I got to admit its getting better. . .

Okay, that last entry wasn’t my best. It was dripping of cynicism and negativity. Well…if ya’ know me I guess that entry was just very much me. Just not as funny.

Today we started work on the baby room. Actually, my dad started work on the baby room. Jeremy, my mother and I just sorta’ went food shopping, Charlie shopping, and surfed the web. Now, I know how to work a paintbrush probably better than most people, but when it comes to my father, no one knows how to do it better than him. That’s his living, he likes to build and paint (Need work done: contact Santos Remodeling for all your house-y needs!).

Like a dufus I forgot to take pictures of the room BEFORE we started the paintjob. It was a dark, diarrhea/exorcist puke green. It wasn’t a bad green, that’s just the shade it was. Imagine if the girl in the exorcist had less bile in her puke to make it pea color and it was just a more concentrated green. Yeah, like that. It took my dad 2 or 3 coats of white paint based in a primer to cover it up before he could start the pretty light shade/hint of purple we chose. I’ll take pics of it tomorrow. It makes me happy and more into the fact that I’m having a little girl, a fact that makes me a bit weary.

Oh, my poor little girl. I worry so much. Not just for the fact that she doesn’t have an older brother to protect her, like I did. But for the fact that she has a mother like me. I’m the absolute worse girl ever. To me, everything girly is utterly boring. I hate weddings, could care less about nail polishes, I hate having hair let alone doing it, I die a little inside when I have to sit through romantic comedies. Everything that is geared toward women is something that I probably abhor. Except make up….and clothes. Love that.

I guess I’ll get more into that in another post. Right now I'm letting my mind spill out before I start having organized posts again. A week to ramble before I get right back into subjects and making sense. My Carrie Bradshaw like ranting posts (ps I  loved Sex and the City…I guess I have a little more estrogen than I thought).

Till then, Imma’ just let it out and get my mind clean of all the clutter and bullshit that is floating around. If you’ve been pregnant before, you can probably understand what I am talking about. Complete emotional crazy shit show that is happening in those brains!

*Yawn*

I don’t wanna’ complain. Honestly, I do not. But as I sit here with swollen feet, sausage fingers, ginormous boobs and farts from hell, I must say “How does one ever find the energy to do anything, let alone end up falling in love with the creature that has been causing this much discomfort and who in 13 years will start to hate your guts?”

I’m 7 1/2 months pregnant and finally started to slow down. Of course I still run after buses, chase around shoplifters, climb up ladders, scale the shelves in back stock, gyrate and do body roll dance moves at work, but I just do it a little more slowly.

When I get home I find myself so damn tired from running around all day that once I sit down, I pretty much stay down. This causes a problem. That problem being; I have to let housework slide. Etsy work, slide. preparing the house and my life for the baby slide. Taking care of Charlie slide. So when I finally do get a day off, I spend it running around trying to get errands, budgeting, shopping, prepping the baby shower (I have to have my say in it or else I will be stuck with this totally girly affair that I will be miserable at) and doing a bazillion other things to catch up with what I had left behind during the week.

I’m fucking tired…and the baby hasn’t even got here yet.

It’s my own fault. I want to do too many things because all my life I’ve done too many things at once. I’m fast paced and get bored if I don’t have things going on. I’m good at doing a lot of things at once. Just not right now, and its freaking frustrating.

Jeremy helps, but of course its under careful instruction. No, he isn’t mentally incapable of understanding how I like the toilet scrubbed, how to feed Charlie or how I like my budget balanced…he’s a man. I am a woman. I understand. I’m patient.

So right now, my life consists of lots of checklists in order for me to prioritize all the things I need to do. It’s a very long check list. *sigh*

I guess I should be chronicling these moments in my life. I have a daily diary that I really suck at writing in every day. Hmm, I should probably write in it after I write this entry. I need to get better at giving a shit about these kinds of things.

I will. I will also be funnier. Right now, my gas pain is giving me a headache and I just spent 1 hour crying about my dog having diarrhea. I’m exhausted.

 

Oh yeah, Whitney Houston died.

I lost myself in this blog and in life. I’ve been so polite and I held my tongue on so many subjects. I’ve decided, I’m just going to let who I am just fly on this blog and not care who I offend. I’m not offensive, I’ve just been trying to spare the sensitive. I’m just New Jersey is all.

I don’t know where that random thought came from, my thoughts are a bit all over the place. I guess what I am trying to say is that I’m not going to hold back on who I am anymore. I apologize if I seem abrasive from now on, but I feel I have that great talent to say what other people are thinking and feel no shame in voicing that opinion.

Getting to work!

Yep, today is the day I get back to work on the Etsy shop! I will be updating outfits on past items, getting together outfits for new items, working on my listings and updating them all. It’s going to be a busy day. Brenda and I (Brenda is my form) will be playing Barbie for a few hours and getting everything together. Feels good to get back into some sort of rhythm.

Before that, I have some cleaning to do still. We’ve made some pretty good headway here but there are a few more odds and ends that need to be placed.

Later tonight, I plan on making bulghur wheat with ground turkey for Mom Jeans and I. Over dinner we go over the painstaking laborious art of budgeting. Oh the joys of being responsible!

An Unexpected Surprise

I have been super crazy, ridiculously, extremely overwhelmed and busy these last few months. In early September Mom Jeans and I did an awesome flea market in Astoria. It was fun and it gave me the motivation I needed to get involved in other ones and make my way over to the ultimate Brooklyn Flea Market one day. I bought a dress form, we were ready to take pictures with it, I was designing thank you cards and business cards….but something was wrong with me. My usual high energy levels were low and my brain was sluggish. I couldn’t remember the simplest things and I was just so … blah.

Could it be….nah!

Life has a way of giving you beautiful and unexpected surprises :

My little girl! 18 weeks old!

So there you have it. Mom Jeans and I just couldn’t have an Etsy shop and multiple projects alone…we had to throw a baby in there. Things weren’t complicated enough for us, I guess.

I cannot wait to meet her and see her tiny toes and hands. Jeremy would say the same if the look of shock leaves his face anytime soon! He’s a worrier, I’m a planner. It actually makes us a good team.

So we’ve been super busy getting things together and he is about to move in and my energy has returned in this second trimester. Hopefully the shop will be up and running again later next week. Can’t wait to get our shit together!

Time to get back to work

I have been stressed, tired, and having migraines. It was an overall crappy July. I started feeling a bit off in the beginning of the month, so I pulled away from working on the blog and shop to concentrate just on my full time job, housework, and taking care of my dog. You know, take things easy *roll eyes*.

I did manage to get some work for the shop done. I made color dyed cut offs! It was surprisingly fun and extremely easy.

Here, I will show you how.

What you need:

• Procion dye mix of your choice
• Bag of Urea
• Bag of Soda Ash
• Water
• Clothes to dye

Step 1:

Get you dye tub ready. 5 gallon tub with cold water. fill with about 3 and a half or 4 gallons (remember displacement!!). You can use a larger tub, but remember if you use more water you will need more dye powder.

Step 2:

Completely soak the clothes separately, in a sink or tub, making sure they are fully saturated with water.

 

Step 3:

Make the dye bath! Add a cup of salt, 2 tablespoons of the dye of your choice, and 1/2 cup of Urea balls. Stir until well mixed. In a separate container of cold water, mix in 1/3 cup soda ash and mix until somewhat dissolved. Don’t  be shocked when the soda ash hardens, it will dissolve after a while.

 

Step 4:

Add the clothes. Leave enough room to stir (in a five gallon tub, two articles of clothing at a time). Stir consistently for 20 minutes.

Step 5:

When 20 minutes are up, add the soda ash bath slowly, while stirring. Keep clothes in dye bath for an additional 30-40 minutes, stirring occasionally.

 

Step 6:

In a running bath, dump the dye out. Rinse the clothes until the water comes out clear…ish. It will take a few washes for the dye to stop running. Line dry.

 

a few tips:

• use gloves. I didn’t the first time I dyed some shorts fuchsia. It looked like I killed a Fraggle.
• If you are super neat with the stirring, go ahead and set it up like I have in the picture above (that was when I had the help of Mom Jeans to clean up spills, and he’s a lot more graceful than I am). But if you are a clumsy spaz like me, put the 5 gallon tub inside the bath tub so you can stir like a Tasmanian devil…and not suffer the consequences of getting your white grout tiled floors dyed pink and blue. Oops.
• The water will not run clean when you rinse the clothes after the dye bath…they just won’t. Go ahead try it. Think you are better than me and you are gonna' get that water to run clean. Frustrate yourself. The best you can do is get as best you can to run it a lil’ clean and then wash the items (either in the tub or in the washer) with detergent.
• don’t have the kitties around. I now have adorable little pink paw prints on the white sofa.
• Remember the dye will react to the original color. So if you are dyeing something that was originally red in a blue bath, the color will come out …Purple. Just like you learned in art class! That’s part of the fun of dyeing things, see what surprises come out that bath!
• An added plus is that you can mix dye powders to get different colors! But always keep in mind the original color of the garment being used.

Have fun mixing colors and dyeing away! Here are the final results of some items I dyed.

 

Original color: Yellow

 

Original Color: black

Original Color: light grey

Taking it Easy

I’ve been taking a bit of a vacation away from the blog and from the Etsy shop, but this week will bring me back into the swing of things. I have a pretty hectic work schedule this week, but I plan on posting some pictures of the projects I have been working on these last few weeks.

I like being lazy sometimes. I work way too hard. . .

List of Things I Need Pt. 1

 

Ugh, This Etsy thing is very trying when you also work 40+ hours a week. I get soo overwhelmed with the amount of things I need to buy for the shop!  I put them in order of importance

1) More Inventory

This one is obvious. I need more stuff to sell more stuff. Time to head to the warehouse!

 

2) Computer Printer

This one will save me time! Printing out shipping labels and decorative thank you notes/designing things will make things a snap

3) Camera

 

Just to get some fresher pics and inspirational shots. Jeremy needs something better to work with…and I need to get better pics taken.

HMM MAKE THIS NUMBER 2 ACTUALLY!!

4) Garment Rack

I’m running out of closet space! The sensible thing to save room in my already cramped apartment would be to store the items in a bin…but it seems unfair to store everything after its been kept away for years. Especially after I’ve steamed them and cleaned them!

 

That’s all for now. I suppose. I can’t wait to get new items but that probably won’t happen till next month some time. Hmm, maybe I can manage to swing by the end of this month. We’ll see!

 

Do you guys have items you need right now?