A Constant State of Change

    The weather cycles through a few options here at the house. We're close enough to the beach that we get all the fog, but w're far enough up and in the hills that we also get the dip in temperature. Every morning is a battle of cold toes and hot blankets. While we had a guest in the house staying in the living room we had to close the bedroom door every night and it helped keep the room really well insulated.
    We don't usually sleep with the door closed because Elvis is quiet but usually very active at night. He runs around a lot, doing laps, exploring windows, but while we had guests we had the door closed, and our windows have busted screens so they stay closed. I just don't want to be that friendly with the wildlife.
    Despite that, I love spending time outdoors. We've got a front porch that you saw in my second post, Mom has a small porch outside of her bedroom, which leads to a set a large cement slabs in the backyard! All three are pretty nice for certain things. The front porch is the most easily accessed since it's the front door, has all the chairs and is flat, but it's also in direct view of the road and neighbors which leaves us uncomfortable.

The back porch (above) is nice and flat, and stable, but it is above the neighbors fence so we see pretty directly into their yard by one of their doors and they see right up to the porch, not so private, plus it's quite small. All three of us can stand around comfortably there, but there isn't room for sitting around and anything. It's best for viewing the creek.



    The cement slabs are best for privacy, 100%. The backyard fence is nice and high in all directions, and we've got a large enough yard that we get some sound insulation from the road, but the slabs aren't flat… they're oddly stair-stepped. and unfortunately they're not 100% stable, as they are growing moss and starting to crumble at the edges. So they're not really the best for doing anything social out there. Not to mention they're surrounded by odd plants and animals all day, and have laundry lines across just under half of it.

Now that we've got the living room unoccupied it has returned to the wonderful state of family room! Mom has joined us to watch some TV and movies a few times now, and I am glad to see she's not just playing on the internet with those crazy people. We've finally managed a little bit of downtime, just in time for someone to ask for a custom dress! Yes, I'm still doing that! My friend Grace asked if we could put something together for a work fundraiser event, and I was very excited to say "of course!" I've worked with her before so I already had some patterns made up, and they only needed a little bit of adjustment because she just had a baby people! I'm excited to be using some beautiful fabric I've been holding on to for a couple years, and am loving the refreshed "creative" work. I love doing alterations with Neimans, but there just isn't the opportunity for creative custom work there that I relish. (Duh, it's alterations, not custom dressmaking). When I wasn't doing that dress work, I was playing Pokémon. Nintendo put out a new free Pokémon game for the 3ds and it is so much fun! I think I'l go play it some more right now! Or maybe finish that dress… So many options!