Making curtains

When JoAnn Fabrics had all of their home fabrics 50% off, I bought enough fabric to make curtains or valances for 9 windows. That includes the living room, dining room, breakfast room, family room and master bedroom. I decided that I should start with the master bedroom because there won't be as many people seeing those curtains as in all the other rooms.

Yesterday was the first day that I had a chance to start working on them, so the very first thing that I needed to do was cut the fabric the right length and cut down the width. It turns out that the fabric we picked for the bedroom is 60 inches wide instead of the usual 54 inches wide. Now, I am not a seamstress by any means so maybe I just don't know what I am doing, but cutting the fabric is much harder than I thought it would be. Of course, maybe it is also easier when you are just cutting the selvages off the edge instead of having to cut 3 inches off each side, but it is so hard to keep the fabric straight. I am using a rotary cutter and a 24"X36" cutting mat (which BTW, is one of the largest that they sell) - but considering the fact that one curtain should be 81" long and 54" wide, that mat is hardly big enough. I have this fear that once I start sewing I will realize that what I worked so hard to keep straight is not straight at all.

No wonder most people just buy curtains at Bed Bath and Beyond or somewhere.

The past few days

This past week has been pretty busy for both me and Justin. Well - I guess Justin's weeks are usually pretty busy seeing that he works full-time, mine on the other hand typically have more flexibility.

I agreed to analyze someone's dissertation research data and I put in long hours last week on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday morning trying to get it all done. Much to my disappointment though, I am not being paid well for my work. We had decided that we could work out payment once everything was done - bad idea. She seemed to think I was greatly overcharging her when I told her she should pay me between $15 and $20 an hour for the work I did. Even after I explained to her that the going rate for the work I did is at least $40 an hour. End result - she told me an amount that she would pay me which comes out to only about $13 an hour for the work I have already done and doesn't include the fact that she has asked me for more analysis and work since we met on Thursday.

Anyway - things didn't help that I woke up on Thursday morning with some kind of stomach flu and was running a fever and not able to keep anything done all day. Luckily - it ended up being a 24 hour bug, because I was at a Stampin' Up! seminar all day on Friday and we had some company fly in from out of town on Friday night.

Saturday both and Justin and I did a lot of driving. I drove to Austin and back to go to my sister's bridal shower. Justin drove our guests down to Galveston for a cruise and then drove up to Montgomery to get a family heirloom dining room table and then bring it back home. We unloaded the table and then had to drive to the airport to return the minivan that we rented for the day. All in all - we each drove about 360 miles by the end of the day.

Now - Justin has a cold and stayed home from work today. At least we aren't both sick at the same time, but we are ready for some relaxing days.

Valentine's Day 2007

Justin and I have never gone out to dinner for Valentine's Day. Our reasoning? The restaurants are always too crowded and some of them have special (and more expensive) Valentine menus.

Last year for Valentine's Day I had a soccer game and Justin made it to my game from work a bit late. Quite romantic, right?

This year we went all heart-shaped. I woke up extra early and made heart-shaped pancakes for Justin for breakfast.



And then for dinner it was heart-shaped pizza (as well as I could make heart-shaped pizza without a heart-shaped pizza pan). And for dessert we had miniature heart cheesecakes.



In Justin's words - we had a hearty dinner.

The last of the furniture arrives!

By 1pm today, the last of our furniture arrived. Now, we have a nice complete bedroom set. Do you like? Now we are just waiting on some material so Julie can make some curtains.

The long road home

This week (and for the next couple months, I believe) Justin is working in the Galleria area of Houston. We are both very happy to have him home during the week since he was working out of town almost every week since we moved to Katy 6 months ago.

When Justin works downtown, he usually does the Park and Ride. Although it does not save him much time on his commute, he does save us money in gas and wear and tear on the car. Today Justin decided to try doing the Park and Ride into the Galleria area. It is almost 6 pm and Justin called at 4:15 to say that he was leaving work. I called him about 10 minutes ago and he still had about an hour to go before he made it home.

When the bus ride is this long, I realize why people choose to sit in traffic instead of using public transportation. I really thought he would be home 30 minutes ago - he would have been had he just driven himself. This is ridiculous. And here we are trying to be good citizens and ride the bus.

wow

A week ago we received the first half of our bedroom furniture purchase. This included the armoire, chest of drawers and both nightstands. Now we are only waiting on the headboard, footboard, rails and dresser with mirror.

We are realizing how lucky we are that our bedroom is very large. The furniture is much bigger in our room than it appeared when we were in the store! If our room was any smaller, it would seem a bit crowded with everything we bought, but I think that when it all arrives it will fit perfectly and make the room seem cozy - before it seemed sparse.

And we had forgotten how nice it looks in person. The picture on the store's website makes it look like a medium color brown, but in actuality it is much darker. Funny, because Justin and I had both commented (before it arrived, but after we bought it) that we were surprised how much we liked it when we looked at it online because we usually prefer our wood furniture to be much darker than the way it appeared online. We will post a picture of how it looks in our room, but not until we have all the other pieces. Hopefully we will get a call in another week or so saying that it has arrived!

And there goes a lot of money

Julie and I decided to spend our tax return before we get it. Of the items on our list of wants, we chose furniture for our bedroom. Julie saw a bedroom set at Ashley Furniture.com, and I liked it as well. We went to a local furniture store that sells Ashley's stuff, but did not see the set from online. Nothing else there struck our fancy, so we headed to Star Furniture. Again, we did not find the set from online, but we did find another set around the same price range that we liked a lot (check it out). We then headed off to Gallery Furniture, and as luck would have it...we found the set from Ashely! Unfortunately for Gallery, we liked the set from Star better.

We headed on back to Star and looked at their set again. We decided that it was what we wanted in our room for the rest of our lives (or at least a long long time). Then it was off to do the paperwork. So, now we are just waiting to have our headboard, footboard and rails, two nightstands, dresser and a mirror, chest of drawers, and an armoire.

It is nice when they have 0% interest financing for 12 months. That way we can put the tax return money to use earning interest until the full payment comes due.
And when it comes due...there goes a lot of money...but worth it.

Sail Away, Sail Away, Sail Away

And that is exactly what happened to Justin and my dream of going on a cruise this year.

As you may or may not know, when we moved here I started working part-time teaching at a local community college. There were no openings for full-time, but as part-time they limit me to teaching only 2 classes a semester. Because the pay for that is pretty miserable and I need a bit more than just 2 classes to keep me busy, I applied at another local community college - HCC.

The guy from HCC called me before we moved and told me that he would definitely have classes for me to teach. Even when I arrived in town and met with him a week before classes started he said he needed to sort through the schedule, but that he would have classes for me to teach, however it looked like it would be a "late start" class (meaning that they start 4 weeks later). This was all fine by me since classes were starting in less than a week and I had not received a textbook, syllabus template or anything that I needed.

4 weeks go by and I have to call the guy again to find out what is going on. Now he tells me that the class he wants me to teach is an 8 week course that doesn't start for another 4 weeks. Of course, 4 weeks later history repeats itself and I find out that although he would have loved to have me teach, the class he was going to assign to me "didn't make", i.e. not enough students registered for that class. Even though he was not able to give me classes to teach for last semester, he will definitely need me for the next semester which is the current semester.

Classes started this week, but let me back up to 2 weeks ago. He calls me 2 weeks ago, asking if I am still interested in teaching for him (completely acting oblivious to the fact that I emailed and called him a few times over the last 6 weeks asking for classes to teach). He tells me that he definitely has classes for me to teach, he just needs to work out the schedule. He calls me back a half hour later to make sure I would be ok with teaching college algebra and statistics. My response - that's great. So now I am to wait for his call with my schedule.

The end of the week comes, with no response. In the meantime, Justin and I are talking about using the money that I earn teaching for him to go on a cruise. Where and when depends on how many classes I get as that determines how much we have to spend on our trip.

So, we are 10 days from the beginning of the new semester and I call to find out what classes I will be teaching and when I can pick up the materials that I need. My call is not returned. With a week to go, I send an email. This time I get a return call telling me that he really doesn't know if he will have any classes for me - he is still working on the schedule.

Since the semester started yesterday, I think that it is fairly safe to say that I won't be teaching there since I haven't heard back again. Therefore - no cruise for us. What kind of a person does this? How many times have I been told that I will "definitely" be given classes to teach? Did the meaning of the word "definitely" change and no one told me about it? It is one thing to get your hopes up for something and then feel let down when all along it was a "maybe" kind of thing, but don't I have every right to assume that someone is being serious with me when they say "definitely"?

Since the meaning of the word seems to have changed, I guess Justin and I are "definitely" going on a cruise this year.

Oh, the weather outside is frightful...

but wouldn't a fire be delightful? Too bad we don't have a fireplace.

I lived in Houston through three winters before and never had weather that I would consider all that cold. We buy a house that doesn't have a fireplace and it is officially freezing here. I know, I know. People will read this and think that we have no idea what cold really is here in Texas. Exactly. That is why we live where we do, because it usually doesn't get this cold here.

So, tonight and tomorrow we are expecting sleet and freezing rain. Tomorrow our high is 32 degrees (Fahrenheit, that is). It is never safe for anyone to drive on ice (ice and snow are totally different things), but it extremely dangerous here where it is quite rare to have to deal with. Luckily, neither Justin nor I have anywhere that we need to be in the morning. However, Justin is scheduled to fly out tomorrow evening which is quite worrisome to me. Hopefully
that will either be changed or the weather won't be as bad as predicted.

I would love to curl up in front a fireplace with Justin when there is weather like this.

Sunbeams

Justin and I have gotten a new primary class for the new year and we are now teaching Sunbeams (for those of you not familiar - this means we teach a class of 3 yr olds at church). Our class is small; there are only 4 kids and that is only if they are all there. This past Sunday was our first Sunday with them and we only had 2 kids there.

The thing about teaching Sunbeams is that they are too young to have the lesson last longer than about 10 minutes, but since they are no longer in Nursery we aren't supposed to be having playtime necessarily. Which means that you have to come up with a lot of things to do with them to take up the other 65 minutes of class time. One of the ideas in our manual was to do a short activity with them - they liked it a lot so we did it quite a few times.

You have the kids stand up and you read a cute poem while everyone does some hand motions, basically you talk about there being a place at church for everyone no matter if they are "tall or small". When you say the part of about being tall everyone reaches their hands up high - and when you talk about being small you crouch down to the floor.

The cute part was one of our two kids that were there on Sunday. Anytime we reached up high, he would say "in primary class!" And anytime we crouched down low he would say "in nursery!" So the poem ended up sounding like this (his inserts are in quotes below):
If you're really really tall there's a place at church for you "in primary class".
If you're really really small there's a place at church for you "in nursery".
Tall "primary"
Small "nursery"
Tall "primary"
Small "nursery"
Heavenly Father loves us all.

Also this past Sunday, we had extra time at the end of class. Since we were trying to get to know the kids, we tossed a beanbag and when they caught it they were supposed to tell us something that they liked so we could get to know them. The boy in class started out telling us he liked playing with his toys, but the girl in class is a little shy so if we asked her if she liked playing with her toys she would say yes. We played many rounds of the game and one of the rounds we asked the girl if she liked pizza. After that, anytime we tossed her the beanbag she would say "I like pizza!"

The boy in class was always able to come up with something that he liked on his own, but after a few rounds we could tell he had to really think about what he liked. How could we tell he was having think hard? He would say "I like..." and then he would close his eyes and scrunch up his face before finally saying something like "cake!" It was really cute.

This may be funner than teaching the 6 yr olds.