All eyes on me, in the center of the ring, just like a circus.

So last season of Project Runway they had a circus challenge.  They had to make an outfit inspired by the circus.  I loved the idea because I like strips and red and the circus seems to use a lot of that.  I needed to make curtains for my bedroom.  Bad.  I mean really bad.  Especially with the ugly air conditioner in.

Just joking, happiness.  You know I love you!  Happiness is my a/c's name.  We're tight.

But seriously, look at that window.  Doesn't it just make you sad?

I'm kind of broke.  Well... Because... I spend a lot of money.  I had tons of left over fabric from my curtains at my old place and the curtains I made for the living room.  So I just decided to pull out the previous stitches and make it work!  Oh Tim Gunn.  Can you believe he has been to Portland AND Vancouver and I didn't even know about it until it was too late?  Apparently they like the Pacific Northwest because both of the contestants from these two places have won.

Anyway, I wanted to do a play on a circus tent with red and white fabric.  They were quite different fabrics and it turned out to be a giant pain in the neck every time I crossed the seam between the two fabrics as I had to change the top thread and the bobbin.  And man oh man do I hate my bobbin.  I wish I had a machine where you just set it in the top instead of having to remove that stupid metal part off the side and fiddle with it until it pops back in.  Ugh.  It's super annoying.

I think they turned out pretty good.  Here's a photo, please disregard the wonky hem at the bottom.  I didn't feel like pinning.  I did iron the top before I did it so that part is a lot straighter than the bottom.

And here's how it looks when the a/c is in use.

I actually think it looks better like this.  It also kind of reminds me of the Queen of Heart skirt in Alice in Wonderland.  The Disney cartoon one.  I haven't seen the new one yet.  Although, I was told it wasn't very good.

And Birdy where are you?  We miss you here in Portland!  I hope you are doing well!  And making lots of cool stuff!

And she speaks inside a cloud.

I can't believe the weekend is almost over.  I am actually getting a lot of stuff accomplished.  This may surprise you, but I can be rather lazy about housework and crafts.  I love a clean house and completed crafts, but the whole process of getting there can be too tedious for me sometimes.

I had a ton of laundry to do, I did it.  My bathroom was dirty, I cleaned it.  My eyebrows needed plucking, I plucked them.  Curtains needed to be made for the bedroom, I made them.  Well I'm in the process of making them.  I got a little frustrated and then decided to clean the bathroom.  You don't have to measure anything to clean the bathroom.  Now I have the shower curtain soaking in soapy bleach water in the tub.  And my eyes are red because I'm allergic to bleach.  At least I remembered to wear rubber gloves this time.

I'm going out of town next weekend for 4th of July.  I'm excited because I haven't been out of town since before Christmas.  And it's also kind of why I'm doing a big push to get all this little stuff done.  I don't want to come home from vacation with a filthy house waiting for me.  Been there, done that.  It's a sure trigger for depression.

So I was just going to have a bit of a lie down last night at 8pm and I woke up at 6:30 this morning.  Whoops!  That sounds like something an old person would do.  And I woke up a little disoriented because the last thing I remember thinking was, oh I'm not tired after all, maybe I will watch a movie.  That's the thing about being an insomniac, if you don't need the sleep, you will get it, if you do need it, you won't.

Alright, I have to rinse that shower curtain and get started on folding this mountain of laundry.

Stay tuned for pictures of the new bedroom curtains.  If I ever figure out how to actually sew in a straight line.  Which is surprisingly difficult.

Oh and if you need something new to listen to try Gamma Ray by Beck.  I forgot how much I love Beck.  This song makes me want to take a road trip.

Things I love.

1) Remember the Monday after Easter how mom would always pack an egg salad sandwich in your lunch and you would be so excited to eat it that you would eat half of it at the bus stop and then be horribly disappointed at lunch time when you only had half a sandwich left?  No?  Well then I'm a pig.

2) Or when mom was sick and dad had to pack your lunch and when you opened your sandwich it was one thick slice of ham on rye bread with a glob of mayo and that's it.  Also horribly disappointing.  I didn't love it then, but it makes me smile now.  Every kid needs a dad to pack their lunch every once in while so they will appreciate mom more.

3) That wonderful feeling after taking a shower, putting on clean pj's and crawling into brand new, clean, crisp sheets.  Will someone change my sheets?  I'll be in the shower.

4) This:

Bouncy Castles are exhausting!!

5) The fact that Ken asked if adults could jump on them too and the girl said yes.

6) I love that dad thinks Junior Mints give you kidney stones.

7) And the fact that mom shaved her legs before going to hospital.  Even though she was already in labor with Ben.

8) That the sun is out finally and maybe I can hang up some clothes on my clothes line this weekend.

9) That sometimes I can hear Katie doing DDR at her house at night.

10) And angry eyes.

SOAP. It's what's for dinner.

So Katie came over on Sunday night to make soap.

It was melt and pour soap, so you'll notice in the background (not the messy kitchen background) the chunks of soap we had cut up.  Then you melt it in a double boiler.

Don't we look happy?  Here's a creepy eye shot of the soap cubes.

We also made some shampoo and liquid hand soap.  Right as I was taking a photo of it Katie asked how her arm fat looked in the previous shot.  I said it looked like this:

Doesn't that look like bacon fat? This stuff was really easy.  You just mix it with filtered water.  Watch how Katie demonstrates:

Liquid soap turd.  You just blend that stuff up and put it into bottles.  We added a little orange oil to the hand soap to make it smell nice and just left the shampoo plain.  I didn't make any shampoo so you'll have to ask Katie if that stuff is any good.  Mom says it is fantastic though.

Now here are some cute photos of us cutting the soap.  Hey side-note... You know what's hard?  Writing a blog on commercial breaks from Hell's Kitchen.  Takes you like 1.5 minutes to figure out what you were talking about and by the time you start getting your rhythm again, the show is back on.

These photos are funny because first Katie pretended to cut and then I did.  Oh aren't we just the thing!

This photo is pretty unflattering, but I thought it was too cute to just not post it.  This is what I really look like.  Extra chins and all.  Plus the chef's knife.  I always pack one of those in case of zombies.

Look at the precision cutting technique Katie has.  Yummy.  That soap looks delicious!

 That girl has mad skillz.

Here are some finished pieces.  I made some face soaps.  Hold on, show is back on. Whoa.  Chef was mad!!  Ok, where was I?  Oh yeah, we made some face soaps with oatmeal in them.  Tip: if you let the soap set too long and then add moisture absorbing oatmeal, things might thicken up way fast.  But they still turned out pretty good.

I'm pretty happy with how they turned out and they smell wonderful.

I thought it might be fun to start posting a random photo from my archives at the end of blogs.  So here is this one.  It's our pumpkins we carved last Halloween.  Mine is the clown face at the end.  It started as one that was much more difficult, but I didn't realize how crummy my carving skills were so I just turned the pumpkin around and started over with the "easy" pattern.  Yeah.  I did that.

The only good thing about the rain is I don't have to shave my legs.

A guy at work told me a couple days ago that we aren't going to have a summer this year in Portland.  I wrote him off mostly because he lives in Boring and I'm not even sure that town exists.  Although I was really surprised when I didn't have to dial a one before the phone number.  Where is this place called Boring that is so close the phone number isn't long distance?  I have no idea, but I'm certainly not going to trust some guy from this mythical land.  Plus, I mean, come on!  Of course we will have a summer!

After today's weather I'm starting to think maybe the Boring man might be right.

This is the vivid color setting on my camera.  Apparently vivid means blue.  I wrote a limerick about the man from Boring.

There once was a man from Boring

Who went outside, it was pouring

He went back to bed

With thoughts of warmth is his head

When the sun came out he was snoring

I know I have been bad about writing blogs lately, but I'm really going to try and do better.  Mostly because Jessica said she is going to become one of my followers if I started posting semi-regularly.

It's hard though, trying to be interesting when all you have to look at is this:

"Come on Susan.  Be funny.  Be interesting.  Say something smart."

I don't have anything smart to say.  So look how gross my kitchen is:

I'm making soap with Katie tonight so I'm going to take photos of that and maybe make a post out of it.  But I should probably clean my kitchen first.

My yard has turned into quite the jungle.  I'm not sure what to do about that.  I should probably whack some weeds or something.  But I kind of like it.  Plus it's easier to not do anything.  Those weeds are huge though.  I didn't know they got that big.

Look at those suckers.  They be ginormous!  I should enter them in the county fair or something.