Prom Dress

My good friend Amy is has a step-daughter who needed a dress a week before Prom.  I know her step-daughter so I really wanted to do it for her.  I got it done in about 3 days but only because it was pretty simple.  I loved this fabric and I love the way it looked on her.  I'm especially excited because we are trading services and she is going to paint me a picture to go above my mantle.  

I used a pattern I already had and altered it a bit.  She wanted the gathered part on the shoulder so I used my *exam table tissue paper to copy the pattern in the size I wanted.  Then I cut it up and to make the gathers.  It was a little tricky.  

It looks much better on the girl then on my dress form.  It's made crepe back satin which has a beautiful drape.  

*The tissue or crepe paper that comes on a roll and is used on exam tables at the doctor's office is my favorite thing to use for copying and creating patterns.  It's heavier than regular tissue paper and lighter than printer paper.  It has just enough see-through.  One roll lasts a really long time.  I had to buy a box of 12 to get it when my old roll ran out.  That will probably last my lifetime.  I have given a few away.  

Before and After

Sorry about the not great pictures.  We took out our old carpet out and put in laminate flooring over Spring Break.  DH and Mya worked on pulling the old carpet out.  I had some sewing to finish so they had to get started without me.  You should know DH and I have never put in laminate flooring before.  We bought the supplies and read the instructions online.  It was a little scary at first.

Before

yep that's me texting

   They grey stuff in front of DH is sand.  We have a sand box so when the kids would come in the fine sand would eventually make it's way down below the padding.  

That's me doing the underlayment.  I'm not sure if that is the official name but that is what we called it.

Here's the Finished product before the furniture went back in.  It took all day with DH and I working together.  It was hard on my back.  I got a massage the next day.  We love it.  The kids love it too and they have told me several times it's way better than the carpet.  It's easier to clean and I can't help but like that.  It does make the room more "echo-y."  We notice every little and big thing that gets dropped.  Our cat had ripped up the carpet right in front of the sliding door so I am glad to have that mess gone.

 After

You'll see more of the floor in my next post about the prom dress.

The eggs are chirping

It must be spring.  I am boiling some eggs and as they were heating up one made a sound like it was chirping.

Clip Board

I got inspired from several blogs and the mess in my bathroom...and the need to display my clips for a class to finally make a clip board.  Cory took this picture while I still had it sitting on the floor.  It is now in the bathroom behind the door.  I have a very small bathroom so that was the best place for it.  I was so excited to get it done.  It only cost a few dollars because I painted an old frame that used to have wedding photos in it.  I did go and buy fabric that I thought would look good with my bathroom and wouldn't be too busy behind the clippy colors.  I wish I had put four rows instead of three because you can see it's pretty full already.

Early to bed, early to rise makes a person healthy, wealthy and wise.

I really like taking pictures of DH sleeping.  

For years I have spent almost everyday feeling tired and run down.  I had some good days but I could never really track what made a difference.  I talked to my doctor about it lots of times.  He gave me suggestions and ran blood work more than once but everything came back normal.  I exercise regularly and I am not over weight.  I think I need to lose 2 lbs to get to my goal weight so I am pretty lazy about that.  But a couple things happened lately that made me change one of my bad habits.

DH has been busy and stressed at work and with the extra work for church he has been super busy.  When that happens he likes to stay up late so that he feels like he gets a longer day with some relaxing time.  At least I think that's why he does it.  We both like to stay up late and even if I am super tired I will stay up if he does.  When he gets stressed at work he gets a little grumpy and I am the sounding board for that.

One day at church I was reading one of those scriptures that talks about retiring early to bed and getting up early.  I decided I was going to try that or at least the first half.  I thought it would help DH also if he would get more sleep he wouldn't be so tired and grumpy.  So I announced we were going to bed early which he did't like but he has cooperated.  I still have a hard time getting up early or getting up at all.  It's not like I have a bad attitude about my day I just don't want to get out of bed because I am lazy.

So we are almost three weeks into this new schedule and from the first day I felt different and never got tired in the afternoon like I used to and I really don't get tired until 9:00 p.m. and we usually go to bed about 10:00 pm.  That is early for us.  I figured it might happen and it did eventually catch up with me that I would start waking up early even if I didn't want to get up.  This week I started waking up at 5:00 am.  Which is icky because I have a hard time going back to sleep.   But I didn't get out of bed because I am lazy and it's so warm in the bed and cold in our house.  DH has felt much better too.  He doesn't get tired during the day.  He has always been good about getting up early.

The first week when I went to bed early I fell right to sleep right off and slept through until about 7:00 am.  The second week I had a hard time falling asleep but this week is better and now I am waking up early.  I know my body will adjust if I keep it up.  And I know I would be better off if I got up around  6:00 am but I haven't committed to it fully.

So I feel healthier and I feel like my mental recall is much much better.  Now all I need is the wealthy part which probably won't happen until I commit to getting up early.  Baby steps.

New Tile Floor

So this last summer DH said that we would do the floors, like we've been planning for fives years, during the Christmas break.  Well I knew he wouldn't remember so I talked to my brother who is very good at tiling and helped me do the backsplash in the kitchen.  We set up a weekend to do it and he told me what we needed to do ahead of time.  Then I informed DH that I had it all set up and what he needed to do.  He tried to back out but I told him it was all scheduled so he couldn't cancel on me now and my brother. He wasn't very happy with my sneaky methods but realized he had no choice.  As soon as he started tearing out the old floor he saw that I was right and that it was going to be good.  

Here is the original flooring.  Yikes!  Isn't it gross?  We also had wood floor in the entry.  It was gross too. I am too lazy to go find a picture of it and I don't want to make you sick.

Here's DH and my oldest pulling it out.  We even decided the subfloor underneath was nicer than the old stuff.  

This is after the cement board was put down which was a whole project in itself.   I had to do this pic of my DH and his first experience doing tile.  Standing is my brother Calvin who was project manager, so he is managing there and my brother Kirk also getting ready to get dirty.  3 long nights; one to put the cement board down, next to put the tile in and the last to do the grout.  

This is the messy grout process.  We couldn"t walk on the floor for two nights so DH built this little bridge that went from the carpet in the hall to the carpet in the living room.  Yes, the kids loved it and went back and forth way more times than they needed to.

The kids take lots of pictures of the cat so here is the finished project.  It's so beautiful and we love it everyday.  I am super grateful to my brothers and my husband for working so hard.  

Now see that carpet the cat is stepping on.  DH can't wait to replace it with pergo or something like that. I love it when a plan comes together.

Since we did the labor ourselves we spent about $450 to do a little over 120 square feet.  I didn't have a hard time choosing the tile because I just used the same style that I had chosen for the backsplash.  I did choose darker grout which was good because grout comes out a lot lighter than the color swatch on the box.  It does darken over time but starts out very light.

This tile looks good even when it's messy.   My old linoleum looked gross even right after I cleaned it.  

Kat Dress

Here is the finished product of the Kat dress. It's a dark dress so it's hard to get a good shot on my camera. Every step of the way had to be redone or adjusted but that's what happens when you are making it up as you go.

I stitched the name in the back of the dress because the back and front are almost identical. And I think it looks super cute.
I stitched all the embellishments on by hand. It took well over 10 hours.
In the end unfortunately the client was not able to wear the dress because it was just too poofy because of the stiffness of the fabric she chose. She is thinking about doing another dress with a drapier fabric. I am going to see if she let me have it back for a little while and see if I can make some adjustments to make it wearable. I hate to think of her not being able to wear it and enjoy it. I did warn her in the beginning the fabric was not like the one in the original picture. She liked the color so she wanted to try it. Which I can understand. I think if I can take the skirt off and take out some of the fullness it might work better.

Christmas Headband

Here was a last minute project that took about 10 minutes. I got some cheap plastic headbands from Walmart, some read tinsel and some sparkly ribbon. Fired up my glue gone and here you go. It took about 10 minutes to make three. I knew my girls wouldn't wear them all day on Christmas but they each wore them for a little while. So I could have made one and had them trade off.

Baby Steps

I got the movie "What About Bob" for Christmas and it inspired me to try and one baby step at time on my blog. Instead of being overwhelmed by all the pics I have not posted I am going to try and post one a day, maybe two if I'm ambitious. Thanks Dr. for the great advice!

These are what I made for my Beehive girls (ages 12-13) at church that I work with every week. I put it in a cute plastic bag with a package of hot chocolate. In case you can't tell they are dipped in milk chocolate first, then the stripes are white chocolate with crushed candy cane sprinkled on. You use it to stir up your hot chocolate. It all melts and you get some yummy goodness. I didn't taste test them but Mya (12) says it was super yummy. I have some left overs so maybe I'll give those away for Valentine's day. Just put them in new bags???