October 2010 – nicole.groudasfamily.com

Happy Halloween!

We had a family and friend filled weekend! We drove home Saturday and spent the day with Aimee, Jason, PJ and Erica. Aimee and I made up a chicken dinner while PJ and Dad carved the giant pumpkins (above) – I got to pick out the patterns and draw them although PJ significantly modified the dragon I drew for the better.

Sunday after a relaxing morning we drove back home to make dinner for my friend Sarah and her boyfriend. We had dinner and handed out candy. We got quite a few trick-or-treaters even though it was so cold.

When we first got home today however we realized that we had no hot water to shower! I tinkered as much as I could but the heat is working (furnace is working) so I didn’t have a lot of options after draining the water and refilling it.

Unfortunately neither of us can stay home tomorrow to get the boilermate fixed so I’ll be boiling water to wash my hair (again) and hopefully tuesday we can get it fixed. UGG! We just got the circulator thing fixed a few months ago, not sure what else could be the problem, there are not a lot of moving parts involved especially since the furnace is working just fine.

Anyhow on the good news front – the roof work is done on the cupola… some more pictures…

We are really glad we went with the copper, it looks great. Now we just have to scrape down the soffit and paint it at some point (not happening before winter).

A few more hours of Halloween, time to settle in with a book for the night.

Costumes finished!

Halloween costumes for 2010 are finished up and dropped off as of last night. Wednesday night I finished up the princess dress no problem, then attached the collar to the Black cat shirt and the sequins to the ears. Thursday night I attached the ears to the headband.

And pictures!

I love making costumes for the girls every year. They really appreciate it and now that they get to pick out the fabrics it’s something I’m doing with them. Every year I hope we have a little more time together and they can help with sewing, but we’re all so busy. Maybe next year they can sew a bit on their costumes and learn the process. Anyhow – that’s over for the year, I didn’t get my own costume done although I could bring it back to NY and work on it Saturday at my mom’s house – tempting!

Overskirt done

That wasn’t too hard – I got the overskirt for Maia’s princess dress all done tonight. I’m going to locate the pattern for the underskirt and maybe even cut the fabric tonight but otherwise I’m pretty much done for the night.

I don’t know if this will end up really looking like Ariel’s dress but I think it’s a very cute pink dress and I think Maia will love it since she picked out all the fabric and embellishments. Tomorrow night – finish the dress and do some hand sewing to finish up the Black Cat! Thursday is my backup night but I’d like to drop the costumes off Thursday night.

The overskirt is “hemmed” with a matching pink wired ribbon Maia picked out. I think the wire is actually a neat idea because we/she can kind of form the overskirt however she wants and it should stay put.

DSCN0718 — Just getting an idea for what it will look like with a pink skirt underneath and the daisy embellishment.

I love making dresses like these! Of course I say that before attempting to put in a zipper (it’s been a while) 🙂

Girl time

I just got home from a day and a half spent with my nieces. What a great time we had. I drove over at lunch time Monday and stayed the night. Emily and I got a few walks around town pushing the carriages (she had her baby doll and I pushed Finley), we played some games, we played outside on the swings and finally this evening we took a nap (well Finley woke just as Emily crashed on the couch so I didn’t actually get to sleep but Finley was happy to lay on the floor and practice rolling so I had an almost nap).

Now I’m back home and back to Halloween costumes. We’ll see how much of the princess skirt I can get done tonight. I found out today I have to be in the office for an early meeting – so I can’t stay up too late (I don’t think that was really an option though since I’m not used to the level of activity required to keep up with a 4 year old!) 🙂

Roof work

The roof work continues, it took a few days to get the scaffolding up and they started removing the original slate and flashing on Thursday, replacing it with new copper. By friday they had the copper all the way around and had starting welding the seams and putting the slate back up. We climbed up on Saturday to get some pictures of the progress.

: The copper goes all around the cupola now.

: Nice job bending around the edge.

: Started welding and putting slate back up.

So far we’re really happy with the work. I can’t wait to see it finished completely.

A little family, a little decking, a little costume work

On Saturday we had quite a busy day. We had some visitors as well as my sister and her husband who came up for the night.

We worked a bit on the deck and used up the rest of the decking, we didn’t quite close up the gap but it’s down to about 12 inches.

DSCN0677 — Some new supports to help get rid of the sag.

We had our night visitor again so we have little critter foot prints across the wet stain AGAIN. Next time I’m putting up barbed wire for the night!

Aimee and I spent the evening up in the sewing room after dinner working on halloween costumes. I got Georgia’s Gypsy costume finished up with Aimee’s help on the belt. I was quite happy with this one, it was fun. The only problem was that the belt is made of a plastic-y material that can’t be ironed which was a pain. It looks like fake leather though so it’s a nice affect.

Sunday was the girls’ birthday party so after breakfast we headed over to Uncle Pete’s house for lunch, presents and cake. Georgia got her costume – the other two will get theirs on Friday…

I’ll post pictures of Maia and Chloe when they try their costumes on later in the week.

When we got home I started right back on the costumes. Chloe’s black cat is just about finished after some planned hand sewing. I wanted to get it ready to bring with me to Becca’s house tomorrow night (I’m staying the night) so I can finish it there.

DSCN0703 — Black Cat costume - ears and collar left to finish by hand.

Then I started on Maia’s dress. I decided to just cut and sew the bodice, leaving the skirt for Tuesday and Wednesday night.

So the costumes are on track to be finished by friday at least. It’s a little late this year but they’ll get to do trick-or-treating friday and sunday in them. Then the real question is if I’ll get to working on my costume at all 🙂

Well time to call it a night, I have to get in to work at a decent time since I’m leaving early to watch the nieces – I can’t wait!

Gypsy costume

Last night I decided to get a start on the Gypsy costume for Georgia. I would really like to have both Georgia and Chloe’s costumes done for their party on Sunday. Knowing the Black Cat costume is pretty easy (just a shirt/ears/tail left) I decided to see how hard the Gypsy costume would be.

I cut out the pattern, then cut out the fabric and got the dress all sewn together. The only part of the dress left is to sew the ribbon details on the bottom. Then I have to make the scarf and belt which are both pretty easy (the scarf is already cut out, just needs fringe added to it.

The dress - this thing could fit me except for the arm holes! It's like a mumu.

This dummy is larger than me so it’s also not formed exactly how it will look on an 11 year old – it should drape more on her. Then I decided to cut out the scarf (it’s just a square) and use the material that will be a fitted belt to get a closer look at how the costume will look when finished. So here it is with a little more shape. The scarf will have red fringe at the bottom and the belt will have gromets and be tied in the front with yellow ribbon – this will be quite fun to make!

A better idea of what it will actually look like.

That was it for my night! The roofers showed up nice and early this morning. We got to talk to them about the extra hole we saw up there and they’re going to fix that hopefully. I also wanted to verify they would be putting ice shield under the copper now that we could see it’s just bare wood up there. I can’t wait to see what kind of progress they make today!

More scaffolding

Well today was full of putting up scaffolding – it goes pretty darn high. We climbed up there tonight so i could take some pictures of our roof leak and it’s pretty obvious why it’s leaking…

DSCN0653 — 120 years later and the copper has rusted away leaving just the bare wood

I assume that’s copper anyway.

DSCN0656 — The temporary fix last year was some shingles that mostly blew off. Rusted all the way around.

So that is why we’re paying for this copper installation. Hopefully it will last our lifetime at least.

While we were up there I took more photos of the roof, found another possible leak we should probably fix up.

And here’s the scaffolding we climbed up to the top of tonight…

We signed a waiver of liability so the roofer is going to leave the scaffolding up over the weekend for us – we plan to try to get the aluminum siding off the cupola to see what’s underneath. It’s also hard to do from a ladder so we figured we’d take advantage of the scaffolding we just paid to have put up.

Roof work

It sure is nice to be able to pay someone else to work on the house and see progress happen when we’re not here! Of course we can’t afford to do it often so we only do it for projects we’re not comfortable doing ourselves – for example – putting in flashing around the top of the cupola where it leaks and fixing another leak on the backside of the cupola.

So yesterday the roofer came and started setting up the scaffolding – supposed to come back today so i’m working from home today.

Can’t wait to see what happens today.

Williams family weekend

After some shopping on Saturday we packed up and headed back to NY to see family. There were birthdays to celebrate, good food to eat and lots of catching up to do! We had the official birthday party today and little miss Emily got the quilt that I finished on the drive home.

I finished attaching the binding on the drive home and put it through the washer/dryer Saturday night at my mom’s house before clipping on the bobbin threads from the back this morning and packing up it. It was as big a hit as a quilt can be for a 4 year old’s birthday present 🙂

Now we’re home and I’m ready for bed I’m so tired, maybe a little reading. I can’t wait to see my nieces again tomorrow (I’m watching them for a few hours in the afternoon). Then I’ll be in the crazy rush to sew halloween costumes in the evenings this week! Be prepared for sewing pictures – if things are going well anyway!