When Inspiration Strikes

Posted by Mandy on June 24th, 2008 filed in WIP

Sometimes I think we need a kickstart to get going.  We’ve been planning things to do for Jack’s room for so long now, but the last time we started painting, I was 7 months pregnant, we were up at the house for the weekend, and we couldn’t get the trim finished before I just couldn’t take the bending and leaning with my gargantuan belly.  When we made it back up to the house the next time, it was the day of our final move-in, and was  2 weeks after Jack was born.  The trim?  Yeah, it’s still not painted.  (FYI, if someone tells you not to pick paint colors when you’re pregnant, believe them.  Or decide on a complete decorating scheme from a distance. What once was a solid stained wood is now striped with glossy paint.  Oops.  We also learned we have to prime everything first, and since it is Jack’s room, we’re not in any rush to do that.).

Anyway.  As I was saying.  Kick in the pants, right.

I changed my mind, too.  I had this whole plan to get going on a pirate-themed room, but just couldn’t commit.  It wasn’t the pirates, it was me.  Sorry about that, I still think you’re swell guys, but *everyone* was into pirates (and I was, but not because of those movies–one of Jack’s ultrasounds looked just like a Jolly Roger!  Of course, one of them looked simian, too, but I hadn’t considered Planet of the Apes.  Go figure.)

Ahem.  So I changed my mind and settled on rockets and robots.  I had found this great fabric from Australia, and then spent weeks tracking it down in the U.S.  It and some of its complimentary fabrics are now mine!  I also found a rocket-shaped corkboard from PB Kids on sale for stupid cheap (15 bucks, originally 70) as well as 2 blue curtains (also on sale–marked the same color, and I thought they were the same color, but um… they aren’t.  but I couldn’t tell right away so most people won’t notice), and a series of hanging panels with rockets at Home Goods, and last weekend, Ben and I found a painting at that same Home Goods with a robot and planets AND a space ship (months after the initial purchase of the rocket panels!)!  Keep in mind, this collecting spree was only spree-like in that it was all cohesive in terms of theme; the buying process spanned several months.

It was the robot painting that really did it for me.  Now I had A Theme.  A Motivation.  We hung the rocket panels and the corkboard and the robot painting two days ago.  Today, I cut two strips of my rocket fabric, and sewed them to the curtains, and we hung them tonight.  I won’t go into the second embarrassing curtain story here.  One embarrassing curtain story is enough for now.

And now… now I am really inspired.  I have decided there’s no better reason to start painting again than to make something for my sweet boy’s room.  I sketched out some plans, and hope to transfer them to canvas tonight.  By golly, it’s a triptych, no less!

In the meantime, I have to finish gramma and grampa’s quilt, I have three more quilts promised elsewhere and planned,and we still need to finish painting the house.  On that note, I am going to go finish reipping out the quiltling I don’t like on Gramma and Grampa’s quilt, and get that finished tomorrow or Thursday at the latest.

Pics to follow at some point.