Dress Shirt

I’m pretty positive that this will not be very impressive. This afternoon, I finally faced the dilemma that is What-To-Wear-To-My-Bachelorette-Party. It’s been a dilemma that couldn’t be delayed, any longer. We leave, tomorrow morning, for Nashville. I’m in one of those stages where I hate all of my clothes and the way they look on me. I was in a bind.

Once free from the daily grind, I came home and tore apart the closet for good party possibilities. I’m aiming for comfort and style. It’s a tough compromise for a girl, you know?

I finally found this dress. I can’t remember why I originally bought it, but it may have been for my sister’s rehearsal dinner. I didn’t wear it very often. I started to wear it somewhere when The Fiance and I started dating, but he absolutely hated it. It got relegated to the rear of the closet.

Please excuse the dress form. I got it, last Christmas, and have had the damnedest time getting it to resemble my body. Various items are too small, too low, too broad, etc. It’s a work in process.

So, that was the dress I thought to wear. It really isn’t as flattering, now, as it was when I first bought it. There are new lumps and bumps that shouldn’t be wear they are. The dropped waist just doesn’t work for me.

What’s a girl to do? Many girls would run out to find something else to buy. Being short on funds and being a crafty girl, I turned that dress into this:

What do you think?

This was my first attempt at sewing a knit fabric (this happens to be t-shirt material). It was difficult, but I’m pleased with the result. I’m afraid it doesn’t look great on the dress form, but I do like the way it fits.

Playing at the Park

I’ve pulled two babysitting gigs, recently, for my nephews. The first was a laid-back evening at their house, but the second was one I was determined to make an adventure. My sister has been on some job interviews, lately, and I watched the boys during one of them. The original plan was to just take a walk, but it was super hot. So, I gave the oldest boy (age almost 4) a choice and asked him if he’d like to go to the park or the library. His response?

“I wanna go see your birdie.”

Once that squawking bit of excitement was over, we settled on going to the local park so the boys could “swing and swide!” B said he wanted to have “a ben-ture!” which translates to “an adventure!”

There were #1 tree hugging adventures…

…and “swiding” adventures…

…a giant turtle adventure (isss haaaawwwt!)

…a “cwimbing” wall adventure…

…and lots of dirt!

By the way, a happy birthday to that last little guy. Tommorow, he turns 2!

My First Foray Into Digital Scrapbooking

As the title of this post states, this is my first time trying to document memories via a creative, digital format. I’ve made paper-based scrapbook pages, before, and enjoyed it. I dislike the feel of needing so much stuff to call oneself a scrapbooker, though. My tastes have also changed quite a bit from the days of my paper scrapbooking. While reading various blog posts, today, I happened upon Molly Irwin’s blog, where her latest project is documenting 100 Reasons to Love Summer. Her style of page layout was something I was instantly drawn to. With them in mind, and Elise Blaha’s mini-books of favorites, I set out to give digital scrapbooking a go.

This is a landscape-oriented 8.5″ x 11″ layout. I made it in Photoshop with virtually no extra stuff. Some layers have drop shadows. That’s about as fancy as I get in Photoshop, right now.

What do you think?

Banner Love

Have I told you guys that I’m a letters person? I like the way that letters look. I love looking through fonts to pick the perfect ones. My favorite discovery of the past year is how to use glyphs in Adobe Illustrator. I can’t do anything else in that stupid program, but I can write pretty words. I also love my handwriting and have worked since the second grade to be satisfied with it.

It’s no surprise, then, that when I saw this image on one of my new favorite sites, Moda BakeShop, I was inspired.

Happy Birthday Banner by Jen Duncan (tutorial)

As soon as I saw this I thought, “That’s a solution to the banner problem!”

See, we are getting married under a tent. This tent will be in the backyard of a home. I’ve been struggling with how to dress up one end of the tent so that there is a nice area defined where the ceremony will take place. The guests will be facing toward a farm field (hopefully without cows), which would be pretty enough, but I felt the need to kind of set off the area as special. Churches lend automatic dramatic backdrops with altars and stained glass and such. While ours will be far from “dramatic” I’m hoping it will at least be sweet and special.

Since I’m not into revealing all the surprises I have up my bridal sleeve, I’m not going to spell it all out, but if you know me and you see that inspiration picture, you’ve probably guessed what I’m doing. Here are some teaser photos to help even more!

In progress zig zag. I love this stitch, almost as much as my new pinking shears. Something about a perfect sawtooth makes me smile. I also love that lit up “Fix” button. It’s one part of my kick-ass sewing machine that helps a rookie like me do a better job on sewing projects. I will never be able to sew on a more manual machine. Please excuse the dust on the shank, there.

In progress with my favorite little flower pins. I need more of these. They are perfect for rotary cutting because they allow your ruler to lay flat, unlike other pins.

Those last two should totally give away the whole project. I’m just excited to have another task to mark as “Complete” on the Monster To Do List! I’m also completely excited to say that this whole project cost me $3.70. All the fabric was from my stash, scraps left over from past projects. The ribbon was the only purchase I needed!

Photo Experimentation

I fear that I’m horribly doomed to take boring photos. I really should take a class, of some sort, but I’m not sure that good photograph composition is something you can learn or if it’s just one of those natural gifts…like spelling. However, I have fun with it, and I have fun playing around in Photoshop. Yesterday, I found out that The Pioneer Woman released a second set of Photoshop Actions. These actions are used to make quick, all-in-one adjustments to photos. They are very customizable and I’ve been playing around with them, this morning. The Fiance thinks that actions, in general, are ridiculous. Ten times out of ten, he prefers the straight out of the camera image. Sometimes I agree, sometimes I think a photo can look nice with a different effect or needs to be trued up to what the eye saw and what the camera captured. I offer the following as evidence.

This picture of our monster dog, Guinness, is just fine as it is straight out of the camera. The composition is pretty bland – subject centered, etc., but it’s okay.

For the edit, I used PW’s “Warmer” action. See, this is where I think I suck at photography. Before I ran this action, I never really even though about the warmth of the SOOC shot. But, look at the difference! I also cropped in a few different ways and wasn’t happy with any of them. Here’s what I ended up with, though. I was going for vertical thirds.

See the difference in color? Maybe not, but I see it. I see the need for more learning in my future!