Summer sewing, pregnancy hormones and decluttering life...

Ok, so I haven't posted in 5 months but I have been busy...

I planned on blogging about the Easter dress I made after being inspired by a jcrew dress with fabric roses all over it but that never happened. here's the finished dress.

The summer was HOT and busy with 5 kids running around. Oh and then there's this

Yes that would be baby #6 that kept me nauseated and tired all summer :) It's another boy. So I will now have 5 sons and one "Tyrant Queen". Actually the Tyrant Queen had been praying for a little sister for months. She took the news pretty well actually. I had also wished for a girl but then when I found out I was fine. The older boys are very close and the dudes are getting along well. I think having three boys in a row will be fun. It definitely won't be boring.

I had a fun two weeks teaching some of the smartest, cutest teenage girls to sew this summer. We made a pair of shorts, a cute drawstring bag and an adorable purse. They really caught on fast and I even decided to teach them to use 1/4 inch seams and it really worked out. The hardest part was dealing with 4 different sewing machines and figuring out how to thread them all.

I have some sewing projects lined up including a "Belle" costume but am trying to purge my house of all extra stuff we don't need. I swear junk multiplies at night. Anyway, I just read this book It's All Too Much: An Easy Plan for Living a Richer Life with Less Stuff that was recommended in a post by Sarah at Clover Lane. I love her blog!

I need to read the book again as I got a little lost in my decluttering mission. It's actually going well but it doesn't seem like it to me on first glance. I clean a room of surface clutter and then some child comes along and leaves a toy, school paper or something I told them to put away right on my nice clean surface. I haven't even gotten to the deep junk purging yet.  A big part of the problem is that we moved into this house 14 months ago and I still don't have an assigned place for everything. There are some things that kind of float from this closet to that. So that is my mission and like everything else I get mad when I want something to happen RIGHT NOW and it's a process. I did send an entire minivan full of stuff to Goodwill this weekend which lightened my heart. Which is good because my poor family had to deal with a complete meltdown on Saturday preceding the Goodwill trip.

I had been furiously working on making the living room look at least somewhat straight and barking at children left and right and then I decided I needed to calm down and take a shower. So I went to the bathroom (we have one bathroom for 7 people) and I was straight back into steaming mode because there was stuff on the counter and floor etc and I had just cleaned this bathroom not a few days before. So I was determined it would be clean before my shower. I started clearing the sink and then moved to the items I saw on the floor. It was a few books the top one being a book a had just cleared off of the couch not an hour before and given to my husband to put away! I bent down to pick it up and yelled his name as I snapped up straight not realizing the cabinet door above me was open. My head hit hard against the corner of the door. The pain mixed with the cocktail of pregnancy hormones was too much and I set to sobbing uncontrollably. Of course the husband came running to see what was wrong and to comfort me and was met with a sobbing diatribe about what he had done and how that led to my pain lol. I told him to leave me alone and sobbed through my shower. I often wonder how he survives the psycho that is a pregnant me. He really is patient. 

I am finally getting to hanging shelves and organizing areas for play in the kid's rooms. All the while planning on keeping only the things that will comfortably fit on those shelves. See, I'm learning ;) I will post pictures when I have it all done.

Comments

[Svetlana]

Having been on a decluttering tear myself, I totally empathize. Put those kids to work. We hid the remotes and tv cables and made them clean til they found them. Conveniently, they were discovered after their rooms were completely trash/clutter free.

[Lizzie]

LOL that is a good idea! Last weekend we told the boys there would be no tv or computer until their room was clean. They woke me up at 6:40 to check their progress. Of course their room is now trashed again...