A Coat!

I've been putting of this post hoping I'd get better pictures. On the other hand given that my camera charger is packed goodness knows where and taking pictures of a fidgety toddler with a camera phone isn't the easiest thing in the world, I think these are the best I'm going to get for a while.

I used the Abbey Jacket Pattern by the lovely Shwin & Shwin.  I'm really quite pleased with how it came out. I used fleece for the body and cotton for the accents. I think I'd really like to try to make a second one out of wool. I know I have some left over wool from when I made a cape for reenacting a few years ago. I'm just not sure where in all our boxes it is right now. At some point I'll go through some of them and find it, hopefully before winter is over.

As you can see matching clothes weren't really on the priority list that day. Unfortunately Maire Shannon was fending off a cold at the time. The pose is the result of her finding and promptly pulling a flower clip out of her hair. I really wish she's keep clips in her hair. There are SO MANY adorable hair things for little girls. I did get her to keep a clip in for quite a while yesterday, so I'm hoping we're making some progress.

After trying her coat on, she decided she really wanted to test it out, regardless of the fact that it was sprinkling outside. Though, in honesty, I think it was BECAUSE it was raining out. She really is her father's daughter.

She really had a great time out there, hence the mud. Did I mention how I love that this coat is very washable? :-)

She decided that she really liked the hat and wore it most of the day. It made me hopeful that cute little winter hats may stay on for more than 5 seconds.

Blog name

I keep thinking that I want to re-name this blog. I don't think that I ever REALLY liked the name I came up with, I just couldn't think of anything else at the time. I also thought I'd post a lot about my love of the Civil War and the South, but I don't think I've even posted about it once, which I guess isn't really saying much give that I almost never post on here anyways. I think I want the name to reflect something about sewing and or home making or something. Hmm, I guess I'll just have to think about it.

Catching up

Wow, I hadn't realized how long it had been since I posted on here. I know I tend to say this a lot, but I really am going to try to keep up with the blog better.

We're still living down in Southern MD with my in-laws. We are, though, trying to get things moving with getting a new place. The commute has been a bit rough, so we're thinking we're going to be moving back up to the DC-Baltimore area. It's been really irritating how much trouble we've had finding people to work with us, though. It just seems like no one cares if they get more customers or not. They just keep dropping the ball on keeping in touch with us or moving forward with thing. We've hopefully four a realtor to work with. The bank guy we'd been talking with seems to just have too much on his plate already or something, so we're going to try to find someone else who maybe has more time to actually work with us.

Maire Shannon trying to look like Mama

I hope everything works out soon because we're going to be welcoming a new addition to our family. I'm currently 22 weeks along with little one number two. We just found out last week that we're going to be having another girl. We're all really excited. I don't think Maire Shannon really knows what's going on yet at all, but she does love babies and has become SUCH a Daddy's girl that I think she'll handle everything okay. We're excited for her to have a little sister and I hope the two of them become close friends.

A dancing sunflower

In other news I've found my love of sewing again. I got myself a Brother serger a few months ago and I'm loving it. More recently I found a bunch of sewing and crafting blogs focused on sewing for kids and I've just been eating them up. All of the pics of Maire Shannon in this post are some of the examples of my recent endeavors.

The Move

So, it was all kind of a whirlwind, and I'm not sure many people even had time to hear about it, but we moved out of our town house so we could turn it into a rental. Currently we are living with Andrew's parents down in Southern Maryland. We've been wanting to take advantage of the low prices and interest rates of the current housing market as well and get ourselves a single family home. We've also been planing to keep the townhouse as a rental property since it's in such a great location what with being right next to Ft. Mead and all.

Unfortunately there have been too many people bailing on their old houses when then buy a new one, claiming that it was going to be a rental, so the banks are reluctant to approve loans for people switching their primary residence into an income property. After some calling around we found that SunTrust had one of the least restrictive requirements. We just needed to have been moved out and renting our current house for at least six months before they would include the rental income when qualifying us for a new mortgage. Andrew parents very graciously are allowing us to stay with them during that time, which is going to be much cheaper than renting a place of our own and enabling us to save for a down payment when we get our new place.

It's be quite an undertaking because we decided to do this, then actually moved out in the space of about a week. We're still doing little projects around the town house to get it ready and the extended family has been a really big help with that. We've already had a few people contact us about the place, and one is supposed to be looking at it later this week, so hopefully we'll have a renter in there real soon. With the speed of everything though, I wasn't able to have things packed in as organized a manner as I would have wished for, so finding some of the things we need/want for the next six months can get a little challenging and we are still settling here, but so far things are going quite well. It's all be really exhausting though, particularly for Andrew who has been getting up at 4:30 to miss rush hour to work and then most days going to the townhouse afterward to do work on it.

Two Years

Two years ago today I married my soul mate. It's hard to believe it's been that long. In some ways it seems like only yesterday, but so much has happened since then it hard to picture my life before our wedding. It seems like it was a lifetime ago. What I can't hardly believe is that our little baby is almost a year old now and walking all over the place.

YAY FOR SLEEP!!

Maire Shannon has started sleeping through the night!! I'm a bit afraid of jinxing it, but she's been doing for a few days straight now, so I'm starting to think it's more than just a fluke. I realized today that this fortunate change of events coincided with me ending her night time nursing. It's something I'd done gradually, so I didn't think it would effect her waking because she would still wake and at least part of the time I'd just rock her back to sleep. I guess when she found that she was always just going to get rocked back to sleep she figured it wasn't worth waking me up. This has been so great. I've not gotten more than three (four at best) hours of sleep at a time in nearly a year now. The key, though, is getting my body used to staying asleep that long again. So far this new schedule had been good. Maire Shannon wakes up at 6:30, so we get up at have breakfast then play a while. At 9:30 we both take a nap for a couple hours. I've been needing to start my day earlier to get my metabolism going so this has been good. Hopefully we can keep it up.

Update on the year

I can't believe it's been almost a year since I last posted on here. Like so many things, I've been meaning to get back on here, but there has been so much going on, this blog has been kind of low on the list. This past year has had it's challenges, but I've been also blessed so much. I've got a beautiful healthy baby girl who was born last June. It's hard to believe she's already 8 months old. She recently started pulling up and walking around furniture a little bit. She's pretty much got crawling down, but does drop down from her hands and knees to her belly some times 'cause it can be faster. As I expected, Andrew is a wonderful father and continues to be a great husband. He's so great with Maire Shannon and has been so helpful and supportive for me.

Slowly but surely I've adjusted to my new roll and have been working towards some of my old goals of better health and house keeping as well as trying to soon resume some of my old hobbies. I've started trying to keep an eye on what I'm eating and would like to slowly start making more things from scratch and use more natural and organic ingredients. I'm hoping to soon try my hand at making bread.