Training classes with Juno: Started Wednesday, April 27th and run every Wednesday evening through June 8th
A road trip to visit my dear friend Rachel in Raleigh, North Carolina: Planned for the second weekend in June! UPDATE: Last night we made plans to go to a museum in Raleigh on Friday, make a day trip to the beach on Saturday, and eat brunch in a highly recomended restaurant on Sunday morning! Sounds like an awesome weekend to me!
Learning to sew: My first sewing lesson & quality time with my awesome Mom are planned for the first Wednesday after she's done with school, which also happens to be only a few days before she and my Dad leave on their summer vacation to South America. Hopefully we will move on to a second and maybe even third sewing lesson. I feel like I'm ready to take on sewing! I have daydreams about handbags with perfectly placed pockets, linings and zippers for knitted items, and fresh pillow covers for my Ikea Tullsta chairs!
A trip to visit my dear friend Crystal in Alexandria, Virginia: Planned for the second weekend in July!
Gardening: Duh. The garden is already planted and I will definitely need to care for it almost daily, but it's something that I can't officially schedule and will require discipline to keep up with!
UPDATE: Here's a busy corner of the garden as of 5/31/2011! Follow the link above for a full set of pics. Everything is now planted (other than continuing stuff like another round of lettuce seeds), and Paul has put up cages and trellises made of bamboo so everything has the support it needs. He also got soaker hoses and a timer, and the soaker hoses are already snaked up and down each row of the garden, so all I have to do to water is hook it up and set the timer! Pretty cool.
Eating meals & packing lunches that use whatever's growing in my garden to the fullest: This will mean planning ahead, making some creative salads to pack over several days, eating more veggies than I would choose to eat if I relied entirely on my carb cravings to make my decisions, and a lot more discipline.
UPDATE: We have used the huge amount of lettuce in our garden now for multiple salads, both to share with others and for ourselves, and I have picked lettuce each of the past two mornings and made myself a wrap for lunch! So I'm doing it!
Baking bread instead of buying it, and use it for copious sandwiches (see previous item). Paul was on a bread-making kick for a while, so hopefully sometime in May we can make bread together so he can pass on his knowledge to me. I'd love to get a sourdough starter going in my fridge, but I'm not going to hold myself to that, so let's just focus on making some plain ol' white bread for now.
Finish cleaning out and organizing the basement, and in tandem with that, reorganize the office/3rd bedroom, in pursuit of my goal to own less stuff. We started this a couple of months back and made some real progress in both the basement and the office, but there's still a lot more to do!
Paint the second bedroom and hallway, including trim, and finally paint the trim in our bedroom
Paint the nightstand and bookcase in the second bedroom, something that coordinates with the rest of the room, and possibly painting the vanity-turned-changing-table too? But that is up for debate.
Hang curtains in the second bedroom
Paint the fugly fugly vanity in the second bathroom
Paint, fill, and hang all picture frames, mainly on the entry wall in the living room and in the dining room, kind of like this:
UPDATE: I have officially painted all the frames, and purchased pre-cut mats for all of them. Two are already hung, one is already filled, and the rest are pretty high on my to-do list!
Mount the huge antique-style world map I got for Paul for his birthday last October on the wall above our low dresser in our bedroom (once I confirm that it will fit on that wall...I think it will). UPDATE: I got two fiber boards for mounting two other posters I have, which I am planning to do with adhesive spray after painting the edges of the boards white, so if that process goes well I might be able to use a similar approach to the big map.
Knit & felt a small pillow using already-owned wool yarn: I have an idea to learn Intarsia and/or Fair Isle knitting by making a simple pillow with an "A" knit into it (for our last name) in a contrasting color, and then felting it so that the A just looks kind of printed right into the fabric. And I want some pillows for the living room, so it seems like a good small sampler kind of project.
Embellish the plain white surface of the trays we got from Ikea so they look nice sitting out: I want to adhere some cool fabric or paper scrap to the bottom of each, and get a small can of clearcoat from Lowe's to seal it in there permanently so it's still fully functional as a dinner tray and easy to wipe clean.
Make an upholstered headboard for our bed. Hopefully with some button tufting and everything! And if it goes well, I might even make a second one for the second bedroom. UPDATE: I created a new Pinterest board to collect upholstry resources and fabric possibilities! UPDATE UPDATE: We have purchased fabric, wood for the headboard, and all other supplies needed (foam, high-loft batting), so I'm all set to get started as soon as Paul cuts the wood down to size!
Revamp the orange wood-framed armchair we got from Poppy - I LOVE this chair, but it needs new fabric that isn't cracked and plasticy, and I think once I have removed the current covering I will take the opportunity to sand down the frame and re-stain it too, like almost black to go with the couch but not painted so the wood grain can still show through. Then maybe I can find a fabric that has some brown tones like the Tullsta chairs and ottomans, and then it will help tie all the furniture together!
Reupholster the seats of the dining room chairs, and possibly the back as well (but I'm not at all sure about the backs yet). Doing the seats will be easy, though. Possibly using the same fabric as for the chair in the previous bullet.
