Under construction…

If you visit semi-regularly, you may have noticed some changes.  Having been at this for almost a year now, I really wanted to make The Political Housewyf a little more personalized.  (Yes, this will be a completely fluff post.  I’m tired.  I just spent 3.5 hours cleaning out my in-laws’ filing cabinets.  Public service announcement: be nice to your children, and CLEAN OUT YOUR JUNK REGULARLY.  They will NOT appreciate going through 30+ years of water bills and such after you’re gone, and, no, really, you do not need every mortgage, tax filing, utility bill, and credit card statement you’ve ever had!  Honest!)

Anyways… where was I?

I liked the green layout I used to have, with the weird flower and bird, but I gradually came to think it was too dark.  So, I now have a lighter, brighter layout.

With the new layout came the opportunity to choose a custom header.   So, after much fussing and cropping and splicing together two different scans (because the housewyf didn’t come out well small, and I could only make the calligraphy so big) and cursing at various editing programs for pixilating the color variations on my lovely handmade paper, there I am (sort of) in the header, with appropriate colonial-era handwriting.  (Yes, the thing that looks like an “f” with the bottom half flipped backwards is, in fact, an s.  Prettier than the modern lowercase “s”, but you can see why it got changed: it’s confusing.)  Thanks to the DH for dropping everything to take reference photos of me in the dress the other night.  (I don’t draw people well at all.  I traced the figure off of the photo pulled up on my computer.)

And then, I liked Mistress Housewyf so much (and I discovered that you can store widgets in a holding box for later use, making them easy to swap out on a whim), that I decided to do some variations, which will be appearing in the top of the sidebar.  I simply taped up my original on my giant lightbox (aka the sliding glass door to the deck), laid a fresh sheet of paper over, and copied the lines with some variations.

I was having so much fun (and the kids were tearing around the house having a blast and staying out of my hair) that I got quite a few done.  Diva looked at the parade of housewyfs taped up to the arch between the living room and kitchen and warned, “Daddy is going to look at this and say you’re crazy, Momma!”  Yep, he did.

Here are the last three I did:

• “Christmas” holding a Williamsburg-type wreath adorned with fruit and dressed in green and red
• “Chocolate” done entirely in shades of brown and holding a pile of bonbons for those days when, well, it’s just been one of those days
• “Sewing” holding a pair of scissors in one hand, pin cushion strapped to the wrist (yes, it’s the wrong wrist, but that’s where it worked), tape measure dangling out of the left hand, and Storm at Sea quilt draped for best effect.  (DH even recognized the pattern because I’d shown it to him as the one I want to make for our bed.  “See?  Impressed?” he asked.  Yes, dear, very.)

There’s also gardening, cooking, resting, patriotic, cleaning, teaching, China (gold dragons on the underskirt and red lantern in hand), and one I haven’t labelled yet but might call “Avoiding Housework”, since she’s much too well dressed to be getting dirty.

So, although politics is usually the topic of my posts, I always have something else going on in the *real* world of things happening around the house.  If anyone has a bright idea for a new occupation for Mistress Housewyf, drop me a comment!