The best laid plans...

You know when you have a week of activity all planned out, great finishes in mind and an anticipated plethora of achievements to brag about for your Sunday post?

The universe has been very unkind to me  this week  chucking roadblocks in my path and generally jumping in front of me screaming "NER NER NE NER NER  " and sticking her tongue out.  My plan for this week was to finish  all manner of crafty and renovatey things and pretty much none of it actually transpired.

The week started so well...I finished Little P's quilt.

I planned to prime the desk twice and get a coat of enamel on this weekend.  Didn't happen. I was going to regale you with tales of my brilliance in getting the windmill blocks sewn together. Didn't happen. I had visions of proudly unveiling my finished meat safe. It's  not finished. No unveiling this week.

However I did do some more of the project I started last week.  

I acquired a monster. Isn't this little guy A-DOR-ABLE? His name is Marvin. He is made by the talented Kris from Life at Rosemary Hill and the equally talented Mrs. Picklesticks.  (Little P already spied this and screamed "MORE" twenty times- I'd say it's a hit.)  Thanks for holding him hostage Kris.

I bought another  chair to restore because I LOVED doing the last chair so much.

Fortunately this one was easy. I spray painted it as soon as I got home. I'm going to sew a funky new cushion cover- just as soon as I teach myself how to insert a zip.

Last night I had a go at FM quilting. If it had been successful, I'd be showing pictures. Notice the absence of visuals ....I think I'm one of those dumbarses that needs to take a class or three.

I made Little P a crayon roll.... I did this to convince myself I wasn't a complete dud, after the great FM quilting debacle.

The leadlight windows are  finished and in place. I distressed them with sandpaper but I was kind of wussy about it so you cant see much detail. I figure I can always go back and have another crack at them later.  These will look fabulous when the custom made blinds go in over this window. And the backyard is tidied up. And my windows get cleaned.

And my pantry door finish moves ever closer. The mesh is here , and the door has seen several licks of paint.  A has a few more to go.
 

What did you get up to this weekend?

It's gonna be a busy week. The best I can do is hang on for the ride. Hope your ride this week is fantastic.  

P.S. Just a heads up....Favourite Things Friday  will probably be late this week, which will probably be on time for our Northern Hemisphere friends but late if you're in the south of the world. Some thing is happening Friday that I want to share so I wont be posting until Friday night or Saturday morning my time. It'll be worth the wait I promise.  

An Unusually Quiet Weekend

It has been a much quieter week/weekend  than usual. Not much actually got finished.You'd think that would make this a short post right? Nuh huh...

I participated in FNSI and  finished 50 Windmill blocks.
 

My pantry shelves are in.  I am one happy camper. This is where three hours of my weekend went. Making my pantry look pretty and carting everything in from the linen cupboard.  Now I'm itching to get the door done because I think it will look so unique.

Mr. Palm Sander and I had a date with the door this weekend. This picture is practically porn because the door is now completely naked. I started the sanding and Mr. P finished it. As Mr. P pointed out to me I loosened the paint for him so his bit was easy. Repairs next. Then painting.

I bought new cushions for the guest room which I just realised don't photograph anywhere near as beautifully as they look. Frugality and my inability to pass up a bargain won out. I got these for 65% off. They scream French Boudoir. You will also notice I am thinking positively about having a guest room at some point in the not too distant future. When I do, you're all invited to come and stay. At the same time. Wouldn't that be fun?

On the "I'll-reclaim-my-guest-room-back-someday" train of thought,  Miss P and I went to look at some houses for rent. Fingers crossed. I also want everyone to cross their toes, their eyes and any other body parts you may have that are that flexible. 

I decided to start  a fabric inventory after I went insane Saturday night and bought 33 yards of fabric online. Damn you excellent Aussie dollar! (insert fist shaking here )  I swear no alcohol was involved. It's time to face facts. I have an addiction.  I'm wondering if I could put myself on a small fabric budget for 2011 and actually stick to it. It's an interesting thought. I still don't have as much as some of you and consoled Mr. P with this thought when I informed him we wouldn't be eating for the next two weeks.  

The leadlight feature windows for the kitchen window got painted by Mr. P after I sanded them. This is in the pre -state. It's insane to me that I sanded these, to have them painted and now I'm waiting for the paint to dry so I can sand bits off again...Madness I tell ya . Madness.

I started another  project...

Crafty posts may get a bit cryptic between now and the end of the year since I decided half the gifts I give this year have to be handmade. How many of you have Etsy stores?  Handmade doesn't mean  I have to make it and I'll need to hook up with some crafty peeps to save my bacon. I'm heading down to the Marion Life Market next weekend to do some handmade shopping to get me started.

I watched some episodes of this while I continued binding little P's quilt ...I love me some 90's drama and this show brings back such memories. I'm at the part where Jane has slept with everyone on the show and has had so much drama happening there was nothing else left for her character so they wrote her out. Kimberley is dying for about the third time but this time it's for real, Michael just married a prostitute, Kyle's wife is really Peter's ex sister in law except nobody else knows, Amanda is still a bitch, and Alison thinks she's pregnant. Billy is still a dork. See...just like real life. It was good escapism.

I hope your weekend has been fantastic and your week is even fantastic-er.

Last thing- Suzanne at Colorado Lady is looking for scraps to make a quilt with thousands of pieces. 2 inch squares and you don't have to cut them. You can just send her scraps.  Pop on over and let Suzanne know if you can lend a hand. Suzanne is one of the loveliest people in the blogosphere and was one of the first people who ever started reading the mad ravings of a girl who quilts in her pyjamas.

P.S. And I finally caved in today and washed my hair in boiled kettle water hanging over the bath. It was nice to wash my hair. I think cooties were living in there.

Finished for Friday ...Sort Of.

Once upon a time, in a land at the bottom of the earth , where people say Cooeee and Crikey and Freakin' in general conversation,  there lived a fair princess who had a very ugly kitchen. She and her Prince did not have the funds to make the kitchen beautiful because while she was rich in love, she was poor in coin, and there was always something else that needed doing round the palace that was more important. Upkeep on a three bedroom palace with one bathroom and a double garage is very costly and the palace was  in a state of utter disrepair stemming way back  from the Prince's wild swinging bachelor days.

The Princess found it very hard to be creative or interested in cooking  in her blue kitchen with cedar panelling, 1970's routed doors, and poorly designed layout. That's probably why her baking sucked so bad-not due to  a lack of culinary skill, but squarely because of negative kitchen mojo.  So dark and dreary was it in the kitchen, that  the princess was convinced in days past  it had been used  as the royal dungeon. The pineapple wall tiles may have been trendy and the height of fashion  in about 1963  but they certainly didn't scream style by 2001 or for the subsequent 9 years she had to live with them.  She wept every time she had to mop the gross brown tiled floors as despite her best efforts they NEVER looked clean.

Finally she spat the dummy, in a very princessly manner of course,  and demanded the kitchen see some action. The Prince got overly excited about this until she explained she was talking about a renovation, not actual action in the kitchen. Deflated, but supportive,  the Prince agreed that  she had been patient and good and loving and it was time for a payoff.  So she and the Prince set about living on two minute noodles and Vegemite sandwiches for about  a year so they could afford what became known throughout the land  as the Never Ending Kitchen Reno. Many obstacles were overcome in the Year of Eating Noodles, and after much planning, dreaming   and endless choice making  they were finally ready to start slaying dragons, metaphorically speaking.

Throughout the process the Princess complained to all of Blogdom, her family, her real life friends, the postman, the guy that runs the local deli  and random people in the street. Eventually she became known throughout the kingdom as  Princess Whiny Arse.   However the Bloggy People  were super darn awesome  about her whinging and supported her through the trauma of no ceilings, lots of dust , 300 pounds of dried leaves falling out of the roof cavity along with an unexploded fire cracker , no floors, no walls, tradies not turning up when they said they would, delays with deliveries, homelessness, delays with the install because the Princess had requested Royal benchtops and not those available as standard, angle cuts that weren't sent with the rest of the kitchen, no way to cook,  a microwave and cooktop that were inadvertently sent to Africa by mistake, petulance, and a small nervous breakdown. And just when it all seemed to be sailing along and the finish line was in sight the universe decided to mess with the electrician's van and so Slack Tea Thursday was able to return one week early but it meant the kitchen remained unfinished.

Nothing bad lasts forever, (it just feels like it does at the time)  and eventually there came a day when no tradies were tromping through the castle filthying up the royal tiles, or making sawing and hammering noises  and the Princess awoke one morning  to the realisation that she had a functional kitchen and no men in her Palace  aside from her husband.  Oh Happy Day! And while the Prince still needed to tile the splashbacks behind the cooktop and around the sink, and do some other things, and the fixit guy needed to build the pantry shelves and install the pesky angle cuts, this Princess is pulling up stumps and pretty much calling this finished.

It's kind of hard to believe this ....

could become this ...

The Princess was deliriously happy because it truly was the kitchen of her dreams. Or maybe because the medication finally kicked in. Whatever.

Oh and Dudley is whisper quiet but apparently the Princess needs to do a tutorial for the Pyjamas Clan on how to empty him and put dishes away.  A Princess's work is never done!

P.S. For all my griping, I just couldn't bring myself to throw away the vintage fruit  tiles. Look what I  found packed in one of my kitchen boxes.

P.P.S. Just a heads up. The Princess hasn't finished the dining room. This wild ride aint quite over yet.

I'm linking up to Finished for Friday  because I finally have a finish!

Bliss

You can't make chocolate chip cookies without an oven...

I made these this afternoon.

And I have a beef roast cooking  for dinner,  with carrots, roast potatoes, roast pumpkin and beans and homemade gravy. I'm planning on pigging out on actual food! As soon as I stop dreaming of all the food I'm going to be cooking this weekend, IN MY AWESOME NEW KITCHEN , I'll be back to share some pictures with you. I just want to make sure the kitchen looks like a magazine layout first and get acquainted with Dudley the Dishwasher.

P.S. Is this the shortest post I've ever done?

Let The Games begin

After years of waiting, months of preparation and a fair amount of the time agonising, bitching, whining and worrying,  the kitchen arrived in many many pieces today. So did the dishwasher, flues, rangehood, cooktop, sink and taps. (They were in the appropriate number of pieces thankfully ) Apparently my microwave is on a boat near the African coast and will arrive mid September.

This is it people. Let the games begin.

So long, Farewell, Auf Wiedersehen, Goodbye, Adieu....

Long post...I'm just pre-warning in case you only have 30 seconds...

I did read your posts this week,  in the spare 90 seconds I managed to find sometime about 5.20 am Saturday , but unfortunately that didn't leave me time to comment, because   aside from working this week, I was saying goodbye to our old kitchen , after packing every single knife, bowl, plate  and saucepan we own  so the installers could come in to wreck the kitchen Friday. I have come to the conclusion that we  have too much stuff. It took 18 tea chests to pack everything away. My pantry is now in my linen cupboard - ah the joy of reaching in for a towel and also being able to grab spaghetti at the same time. I might never change it back.  Unfortunately I don't know where I put the soap to make room for the food so we're all stinky. It's a bit like living in medieval times here at the moment.

It only took 45 minutes for the old kitchen to be ripped out , which doesn't seem fair since I've spent 8 years hating it, and so by Friday lunchtime, after electricians and plumbers and kitchen wreckers had  done their thing...Voila! There was nothing left. I had a  blank canvas. Sort of.

And here is my empty walk in pantry , which is usually full of stuff that is now  in my linen cupboard. Did I mention I haven't organised new shelving for the pantry yet? Or a new door? Or a new light fitting for the dining area?  So I took out my frustration and anxiety on the pantry and smashed those old shelves to bits... I felt a bit like Bob the Builder, except I have boobs. Damn straight, I hummed the theme song from the cartoon while I annihilated stuff.

 

The blue kitchen has found it's way to the great kitchen in the sky (aka our front lawn )  and now  we can start doing some of the "Wow" factor stuff  I've been waiting for like finishing the ceilings, and and painting the walls. Our back  patio and front yard totally look like a junkyard. I bet the neighbours are having an apoplexy. Tough.

Part of the joy of getting all these renovations done is getting the tilers in to do  the entry, hallway, computer room, kitchen and dining room, which will happen from Tuesday. (Yay! Less hard work for us !)  Double joy when it only took us about 30 minutes to rip the floorboards up this afternoon. I had visions of it taking us hours. We currently have one ton of tiles stacked on a pallet in our garage waiting to be laid. Goodbye crappy old floors.

Before

After

I will have to be offline while the tilers do their thing  which means I'm likely to disappear at some point , probably tomorrow.  I can guarantee you the computer will be reconnected within 5 minutes of the tile  grout drying, which if everything goes according to schedule will be about this time next week. However, you know what they say about the best laid plans of mice and men don't you?

That will give me plenty of time to paint and sand and be Mr. P's general trades assistant  before the new cabinets arrive. Maybe I'll have time to get some sewing done? I am really looking forward to being normal again and not having a house  that looks like a pigsty and the kitchen consuming every single waking moment. Unfortunately that day is still probably weeks away.

So after Friday's wreck-fest I set myself some tasks to  achieve for the rest of the weekend...

I put myself  in charge of pantry remodelling. This included lots of boring jobs like cleaning walls, scraping old paint, bogging up walls, and painting the ceiling and walls. I want  to use power tools ! I used a drill on Thursday to dismantle a shelf in the computer room and frankly it rocked. And then I lashed out and pulled off skirting boards with a pinch bar and hammer on Saturday, while Mr. P watched nervously worrying I might break a finger nail or perhaps break one of the few things that is left in our kitchen, and go completely postal.  I didn't.

This was the internal brick wall between the kitchen and the computer room. Our oversized bench top will jut out over this and I'm planning for  it to be an under bench storage area. We have had a temporary shelf  set up under here for the last four years which doesn't sound all that temporary does it ,  and we figured we might as well sort that out while we're doing the kitchen.

One of my projects this weekend was to paint the brickwork as a back to the permanent open shelves that will go in there soon. Can you say "Hello Ikea"?  Two coats of primer and a top coat of paint later it was done. I know it doesn't look like much right now but wait until I start dragging furniture and objects de art  back in here. It's going to look awesome.

My meat safe renovation continues. This weekend I put  the final coat of oil based paint on the carcass and primed and undercoated the doors, an extra shelf  and drawer.  Then my friend Mr. Staple Gun made a special guest appearance to help me attach the chicken wire for the sides. It's coming together slowly due to competing priorities, but so far so good.

Mr. P did all the hard work with the kitchen this weekend.  Lots more screeding of ceilings with boggy stuff and sanding . Patching up of walls. More sanding.  Oh Joy ! Oh Fun! And guess what? Today is Mr. P's birthday. The other part of the Pyjamas Clan took time out to celebrate at the local Italian joint for tea tonight.  Happy Birthday Mr. P!

At some point our lives will be back to normal. Well, as normal as things ever are at Maison Pyjamas. It seriously feels like forever since I wrote anything amusing and non kitchen related and I'm starting to get bored with posting about nothing being actually finished.

And also I'm so peeved it's not Thursday every day because for tea last night  we had left over coffee cake my sister brought over earlier in the day and we ate it off  paper plates and Friday we ate fish and chips straight out of the paper for dinner. All of this slackness,  and my conscience wont let me use it for future Slack Tea Thursday posts.

Oh and today just to remind me I'm alive the universe decided my car should have a compete metldown and not start. Enough already universe- I have enough on my plate without you deciding to poke cosmic fun at me. Naturally once roadside assist arrived she started perfectly. Mr. Roadside Assist was not amused. Conversely I was thrilled. (Mental Note to self: "Don't do the happy dance in your driveway until after the roadside assist dude has left next time" )

I hope your week is full of wonderful things.  I'll be back when my tilers are finished, which will mean I'll be one step closer to finished too!

Saturday Allsorts

I signed up for my first ever Friday Night Sew in hosted by Handmade by Heidi  and it happened last night. Everyone in the Pyjamas household was briefed on the sew in rules ..ie I am unavailable between 7 pm and 11 pm unless someone dies  or requires serious  medical attention. If you disturb me you better make sure you have your running shoes on and the phone number for medical attention because you'll need it by the time I'm finished with you.  Everyone played the game -well mostly. I did wander out of my sewing room at one point and Little P and I played a game of chasey around the ottoman in the lounge and another game of "lets turn the floor lamp on and off for around 20 minutes" because that's heaps of fun. Have I mentioned in the last 5 minutes   how blessedly cute my grandson is? No ? Well he is. I love that he's learning he can influence his environment  and the people in it. That kid said Na- Na about a thousand times yesterday and pointed at bananas because he learned earlier in the day if you ask - you  will receive. Genius I tell you - that child is a genius and everything he does is one step closer towards the germination of an amazing human being.

Any-hoo. Focus. Sew In. I decided to start something new because I simply don't have enough on my plate at the moment.   For all my bitching about Christmas in July at work this week , I was inspired to start a Christmas quilt , mainly because I have approximately 187 yards of Christmas fabric in my stash and have never done a Christmas quilt before. Not being completely insane, (yet)  I decided to keep this one simple. I'm planning a second Christmas quilt this year that'll be more complicated but for now, I'm about a bee's whisker away from a complete meltdown. KISS (Keeping it simple stupid ) is the way to go.

So at 8 pm last night, I started with this pile of Robert Kaufman Sparkle All the Way Jelly Roll bits. Yes I was late to the sew in.  Have you ever noticed jelly rolls look sublime when they arrive but kind of look like spilled guts once they're unrolled?  They don't look nearly as pretty. They really are a case in point for clever marketing because if they slopped bits of random fabric strips in a baggie nobody would buy them.

And hey Presto by 11 pm last night I had this...lots of strips for a Christmas stacked coin quilt.

In other fabulously gossipy news this week, the delectable Jenni over at Baa Me Kniits had a giveaway recently for this lovely shawl and I won. Whooooooooo Hooooooooooo. I'm so going to parade this lovely at work and make everyone jealous. Thanks again Jenni. (and to her son who drew my name !)

Elizabeth over at Such a Sew and Sew  is having a giveaway  to celebrate her 200th post. You can win this abbey bag made by  Elizabeth  herself.  Don't you just love the fabric and cute little pin cushion?  Pop on over and have a gander about  how to enter and to congratulate her on the 200 posts thingy, which is actually a really big deal.

And I had a cook-a-thon this morning because it will be the last time I do one in my old kitchen since this time next week , it will no longer exist.  Plus we will need to eat while we are waiting for the new kitchen to go in, but we'll pretty much only have a microwave so I made enough spaghetti sauce for three meals, beef koftas for two meals, and enough curry for three meals. Then I made 7 dozen party sausage rolls for Little P's birthday party tomorrow. 

Mmmmmmmmmmmmm Rendang

Little P's sausage rolls

Yesterday , I primed the meat safe (again) and today Mr. P decided I wasn't painting fast enough or well enough or something and took over doing the top coat. (has anyone else ever noticed every picture of Mr. P is on an angle? )

I've decided you can all suffer through the kitchen re-do with me in real time from here on in. So much is starting to happen that I  want  to spread the misery as far as possible   to share it with you in infinite detail. This week I contacted 5 tilers, two of whom actually turned up to quote me for a 40 square metre tiling job. The kitchen installer contacted me today and came out to do his final measure and walk us through the process. He confirmed they would be arriving early next Friday morning  to take out the old kitchen (and they'll even remove the sink splashback tiles for us while they're doing it.) The plumber will be coming next Friday as well to start installing the new plumbing for the dishwasher and to cap our old tap connections and put the new ones in since we're moving the taps...whooooooooo hooooooooo, it's actually happening! That's progress.

Have a fabulous weekend. My Saturday night will be spent looking at what other particpants got up to for Friday Sew In and I'll be partying tomorrow with the one year old crowd and all of the Pyjama's family.

Look Away Now- Kitchen Update-Nothing to See Here

Forgive me bloggers- it has been two weeks since my last confession update.

We have been doing lots of final organisation-y kind of things and a little work. Things seem to be moving slowly but I guess that's because we haven't done any of the "Oh my goodness what a difference that made" work yet. Replacing your ceilings and pulling up tile doesn't give you the "Wow" factor I'm looking forward to seeing  at the end of this project. Assuming we ever finish. I'm expecting at this point to do an unveil for you all around Christmas. And so , because I don't have anything much to show you, I'm going to show you some of the colours we've picked out.

Walls

Bench tops

Kitchen cabinetry in this colour and style but I picked nicer handles. And I'm not having glass doors because I dont want to have to clean them.

We met with the kitchen designer (sounds impressive doesn't it ) last weekend and were informed that because we have requested some non standard stuff our kitchen components will take at least a week longer to be done than usual.   So we're now looking at an install date of around August 9th which is only 3 weeks away. The old kitchen is being ripped out in 12 days, so we can tile before the new cabinets go in.  Living here is going to be just like camping, which is not usually something I say "Oh goody" at the prospect of. Yeah I'm a princess. If I don't have a place to plug in my GHD as far as I'm concerned you're in the stone age.  So,  if you live close by you might like to take pity on us and invite us over for dinner. Or you  can save the favour for when we do the bathroom and need a shower. Those of you who don't live close- you can send  me dinners via mail.

With the exception of the ceilings and floors and the continual mess,  the kitchen doesn't look all that different at this point. The new ceilings are in. Mr. P did a load of boring putty-ing (I'm sure there is a technical name for this I'm just not interested)  on the ceilings to cover the seams.   This is one of those necessary evil type things. I'll get excited when we have cornices again and the ceiling is painted. And my light fittings are in. And the kitchen is finished.

I have ceilings ! Ugly ceilings...

There are currently  no lights in my kitchen because we are completely changing the configuration of the lighting for this area, which naturally can't go in until we have finished the ceilings   so we've been using a 500 watt halogen to see.  It's awesome because  I get to work on my tan, kill the environment with power usage and stay warm all at the same time. It's like having the Australian summer inside in the middle of winter.   The risk of blindness if I look directly at it is just an added thrill.

We have ordered our floor tiles. I went with an off white Italian ceramic. There are those among you who will tell me I am crazy for going with off white because it will show up all the dirt. Let me tell you it doesn't matter what we get it will show up the dirt, because we have two dogs the size of Shetland ponies who never learned to wipe their feet and I want off white. If you had lived with disgusting chocolate brown floor tiles for the last 8 years you'd want white too.  And just to freak you all right out white tile haters , we got enough to do the entry, hallway and computer room as well. This is them. Rustic and textured.

And this is what we pulled up...(I'm selling them cheap if you're interested)

And this is what my kitchen floors look like right now. Pretty isn't it? I have no idea why it's green. There are floor boards under that muck somewhere. Quick- cover it up with white tile.  I am seriously considering getting someone in to do the tiling at this stage and bugger the cost.

I have no splash back because I pulled it out already and I haven't decided what to replace it with. And I have no range hood either. This is the gorgeousness that is currently my cooking area.

I have ignored all the sanding I have to get done. I started doing something totally unrelated to the kitchen telling myself it's stripping and painting  practice before I tackle those  chairs, and the dresser  ...and the table. I have changed my mind over what to do with the table about 30 times and think I've finally settled on something but I'm not going to say what it is so I can change my mind again later and not look flighty. This is what I have been working on today. I have realised I despise painting which is unfortunate because I have stacks of it left to do.

And after two coats of primer I have this...(Miss Mustard Seed said I had to keep this piece and she knows what she's talking about so I'm making something pretty out of it )

I have worried about whether everything is going to come together. Will the walls match the floors? Will it be too much white ? Am I crazy for trying to match two different styles in one space? Will warm white REALLY go with stark white ? This has been my crazy thought process this week. I am driving myself and everyone around me INSANE. Poor Mr. P. I think he's thinking about the "till death us do part" bit of our marriage vows  a lot this week and not in  a good way.  

I am at a point where I think this is never going to be done, my life will never be normal again, my house will never be clean again , and I will never know where my plates and Tupperware have disappeared to . Conversely I am cacking my daks that I won't have things done before the installers  get here. When I mention the bathroom reno in 6 months can someone slap me in the side of the head and point me towards all my  posts about the kitchen.

Yours sincerely,

Princess whiny-arse.

P.S. I completely get that in the grand scheme of things this is so not a big deal compared to famine, terminal illness and world poverty. However I am a Virgo and we like order and cleanliness and predictability and control and I don't have any of those things at the moment. And Patty, I know you're reading this and all I can say is you'd better bring some good wine and some Valium next weekend. I need both of them.