Why today is the most important day of the year

Easy sweater refashion for spring

Last fall I purchased three plain 3/4-sleeve cardigans on clearance from Target with the idea that I would use stuff in my stash to refashion them. Here's what I did with the turquoise and the light green cardigans, which left the white one. I purchased the white one because I wanted to recreate this cardigan from White House Black Market:

and although I love it, I've never gotten around to it and at this point I know it's just not going to happen. So in the interest of just getting it done, I turned to another tutorial I have in my files that used a white cardigan: this 20-minute Spring sweater re-do from Jen at Tatertots and Jello.

I loved the way the bright colors of the buttons and the rickrack pop against the white sweater in Jen's version, but the only fat rickrack I had on hand was black, so I decided to go with it anyway. I followed Jen's tutorial and first removed the existing buttons, then pinned on the rickrack and sewed down the length of it.

 

I turned it under at the top and bottom but if I were doing it again, I wouldn't trim the end of the rickrack so close. Jumbo rickrack is woven and thus unravels badly and at the bottom you can see it peeking out. I attempted a fix with some Fray Check and fabric glue, but I wish I'd just left it longer to begin with.

I didn't have enough of the same size of covered button blanks, so I couldn't make cute covered buttons like Jen did. I do not have a shortage of buttons, however,

so I dug out a few of my favorite vintage plastic buttons and sewed those on instead. They were larger than the original buttons so they do not fit through the buttonholes, and I had to sew the sweater shut. That was a pain, but the cute buttons are worth it!

Sewing on all eight buttons took me longer than 20 minutes, but the rickrack part was a breeze. I wore my new sweater yesterday and the rainbow of vintage buttons made me so happy!

And if I ever get tired of the sweater or need to throw it away, I'll most definitely be removing those buttons to use again!

In which thrifting patience pays off

I mentioned yesterday that this weekend I finally thrifted an item for which I have been searching for five years. Are you curious what it is?

Blue ice skates! I do love to skate, but they're not for me (in fact, I haven't even looked at the size). I've been looking for a pair of these blue leather skates with the gray fur trim ever since this magazine came out back in 2006.

This was a special issue from back in the days of Country Home magazine, may it rest in peace. (sob!) One of the first few pages featured this image

and once I saw it, I was on the hunt! Several pair have come up for auction on eBay and I even bid on a few, but the prices always went over my limit because the shipping costs were always so high. I knew if i was patient I would come across a pair sooner or later. It took almost five years, but my patience paid off and I found not one, but TWO pair of these skates at an estate sale on Saturday! I literally squealed out loud when I found them in the basement and the other shoppers looked at me funny. I can't wait to decorate with them this winter.

I found some other goodies as well. There were three estate sales being held within blocks of one another, an extremely rare occurrence around here. In addition to the skates I bought some pretty china saucers (I have a project planned for these), a vintage plastic tree topper (wreath fodder), a pair of earrings and a packet of darling little woven flag picks. These were fun finds, but if I hadn't found anything other than those blue skates, I still would have been thrilled! Have you had an experience where thrifting patience paid off?

Field trip to the Butterfly Pavilion

This past weekend I found something at an estate sale for which I've been searching for FIVE years! But that will have to wait because it's rainy and gloomy today so I can't get good photos. In the meantime, I do have some pretty photos to share.

Last week Maren's class went on a field trip to the Butterfly Pavilion. It's way across town so we've never been before, and I wasn't sure what to expect. The highlight of the facility is the tropical room, which is full of amazing tropical flora and butterflies everywhere! I've never been anywhere like it; there were huge butterflies on every surface and even more flapping above our heads.

It was a great place to try out the macro settings on my camera! The butterflies were nice and big and most were very cooperative and held still while I was trying to photograph them. :)

Porter went with us. The humidity in the tropical conservatory made his frowsy, no-bath hair curl right up and gave me a reminder of what we'll be dealing with in Florida next week!

I'm planning like a madwoman for our trip. The last time we went to Disney World was in 2004 and we didn't have kids, so this is almost like going again for the first time because we have a whole new set of considerations. One week from right now, we'll be on the plane headed to sunny Florida!

Spark No. 3

Last September, my mom and I got Sparked:

Which sounds like a possibly illicit activity, but really was two days of friendship, creative inspiration, eye candy, real candy, and fun.

So it's no surprise that we're doing it again this year! A few things have changed (the date, the organizers, the number of attendees) but I'm confident that it will be just as invigorating and uplifting as Spark No. 2.

There's still room if you want to come too! This year's Spark 3 will be held October 21-22 in Lindon, Utah, which is a town just south of Salt Lake City. The Wasatch Front is simply gorgeous that time of year (amazing fall colors, warm days and cool nights) and I'm thrilled to have a good excuse to visit and spend time with my mom.

Won't you join us?

NASA & WDW: Two of my favorite acronyms

If everything goes right and the weather and technology cooperate, two weeks from tomorrow I will get to witness this with my own two eyes:

A Space Shuttle launch! And I'm so excited I could probably wet my pants a little bit!

My mom has a friend who was able to get us VIP tickets for the launch. That means that we get to view the launch from inside Kennedy Space Center, and attend a special briefing on the launch the day before. We actually had tickets to go a year ago but decided not to make the trip because it was right during Spring Break, so hotels and flights were either full or outrageously expensive. We crossed our fingers that we'd get another chance, and it looks like we have it!

The original launch was set to take place on April 19th but was postponed to the 29th because of a conflict with another launch. Launches get scrubbed all the time if the weather doesn't behave or if there's any kind of technical glitch, so we're FAR from being in the clear. It stinks, but it's a very real possibility, so I'd appreciate it if you'd all just keep your fingers and toes crossed for us that the launch goes off without a hitch!

We do have a Plan B if the launch gets scrubbed:

Hello, House of Mouse! The fine folks at Disney are running a deal for military families in which we could purchase 4-day tickets to Walt Disney World for a greatly reduced price. Normally I'd want to wait a few years for a trip like this because dealing with a wild 18-month-old is going to be a challenge, to say the least. But under the circumstances, I think we're going to give it a try and just set our expectations low. The Mister and I have been to WDW a couple of times before and Maren will be thrilled with anything she sees, so there's no reason to feel like we have to do and see every single thing in this one trip.

And now, I have to plan a major cross-country trip for us in less than two weeks! Heck, I don't even think we have appropriate clothing for the kids--we're still wearing sweaters and jeans around these parts, and we're basically catapulting ourselves ahead one full season so I'm going to have to do some quick shopping for shorts, t-shirts and sandals. I can't wait!

Good junk and cupcakes

As I last posted, I was headed out the door to an estate sale for the first time in months and months. Both sales I visited were on their final days so things were really picked over, but what remained was 50% off so I managed to find a few things. On Friday morning, I stopped at a garage sale up the street and found a few items as well, so although I didn't hit the mother lode this weekend, I found enough to satisfy my jones for junk:

The folding yardstick & clip earrings were from the first estate sale. The two empty vintage frames, cute framed motto and antique flocked Christmas postcard were from the garage sale, which is a reminder to me that I should always just get out of the car and have a look, even at sales in young suburban neighborhoods like mine! From the street, this one looked like your standard baby clothes, toys & misc. household junk sale, but it turned out that one of the ladies holding the sale loved vintage and shabby stuff and was off-loading a few things. Score!

The chippy piece of wood trim was also from the garage sale. Don't know what I'll do with it yet, but I'm hoping to channel Jane from Mamie Jane's and make it into something fabulous! I picked up the tart tins and cookie cutters at the first estate sale; I'm already stocking up so I can make more of these this Christmas. The vintage ornies were from the second estate sale and aren't anything amazing but they were cheap and make good wreath fodder. The cute red, yellow and blue letters were also from the second estate sale--they're made of flexible plastic and they snap together so you can make little phrases. They're just darling, but I laid them all out and there's only one R, so that may limit my spelling choices.

The rest of Saturday I spent working on these:

I made 12 dozen cupcakes for a wedding on Saturday night. Thankfully I had helpers to do the baking for me, but I made all the frosting and did all of the decorating. The bride's main colors were yellow, orange, and chocolate brown, so I chose to make chocolate orange cupcakes with chocolate orange buttercream, and lemon cupcakes with citrus cream cheese frosting.

They really did look pretty cute. My forearms are still sore from squeezing my big piping bag full of frosting!

Did you find any good junk this weekend?

I found it!

I found Flea Market Style! I checked Home Depot (nope) and Walgreens (nada) and finally got lucky at Safeway, so thanks to Heidi Ann for her suggestion!

Today I'm overseeing/decorating of 12 dozen cupcakes for a friend's wedding reception this evening. Yesterday I made 9 batches of homemade frosting, and went through 6 bags of powdered sugar in the process. What a mess! Hopefully I can get photos of all 144 little yummies lined up and looking fabulous. For now, I'm off estate sale shopping for the first time in months! Hooray!

I'm on the hunt for...

...the Spring 2011 issue of Flea Market Style Magazine! Last night I checked at JoAnn's, Barnes & Noble, Michael's and Wal-Mart with no luck. The Flea Market Style blog says I have a few more options, so I'm not going to give up on finding a copy just yet. If you've already purchased the newest Flea Market Style magazine, will you leave a comment telling me where you found it? I'd like to increase my odds of success and decrease the amount of places I have to drag my kids with me. ;)

Remade vintage curtain valances

I mentioned yesterday that I'm in the process of decorating my office. I can't really call it REdecorating, since it wasn't decorated to begin with! In fact, it was the only room in the entire house that still sported the original builder's paint. This is significant because the previous owner was very much into decorative painting, and when we moved in, there were all manner of murals and faux finishes adorning every single wall of this house. I have to wonder if perhaps the husband told the wife that she could have free reign over the rest of the house, as long as she left his office alone!

I got the harebrained brilliant idea to paint the room the day before the carpet was to be delivered--we had to pull out all the furniture anyway, and we didn't have to worry about getting paint on the carpet so it seemed like an ideal opportunity! My long-suffering husband went along with me and although painting in the semi-darkness at 10 pm on a Sunday night is not his idea of a good time, I think he'd agree that it looks much better now. We used the only nearly-full can of paint I had, which just happened to be the ever-popular Sherwin-Williams Rice Grain.

Now that we have new paint and new carpet, I've been inspired to actually decorate the room and make it look pleasant, instead of the stuffed-to-the-gills catchall room it had been previously. The large window in the room provides lots of light but it was bare, so I wanted to add a curtain valance just to soften the edges and add some color. I purchased the curtain rod on clearance and with a coupon from Bed, Bath & Beyond, and I knew exactly what curtains I wanted to use:

I bought this set of four vintage curtain panels back in 2007 at a thrift store. I absolutely adore the red, yellow and gray print of windmills, tulips and little Dutch girls! I've never used them because they were too long to be used as valances but too short for any of the windows in my house, so I've kept them tucked away in a dresser for nearly four years.

For my office window, I started out thinking I could just shorten each panel and call it good, but the more I looked at them I realized that I was going to have to completely start over. Whoever sewed them originally did a really poor job, and that's coming from someone who can barely sew a straight line! The seams were all in different places, the lining was sewn differently in each panel, the selvage edges were (unnecessarily) hemmed--it was bad. Armed with my trusty seam ripper, I laboriously removed all of the original stitching until I was basically left with raw fabric once again.

Stitching up the valances was unfortunately not as easy as I had expected, and I have a bit more compassion for the original seamstress now that I've fought with the fabric myself! The side edges of the fabric are selvage but when you fold them to meet, the fabric is not even and the pattern doesn't line up. That created significant difficulties in measuring and sewing to keep the pattern straight and trying to make all four panels uniform.

Even though they're not perfect, I like them--I'm happy that they finally get to see the light of day after four years! They liven up the office and add softness and color around the window, so I'm going to call this project a success--just don't measure the hems. :)

March Tension Tamer challenge update & thrift store jewelry

Way back on February 21, I posted that I was going to set a challenge for myself for the month of March to tackle my out-of-control piles of stuff to be sold on Etsy & eBay. My challenge was taken from Peter Walsh's book Lighten up, and was to last from February 21 until March 31. My goal was to spend that time listing like crazy on Etsy/eBay/Craigslist and whatever hadn't been listed by March 31 had to be donated.

I'm ashamed to admit it, but I didn't do so hot! I did have some obstacles during the month of March: I spent 11 days out of town plus a day on either side of that for prep/cleanup. Two additional weeks after that, Maren was out of school for her break, meaning that during those days I got zero hours of kid-free work time. Also, we decided to repaint and recarpet our office and family room, which meant we had to spend several days moving every single item out of those rooms and then back in, and the office is where the computer lives so it's where I do all listing, shipping, etc. And then we had Maren's birthday party to plan and execute as well. I'm just full of excuses, aren't I? But truly, I don't feel that I had a fair amount of time to work on my listings. I did get some things listed and sold and that felt great, but I know that I could have done more if I'd had more time to devote.

Because of that, I've decided to extend my challenge a bit longer. I'm still in the process of redoing the office, where all of my inventory had been 'stored' in big plastic tubs sitting in the middle of the floor. When we pulled everything out so we could do the paint/carpet, it was so refreshing to have all the junk *gone* that I've been loath to bring it all back in. Having a new, pretty space definitely motivates me to keep things cleaner, and the way for me to keep things clean is to sell my stuff!

Another part of my challenge was that I would not bring in any new inventory during that time--which meant NO junking! I adhered to that rule until March 26, when Maren's birthday party was over and I needed to relax a bit. I hit the thrift and found a few fun sparkly things:

The cute vintage poodle brooch has green sparkly eyes, and he's for sale in my Etsy shop. Also for sale in the shop is the cool vintage Chicago souvenir brooch--the round bit is really a tiny perfume bottle! I'd keep it but I've never been to Chicago, so it holds no sentiment for me and it has to find a new home. My other finds are a big sparkly aurora borealis brooch, a tiny vintage bunny pin with sparkly red eyes, a homemade pin made with antique buttons, and an antique bullion piece that has been made into a brooch. Not a bad haul to end my thrift store diet and get me back on the wagon for a little while more!