Shiny Sink Prevails!

You'll all be insanely happy to know that my sink is still shining. And I now see how this works. This shininess is somehow contagious. I.e. I wake up and look at the sink, then I look over at the counter tops and think...wow that's a mess, I should do some dishes and make my counter top match my sink! And no, I didn't overhaul the kitchen, but I did do all the dishes and tomorrow I think I'll tackle the counter tops by the sink. Baby steps I guess.

This weekend I supposed we'll try to look at some new sinks. I casually mention to my Mom that it would be nice to get new counter tops and within 10 minutes she's outlined a whole plan of attack for redoing our kitchen. She's a doer...I'm a dreamer. Haha. As in, I say, it'd be nice to get new counter tops, maybe even reface the cabinets. Which translates into...it sounds good in my mind, but I have little intention of acting on this fantasy. However, she hears this and instantly has a step by step way of how to get to a perfectly redone kitchen. Including checking estimates against refacing the cabinets vs. getting new cabinets. Uh huh. I'm exhausted just thinking about it. And I don't think now is a good time to tear my kitchen apart, considering Corbin is due to arrive in less than 2 months. He doesn't even have a place to sleep at this point, I think that might top the list priority-wise.

I could use a bit more "doer" in my personality, but alas, that is not me. I'm sure this drives my Mom nuts.

But in awesome "doer" news...for those that have ventured over to our house in the last 7 years, you may have become accustomed to our "no ice, no fridge water" quirk. For those of you who are lost now, we purchased a water softener right after we bought the house. When the water softener does it's 2 am cycle to clean salt is released into the lines if your bypass isn't working. Apparently, ours wasn't working or hasn't ever worked. Hence the ice maker in our fridge would pull in salty water in the middle of the night leaving us with salty ice and salt in the water line of the fridge. Yum. So for 7 years we've been content to put up a sign on the fridge that says "Don't use ice". HA!

Well, in honor of our new wonderful fridge, I decided that I would NOT ruin this fridge with salt (it can rust out the ice maker), and that it didn't matter how much it cost, we were going to fix this problem. $60 later...the problem is fixed. 60 bucks!!?? I've been living with salty ice for 7 years and all it took was 60 lousy bucks. Argh, what's wrong with us. What can we say...we've been busy. HA. So now everyone can come over and enjoy cold tasty water from the fridge and some ice cubes to go with it! Woot.

And as a reminder to all you children out there, this Sunday is Mother's Day!! What are you doing for your Mothers (if they are still with us that is)? I have made my mother a gift. It took over 5 hours total and it was complete craziness, but I finished today. Last month my mother sent me a page from a magazine that had this cute little purse shown. Somehow she got it into her head that I'm some kind of creative seamstress (which I am now painfully aware that I am not) and asked if I would make if for her for her birthday (which was actually May 3rd). I, of course, said yes. Well I didn't finish it in time for the birthday, but I did get it done before Mother's day (I'll just have to priority mail it). Let me tell you, this was not easy for me. First, I have only really made things from patterns. You know, you go to the fabric store or walmart, buy those envelopes with the patterns in them. Cut them out, follow the directions, sew and voila! Ok, I can barely do those, but I CAN do them. This was totally different. This was a picture of a purse. A picture... And the purse had a lining. And a strap. And these plastic loop things to hold the strap on. And ribbon to close the purse. Uh ok. And confession time - I have no spacial abilities WHATSOEVER. I mean, I totally fail those tests where you have to make something fit in a space, or turn things around in your head. My eyes start to cross when the patterns take about putting wrong side to wrong side and blah blah. I really can't see things like that in my head. It's a wonder I have a creative bone in my body. So the idea of me making my own pattern? Ha ...ha...ha ...ha. You're kidding right?

Well, somehow I managed to piece together this purse from two different patterns of purses, plus a little trial and error. And surprisingly, this thing does look like a purse. Of course, the stitching is way less than perfect, there are plenty of crooked stitches and such, but it is a purse with all of the above mentioned features. I'm proud that I completed it, although I realize that my Mother will probably not be happy with it. And that makes me sad. I imagine her either thinking it's a sad interpretation of the picture she sent and blame it on my deficient skill, or she'll take it to the other end and call it a sloppy interpretation and blame it on my lack of care or love for her. :( Both are not reactions I'd like after I spend 5 hours stretching my minimal sewing skills to create what she requested. But I'm preparing myself for this. If those two reactions aren't seen, then I'm sure the third reaction that would show up is that she would be unsatisfied with the features of the purse. For instance, the purse is smaller than the purses she usually carries, therefore no good for her. Or, she requested a snap, not a ribbon tie, to close the purse, even though even the picture had a ribbon tie. I couldn't get the snap on correctly, so I gave up and did a ribbon instead. Plus, with my crappy hand sewing skills, I figured the wear and tear of snapping and unsnapping would eventually break the threads of the snap anyway and it wouldn't last. So yeah, that's what I'm thinking her reactions will be. Why I bother, I don't know.

But I will include a picture for all of you to see. No extreme closeups...no need to see my poor sewing.