{ yum } grilled veggie sandwich

So with all that time spent on the couch, I developed a love of food tv.  A love?  An obsession, maybe.  Where has this been all my life?  Constant access to delicious inspiration meals and ideas combined with a whacked out appetite/nausea combination has made for some intense episode watching.  I have even set the dvr to record shows that might conflict with Blues Clues or Modern Family.

Please tell me I'm not the only one.

Or don't.  That's ok, too.

My husband can't tell if I'm torturing myself or really enjoying it.  By ten o'clock every night I want to go to the grocery store and stock my kitchen with fresh herbs, prosciutto, international cheeses and special breads and fish. 

Last weekend I could. Not. Take. It. Anymore.  And I felt good enough to spend an hour in the kitchen preparing something. 

And, oh my goodness.  I made Giada's Grilled Vegetable, Herb and Goat Cheese Sandwich and it knocked my socks off.  With no access to japanese eggplant, I only used zucchini, but it didn't matter.  The sun-dried tomatoes and herbs and cheese and crunchy bread and.. oh my.  It was heaven on my plate.

It almost pained me to shoot photos of it before digging in. 

And then it was all gone.

The end.

Here's the link to her recipe.

{ easing back in } sewing again

First of all, thank you all for the kind words of congratulations and well wishes after my last post. This girl is feeling pretty relieved that the cat is out of the bag. I am still quite freaked out about the logistics involved with three in carseats, but everything will work out. Right?

At any rate, thank you. :)

Also, I promise not to turn this into a pregnancy blog. My goal over the next several months is to create and do and make and enjoy. I couldn't be happier that spring has sprung right as I'm coming out of my funk; it feels like one giant celebration every time the sun pops out. Happy! Sunshine! Birds! Flowers! Sandals!  It's all good.

So.  After one of the longest breaks I have ever taken from my trusty old machine, I tackled my chair last weekend with a new slipcover. The little girls were out of town last weekend, so I had no pressure of schedules and commitments (and no longer felt tethered to the sofa!), and a full two days to get productive.  It felt really good to make something again. 

We bought this chair a few years ago.  One of the things I liked about it was that it came with a slipcover.  A zipper-free, all-right-angles, easy-to-duplicate slipcover.  I had grand plans of making seasonal covers -- a smoky velvet for winter, a crisp white linen for spring and summer, and maybe something special for the holidays, if I wanted to get really crazy.

Well, four years later, I finally got off my duff and made one.  After seeing how the original linen slipcover wore, I decided that wasn't probably the best choice for this busy chair again, so I went with unbleached canvas. 

Since the old one was torn and unusable, I was able to use it as a pattern.  I cut off each peice and pinned it back on to the chair as a reference for how it went together. This proved to be very important, as so many of the pieces were so similar. Then I took one piece off at a time and cut a matching piece (plus seam allowance) from the canvas.

I spent some time figuring out the order in which I needed to assemble this thing, but once that became obvious, the rest went quickly.  I am kicking myself that it didn't get tackled years ago.  And now that I do have the pattern pieces cut, there is no reason that my original plans of chair 'clothes' can't happen. Should my chair have her own closet? :)

The one thing I hadn't planned on is how all the crinkles and imperfections show when you aren't using a print like the original slipcover.  Maybe it's just because I made it and I see all the tiny misalignments, but going with a solid really draws attention to the lines rather than the whole... but I'm going with 'hey, it's a slipcover, it isn't going to be perfect anyway,' and leave it at that.

Also, it is not yet hemmed at the bottom.  I got that far and mama needed a rest.  After nearly two months of inactivity, I'd gotten more accomplished than I expected, and took a break.  Maybe I'll finish that this afternoon during naps.

What about you?  Do you have a slipcover project you've been putting off?  What's keeping you from starting?

Thanks again for stopping by and saying hello last week.  I've missed this space.  xoxo

ps:  it's finished!  Hooray!

{ un-pause }

{Fidget always says 'un-pause' instead of 'play.'  I think it's cute.}

Well.  That was a nice long break. 

We happened to run into some friends last night while we were out for a long-overdue dinner date, and blogging came up.  My friend, Lina, has a fun blog of her own that is chock full of healthy living tips and daily life humor that goes along with having four kids.  Talking about blogging made me miss it. Enough to pop in today and check in with the world.  Hi.

I have enjoyed my time away.  I haven't felt the pressure (and why is there pressure?  That's so silly.) to blog, or to create something so I could talk about it.  I have watched movies and read books and taken lots of naps while the littlest one napped as well.  I kind of took a break from my camera and the need to document stuff all the time. 

And I had a little secret.

We're expecting again(!) and I really, really, really felt horrible.  So, while I dealt the hormones and the nausea and the motion sickness and the exhaustion, I pretty much anchored the couch to the living room floor and kept up with the world on my iphone.

And I finally felt good enough to go out to dinner last night. Hooray!

(Now that I'm not wallowing in my crappiness, I am beginning to get excited about little #4.  A fourth girl?  Or a first boy?  No telling. We'll be finding out in a few weeks, though.  Crazy.)

At any rate, I feel better and am starting to look around the house for stuff to do.  The sunshine and warmer temps are energizing.  The kitchen remodel is underway. (As in, most things have been picked out and the people are lined up and we are ready to move on this thing. Finally.) There are some slipcover projects that I have been meaning to tackle.  And we will have a bedroom shuffle to manage, so there are new bedroom projects as well. 

Today I am going to tackle this chair.  I've been meaning to for a while.  The old slipcover was linen and was so worn that it tore -- right across the seat -- last November.  I've been letting it sit around sans cover for a bit and now it is covered with the markings left behind by grimy fingers and little wet washcloths.  Lovely. The new fabric is an unbleached canvas that I've already washed and dried, so it should be nice and practical.  This chair gets lots of use.

The sunshine in the kitchen is so wonderful that I'm going to bring the sewing machine up from my basement studio and work in here.  I cannot justify sitting in the basement on a gorgeous first day of spring like this.

Have a nice week, friends.  Happy Spring!
xoxo,
miss chris