Sweet Sleep

Mattresses are important, people! I had the best night of sleep last night that I have had in forever: dreamless and smooth, rippling on and on, with only a few hip aching moments of dim awareness as I rolled over in the night. I usually sleep pretty well during pregnancy, I'm just lucky like that, or chilled out like that or desperate like that or something. But this pregnancy has been different...our mattress had done its most valiant but there are limits. It had been with us through a decade of marriage and who  knows how many years with another family before us. I honestly think our mattress was from the 60's or 70's. This year it reached astounding heights of absurdity. A and I had begun to joke about going sleep in the soup bowl every night but truthfully it was more like sleeping in a real life game of Chutes and Ladders. There springs poking up, gooshy holes, hard ridges, and broken plastic handles sticking out in gouge-ready positions.

Thankfully, oh so thankfully....I report to you that we are now the proud owners of a new to us, 2 year old mattress that feels like heaven. We lay in bed laughing this morning about the strangeness of sleeping on such a nice bed in our own room, we felt like we were at a hotel! So silly!

Before we carted our old lump-fest of a previous bed to the dump I whipped out a pair of scissors and zipped off the beautiful fabric that covered the box springs. I've been eying it for years and knew even when we first got it that I would someday strip that cloth off for another use. The bonus of ancient mattress sets is the psychedelic, vintage fabric that they come wrapped in. What do you think? Curtains in the bathroom or the kitchen or something more creative?

A Peek Into My "Studio"

My bedroom, my kitchen, my garden and the couch are really collectively "my studio" at the moment...there's no dedicated creative space in our house, no real "spot" to store all the artistic goods just a general flow of creativity that messes up the whole place and keeps us humming all over.

Friday was an explosive day for me, spurred on by a swap I was part of that involved a lot of crafting but, that was only the downhill push. Before I knew it I had avalanched my way into full creative mode complete with large amount of scrap fabric and other materials flying about and thrown hither and yon. Been way too long since I did any sewing, felt awfully good to sit and hum away on the machine again. I miss it. Am looking forward to a nice space for sewing at our someday house. Speaking of which....there may be house news on the way! (just a little teaser)

But, here's a peak into my workbasket lately:

And then....on the subject of personal artistic-ness I have to include this portrait sketch in pencil that one of my fabulously talented and inspiring fellow Tuesday art session painters did of me. I feel like I won the lottery! Can you believe it? I have had my portrait "done." So exciting!

Here's my favorite bit: