It’s all over me.  I’m all sweaty and dirty from a job well done.  The house is considerably more presentable now, and a lot of the grime has been scrubbed off the walls, doors, windows and shower.  A good portion of the clutter has been taken care of.   A few plants were set in  the ground – forsythia out front, a nice flowering cherry tree, a lilac and a rhododendron in the front garden.  Soon the raised beds will be planned out and planted as well, and we are getting ready to till up a large portion of the back for squash and watermelons.  This is going to be an experimental year garden – wise.  In other words, how well can I manage a huge garden out back, and can it logistical work out there and survive all the deer/rabbits/goodness knows what else.

Paul got started on the built – in window seat for the playroom.  We decided to turn it into a nice twin bed – sized retreat that will lift up on hinges for storing toys underneath.  Hooray for hidden toys!!!  Now I just need to find a good twin size futon mattress that won’t cost an arm and a leg.

The girls took advantage of the beautiful weather by playing outside with the neighbors’ girls (we likewise got to spend time with their parents and relax a bit).  And Emily gother hair dyed purple.  I know.  Calm down.  I figured that childhood is the best time for weird hair colors and such and we should just let her get it out of her system now.  Besides, Emily has beautifully dark hair so even a shocking purple comes out more as subtle highlights in her hair.  You don’t see “PURPLE!” when you look at her.  You see a cool dark brown with a neat purple sheen to it.  Besides, it’s supposed to wash out in 3 weeks.  I have to say, though – the dye we used was awful.  We got it from Hot Topic and it was the thickest, messiest hair dye I have ever seen or used in my life.  It got all over Emily – her neck still needs a good scrubbing to free it from the lilac shade it has taken on – and all over my tub.  I had to scrub it clean afterwards.  I have pictures but they’ll have to wait.  My computer is woefully low on hard drive space, a condition I’ve been assured by Paul to be absolutely my own dumb fault for tuning out his expert computer geek advice and filling it up with 27 gigs of pictures.  So I can’t upload until I’ve fixed that massively horribly bad and I totally don’t want to think about it let alone solve it slight problem.

I also finished a dress for Neve and a dress for me, both nice and light for summer.  Again, pictures later.  I started working on a wrap skirt for myself from Weekend Sewing but ran into  a slight snag – I ran out of fabric!  I though I had enough, but it turns out that instead of a small I am in fact a Medium/Large. Now, I don’t mean to sound all self – congratulatory or anything, but this has been bugging me lately.  I am a fairly small person.  I hear it from a lot of people around me, and even the nurses at the doctor’s office refer to me as “petite”.  Dudes, I have chicken legs.  I’m average height (about 5’5″) and I am less than 130 lbs.  How on earth is that a Medium/Large?  It’s not really this pattern that’s got me bugged about this.  It’s clothing stores in general these days.  I just can’t believe that I would be a large in anything, and if I am, then what about all of the  still slender women I know who are taller and heavier than me?  Are we really going to call them XL?  Crazy!  No wonder all of us women have body issues.  Anyway that was my little rant for the evening.  Soon I will hopefully get pictures posted of all of the projects both complete and in process and the beginnings of this year’s garden.  Now that things are moving along I feel invigorated and ready for summer.

Bring it on!