Busy week

This week I:

Applied for a job with the civil service. Their application process is both lengthy and tiring. Coming from an industrial/organizational psychology background, I can say they do a great job isolating the skills, knowledge and abilities needed for the open positions. But the process was still tiring to me as the applicant.

Conquered invisible zippers. This is a big deal to me since I've always been frustrated by zippers and would rather make 15 buttonholes than put in one zipper. The picture shows the invisible zipper in my new skirt (it's on the ironing board). What's more, I made it with my quilting foot on my Bernina because I don't have the correct foot. I'm on the hunt for one now and then zippers will be mine forever.

Along with the zipper, I made a jacket and skirt. Well the jacket is 99% done. I need to sew on a button. I do love Vogue patterns, the attention to detail is remarkable.

Watched Kent turn into a Craig's List seller extraordinaire. In the last week or so, he's sold two rugs, a book case, our red chair and the matching ottoman. He's getting ready to list another book case on there too. We've sold these items as we've found mostly very inexpensive replacements that work better in our space.

Watched and helped Kent install new lights in our kitchen. Previous owners had installed a few can lights throughout the space but they are odd--the bulbs are set deep in the can so the light doesn't really make it out into the space the way you'd think it would. We had two cans in our kitchen, two in each of the halls and two in our living room. So in addition to being inferior can lights, there aren't very many of them. We tackled the kitchen first and found two halogen fixtures for $10 each. We are going to need to put in a dimmer switch now! I think in the winter I'll be really glad to have halogen, although they are a bit warm. We may try lower wattage halogen bulbs too.

Replaced our tall darker book case with new shorter book cases from Ikea. Here's what it looked like before:



And here's the after picture: