As November wraps up...

It's time for some random blog updates. Where to begin?

I finished the sewing project for that FB meme I mentioned. I like how it turned out. Sorry to spoil the surprise for those of you awaiting a package, but here they are:
They're very simple shoulder bags, made from a pattern I found through pinterest. (Thank you to Lula Louise for putting the tutorial together!) They're reversible, so I used a fairly heavy-weight fabric on one side of each, with a fun fabric on the other. Here's a close up of the ones with denim lining:
After I made the first one and got the hang of the pattern, I could whip one out in an hour and a half, including pressing seams (which I often skip on other projects - naughty, I know!). I made all of these over the course of four days. And to make it even better, I already had the solid color fabrics in my stash, so just bought colorful fabrics that coordinated with what I had. I think all three - the khaki, dark denim and brown corduroy - had been purchased by me at various times over the past several years with the intent of making skirts for myself. Clearly that never happened. I was glad to put them to good use. Now I just wish I had one of these bags for myself! I'll definitely be saving the pattern for future use.

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We spent the first half of the long Thanksgiving weekend at my parents' house, hanging out with them, my sister and her boyfriend, and her kids. It was a lot of fun! My folks have a hot tub in an attached sun room, so the kids "went swimming" a couple times a day. And the day before Thanksgiving, I spent many hours shopping with my mom, which was wonderful! We browsed through all my favorite stores and never bought a single thing except lunch at the Cheesecake Factory (thanks, Mom!). It was just the sort of guilt-free retail therapy I was needing. Now I can go back to being content in my smaller city. I've had my C&B, William Sonoma and Pottery Barn Kids fixes.

I also spent a lot of time playing Guitar Hero and Just Dance on my parents' Wii, mostly with Sara, my niece. She killed me on Just Dance, but I reciprocated on Guitar Hero, so fun was had all around.

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We came home late on Friday so we could go tree shopping on Saturday. Ellen was in town from college, and we wanted to be sure to hang out with her while we could. A tree farm was as good a place as any!
The girls love the playground at the tree farm we often go to. And the trees are pretty nice, too. Ours is still sitting bare in the living room, because I haven't found time to string lights. I've been busy.

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I got it in my head on Friday, during the drive home from KC, that I needed to move forward with swapping Peter's room and Nathaniel's office. I went so far as to sketch (on a napkin, in a dark car) layouts of the rooms and the furniture that would be in each and how best I might arrange it. So Sunday came and I seized the moment. It was a ridiculous day of moving this dresser back here, sweeping, moving the desk across the hall to here, sweeping, moving the dresser across the hall to there... but in the end, I was so happy! I had originally intended to paint the pink room that Peter had been in before moving Nathaniel's office into it, but then I realized I couldn't since Peter couldn't sleep in the room while I was painting. The painting will get done eventually, although it just lost a lot of the urgency, so "eventually" may end up being "next year".

Here's Peter's new room set up (note - most wall art has not yet been rearranged):

And another shot, with a better view of the "window":
You may recall that that window looks onto the back of the addition's wall, so is just annoying. I still hope someday to build a bookshelf into the window frame. In the meantime, I used a bunch of boy-themed scrapbook paper to fill each pane and make it (hopefully) less of an eyesore.

While we're on the topic of cute things:

And here's Nathaniel's new office, which is also the guest room. If you look closely you'll see that our current guest is a princess-rock-star in need of some r&r:

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I hope you all had wonderful Thanksgivings. I can't believe it's Advent already! Happy Advent!