baby knitting

What's this!? An update!? With actual knitting content!?

Amazing.

Yes, I have started some knitting for the baby. A mixture of feeling better plus not having much to do now that I'm not working plus wanting to do something to get ready for the baby has inspired me.

First off, here's the hat I knit a couple weeks ago. The one I just made up and ended up probably being too big for a newborn, but that the baby will definitely grow into. I just borrowed a baby bootee book from Rachel, so I will make some bootees to go with it soon. I might also make some matching mitts so he doesn't scratch himself, though I don't know how practical those are.

Then I went to the knitting store on Friday for the first time since February (!!!) and bought a couple of books and some yarn. The project I started on today is from Rowan Babies and is called Buster. And the baby in the picture is just too cute.

I'm using Rowan wool cotton for it (as the pattern calls for) but am using sliiiiightly different colors to make it a bit brighter. The yellowish-green will be the main color and the teal will be the stars and the sleeves. I'm hoping this will fit him around xmas time.

I think I'm going to like this knitting baby clothes thing. So much faster to actually complete a project!

last days

Today was our last day with our Tuesday/Thursday preschool group. Tomorrow is our last day with our Monday/Wednesday group. I'm going to miss my little guys and girls. I have such a great group of kids. I'll need to go back to the school in the Fall to visit and make sure all the kids are transitioning to their new classrooms okay. It's so hard to see these kids every couple of days for a year and then never see them again - one of the sad parts of being a teacher, especially one who won't be back at the school next year. Luckily there are so many more benefits, like seeing how much progress the kids have made this year. They've grown up so much.

bedroom closet and other remodeling

So I promised pictures of the closet project we worked on this past weekend. Before I get to those pictures, I wanted to point you towards our house remodel site that has most of the major work we've done to our house.

The most interesting (and largest) project is, of course, the kitchen. We entirely gutted the kitchen. Not even the walls, ceiling, floor, or windows stayed. There are still a few small things that need to be finished up (and one large thing that is still awaiting PG&E - they suck), but it is finished now for the most part. I'm still waiting to take the good "after" pictures until everything is finished though. Then I can have side-by-side pictures that really show off how bad it was then and how wonderful it is now. I love my kitchen. There are two pages for the kitchen - kitchen 1 and kitchen 2.

If you don't want to click to check out the whole project, here's a little preview.

Before:

And After:

Now, on to the closet stuff.

The master closet is 9 feet wide and used 3 sliding doors for access. It started out with just one long clothes rod and a very warped shelf over it. First we ripped those out.

After ripping out the support boards and baseboards, and then sanding the walls, Tim shows us how big the closet is.

Then he painted the closet to match the rest of the room. The color is Behr's "Pesto." While Tim did this, I did some gardening so as not to breathe in paint fumes :)

Then we assembled our new closet organizer. This took about six hours.

And last, we put all the clothes back in the closet!

Niiiiice! :)

Now we have to figure out what we want to do about the doors. I'm not a big fan of sliding doors, but since the closet is so wide, we might not have any other options. Tim suggested a curtain, but I said that sounded too "dorm room." I suggested no doors, and Tim said that sounded even more "dorm room." We're going to check out some accordion style doors, but if nothing else works, we'll go back to the sliding door option. At some point, we will reinstall baseboards when we get around to doing that in all the bedrooms. We also need to install some kind of light in the closet before the doors go back up.

We also took out the closet organizer in the library to prepare it for painting. We thought we would get to both closets this past weekend, but boy were we wrong. After we paint in the library, we have an IKEA closet organizer that was in my craft room that we are just going to move in there. The craft room is going to become the nursery. The closet in there is already painted and ready; we just need to assemble the new closet organizer (same kind as in the master bedroom). Then all our closets will be updated! Whew!

Also, I just want to say how much I love my handyman husband! It is so great that we get to do all these projects and save so much money because Tim does so much of the work himself. He is really making this house fabulous. And I am becoming an efficient handyman's helper ;)