Fear the machine...wait, don't

For Christmas Craig got me an awesome serger, which I said I wanted but I was also a little afraid of because it has KNIVES that cut fabric and you thread it with four giant things of thread and I didn't really understand how the whole thing works...but yeah, I wanted one anyway. :)

So yesterday I actually pulled it out of the box and made sure I wasn't going to injure myself with it - boys may get excited by things like miter saws and robot vacuums, but I'm pretty excited about this kind of machine.

Successfully threaded and ready for action!

So I didn't actually do anything with it besides obsessively read the manual and thread with new colors and do a test round of serging to make sure I could actually operate this thing.  Ta da!

Yeah, I know, it's not that exciting, but it's exciting for me

In related fabric news, Craig fell in like with some puppy dog crib bedding at Buy Buy Baby (I would say "fell in love," but Craig would tell you that it's impossible for him to fall in love with something like crib bedding), and while I could appreciate the adorableness of the playing puppies, I was way less in love with the plaid...situation...that dominated the colors and style.  So in typical Erin fashion, I decided it would be smarter AND more economical to just make something cuter with even adorabler puppy dogs. In non-typical Erin fashion, I'll actually make this happen before the baby shows up.  I'm a major project procrastinator overanalyzer.

Project #1 - crib skirt.  I'm going to use the fancy new machine to serge the edges and then flip under for hemming with the other cool machine, use a TBD combination of these guys (imagine me, buying excessive amounts of fabric and bringing home options instead of just committing...):

...to appliqué adorable little puppy dogs in the shape of this super cute guy...

...onto a solid grey background. Undecided on whether to throw in a box pleat on the front skirt or not. Let's see how it turns out.  And if the entire thing turns out nothing like what I have pictured in my head, then we'll throw down $60 at Pottery Barn Kids for the animal alphabet version and I'll have a lovely pile of scraps.  Actually...it would save a lot of time to just spring for that whole set and be done with it...hmmmm.  We'll see how today goes.

Off to go sew!  You know, AND watch the Olympics.  Oh, and one more nursery update - we're paying a qualified professional to install crown molding in this particular room where the ceiling slopes onto the wall at a funky angle and we almost lost our minds trying to figure out how to work all the angles.  Worth every penny, should be done in a couple of weeks.  When the magical carpenter man also comes to install the new built-in bar and wine fridge for the kitchen/breakfast nook area...yay!