And Sew On

Write. Click. Scrapbook.

I have loved the collective Write.Click.Scrapbook. from day one. I remember when they launched their website, thinking "Yes! This is what scrapbooking is all about for me!" It was, and is, right up my alley. I even remember once leaving a comment, asking that they have a contest for guest members!

So, imagine my amazement when I received an invitation from Elizabeth Dillow to join the collective! I was tickeld pink, to say the least, and keeping the secret has been tough! (Okay, I admit, I leaked it to a few friends who knew how exciting this was for me!)

On top of this being my first month contributing to the gallery, it's also a brand new start for them: New homepage, new gallery, several new members, new content (a special schedule for the summer, along with downloads and sketches)-- you must make sure to head over there now to check it out!

This month's theme was being inspired by past galleries-- which was easy because there is SO much inspiration in the gallery every month! I chose a Wendy Smedley layout from the January "Black and White" gallery.

I used a photo Q took of me a few weeks ago, and the journaling comes from my blog post that day.

Thanks for the warm welcome, Ladies of Write.Click.Scrapbook!

Happy second birthday to you!

******************

I saw this on a pinterest board the other day, and I'm going to do my utmost to keep to it this month:

I'm not looking to accomplish anything fancy-- just to get my camera out every day and take a few snaps.

I printed off a few shots from our vacation today, and I did a little scrapping this afternoon. I really missed it while we were away in North Carolina. I ended up doing lots of little lists of layout ideas and sketches...it's always nice to have a place to start when all those holiday snaps are staring at you from the work table. Hopefully I'll have a layout or two to share before the weekend is out!

Silk Skirt to Top Refashion Tutorial

If you read this weekend's post, you know that I went to some garage sales on Saturday with the girls and finally started sewing a few things for myself. I feel so much less pressure when something is a refashion-- because I'm not putting $$$ of fabric at risk! Case in point:

I bought this Tommy Hilfiger 100% silk skirt at a garage sale for 75 cents. It still had the tags on-- it was originally $120! In the past I would have overlooked it, being several sizes too big for me and not a great cut:

This time, though, I knew I could somehow make it great. I remembered seeing a blog post not too long ago that featured a skirt-to-top refashion, and sure enough I found this tutorial lickety split through Google. (It's in french. Put the blog address into google translate and you can read any blog, in its original format, in your chosen language. Amazing.)

The basic idea is to flip the skirt upside down so the waistband of the skirt becomes the waistband of the top. (I know, weird, right?) I'll give you a quick step-by-step, but here is the after:

I have been pinning all sorts of stripes and chevron patterns to my Pinterest board recently, so this fits right in! It's sort of a sassy top-- quite loose fitting, slides off the shoulder sometimes, so I'm wearing a cami underneath.

Here's the back:

There's the zipper peaking out the bottom. Rather than cut out armholes, I just created fold over peekaboo sleeves:

 I made up a quick pictorial of how I made this top, just in case you want to give it a shot! Feel free to take this image and adapt it to your liking. Link me up if you make a skirt top of your own. :)

Hubby took the photos again this time-- he always makes me laugh. A husband should always make you laugh.

 

Dress Refashion for Me!

I finally did it-- put some of my new found sewing skills to use for myself! The girls and I went garage sale shopping this morning (there were probably 30 or more in our neighourhood), and I found this dress for $3:

(Oops. I just realised you can see my bra in this photo. I'm going to assume you've all seen a bra before and move on.)

This is a Rodier Paris dress-- quite high end, and lovely material. As you can see, it's a bit sackish on me, and too big. It's also too long. I'm trying to move out of Frumpville. You can see in the photo that there is a very wide hem at the bottom. It was double stitched and gave me the perfect place to shorten it to. I just ironed the hem up all the way around, pinned and sewed it, then cut off the excess. I took in the sides a little bit, too, between the arm hole and the pockets. Then, I used the part I trimmed off the bottom to make a wide belt. Here is the result:

No more frump! I love it-- comfy, not too long, with a little shape. Hubby took these photos. He's very proud of himself:

(Yes, I usually put my hands on my hips during photos. Not sure why.)

To make the wide belt I took the left over strip of fabric and cut it to my waist size. Then I trimmed the ends to look like the end of a crayon (can you tell I'm a mom?) like this:

I sewed the right sides together, leaving the ends open and enough room to flip it back right sides out. I pressed the seams, then I cut the original tie in half and fed the unfinished ends about and inch inside the wide belt opening. Then I topstitched over the ends and, voila, wide belt!

I know what I'm wearing the next sunny day...

What I'm Reading

I know I haven't been blogging much lately-- I haven't been sewing or scrapping much either! I try to take time for myself every day, but I only have time for one thing-- either scrapping OR sewing OR blogging OR something else. The girls are getting more independant and it feels so luxurious to take those few extra minutes to do some of things I used to do pre-kids.

This past week was about reading. I used to read so much. I used to fly through books and practically live at the bookstore. Sadly, I can probably count on one hand the number of books I've read since Audrey was born. (Okay, maybe I'd need both hands. Still.) When I was out with my Mom last week we went to the bookstore and I was drawn to this book:

"The Midwife of Venice" by Roberta Rich

It's about a Jewish midwife in 16th century Venice who is called on in the middle of the night to attend the birth of a Christian child-- which was illegal in the day. In the meantime, her husband is being held as a slave in Malta and the money she would earn from this one birth could pay the ransom to bring him home. I flew through this book in two days. What a page turner! However, I read it so fast that I kind of regretted buying it! So a few days later I went to the library to search out a few other books I had almost bought.

Yesterday I finished this one:

"The Help" by Kathryn Stockett

This was excellent. It's a story about the relationship between black maids/caregivers and the white families they work for. It's written in the voice of three women, and it is so evocative of the time and place-- Mississippi in the 60's. This book is so popular it was only available for a 7 day loan, and I had to read a lot during the week to get it finished. A wonderful read, though. Highly recommended.

I'm going to yoga today, then back to the library this afternoon with Lily, then scrapping tonight!

(I guess that's more than one thing for myself. Decadent!)

 

Birthday Dinner

It was my birthday last week, and my hubby took me out for a fabulous dinner with a few friends to "Lee on King". It's "Top Chef Masters" Susur Lee's new restaurant, and let me tell you it was AMAZING.

We left around 6, because the only reservation we could get was at 6:30. I managed to fit into a dress I haven't worn since before the girls were born-- and I remembered after I put it on that it was given to me for my birthday ten years ago by my castmates in "Mamma Mia". They all knew that I love JCrew, so they all went in together to get me this dress:

A little snug, but it fits! lol!

When we got to the restaurant we decided to do "Chef's Choice" and just have them bring out the Chef's favourite dishes. This was good and bad-- so delicious, but too much food and awfully expensive! Still, next time we will know exactly what to order. My faves were:

The oysters. So fresh. I haven't had oysters in years:

Next was Susur's signature salad, the Singaporean Slaw. There are 19 ingredients in this salad and I would never have believed cole slaw could be SO fresh and delicious.

Another dish was a cheeseburger spring roll, wrapped in lettuce.

After that the dishes were coming out fast and furious and I put away the camera. The food was so delicious and so plenteous, I could have burst. At the end they brought out chocolate molten cake:

and Quillan asked that the Chef come over to wish me Happy Birthday. :) Chef Lee was very friendly and happy to take a photo with me:

It was such a great night-- and such a great meal!

I've been working out of the house on a show for the last 10 days, but this morning I don't have to work! I could do laundry...actually I AM doing laundry right now...but instead of staying home to fold it, I'm going to take the girls to Bonjour Brioche for hot chocolate and pains au chocolats. Priorities, you know.

(Audrey in front of the Eiffel Tower, April 2008)

I Didn't Go to Yoga Today

A caveat to yesterday's post.

Sometimes you can have the best of intentions to go to yoga.

Then your two year old has diarrhea for two days, and the telehealth nurse call you back just as you're walking out the door, so you talk to her for 10 minutes and make a list of things you need to feed said two year old. And then instead of going to yoga, you go to the grocery store to get pedialyte and bananas and such, and then you come home and make lunch, and do the dishes, and make brownies for the dinner party you're going to that night, before going to a meeting, before taking care of last minute details for your class the next day...

and then exercize falls off the table again.

And it will.

Just so long as you keep putting it back up there.

I Went to Yoga Yesterday

I am a lucky girl. Blessed. In so many ways it is hard to count.

I have two beautiful girls who make me laugh, and cuddle on command.

I have a husband I am deeply in love with, who is around during the day to co-parent in every sense of the word.

I have multiple passions and (because of that husband) the opportunity to work on them when I need to.

I have so much in my life, and I am so grateful for it. Truly.

In fact, I feel such a responsibility to live up to those beautiful girls, that husband and those passions.

I feel a responsibility to do better, try harder, and make my passions work for me in every way possible.

I feel a responsibility to live up to my life.

And when all those things get busy, and still the kitchen is not clean, and the girls' room is still not decorated, and I have multiple deadlines...when I am busy living up to my life, the first thing that falls off the table is exercise.

Partially because I have always been clumsy and inflexible, and that makes me self-conscious.

Partially because the last day of gym class rates on the top 10 days of my life.

Partially because even when I'm having a really good yoga class there are many moments when I think to myself, "What on EARTH possessed you to come here?".

And, frankly, sometimes it just feels selfish.

It's easy to justify putting it off for another day, another week...another month.

And yet, when I go to yoga I am a happier person. (I know this, because my husband tells me so.)

I am also a healthier person. (As someone who is on week three of an awful cold/sinus cough thing, I am envious of a healthy me.)

When I go to yoga I fill myself up so that I can give more, do more, do better.

That's why I have to make exercize a priority. I have to take the time. I have to make myself go.

If I want to live up to this beautiful life I've been given, I have to take the best care of the person living it. Otherwise I won't be living up to anything.

 

 

Audrey's birthday party went really well yesterday-- thanks to help from my Mom, and the three other moms that hung out during the party. I have lots of photos to share-- thanks, Sonya, for playing photographer!-- but don't have them all edited and ready yet.

Instead, a photo of my new toy. :) I went back and forth many times about this little beauty-- "I shouldn't...but I like it...but I shouldn't...but maybe... " Finally, the Rogers people called to say they had one ready to send, and Q snapped it up. It really is pretty...and pretty addictive. Any apps to suggest, blog friends?

The Farmer's Market

Ah, the farmer's market. A lovely autumn outing with the girls-- one of those trips that makes me feel like a real MOM. Of course, I took my camera.

Here are the girls with their Honey Crisp Apples:

Here's a photo of the three of us:

And here is a photo of the booth where I left my shoulder bag and didn't discover it until I was all the way back to the car, then dragged the girls back in a panic because my wallet and my (only) car keys were just sitting there somewhere, and Lily screamed the whole time because she wanted me to carry her, and the bag was still sitting there (whew!) but my wallet wasn't in it (crap!), and while I thought to myself "Well, at least I can drive home", a woman saw me panic stricken and said that it was my lucky day because someone had found my wallet (probably in the piles of produce) and the lady behind the booth held it up with a big smile..

Yes, it's trips like this that make me feel like a real MOM.