Easy, Peasy One-Shouldered Shirt

 y creation of the day a la Gianny L and her so sew easy tutorials. I've never tried anything she's done, but she's been bookmarked in my favorites for a while. Honestly, I've been too afraid of sewing knits to try.  Now, I think I'm hooked.


 I had a knit remnant of one of my favorite colors (indian teal) in my fabric closet that I thought I was going to make an infinity scarf from, but I decided I needed a breezy easy to wear one-shouldered top for our upcoming vacation.  I pulled it out during the kids' naps and used the sewing machine in only two places.  It took all of 5 minutes.
 (That is, of course, not counting the 15 minutes I spent making about 5 other attempts that were thwarted by knotting, tangling thread. Once I got that taken care of and remedied, the ACTUAL sewing of the shirt was only 5 minutes.)

I have to admit that I made it WAAAAAAY too short and that's why I am wearing the skirt high.


Not that it isn't right on trend to wear it that way... See this is what I mean about a pretty pickle. I get myself into them all the time and often, it just works out. I do still want to make another longer one that could be worn with jeans... without showing my belly button.

Maternity Jeans Reinvented

Just before we start here... I am well aware that the shirt my lovely model is wearing doesn't match, nor even really compliment the pants featured (and it does her no favors either). I was too lazy to change her and she had borrowed the shirt earlier in the day from a little friend, who also happens to be a boy. So that explains what you might think to be poor taste. ha.

hese little beauties were made from the bottom of the pants legs of my white maternity jeans that have a stain near the top of one leg.  I was going to give them to Goodwill, but then I realized that they are exactly the type of thing I now shop at Goodwill just to find so that I can turn them into something else.
I knew they would make super cute pants for Eden and they're like nothing you can find in stores.  I decided to really set them apart with a bit of a ruffle at the bottom.  I left the frayed edge of the denim showing and just  stitched the ruffle underneath.  Cute right?
I learned to make pants from this tutorial and now, I do it from memory.  I also have a pattern from Whimsy Couture on Etsy for ruffled pants that added a bit of panache to my pants-making skills.  I love all of her patterns that I've tried and if you're just getting started, you should check her out.

See my sweet girl's little painted piggies?  It's her first pedi, done by yours truly and she's so proud of her "toe naow powish."

Living Green

reen is a color, the perception of which is evoked by light having a spectrum dominated by energy with a wavelength of roughly 520–570 nanometers. 


So says Wikipedia.  
Green can symbolize balance, harmony, stability, hope, regrowth, life, fertility and nature.  Wikipedia also says that the word is "closely related to the Old English verb growan ('to grow')," 
These days, it's cool to be green, or maybe it's become so commonplace that it's just un-cool not to be green.  Kermit said it best though.  It's really not easy, to be green the environmentally friendly way I mean.  We JUST got a recycling bin and I used cloth diapers for two years on my first girl, but that's about all I do for my part.  I'm sure it's not hard once you get some things in motion, but the inertia of convenience overrules.

Nevertheless, I seem to have an unexplainable attraction to this color.  I knew I liked it, but I'm starting to realize that I like it a lot.  There's evidence in these photos and more evidence in this blog layout.  Those paint chips are ideas for exterior house colors (hopefully a green house symbolizes the money from the sale of it since we will be moving an a few years) and, as you can see, the wall in both pictures is green.  I read that time moves faster in a green room, but I'm not so sure about that.  Some of my days do drag on so.

That lovely fabric is what I picked out for the curtains I made for our office.  I just picked it because it was the only one on sale that I really liked, right?  
The colors on my favorite mug a couple of posts ago... two different greens.  My iPhone skin... green.  My first Bible with my name embossed on it was teal green leather.  I don't consciously look for greens.  My favorite color is purple... I think. I can't be sure anymore. 

Skirt!

have so many little girls skirt patterns I need to try, but I think this one is one of the cutest. The pockets really make it sweet and adding them is a great way to use some fabric scraps too.

(just so all who see this are aware, the picture posted here is not mine. I did not take it, nor was I anywhere nearby when it was taken. I borrowed it from the blog linked above, as you will see when you arrive there.)

The Color of Inspiration

his is my favorite coffee cup in the whole wide world... er, in my cabinet.  Guess where it's from.  Just guess.

Well, maybe you don't know me or the crafting community at large well enough to know where a large slice of the inspiration pie is often found.  Anthropologie.  Ever been to that amazing collection of color, ruffles and general indie artistry?  sigh.  It's like food for the crafter's soul.
This single mug has inspired my next kitchen's entire color scheme.    I love the teal and lime together.  I can see a crisp, white breakfast area to make it pop.  And my budget is just going to HAVE to make room for some decorative cabinet knobs (from Anthropologie, of course).

First Things First

et me share with you really quickly some of my new discoveries. I don't really want to give them all away, but they're free and too fun and easy to use to keep to myself. Besides, as much as I want you to be impressed with my blog, I think it's more impressive to know you can do the same things with yours if you like.
I have a short list of things that I think are really cool... but you may not and I may be exposing just how new I am to this whole blog design thing.

Cool Thing 1: You can change your Nav bar color. If you're on Blogger, that navy blue bar at the top doesn't have to be navy blue. Did you know that?   'Cause I just found that out today and I've written around 400 posts on two blogs and edited the layouts and all that junk and never knew. Go to "customize" then to the "Layout" tab on your blog. There's that familiar group of rectangles where you can add a blog rolls, slideshows and the like. Well, look at the top of that group of boxes under the "Save" button and there you will find an edit option for the Nav bar. How did I never see that?! There aren't any really amazing color choices or anything, but it was sure great to know I had choices. I dislike navy in general.

Cool Thing 2: There are at least two, and I'm sure more, blog designers that offer some of their templates for free. The one I used for this blog is up there in the upper left corner - Smitten Blog Designs. The one I used for my other two blogs is Aqua Poppy Designs.

Cool Thing 3: I have downloaded over 300 CUTE fonts for free at Kevin and Amanda's blog. I love having access to all these unique fonts. They are people's actual handwriting, so there's really nothing like it you could purchase. I used them when I made Eden's 2nd birthday party invites. AND... There's a tutorial that takes you step by step through how to put them to use on your blog even if you've never touched code before. If you're good at following directions, you can do it.

Cool Thing 4: This blog posts one awesomely designed letter of the alphabet a day and the code to go with it. Just go to the "Edit HTML" tab while you're composing your post and insert the letter where you'd like. I'm using one for my signature and random ones for the first letter of posts.

Fun stuff huh?!

This is a...

retty pickle you've gotten yourself into!

I think that a lot when I'm crafting. Sometimes, a bit later I think, "Wow, that turned out halfway decent. I'm glad no one saw all the mess in the middle!"

So here it is, a blog to chronicle my crafting. My often unplanned, impulsive, directionless, spur of the moment crafting. I love creating things, but I don't really relish patterns and directions. I'm the same with recipes and cooking, but that's another blog. (and that one would really be awful and sparsely posted, so it's not ever happening.)

This may be a phase or it may drag on for some time. I just need a place to put my diary of creative ideas, including inspirations, future project plans, tutorials (fingers crossed) and finished projects. I feel like I'm cluttering up my other blog and I want to organize a bit. My living space isn't organized, but, dog gonnit, my cyber space will be!

Happy crafting everyone!