Good Thing I Hoarded It All

I have a lot of dresses and skirts from high school that I've held onto, partly because there's hope I'll one day fit into them again, and also because I have dreams about repurposing 'em, making it wearable now.  Because a lot of my high school clothes were baggy or stretchy and because pregnancy has left my butt flatter than it used to be, I actually managed to fit into some of my old stuff now!

So lately, I've become obsessed with making old skirts and dresses into new ones.

I made two khaki skirts longer and got rid of a weird slit up the middle of one of them and then, I did the impossible.  I made a bridesmaid dress re-wearable!  Ho HO HO!!!

No, it's not a tube top - see below, it just looks like it.  

The thing you can't see are all the holes on the inside - some from the fabric I tore and the lopsided stitches I made.

Here is the dress four times, we wore 'em for Julia's wedding in 2010, they were such a steal too - $40 ABS formal dresses from Loehmann's.  Ahh, how I miss Loehmann's.

And now, wa-la!  A new skirt to go with those green and yellow shoes I can never find anything to wear with (but is it too matchy matchy?!)

I look bowl legged here. 

Hooray!  Yippee!  Next step: a stop to Forever 21 for some cheap accessories to revitalize some of my old stuff.  My friend Sara from my CMC days taught me to sew once- well, she basically sewed a top for me, I picked the fabric and style, but she was the first one to show me how to sew a straight line... and then, I've had one 2 hour class and everything else has been experimentation, well I think Sara would be proud of me.  I think so!

Out With The Old, In With The New

I've longed for a new dress for quite some time now.  When Andy graduated, I mulled over what type of new cute summer dress I'd wear, immortalized in all the family photos we'd take, worn in the sunny California weather with the backdrop of the beautiful USC campus.  Just darling!  Instead, I got too busy and too cheap to do any sort of shopping.  Add to that the fact that my days of a new outfit for every single new outing are long past me and all you have is lil ol' me with no new dresses.  Instead, now I'm looking towards how I can rearrange old pieces of clothing already in my existing wardrobe for a new outfit, accessorize, or better yet.... make two dresses into one new one?  DING DING DING!  We have a winner!  I tried the last option yesterday.  Keep in mind I am a new, novice, newbie, very inexperienced wannabe sewer.  So much so that Andy had to advise me the base has a detachable section which makes it capable to sew sleeves - no, I did not know and I sewed me sleeves together and sat there, taking them meticulously apart before redoing it again!

I have a bunch of old dresses I don't wear anymore - some because they are too short, some because they do not fit my now Mormon modesty standards, and some because they aren't as cute as they used to be.  I had been eyeing the "modestify your summer dresses" blog post from Sarah from her Welcome to the Good Life blog since Jordan was born - showing it to my mother-in-law, who was staying with us at the time, and is an amazing seamstress.  For the wedding I'm in this weekend, I had envisioned adding sleeves - but the dress was a lot more bare than I thought - and my mother-in-law saved the day by making me a cute lil matching jacket from extra material J. Crew sent me (after many complaints and e-mails).  I couldn't do it for my bridesmaid dress but I wanted something cute for the rehearsal dinner and I didn't want to layer any of my existing dresses because it's going to be hot in Napa Valley! and let's be honest, it's not 1993 and a t-shirt underneath a spaghetti strap dress isn't as cute as it was when Monica wore it on Friends back then.  In her blog posts, Sarah always talks about how her projects are for beginners, but might I just add - there should be a category for pre-beginner because that's where I was yesterday!  The project took me a sincere two and a half hours - including cutting, sewing, un-sewing, re-sewing, un-sewing, re-sewing, etc.  Alas, I have a new dress - no, it wasn't free given the time spent on it, but come to think of it - I don't have the luxury of time to shop on my own anymore... Jordan makes it very hard to get any shopping done, sure he's content for about twenty minutes, but I've always liked shopping alone and he cramps my style.

 

Clean Me Please

I had been eyeing the refrigerator for quite some time now, in disgust and pity, but also more indifference above all.  It taunted me to clean it.  I had better things to do.  It taunted me to clean it.  I had other plans.  It taunted me to clean it.  I told it to go away.  It taunted me to clean it.  I told it to try someone else.  Much like a helpless teenage girl who can't give up her high school crush, the fridge again told me to clean it.  I ignored it.  Until I saw a piece of my long black hair in the fridge.  Yuck.  Guilty as charged.  Okay.  I guess I will clean you now.

I've been mistaken for a neat freak by many people but in reality, I'm dirty masked by organized.  HAHAHAHAAAA.... muhahahahahahaha.  That aside, I do find pure joy in cleaning, which for me, is loosely used to describe organizing.  In fact, when I was in middle school, one of my closest friends would always invite me over to her house to hang out, just long enough so she could "get Daisy to clean" her room.  I didn't mind it at all and actually looked forward to it each time!  But cleaning the toilet or the fridge are not my favorite things and unlike the toilet, which I have learned to clean more often than not in order to avoid one HUGE attempt at cleaning it.... the fridge just doesn't seem to make its way up that chain of must do.  Until today that is....

Today, I decided to clean the fridge.  Not just throw out the rotten stuff (give me some credit, I actually do that regularly), but clean .... take out all the pieces, wash it with mild soap and warm water (as instructed on the bottom of the plastic bins I had never seen until today).  The last time I cleaned the fridge was when we first got married, but I didn't do a thorough job like today.. at the time, I only clorox wiped the bottoms a bit and called it a day.

I cleaned for half an hour before a 9 AM call with my company's website developer.  I then cleaned for about an hour... fed Jordan... put him to bed... cleaned for another hour while sending e-mails and making phone calls (personal and business)  in between and rocking to a Christmas pandora station.... did some laundry, took out the trash (gross... I usually let Andy do this but it was a little out of control and I couldn't wait until he got home), cleaned some more once Jordan was awake and distracted by some toys... and well... I would say it took me somewhere between 3-4 hours to clean the fridge.


But man did it feel good when I was done.


I wish I had gotten a photo of the before fridge but it's probably better that I didn't.

 all the bins out and clean... !

The left side... all done!

The right side...all done!

some of the food waiting to go back in...

 Oh my goodness... I actually did it!... three... maybe four hours later...

 Jordan playing nice while I clean.  Whenever he dropped a toy, I'd go and play with him for 10 seconds before returning.  He was pleased by this.  

I know all I did was clean a dirty fridge, but the sense of accomplishment I was left with was simply priceless.  Cleaning the fridge, another simple joy of life, who would have thought?!