elisalou designs

Want to see a cool way to get drywall upstairs?

I thought it was pretty cool

WHen we busted up our front porch we found a bunch of these old bricks

Love old stuff

Here ya go

and here 

They are up in a limited quantity

The Bailey Bag in this cool perfect for fall Amy Butler fabric

Pictured here is the twill interior version, the ones listed have soft tan cord instead.

And other things….

Do you ever see something so dumb, it’s super funny?
My kids have been singing this song, beware- it’s quite catchy.

And if you aren’t a Harry Potter fan it will be even more dumb.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tx1XIm6q4r4

Cole taking a break

My brother and sister-in-law

Just a another remodel update for family

Puzzle piecing old with new

New siding (hardie plank)

My laptop crashed.  And of course it had all my recent pictures freshly downloaded onto it.  I must have some kind of bad computer karma.

I have been trying to find cool pictures of craft/sewing spaces to get ideas for my new space.

Remember these?

Goals.

But the reality is that my studio could never look like this.  A lot of my fabric comes on very large rolled up bolts and even the smaller bolts are too big to stack up and look pretty in an antique cabinet.  Sigh.

But as I plan the new space I can pick pieces that inspire me.

I guess we should start with walls, we don’t have any yet.

For those of us that have blogs it is sometimes hard not to treat them as a journal. But it’s a journal that the whole world can see. That is why it is hard to decide how much personal info to put out there. But every time I do hit the personal side of things, my inbox is flooded with thank-you emails- for making it real. And the reality is, we are all real people, living real lives. And we all need to connect on some level.

So once again I am here, treating this blog as my journal-my own personal therapist. Thinking it is probably best to edit my feelings rather than stick them out there but forging ahead anyway.

On Saturday my Uncle Jack died suddenly of a heart attack. He was one of my dad’s little brothers. I wasn’t close to Jack, but I understood Jack. We shared a few traits, a sarcastic sense of humor, a lack of patience, a little stubborn. He was always funny, with an ever present smirk.  I identified with Jack even though he was what I would call a tortured soul. A person that experienced a lot of heart ache and never really recovered. I felt sorry for Jack, even though that is probably the last thing he wanted.

My dad’s mom died of cancer shortly before I was born. Before she died she wanted to see the sun rise over the ocean (my parents lived in North Carolina at the time). She came down to visit and told my pregnant mom that she knew she would have a girl because she had seen her in her dreams. She also told them to take of Jack. She knew.

Today my mom sent me his obituary and I thought I would share it here, with a few names deleted. I hope he finds peace now. He deserves it.

Jack
Jack , 64, died Sun Oct 7, 2007. A prominent real estate attorney of 34 years in Lexington, he was also a licensed broker/realtor, a member of Macedonia Christian Church, and continued to share a life long love of farming and raising cattle with his brother. He received his undergraduate, as well as his Law degree, from the University of Kentucky and was an Army veteran, receiving numerous awards in marksmanship.

Here is another cut and paste because my picture feature on the blog is still not working. I am hoping that Andy will fix it soon. It used to be, “build me a website, build me a website!” and now it is, “fix my blog!” It’s not as if there isn’t a million other things going on.

So I will cut and paste and images will be all screwy until he comes back in and reformats everything. Ahh, the joy of not knowing html.

ANYWAY, for those of you interested in our on-going remodel- here is what is up. We had our hearing last week for our new front porch (and all went well) so here is what happened to our old one over the weekend

A Saturday spent with a jackhammer. Andy was not a happy boy after that one. At one point a friend of ours stopped by and invited us to a pig roast- we were so dirty and gross and tired. There was no way we were going anywhere that night.

Our front door is going to be moved forward so it flush with the brick. Then we will build a portico on the front. This is to allow a bigger entry/hallway inside the house and reduce the “pile-up” effect that always happens when whoever is leading the pack decides to stop inside the front door.

Today was demolition of the slate floor in the entry hallway. The trim was pulled off and the floor was destroyed

blurry picture of the slate.

Once they got about half of the way down the hall, one of the workers fell through the floor, and ended up with a leg through the basement ceiling. Of course Cole was in the basement, but luckily not playing underneath the avalanche of debris that fell through the hole with the worker.

Here is my basement ceiling, with a piece of plywood over the hole

View elisalou_designs’ map

Taken in (See more photos here)

and here is the floor in the hall after they covered it up with plywood

So clearly one should be wearing a hard hat while living in my house these days. I am getting a lot of comments lately from people expressing that they could never live like this. It’s not easy, even for me and I consider myself a pretty laid-back person. But what is the alternative, move out and take our three boys and three dogs with us? Not really an option. At the end of the day I get to sleep in my own bed and my kids keep their regular routines. And it won’t last forever. In fact we get drywall and hardwood floors this week. PROGRESS!

The worst part about the whole thing is probably Cole. Every chance he gets he will run through the construction areas with bare feet (a big no no) or grab a handful of nails and carry them around while his older brother freaks out and threatens to call dad. He is fascinated with the whole process and loves to hang with the workers. One in particular is very patient and often will allow him to help. It’s just too much temptation for a 4 year old boy.

In the meantime we move on, one day at a time. Freezing when we had some very cold days in August and sweating our butts off while it has been so very hot in October. But in the end it will all be worth it. Right?

My blog is the latest thing to give me trouble. I have no idea what’s up but it stinks. I can’t pull photos onto the site from my flickr account which is the regular way of doing it. UGH! Computer frustrations! I am going to try the copy and paste method

Here is my latest work place. A front table with Chili Peppers on iTunes. A small space away from workers.

This is also a little peak into how things are going to be on the website for a while. Here is stack of Kashmir Bailey Bags.

They will be up on the site soon, along with some other great Amy Butler print bags. I will be sending out an email when they all go up.

I was hoping to share some pictures of the Country Living magazine fair that I attended over the weekend but for some reason the picture aspect of wordpress isn’t working.  We had a good time despite the fact that it was LAME-O!  We were really hoping to find some cool stuff but all we found was Americana and Taxidermy- no lie!  If you want to see some pictures you can check out my flickr pictures here.  No pictures of the taxidermy because it was bad enough having to see it there was no way I was going to photograph it.  Blech.
The only thing that I found that I really wanted was that cool old Ford truck but it wasn’t for sale.  Loved it- perfect for running errands around my little town- Dad keep your eyes open, surely someone has one out by you.  I did end up buying the new Amy Butler book and some cool pumpkins.

But that’s it.  The pumpkins and truck were the only cool things there.

Still plugging along with our construction.  The three days a week when Cole goes to preschool I run into a dad that recently remodeled his whole house.  He lives a few streets over.  Every time he sees me he says, “I told you that you should have moved out.”  Ok he did tell me that before we started but I laughed it off, after-all I have three boys that like their house, three dogs that make is hard to find a rental.  Plus my oldest would freak if he didn’t have his whole routine of walking to and from school with his buddies.  But….. this weekend I realized how I am in fact getting a bit construction weary.  We came home from a party at a friends house down the street and everyone was dirty.  The kids had been playing kick the can and ghost in the graveyard and Cole being the youngest of all the kids- was wiped out. But he was filthy.  We are down to one bathroom with a shower that we are all sharing.  SO the older boys took quick showers and then started brushing their teeth.  Cole was naked, cold, and grumpy and yelling for someone to take a shower with him.  As I am trying to get him in the shower I realize that 4 people in the tiny bathroom was crazy and there was no way I was going to strip down to help Cole in the shower when there were two older boys hanging in the bathroom with me.  So I ended up getting in the shower with my clothes on and throwing my clothes over the door and was able to soap Cole up and get him to bed clean.  In the meantime I am yelling various things about having my own bathroom but of course no one is listening.  Crazy!

But today the plumbers put the new tub in the boys bathroom (my new tub is still sitting in my new family room- makes perfect sense right??).  I was so desperate for a bath and my 5 minutes of peace that I actually climbed into the boys new tub, in the gutted bathroom with no walls- just a roughed in tub with exposed copper pipes- and with a little help from some b&bw bath bubbles, actually enjoyed my first soak in a month.   So looking forward to my own tub!

Hopefully pictures will come soon.