Several Saturdays in a Row

Things I have done in my first week off school:

- I spent Memorial Day weekend moving the Masons into their new house.

- I babysat Jack (which included a trip to the park and a trip to the library, both things I haven't done in years!)

After taking this picture, I joined him on the swings.
They are just as much fun as I remembered.

- We celebrated Jack's 3rd birthday.  I was party photographer, and I got to give him the presents I alluded to earlier.  I didn't get a picture of the "Danger!" cape I made, but here's a shot of the pencil case:

The pattern can be downloaded here.
Barely pictured: The awesome science robots fabric I used for the lining.
Not pictured:  The brown, orange, and green argyle back.
Seriously, if I thought I could pull it off without going too Mrs. Frizzle,
I would totally make a dress out of the fabric I used to make this case.

- I enjoyed many long morning workouts at the rec center:

Turns out morning workouts are populated by me and the 60+ crowd.
Good times.

- I cleaned out and reorganized my closet, then dropped two large garbage bags of clothes and shoes off at Goodwill

There may be a third bag of clothes and shoes I'm donating to my own theater department at school.
Three bags full - sheesh.
Apparently I haven't cleaned out my closet in a while.

- I made room in my closet for a recent splurge, which I absolutely love:

A rolling laundry cart with adjustable hanging rack!
I love being able to hang clothes directly from the dryer.

- I went knob shopping:

After visiting four stores, I wound up with these in my guest bathroom:

and these in my kitchen:

I also tried out several knob options for my own bathroom and the pull handles in the kitchen, but I returned them all and have since been wistfully looking at higher end hardware.  Alas, somehow I can't quite justify spending $100 on five kitchen handles.


- I made myself one of these:

Source

- And after waking up yet again to the sound of workmen walking past my bedroom, I finally tackled the problem of having a balcony on the ground floor:

The view from my sliding glass door - Ugly, noisy rocks + parking lot

An upper-floor apartment would be nice, but I don't want to move.  Instead I made some panels for privacy:

New view:  Printed duck cloth + parking lot

Somewhere around inverting number 16 of the 28 ties I made for those panels I started to curse my design, but my mood was greatly improved when passing neighbors commented on how cute the panels look.  They were also impressed that I had made them myself (take note, Grandma Cook!).

So, at the end of Week One of Not Running Away for the Summer, I'm feeling pretty good about it.  I like being able to do these kinds of things without interruption or the pressure of time.  I also get to do them not instead of but rather in addition to relaxing in other ways, i.e. reading many books, playing with friends, seeing movies, and such.  It's like all of the Saturdays I lost working during the school year have been strung together in a row for me to use all at once.  It still feels a bit awkward to have so much time off when no one else does (although Lisa's happily out for the summer now too!), but I am enjoying this chance to be personally productive.