Sorry for no post yesterday. Had corporate in and I was so stressed I just couldn’t add another “thing” to yesterday.
So today is my last day of getting up and going to the office. Tomorrow I start working from home. Yay! There’s a lot of crappy to what is going on at work but I am looking forward to working from home. Today in particular was awful. It was 21 degrees this morning which i think was a record low for this time of the year and with the wind chill it was single digits. WTF. And our heat isn’t working right at work – which hasn’t really been a problem because it hadn’t really gotten COLD COLD yet. But on the couple of COLD COLD days we’ve had, I come in in the morning, and – even though the heat has been left on and at 70 all night – it was only 61 degrees in here this morning. And no amount of bumping the thermostat up higher would make it kick on. I’m pretty sure it’s not working and the only reason the office warms up is because the day warms up. It’s 63 in here right now. Thank goodness I have a space heater.
But as of tomorrow it won’t be my issue anymore. My upstairs at home is toasty warm.
So anyway.
Got my buckles for my Belle shoes from American Duchess! They are so pretty! I was trying to cheap out and just find something buckle-looking locally but everything I saw was ugly so I sprang for the nice American Duchess ones. Maybe one day I can actually get some of their shoes to move these buckles to!
The joys of packing up a 5 suite office. Corporate asked me to send a few things back up to the HQ. Told them I needed some bubble wrap. This is what they sent me.
The delivery driver was NOT happy because he was in a semi (our office can’t handle semis), the bubble wrap was on a SKID and he had to unload it. Then he couldn’t get it through the door – I had to pull one end while he pushed from outside. I maybe used 10% of it.
My Arwen velvet came!! It’s so pretty! I wanted to jump right in but have to make myself finish Belle first.
Speaking of…
She’s done!
She doesn’t fit the smaller form great but I had the big pink dress on my regular dressform at the moment. Skirt is hemmed – I need to press it since I just kinda vaguely ironed it after dyeing it. Upper dress is done, hook and eye tape is all in, bustle lines are sewn in, sleeves are sewn in.
And shoes are done! The buckles aren’t functioning buckles at the moment, I just made tapes for them to slide through and just stitched that onto the shoes.
I still need to touch up a couple of places on the heels of the shoes where I couldn’t get the white paint off.
I keep thinking I need to do more. Add some ruffles or something. But that doesn’t really fit the look I was going for here, which was more of a casual, simple look.
I do have enough cotton left I could make some trim. Maybe I’ll think about it in the future, maybe just on the skirt? I’d like to add a fichu at some point too.
Both of my girls
The weekend was pretty quiet. Chase had his yearly inventory at work he had to be there for – all day Saturday and half of Sunday. I told him I was going to sew Saturday, but instead, I attacked his home office with a vengeance. Got up at 7:30 and just started going at it. I wish I had a “before” picture to show ya’ll – he still had a bunch of unpacked boxes in there, stuff was just jammed in there and it was a mess. He’s been trying to make some headway but with his back it was difficult for him.
First -I focused on his closet and got that organized and things set up using the space better. Then I did the same for his 2 shelves behind his desk. Once those had more space available, I started unpacking the boxes. Just got everything out and got the boxes out of the way. Anything that didn’t belong in his office got taken out – there were a few garage things that went to the garage, prop room things, and a lot of legos that I just put in Kevin’s room for now.
Once I had everything out and the boxes gone, I started making piles of stuff – here’s camera gear, here’s computer gear, here’s art, here’s books, etc. Then started putting it all away. Once I had the major stuff done, I was left with:
A bunch of stuff I dunno where it needs to go.
I started just putting things away one at a time – just picking up the closest thing to me and finding a home for it. At the end I was left with a box and a bucket of things I didn’t know where to put at all, that he’ll have to go through, but I finished up his office around 3 and finished cleaning up the hallway and breaking down boxes by around 3:30-3:45.
He was VERY surprised. Yay!
We went and had dinner with Nana and Kristie, and then Sunday he had to go back to inventory so I sewed a bit (finished up the last things on Belle) and did some house work. He got home around lunch, we went and had sushi and then went to see Doctor Sleep! I haven’t read the book but now I want to. I was obsessed with The Shining back when I was a teenager and I really liked this as a sequel.
Then last night, since Belle was done, I finally laid out my Arwen velvet and got it cut.
Used my mockup as a a pattern, still got about a yard left. It’s all just pinned together – I’ll get them sewn up tonight. Maybe? I just realized I may not have thread. Don’t know that I have anything close to a dark purple!
I need to get my sleeve fabric order – but if I get stuck I have Raddus fabric to start on. I have my knit for the underdress I can work on for now.
This weekend is MCFC! I’ll be wearing Belle Saturday. Yay! I’m excited.
And now for Sims corner.
So I think I mentioned I made an Overlook Hotel with a Torrance family. Well I got bored of them after a bit – I got the Vampires expansion and wanted to play with it and sticking a vampire in their house wasn’t really letting me play with it that much.
So I made a new family. Well, it’s just a girl. Her name is Carbeena Garbitch and the game did NOT like that name and warned me that I could not add her to gallery because it contained a forbidden word. LOL. (Also, it told me the same thing about my Torrance family? I get it with Garbitch but I dunno where that came from with them.)
So Carbeena is a total vampire fangirl. She reads vampire fanfics, she researches them on the computer, buys books – overall she just really wants to be a vampire. So she moved into a little house in the vampire neighborhood. Wish I had taken a screencap of her, she’s got dyed blue hair and wears a skull t-shirt.
When Carbeena moved in, it was RIGHT before Christmas. So one of the first sims she met was Father Christmas! And the two of them really hit it off and became friends. They went to concerts together, and to raves, and to festivals. Father Christmas was really the only friend Carbeena had. She got a job as a fast food worker to make ends meet, and she adopted a cat named… crap I can’t remember, it was the name it came with like Checkers or something. She also invested in a video editing station to make videos and vlogs to earn more money. She actually did pretty well at it, enough so she could quit the fast food job eventually.
So Carbeena went out at night a lot, looking for vampires. And one night, she meet one. Finally! It was Caleb Valore, one of the Maxis-created characters. Well they hit it off right away. After a few days of flirty texts, Caleb came by, and she begged him to turn her into a vampire. And he did! Success! Annnnnd they also woo-hoo-ed and Carbeena became pregnant.
Despite her pregnancy, Carbeena went out every night to enjoy her vampire lifestyle. But one night, after taking a long drink from a victim, she got a call from her best friend in the world, Father Christmas. He couldn’t believe she’d been drinking plasma from people without permission and was not happy with her.
Mortified, Carbeena had to rethink this vampire lifestyle. Especially once her daughter, Clorox Garbitch was born. AND especially after she and Caleb had a huge fight and falling out, becoming mortal enemies. She decided she regretted becoming a vampire, and set out to undo it. Thanks to her vampire lore research, she was able to learn how to make a drink to reverse it – but she had to save up a lot of money to buy the necessary ingredients. She made some more vlogs and eventually earned enough to buy everything. As soon as she did, she grabbed Clorox and headed downtown to a place with a bar where she could mix the drink.
Upon arrival, she discovered she needed an additional 2500 simeleons to make the drink, beyond the ingredients! She didn’t have enough, but she knew her daily money from her videos would come over the next morning, so she decided to wait downtown until it did. Clorox slept in chairs and ate festival food while Carbeena decided to try to beg for the money. She had a decent amount of charisma and the ability to ask for small or large loan. But every sim she asked got mad at her, and, angry at them for turning her down, she’d drink some plasma from them in frustration and desperation.
Finally, hours later, her video money came in and she could make the drink. She did, drank it, it reversed her vampire nature back to mortal. Hooray! She had a hard time getting Clorox home but they finally got back home to Checkers the kitty and returning to a normal lifestyle.
But Carbeena was never about a normal lifestyle. So vampires weren’t for her… maybe mermaids instead?
Carbeena sold everything and moved to an empty plot of land on the island. She had enough reward points she was able to buy some mermaid kelp and become a mermaid immediately and painlessly – though the move had nearly bankrupted her and she was only able to afford to build a modest hut. The first week in the hut was really hard, and Carbeena’s video returns were getting less and less. Eventually she had to take another job – retail worker – to make ends meet and to get all the necessities for herself and Clorox.
While she was doing all this, and Clorox was growing up and going to school (and Checkers had to be aged down like twice), Carbeena made a realization about herself. She thought she wanted to be a vampire and to marry a handsome young vampire… but none of that had worked. With her new outlook on life she realized that she’d had one man there for her all the time – Father Christmas.
She tried flirting with him a bit, which he did respond to. And then the Romance Festival came about, and they headed there together. She flirted a LOT. They even shared a kiss. But then Father Christmas rejected her, embarrassed by this young woman trying to hook up with him. He left the festival and Carbeena went back home, embarrassed and upset.
Meanwhile, Clorox grew up into a teen. And she turned out to be a vampire. So now we have a moody vampire teen and an adult mermaid in a complicated relationship with Father Christmas living in a half-finished hut on a island. What will happen next? Who knows, I’ll probably get bored and move on to somebody else… LOL.