So what have I been doing in my new sewing room? ... not much, time won't allow me as I have to paint the kitchen and garden room floors and doors - Bo's in charge of ceilings and walls.

I've managed to do some stamping and made the linen pillow using some sticky foamies I cut out and stuck on an acrylic block. I had some white textile paint left over and used a roller to get it on the foamies and pressed it here and there on to the fabric. The round crocheted pillow is actually inspired by Jane's post only I made mine smaller and more puffy as I wanted it to look like a cake. I started a ring of 6 chains, and made 12 double crochets, after that I just went round and round. I'll come back to this post later and tell you what I've done but I don't want to disturb BooBoo because by now she's snoring her head off.

What a historical day .. oh my .. CNN on all day .. the sun is shining .. only another two hours .. it's so exciting!

Did you see how I tried to make an American flag there with my new fabric stash .. impressive eh?

The sewing room is almost done. I only need to paint the heating pipes, put chicken wire in front of the windows (because I'm scared frogs will get in) and find a cute free standing cast iron radiator because I find it too cold with just the pipes.

Most of the furniture in this room is new and from Ikea. As this house is three times bigger as our previous house, we are in desperate need of furniture. Now I'm not one for buying everything in one day (can't even afford that) because I like rooms to evolve. I already had the EXPEDIT bookcase but bought some extra drawer inserts to house all my yarn. I bought the MALM chest of drawers, the two MELLTORP dining tables for my sewing machines and the table top for the VIKA ARTUR trestles.

I planned all the stuff I wanted to be in this room in advance by sorting out and preparing boxes in another room. This way I only had to move everything in.

The radiator will be under this spool rack. I used Elephant's Breath floor paint by Farrow and Ball for the floors. For people in The Netherlands and Germany Forel from Histor will match perfectly and you should get it mixed in the Histor concrete paint.

It was pure practical to start to renovate the basement first because so much stuff can go in there. The room next to my sewing room is the Bo's tool room and where the combi-kettle is. The first corridor is used for storage (vases, pots & pans) and the second corridor will be for my shop. There are still two uncompleted rooms on the other side that hold wood we need for building and one where we keep junk. We also really like to work in pairs, like we are doing the kitchen the same time as the basement. The kitchen will be done plastering tomorrow so while that dries we can work in the basement. After the kitchen is finished we'll work on the TV room and my office as they are next door. Next we'll be working on our bedroom and the bathroom and so on.

I'm in love with this room and I think today will be the first day I actually get a chance to play in it.

I'm really honored to be in the top 100 list of "The Homies" at Apartment Therapy. Thank you for those who put in a good word for me, you are sweethearts!!

The floor of the basement is drying really quickly, I'm going to move in furniture this week - whoooooo!

Happy 2009!

We didn't celebrate last night instead we painted our dungeon aka the basement of the house.

I now totally understand how people like Dutroux can hide people in their homes without other people finding out. Our house has a typical Belgium basement where you can easily house a small family of immigrants or some kids. People in Belgium don't fuss with their neighbors. The houses across our street never show any activity. Last night, during the fireworks, I got excited to see a little boy run out of the house but that was just for a fraction of a second. So in other words, god knows what people are hiding behind those drawn curtains.

This is the second corridor in our basement, there are two in total with on each side two rooms. The door on the right is the door to my sewing room, the door to the left is going to be for storage. There's another door to another room and to a blocked passageway to the old brewery in the storage room. It's all really scary but white paint and some Cath Kidston floral fabric will do the trick.

This is what my sewing room looks like today. This is what it looked like a couple of weeks ago.

The floor is going to be painted in a sandy color and the heating pipes will be white too. Those holes in the walls are vents and will be covered with something pretty in cast iron.

We went for a shopping trip to Ikea last week to get some furniture for this room. It now depends on how fast the floors will dry before I can start moving all the furniture in. I get so ecstatic knowing that by the end of this month I'll be able to put things where they're going to be for a long time. To know that if I enter this room my sewing machines will be waiting for me, that I know in which drawer the good scissors are. Also this time next month I might have a working kitchen ... the thought of a working kitchen ... well let me spare you the details.

I used Farrow & Ball's Pointing (no. 2003) for all the walls and doors.