The Plague....

Well, without fail this holiday season has started off, yet again, with the kids coming down with the croup-y plague and spreading it to the whole family. I've gotten to where I don't even tell them a holiday is coming for fear that their bodies just lie in wait to release some virus. After 5 years straight of it though - I think Mike and I have developed a healthy paranoia! LOL! Ah well, at least it's actually BEFORE the holidays this year and it hopefully won't continue on through it.

It was windy and cold (duh, it's the windy state) this weekend - i.e. miserable, so we worked on some "indoor" projects. Mike and I both decided it was way beyond time for a headboard for our master bedroom and decided to try to make one, mainly because the furniture we both can actually agree on is usually about $7-$10K for a whole set, so we decided this was much more practical and it's a "fun" family adventure working together! So, we are making this padded headboard - and yes, that "we" does include both of us so it's not like I've got a little mouse in my pocket! Mike went and got a sheet of oak plywood along with a deep mahogany stain and I got fabric and trim. He spent Saturday staining the outside 10 inches of it all the way around this piece of wood large enough to be our garage door - ok, so it's only big enough to accommodate our king-size bed it just looks huge, and I spent Saturday padding and covering the piece that will be the insert in the middle of the headboard. Helpful hint for a project like this: don't buy fabric with any type of lines - horizontal or vertical - or heaven forbid, both! We bought a "quilted" type of fabric - which means it has a bunch of 1"x1" squares - hence, vertical AND horizontal lines. Can you say "UGH!" - and oh, but this was supposed to be a "fun" family project with teaching the kids "frugality". After many starts and stops and my eyes not only blurring, but actually crossing while trying to get all those lines straight and level, Mike finally found his level (I think he was getting even for me laughing at him earlier in the day), I quit cussing like a sailor, and we made short work of the project. The headboard is looking absolutely gorgeous, thank you Vern Yip from Trading Spaces for the idea. Anyway, so while I was wrangling the fabric, Mike put 2 coats of stain on the wood in the garage - oh, and did I mention it was cold and windy (i.e. wind gusting to over 40mph) that day - and gee, he's working in the garage with the door OPEN. Not rocket science to figure out he was picking gnats, corn stalks and all sorts of crap out of his stain! It was pretty dog-gone funny - especially the gnats! He finally decided to heed my advice and bring the wood in the house (heck, just closing the garage door would've been a great idea!) so that it might have a chance of drying sometime in this millenium. He figured it would be ready to go by 10am the next morning (yeah, right!) for the polyurethane coats. Alas, to his great and total surprise, it was still wet to the touch throughout much of the day Sunday and didn't dry completely until 8pm Sunday night (hmm, couldn't have had anything to do with that 40 degree weather we were having?). Ah well, at least he got to watch his Cowboy game - and they won - so life is good! Anyway, once I got finished with "my" part of the headboard, I started sewing new pillows for the bed. Ok, I must've been jacked up on chocolate, benadryl or completely lost my mind when I bought all this fabric and trim for this project. First it was the quilt fabric for the headboard - but the capper was buying beaded fringe for the pillows. Can you say "Stupid"? Holy Toledo! Lucky for me, Mike bought me this fabulous sewing machine 2 years ago and I absolutely LOVE that it has a slider switch which allows you to control the level of speed that it sews at. Normally I have it at super-sonic - as in, call NASA because it makes the floor shake like it's going to lift off. For this project however, I had it set at it's slowest setting - 1 stitch per second. Oh my gosh - SHOOT ME!!! I'm waaaayyyy too impatient for this!!! I did finish 1 pillow ................... in 7 hours.........ugh. Not sure if the other 2 pillows will ever get done at this pace or if I'll just rip them to shreds while laughing maniacally!

Anyway, so we put the 1 completed pillow on our bed with our current comforter, for which all of this new fabric was chosen, only to discover that it makes our nearly 8 year old comforter look 40 years old. So now the dilemma is do I make a comforter out of the quilted fabric or go buy something ready made that could work with it....................?????? Mike is really liking the looks of that quilted fabric being made into a comforter..........guess I shouldn't have laughed at his gnat picking...........................