Brand New Studio!

My brother-in-law who originally bought the house with Matthew, moved out last week. So with one extra room in the house, we decided to move out of our old bedroom and turn it into the office/sewing room. I can't relate to you how wonderful I feel right now. This is the biggest, most convienient, comfortable, and well organized space I have ever worked in. I'm in heaven.

Stephanie worked with me on Sunday getting things started. She is awesome, and really help set the tone of "Are you really ever going to use this? Let's get rid of it." A very necesarry attitude considering I've been collecting fabric and things for a decade now.

Look at this beautiful arrangement she did for me.

Moving and organizing my collection of fabric and trim was a huge job that actually took me about 25 hours to complete (my entire week so far). Truth be told, I have a few more storage bins in my basement, and in my parent's basement. But let's not think about that right now.

This is what my old studio looked like half-way through the move.

Cataloging all my home-made patterns.

How long can I keep things this tidy?

Things are getting desperate

Years and years of saving change (even the quarters). We were saving it for some super vacation we never planned. We called it our camping coins. Well, we needed help paying the bills this month, so off I hauled it to the bank. The two canvas bags were so heavy, I thought they would rip.

Have you ever cashed in your change jar for a beer run thinking, "this is going to be, like, $100 dude!" And then was totally disappointed when it counted out to be less that half what you anticipated? This was nothing like that, this was some serious jing, like I said, lots of quarters. Turns out it was over $460! Holy crap. Big help.

Handmade Nation!

Faythe Levine, crafter, artist, musician, fellow Milwaukee boutique and gallery owner (Paper Boat), and filmaker, is the director of the film Handmade Nation which premiered last Thursday at the Oriental Theatre. She is a rad lady. I was so happy to finally see the film that she's been working so hard on and promoting for the past 3 years. The theatre was full!

I was impressed with the film. She did a great job.

I love the Oriental. I wish my relatives would give me gift certificates to go here instead of the damn Marcus theaters.

Baby Party

Over the weekend we had a little welcoming party for the new Mr. baby-pants who's due on March 9th. We held it at Sugar Maple, which is milwaukee's sweetest bar in my opinion because it is both smoke free and it has dozens and dozens of amazing American micro beers on tap. Being pregnant, I was able to appreciate one of those items.

Sabrina came through with a delicious cake that she described to me months ago. Very cute! And friends and family brought some yummy food. We weren't expecting gifts, since we don't need much, but a few friends came with some very special things. Some hand-made, some vintage, some just darn adorable. Very appreciated. And my mom gave us a matching sweater and hat that she knit herself. Beautiful!