A new craft room and it's all MINE.

Our basement was the kind of place that you just couldn't think about. When we bought the house, Justin and I fully intended to leave it in it's 1981 glory, wooden walls, red carpet and all.

But then I got pregnant and the baby needs a place to sleep but I still need a place to craft, and NO, I DO NOT WANT ALL OF MY STUFF IN THE DEN, so how about that basement?

Here's what it used to look like:

I know--you're jealous. Who wouldn't be? That's a sexy room right there. I will add that the floor on this side of the basement (the other half is unfinished and where we keep tools and laundry things) is raised about three inches off the ground, and we have no idea what's under there, and we're planning to keep it that way. So if I come down with some sort of terrible respiratory infection and/or fungus, we know why.

My dad was very passionate about fixing up the basement for me. He just couldn't stop thinking about it, so we made a date for him to stay with us while my mom was in Italy. He and Justin ripped down the ceiling and 85% of the ductwork, then rebuilt the ductwork mostly from scratch. I mean, with their bare hands and some metal cutters and lots of banging around. They were He-Men, men among men, men who worked 15-hour days and all they had to show for it at the end was...nice, neat ductwork (the old stuff was a hot mess). My dad had to get back home, so the new ceiling isn't up yet, but the lights are. The lights...I could wax poetic about the lights for days. They are wonderful. Lights! Who knew!

Before my dad came to town, Justin spent a very long week painting the walls. We thought long and hard about this. As my father's daughter, I just have a very hard time condoning the painting of wood. We could have taken down the walls (someone once offered us money for the paneling), but then we discovered that the studs in the basement run horizontally, not vertically. That's not very helpful for putting up drywall. I took a nano-second to pick a new color, and with the help of a few friends, Justin painted.

And painted.

And painted.

Our basement is very big. The grooves between the paneling are so wide that you can't just hope that a paint roller will spill enough paint inside; you have to use a brush. Justin spent hour upon hour in that basement, despite the fact that he thought it would never be nice enough for my craft room.

I'm happy to say that the dude was wrong. It's PERFECT. I am IN LOVE. I don't care that the ceiling isn't up yet - who needs a ceiling? I have so much more room now (and the old craft room wasn't anything to sneeze at), and we had a heap of his family in town last weekend, so they all moved everything downstairs in about a half hour. I'm slowly putting things away, but here's how it looked once we were all moved:

You can't call these "after" pictures because we're not that far yet. These are just "somewhere in the middle." Now I have all of my yarn put away and the fabric is almost all neatly folded onto tiny bolts in a cabinet at the bottom of the stairs. Being down there, even in its unfinished, messy state, brings me so much joy.

So much joy, in fact, that I didn't even get sad when Justin started priming the old craft room walls for the baby's nursery this morning. Kid's gotta sleep somewhere, I guess.

Still here! Still knocked up!

What a month. What a week. What a day.

* I'm still pregnant. Six weeks to go! Bean is an active little dude all of a sudden, and he likes to try to push his head through my belly button. That's been fun. He loves chocolate ice cream (any food, really), and when Justin and I talk to each other.

* My dad was here for seven days. In those seven days, he and Justin ripped down the basement ceiling and most of the ductwork. Then they created their own new ductwork because our house is crazy and old and the term "standard size" means nothing around here. They also put in lots of great new lighting. All that's left is to put up the new ceiling, which, they tell me, is the easy part. I think that happens in a few weeks. There was also some minor plumbing work for our new washer and dryer (love!). My father is a saint and a hero and my husband is quickly following in his footsteps.

* Justin has been working his ass off getting the house ready for this baby. Shuffling most of the rooms around has required a lot of painting and moving of furniture, and he's done it all pretty much by himself. I can barely stay awake long enough to work, and this kid is painting ceilings at 1 a.m. I don't know how I got this lucky.

* The air conditioner broke yesterday. But it is fixed today!

* Rooms are a mess, storage is every which way, but the majority of my craft stuff is now in the basement and I am so, so pleased with how it turned out. I'm slowing putting away everything, but I do have some pictures to share. Once I find my camera.

* We've had doggie guests for 10 days and poor G is so exhausted that she didn't even get up to greet the air conditioning man. She's now passed out in front of the vent, waiting for the house to cool down.

* I'm exhausted, too. Between house guests and working and trying not to freak out about the general clutter around here, I'm finding it hard to stay awake during daylight hours. Of course, I get my second wind about 8 p.m., which isn't really helping anyone.

* Six weeks! I have no idea what's going to happen after that.

Is it too early for Coke Black?

Good god, I'm tired. Due to a suicidal ceiling fan, I'm back down in the guest room until Justin can make our new ceiling fan stop sounding like it's scraping paint off the side of a boat with a scythe. Egads. It's hot, I'm growing a baby, and try as I might, I just can't sleep without the ceiling fan.

The good news is that the bedroom is done, accessories and all, minus window coverings. I don't really mind - it's like living in a treehouse! - but Justin is a little more modest than I am. He just can't make himself put up the old blinds, though, so we're living like savages until he makes a decision.

Without further adieu, our new bedroom (in case you were wondering, here's what the paint job looked like before):

I'm a big fan of the stripe around the ceiling, and it's a good thing we decided to do that instead of putting up new crown molding (for those of you keeping track at home, the previous owners put door casing around the top of the room, which we stupidly put back up AGAIN after we painted five years ago) because it turns out our walls are all different heights, sometimes in the same wall!

This is my favorite part of the room. We'd always meant to have a little library up here, but the bedroom is always the last room you do, I guess. The bookshelf is the only new piece of furniture in the room; the couch and end table were in Justin's den, and the red chair was languishing in the basement, waiting for a good home. My dad and Justin were able to fix the window a few weeks ago, so now it has a screen again and is most useful. I read here every night before bed, and it's just lovely.

And yes, that would be an armadillo and a buffalo in Gracie's bed.

It's enough to make anyone crazy.

I get myself into messes. I know this. But the past two weeks have really gone above and beyond in terms of testing my patience. A brief look into what's going on at our house:

We're nearly done with the bedroom remodel. "Remodel" seems like such a strong word, but this isn't just slapping up some new paint. Five years after we first moved in, we're back to spackling, fixing cracks, and finally painting the ceiling. Yes, we did do this room when we moved in, and yes, it was a ton of work, but it wasn't perfect. Justin, apparently, is going for perfect. We've been sleeping in the guest room for the past two weeks, and I've been told I'll be back in my bed tomorrow night. I MUST be back in my bed tomorrow night because:

Portrait of the Dog as tired of this shit.

Penny is here. My parents dropped her off last week, and they're returning from their vacation tomorrow night at midnight, and they, of course, will sleep in the guest room.

Some of my week has looked like this:

It's like an idiot convention in here.But most of it has looked like this:

No, seriously, when is she going home?Gracie has all of a sudden become a jealous bird, and she can't stand it when I pay attention to Penny. She used to not care, but now she's all I'M THE ONLY DOG IN THIS HOUSE and it's become quite tiresome. After my parents left on Saturday morning, Gracie spent the day preventing Penny from coming upstairs. Also, she's been in my face all week, obviously trying to tell me something. We asked her if Timmy fell in the well again, but just got a blank look.

On the upside of things, I've been spinning:

I'm very nearly done spinning the singles and hoping against hope that plying it won't turn into a muddy mess. I'd like to start plying tomorrow, but we'll see. I think this will become socks for Justin. It's nice to spin again, especially while watching Downton Abbey on Netflix. I have all of a sudden stopped watching all of the Real Housewives and now record The This Old House Hour and all of the Masterpiece Classics.

Welcome to my 30s.

From where I sit

I spend about 75% of the "working hours" in my craft room, which I suppose could also be called my office. It's a great set-up - I have a window right next to my desk, where I can watch the seasons change via the enormous tree directly in my line of sight. In the winter, when the tree is thinned out, I can spy on goings-on on the next street over. My desk is enormous, big enough to hold my computer and printer, stacks of patterns and spreadsheets and binders. When I worked in an office, I tried to clean off my desk every Friday. That doesn't really seem to work around here - even when all of my work things are safely put away, there's still yarn and empty cans of Coke Zero and various knicknacks.

I'm really not a knicknack kind of person. My mom is about as minimalist as you get - there are probably three family pictures in that entire house, maybe a small statue on a bookshelf here or there. She doesn't decorate for holidays except Christmas (and only on the years when we have it there). I've inherited her disdain for objects just meant for clutter and, no, I do not decorate for holidays, either. But I am rather fond of "guys," as I call them.

These are my two newest guys:

Green Pill Man and Snake are mystery box items. I love them. I found a little store in Westport that carries hundreds of these, and although the women running the shop wanted me to open my boxes right there, I waited until I got home. It was definitely worth the wait. I need to find a new place for them, though, because they're currently sitting on my printer, and I'll probably need to use the scanner sometime soon. Unfortunately, there's no more room at the inn:

This shelf is right above my computer monitor and was put up expressly to hold a passel of my favorite guys. From left to right, we have Roy, Chuck, Peep, Benjamin Franklin, Babo, Herbert Hoover, and CB. CB is made from my favorite shirt that my dad used to wear. I stole it in high school and wore it every week, and it finally wore out when I was in college. My parents' neighbor made CB for me, and even put one of my dad's old ties on him. He is one of my most prized possessions.

Benjamin Franklin and Herbert Hoover are, well, Benjamin Franklin and Herbert Hoover. I got them in high school. At Target. They were part of the Leaders of the World collection, which also includes George Washington and (I think) Ulysses S. Grant, Abraham Lincoln, and James Madison. I know, it's an eclectic group of guys. Ben is missing his tri-cornered hat (he probably lost it on a date with my Spice Girl Geri doll). I went to Herbert Hoover Elementary school, so of course I had to have HH. His suit is rather ill-fitting, but my mom thinks it's because he lived during The Depression, and he's wearing someone else's clothes. I like to keep them close by just in case I need guidance on matters of national importance. That happens more than you think.