One down

I spent all day making Robin's Christmas messenger bag from a pair of pants we got (for that purpose) at the thrift store, and some lining fabric she picked out of my stash. We're all pleased with the results.


Why, yes. I did go cross-eyed sewing those striped pockets to that checked lining. Thanks for asking.








Julia's is going to be made out of a pair of jeans which, I realized while I was working today, is considerably heavier fabric than the khaki-type pants in Robin's. Wish us well.

FINally, she posts some PICtures...

Posting a few photos at last. Christmas, after all the hectic and tiring and overwhelming that led up to it, was lovely. The tree was...well, okay. The girls liked their presents, we sat around and watched A Muppet Christmas Carol and napped and played with the new toys and the cat (and made new toys for the cat) all day. Just like it's supposed to be.

Then we even found a grocery store open in the evening, so there are cookie ingredients for tomorrow and everything we need for dinner & breakfast.

Now we're here to check email and post (and say hi to the new neighbors starting to move in downstairs), and then back home.

Look! Space! Yes, the shelves in the bedroom and the space under the bed are packed solid, but the living space is totally livable. We actually have a table. At which to eat and do puzzles, even if other people are home and wanting to do other things. At the very same time.

Well, I got what I wanted for Christmas

...which is have all our stuff (except this here computer, plus a chair and small table) in the new house.

An added benefit to that is that I now know the new place won't get any more crowded with boxes and stuff. It can only improve from here.

We hung some quilts on the wall (provisionally, where there were already hooks) and it made a big difference in the bedroom especially, which had been starkly functional until now, and I don't mean that in a good way.

I'm not feeling very Christmasy, what with all the work we've done and still need to do, but knowing the move itself is behind us is, truly, what I wanted and I got it.

Now I'm back here at the online computer to do my Christmas shopping for the girls. It's not as bad as it sounds, though. I have their stocking gifts all bought and wrapped, but the other gifts I want to give them have online components.

One is a membership to an online computer game they love playing, so I need to find out the terms they offer so I can decide how many months they get, and also find something to print out and wrap up to actually physically give them.

The other is that they'll be home with me most of the next week, so I thought a good gift that I wouldn't have to deal with before Christmas would be to find simple sewing patterns for a purse (for Robin) and a tote bag (for Julia) and let them pick the fabrics from my stash and help me make them.

So I need to find some patterns for them to choose from and, again, something to print out and wrap.

And the final thing is to bake cookies together over the coming week, but I can look up recipes for that in my cookbooks (which finally got moved today), or online when the time comes. I have cookie cutters and some of the specialty ingredients (chocolate chips and sprinkles) so there's something for them to open in connection with that.

Bob's giving the whole Christmas Tree In A Land Without Tree Stands thing some thought, and we'll cobble together whatever he figures out when I get home. I bought some ornaments (Costa Rican grocery stores gather all their Christmas stuff in a 1/4 aisle and mark it 70% off several days before Christmas, it turns out), and we made some, and they can do popcorn strings if we all feel up to it.

So.

Gotta go gooping. (That's googling/shopping, you see.)

Merry Christmas, y'all.

Bullet point afternoon

• I'm on vacation, yay!
• Bob finished clearing out the downstairs apartment (which the landlady has already re-rented, so she's glad we're finished a few days early) and is mopping it now.
• The upstairs one is still pretty depressing, but I did actually accomplish quite a bit today. There's stuff everywhere still, but closets and cupboards are pretty much empty inside.
• The landlord didn't come by to give us the meter number like he said he would, but we narrowed it down to one of two (out of six) meters in the cluster, thanks to Google Earth.
• The mall wasn't really that crowded today, but Costa Rican malls don't build their parking lots to scale, so getting in and out was insane.
• The kitty spent several days at the back of a shelf in a dark room, but she's been out and about a lot more today.
• I'm on vacation, yay!

Stopping by apartments on a chilly morning

Had to come by here on the way to the office this morning to pick up the hand truck that I borrowed from work.

Well, okay, and because it turns out that all of my pants are still here, except for the paint-stained jeans I'd been wearing the entire weekend.

There's still just as much to do here as there was yesterday (except for one [1] carload of sixty gazillion [60Gz] books, that I moved yesterday), but now the kids are away till Christmas Eve (or Day) and work should be very low-key, and the roads are very clear (except for that one ambulance-worthy accident we passed this morning) and hopefully the next few days will be productive without being crazy-making.

I went ahead and got a Christmas tree with the girls last night, which I envisioned as being an extra-special, unexpected Making Christmas Happen thing for them, but in fact we couldn't see the tree in the dark, Robin cried because we were killing it, and Julia fretted that it would fall off the roof of the car and damage things.

Oh well.

But now we have it, and it looks pretty nice in the light of day, and smells good, and that's one more thing partially dealt with. Next up, figuring out how to stand it up and get it water in the Land Without Tree Stands.

Okay, off to work. I did take a few pictures of the wreckage of the old place and the Lovable Insanity that is the new one, so those'll be appearing eventually.

Happy Monday, y'all.