hooks and a shoe rack, again full of stuff we don't use.  Those got a whipping up too;

Ahh, much nicer!  Just two things to do, one, make a proper cover for the box seat (done actually, just don't have a photo) and get a nicer once piece carpet, rather than or mash of three (which are pretty old and ratty anyways!)  So now our stuff (the stuff we actually use) has a home in the bench box (repurposed from our bedroom were it stored old video tapes, yes old video tapes)  And the stroller is in our back hall folded up to be taken out when needed!

Next up, the back deck.

Before, a huddle of as much stuff as possible under our overhang, whether it needed to be there or not!

Yes, that is old trim and windows you see.  Donations from our lovely neighbours when they replaced theirs.  I'm keeping them as some of ours need replacing, but I want to keep the old windows, and some of his were in better shape to be restored.  And the trim is to put in our bathroom to replace the crappy standard trim a previous owner put in when they haphazardly renovated our bathroom.  I plan to bring back its original glory some day.  I realized stockpiling stuff doesn't mesh so well with our simplifying plans, but I feel it necessary in this case (and cheaper than buying it new later!)

Now it looks like this;

Note that we can actually get in our door now!  I know it still looks like a lot of stuff, but first I'll mention that we have NO garage or shed, so some stuff we use regularly must just live on our deck.  That's our bikes under cover on the right (for the rain0, our bike trailer for Squiggles, some tools (rake, shovel)  Otherwise behind the BBQ is our recycling bins, and in the deck box is small things like small tools, seat pillows etc.  I still want to purge the box, but time ran out! And I'm happy we got it as tidy as we did!

Now if only we could get around to tackling our dreaded office and guest room.  Anyone want to come and stay here? :)