At least that is what Anya probably feels like.  Well, I guess I do, too, since I have so much fun making them.

I actually made this dress a few weeks ago and forgot I hadn’t posted it yet.  It didn’t get posted with the rest of the sewing frenzy because when Anya put it on it didn’t fit right.  It went in for a bit of surgery.

As you can see the torso part was wayyyy too long, so I brought the skirt part up a bit. I think I needed a bit more coffee because those hamsters running my brain were a lethargic when I was designing this dress.  I’m not sure what I was thinking.

THEN she came home from wearing it at daycare with a MARKER STAIN in the middle of the top (same day as this photo was taken).  At least the marker stain was teal and matched the dress.   I washed it right away and it came out…thankfully. Mama was not happy…not happy at all.

The print is french terry and the stripe is a cotton-lycra blend. I love the feel and weight of these fabrics. The rickrack is chenille.

Here she is playing in it at the park the other day.  Before the snow.  But that’s another post.  It’s not the best shot of the dress, but at least you can see she is wearing it happily.

*****

On the household construction woes, we spent a large majority of the weekend priming and painting the walls and ceilings in our basement.  My hands were so sore and numb by the end of each day.  My forearms were cramping up on Saturday night.  This would be one of those moments when it would be nice to have family that lived close by to take the kids for a bit.  The kids were “helping”, and it would have gone a bit faster if I hadn’t had so much “help”.  Ah well, we should have the majority of it painted by the time the guys come back on Wednesday.  Then the floor laying can begin!  Progress!

I was a bit worried about the paint color for the main room being too dark.  It is a basement afterall.  I chose a terra cotta color, and it turned out just as I wanted.  Now I just have to draw up some large stencils for the walls that I’m going to put on with a copper metallic paint.  Coolness will abound!

In case you are keeping track…here is a few more items to add to the list of “stuff that has gone wrong”:

• Our new egress window is not draining…at all.  We had a bit of rain in the past few weeks and it just fills up the window well and hardly drains.  That means we have been using a small pump to get the water out.  Not a long-term solution by any means.
• To alleviate said window well issues, we need to get gutters on our house.  The gutter man came out yesterday and said we had a really ususual roof line, which would take extra work.  Extra Work = Extra Money.  Great. Fabulous. 
• There is no extra money for those gutters, so it will probably go onto a credit card and not on our home equity loan that was supposed to take care of all of this remodeling shenanigans.  Great. Fabulous.

If I ever do another home remodel…someone please knock some sense into me.  Especially if it occurs with this house…because apparently we have been cursed by the most INEPT BUILDER EVER.  Most of the issues would not have happened if he had just done the construction correctly the first time.  The drainage issues we have are due to what he did with the fill (i.e. clay instead of sand fill next to the house).  Oh, and apparently our house windows are not supposed to be exterior windows.  Huh. Well, that’s just PERFECT.   Because why would you put exterior windows on a house where it gets to -30 degrees in the wintertime.  No wonder our house has heating/cooling issues. 

Well, we definitely don’t have money for that this year.  Maybe next. *SIGH*