Where I hide from the shouting.

Henry is a shouter. I wish you could hear it, but it basically sounds like an old man with his hearing aid turned too low. "Aaaaa! Aaaaaa! ... Bwa." And when the shouting gets too loud and Mommy tags out, she hides in the basement.

Oh, my wonderful basement. It was pretty much finished about nine months ago, but I haven't really gotten to spend as much time down there as I would like since somebody else was finished about nine months ago, too. He's not a huge fan of the basement even though we watch PBS Kids when we're down there and nobody makes him iron.

I never showed pictures of the room once it was finished, and while I could pretend to be embarrassed about the hurricane that blew through there, let's not kid ourselves. This is a space that is used, abused, and rarely vacuumed. Having crap everywhere does make it harder to work, but I like a challenge and I'm very good at moving piles of things around. All of my favorite things are in this room, and why would I want to put them away? So the Internet thinks I'm neat? Internet, we clearly haven't met.

The view from the bottom of the stairs.

You'll notice two main themes in this room: sewing and knitting. Actually, fabric and yarn. Those shelves don't contain all of the yarn - there are two Steralite containers on the other side of the room. One holds sock yarn, the other holds handspun (mostly mine). I do not consider them deep stash, and I dig through the sock one quite a bit.

I do most of my work on the same kitchen table I smeared with Play-Doh when I was little. She's a sturdy old thing, and she's lived in more houses than I have. Yes, I would love a taller, bigger, better cutting table, but even if I had that, my old friend would still be part of my craft room. We are soulmates, I think, bound by years of abuse and new hobbies.

I sew on a crappy sewing cabinet from Jo Ann. It works.

The view from the end of the room.The brown chair is for all manner of yarn craft, most often knitting and untangling said yarn. Sometimes Justin sits in it while I work at the table, and sometimes Gracie loses her mind and jumps onto the ottoman. Most often, it is covered in fabric, yarn, and other crafting supplies.

The little table next to it is a family heirloom. It's my tea party table from when I was little (also used for numerous lemonade stands), and it's official name is The Little Red Table. It has a bum leg that falls off when you pick it up.

I love this table. Justin doesn't understand the appeal of the table and why I'm so attached to it, and he's tried to convince me to get rid of it. I would rather lose a limb. This table is Home to me. I've crafted on it ever since I was a wee thing, and when I wanted to create a collage on top of it before I went to college, my dad stepped in and made the wooden topper you see on it now. I collaged on top of that, and my little red table is (somewhat) pristine underneath.

My quilt design wall is at the very back of that picture, close to the sewing machine. Right now, it's just holding a few squares I was auditioning for my pixelated piece, but it's become invaluable when putting together the mostly-solid quilts I love. It's just a huge piece of cheap batting tacked up with some contractor's nails. It's the reason why I was okay with giving up my old craft room (stupid baby) and why I wanted my new space to be in the basement.

My favorite part of the room is right when you come down the stairs. This room is covered with strangely-shallow and oddly-shaped built in cabinets, and this cabinet is where I keep 90% of my fabric (the other 10% is on the floor in front of the cabinet. I am lazy.) Inside, there is a glorious rainbow.

Solids, how I love thee.

So there's the room. It's not pretty, it's not neat, and it's not for the faint of heart. It's exactly what I wanted.

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.