Goodbye Yellow Dress

My yellow lotus dress sold on etsy yesterday. I almost forgot that it was still for sale! It's been hanging on the wall of my sewing room, and I think I'm going to miss it. It makes me happy though, to know that a cute little 2-year-old will receive it for her birthday.

Funny Flier

They announced this event in the service and it made Dave and me giggle. I think they really wanted to make sure everyone felt included :).

Decatur, Illinois

Hey friends, I just wanted to let you know that I'm not neglecting you... I guess maybe I am. I'm in Illinois right now, resting at the Holiday Inn Express before our gig tonight. I'm excited to get back home and start back to work on that troublesome dress of mine. Thanks for all of your feedback about my problem.

I decided to bite the bullet and do a very involved repair. I already ripped out the collar and seams that attach the front of the dress to the sleeves. I'm going to piece together what I have left of my fabric to remake the top of the dress and create something of an empire waistline. I have a ton of work ahead of me, but hopefully I can salvage it. Wish me luck!

Problems

I was making so much progress on my dress... I had the sleeves done and part of the collar sewn in. Alas, when I tried it on, those little black diamond shaped flowers with the white centers were in a VERY unfortunate place.

The irony is that I actually re-cut the front piece at the beginning of this whole process to avoid that very thing from happening. It was so hard to gauge where the designs would actually end up because of the whole collar addition. Anyhow, I definitely guessed wrong, and now I'm at a standstill, trying to figure out what to do next. The only idea I can come up with is to add some appliques to disguise those two menacing flowers. Here are some ideas:
Idea #1

Idea #2 (with leaves added)

Idea #3 (with only leaves)

Any other suggestions oh brilliant friends of mine?

Watertown

Jordan, Rachel, Dave and I went to Watertown, TN to their annual everyone-has-a-yard-sale day. I'm sure it has an official name, but I don't know what it is. Watertown is the home of the nearest drive-in theater, and is also very much a small southern town. We got to experience some culture :)

Here's the first of it...

Just beginning our adventure...

Here is my $2 find... I'm so proud.

Fudge and Friends

Dave and I have been spending a lot of time with our friends Scott and Carol recently. We lament the fact that we live 40 minutes apart, but we try not to let that stand in our way. The other night we all ate delicious chicken fajitas (I totally want some now!), watched the office and made Carol's favorite Fudge Pie... it was so yummy :)

This Made Me Laugh

Apparently when you slow down Jeff Goldblum's voice, he sounds completely drunk. This is an old Apple commercial :)

Something For Me

I just started a new project last night. I'm going to make another dress using the same pattern I've used before. I just can't get enough damask these days, so I figured I might as well wear it! I'm hoping to use one of my cute little belts with it to add some color. Today I need to buy a zipper and maybe some interfacing... I'll have to check. It's fun to make big-person clothes again :).

More Onesies

I was commissioned to make these two little lovelies. It was really fun, and I love how they turned out. I really like the fabric for the bird, but I love the detail in the elephant. It was fun to put the different pieces together.

Snug as a Nano

I'm back at home now which means a lot more time to be crafty.. hooray! I just got my very own ipod nano and knew that if I didn't find a case for it, I would definitely scratch it. I wasted no time and put my cute japanese fabric to good use as a little nano case. I also used a button that came as an extra with a shirt I got a long time ago. It was perfect! So...it's a tight squeeze, but the ipod just fits!


This is how small it is...

Chalkboard

I made this little beauty awhile ago, but I just managed to buy some chalk. So, here it is... my chalkboard-grocery-list-recycle-sign.

Blessings

God is so good to me. He gave me a wonderful mother-in-law named Pauly. She took the day off of work on Monday to spend time with me. She took me to a lovely lunch and then for a stroll around downtown Glendale, AZ to look at antique shops (our husbands' worst nightmare... an afternoon of antiques and chit chat). It made for a wonderful memory.

Plate Project

Dave and I got to stay with his sister, Jess, and her 3 lovely roommates in their gorgeous house. While we were there, they decided to hang some of their pretty plates on the wall in the dining room. It was fun to be a bystander/documenter for the project and not actually have to do any work :)

Here's the layout.


Here's the end product, although they want to buy two more hangers so that they can add two more little plates to the arrangement...

... which will eventually look like this:

It looks so wonderful! It makes me want to hang plates in my house :)

Denver Pie

Jess and I HAD to figure out how to use the second frozen pie shell that we bought from the store, so we decided to make a chocolate banana pie that we found on Rachael Ray's website.

Here's Jessi cutting... again.

This photo courtesy of David Heller.

Is whipped cream supposed to be this messy?

It sprayed ALL OVER.

It was supposed to look like this:

But turned out like this :)

It was surprisingly delicious, though. Who knew that chocolate pudding, bananas and whipped cream could be so wonderful?

Shopping and Inspiration

Today I went to Anthropologie just to have a look around. I stumbled upon some beautiful blue glass knobs that were on sale! I have an old dresser of mine that's currently living in the guest bedroom, but I've always wanted to paint it and give it some new knobs. Here's the problem: there were 5 knobs on sale, and I needed 6. So, I thought and thought, and decided that I would go for the antique shabby chic look and get 5 matching knobs plus one that kind-of coordinates. I knew that if I saw a painted dresser in a store that had one mismatched knob, that I would love it. Therefore, here's what I bought:

While I was out shopping, I got really inspired by all of the wonderful spring and summer dresses (I was not inspired, however, by their price tags). It made me really want to try to make my own. Something like one of these perhaps: