My Very British Wedding..

Project of the Day: Little Girl's Skirts with Tops

Recycling old clothes will not only lessen the crap in the house (environmentally-friendly, check!) but also is a great way of turning an otherwise forgotten-old-clothes into a new creation. This time, I made two girl's skirts with matching tops.

Materials:
Old shirts/Polo
Elastic
Thread

Project of the Day: Cardigan Transformation

I had to make fabric flowers of different shapes and sizes for this project. Since I intend to give this to one of my nieces, I re-sized an old cardigan of mine to suit the intended recipient. I, then sew the flowers one by one, until I began to have carpal tunnel syndrome, just kidding. Anyway, as modeled by Annabelle, the result is shown below.

Materials:
Old cardigan
Left-over fabrics
Buttons and bling blings.

Project of the Day: Skirt from Old Dress

Here is another creation from an old dress. I sew a skirt out of this blue polka dot dress. I also made use of the remainder of the fabric by making a Kanzashi flower and ruffles that I then put on an old tank top. So here you go, another transformation.

Materials:

Old dress

Old top

White/Blue Thread

Garter/Elastic

Susie..

Did I happen to tell you how much I love you Little Susie?
Did I happen to tell how sweet I think you are?
Did I happen to tell you're Mama's angel girl?
And Papa's little shining star?

                                      -Mary Gordon,"Circling My Mother"

Time With S

It all started in the airport, at Carousel A.
The blue tiger shoes, the blonde hair.
The look of acknowledgement, the smile.
Then the awkward pleasantries and the first embrace.

Dinner with my folks. Them, scrutinizing you.
The longest joining of lips and the getting-to-know phase.
You- making me laugh. You- making me smile.
My curiosity was piqued. Not sure with yours.
Turning off the lights. You- sleeping on my bed.
While I lay on the couch, wide-eyed.

The walk in our neighborhood, the jeans, the specs.
Conversations, laughs and some tears of joy.
The red, hot Camaro. The bloody red, hot Camaro.
The attention you gave to it. My slight jealousy over it. ;-)
Three consecutive nights in Ducksworth, or maybe just two.
A glass of wine for me and a few bottles of beer for you.
Suspecting the waiter as queer,
as he was undoubtedly hitting on you.;-)

The lovely summer walk around Lake Norman.
Witnessing two squirrels getting hot and heavy.
At least, that's what our filthy little minds came up to.
Looking out over the lake-feeling the warmth of the sun.
Marveling at the beauty of the surrounding and of you.
Sitting on a bench- talking about our life and our plans.
All things seemed beautiful at that moment in time.

Watching Karl Pilkington and his brilliant idiocies.
You, enduring Love Actually with me. Without falling asleep.
Losing your phone at NASCAR. A brief moment of panic.
And the sigh of relief when we finally found it in the end.
Cruising in the red hot Camaro which I began to love.
Enjoying Charlie's smoothies and coffee at lunch.
And just being together while the world spin around.

Our time together was short. Numbered.
Yet it was delightful. Splendid!
And with an absolute certainty, I shall be wanting for more!
Come back soon love. I miss your company.
I like what we had and I want it again, very much!

Told you so.

                                                       

And yeah, the bloody red, hot Camaro.

                                                     

DIM- Do-It-Myself White Garden Fence

There are a lot of wood mills in our small town so scrap wood is basically just everywhere here. So what do we do with the scrap wood? Well, aside from it being the main source for firewood among locals here, it can also be used for other things like making a garden fence. So that is exactly what I did. It took me weeks to finish since I don't have an electric saw. Then I painted it.  I only spent $4 for the white paint. Below is the finished project.

Jared Leto oh yes!

Tonight, I shall be entertained by 30 Seconds to Mars.
Jared Leto will have all my ears and eyes...;-)
Isn't he such a beautiful creature?
Those eyes, the voice!
Just! Oh! So damn sexy!

Wouldn't you agree? ;-)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UWAuT4AdeY0

My Flowers

Love Story 2

When You Think Your Love Story Is Boring

Posted: 07/30/2013 6:56 pm

"My love life will never be satisfactory until someone runs through an airport to stop me from getting on a flight." -- Teenager Post #14029 featured here.

He drove us all home 18 hours over two days.
Three kids and hundreds of miles and potty breaks and princess pull-ups, the car covered in the markers I'd bought for window art. Turns out the soft beige ceiling of a mini van makes a perfect canvas. Rainbow swirls color the door panels and there are goldfish crackers crushed so deep into the seats that they will likely be there come next summer and this same road trip all the way to Northern Michigan and the lake that his family have been coming to for decades.
He's never run through an airport for me.
Three times he's held my hands, my shaking legs, my head, my heart as I've bared down and groaned a baby into being. He has run for ice chips and doctors and night shifts and laid himself low to help me hold on through the hard rock and roll and push and pull of labor and I've never drowned holding onto his hand.
There is a rumor, an urban myth, a fiction, a fantasy, a black-and-white screen cliché that love looks like the mad, romantic dash through airports for a last chance at a flailing kiss.
And then the credits roll.
And the lights come on.
And we must go back to our real lives where we forget that love really lives.

I threw up so hard and fast and often one night in a farmhouse in Pennsylvania that I couldn't stand come morning. He moved over and out and gave me the bed. He went out for crackers and soda and mind numbing games to keep the three kids occupied and away from mom.
I looked in the mirror and there was nothing romantic looking back at me, but around the wrinkles in my eyes, the parched, white cheeks, there was the deep romance of being loved beyond how I looked.
He's never run through an airport for me.
He's gone out for milk at 10 p.m., he's held our children through bouts of stomach viruses and told me there is nothing about his kids that disgusts him. He's carried us on his shoulders when we were too tired or too sad or too done to keep doing the every day ins and outs that make up a life.
He's unloaded a hundred loads of laundry and put the dishes away.
He lays down his life and it looks like so many ordinary moments stitched together into the testimony of a good man who comes home to his family in the old minivan, the one with the broken air conditioning.

It undoes me every time to look around and find him there, having my back in the day to day and the late night into late night and then next year again.
He's run a thousand times around the sun with me and we hold hands and touch feet at night between the covers even when we're wretched and fighting we're always fighting our way back to each other.
He's never run through an airport for me.
He runs on snatched sleep and kids tucked into his shoulder on both sides of the bed.
He is patient and kind.
He always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
And we come running to him. When the battered white minivan pulls into the driveway his children trip over themselves, their abandoned Crocs and the pool bag to be the first to open the door and spill out their day into the hands of the man who can catch them.

He's never run through an airport for me.
This ordinary unremarkable love walks slowly every day alongside. One step, one day, one T-ball practice at a time.
One permission slip signed, one Lunchable, one school play, one art project, one Lego box, one more night time cup of water delivered at a time.
This ordinary love that wakes up with bad breath and crease marks on its cheeks and is the daily bread that sustains across time zones and countries and cultures and the exhaustion of trying to figure out how to be a parent and a grown up and somebody's forever.
And this is a love life -- to live life each small, sometimes unbearably tedious moment -- together.
To trip over old jokes and misunderstandings. To catch our runaway tongues and tempers and gift them into the hands of the person who was gifted to us.
He lets me warm my ice cold feet between his legs and the covers at night.
He has never run through an airport for me.
This is love with the lights on and eyes wide open. This is the brave love, the scared love, the sacred boring, the holy ordinary over sinks of dirty dishes and that one cupboard in the kitchen with the broken hinge.
This post originally appeared on LisaJoBaker.com

Cross Stitch Galore

 Look what I unearthed today? A collection of my cross stitch works. I remember selling some of my stuff before at my sister's store but when it closed, I had to put all my works in a box and I totally forgot all about it until recently when I was cleaning the attic. Oh boy, I still have a handful of frames. All of these were made 6 years ago except for one, the first ever cross-stitch I made which is like 17 years old. Anyway, I am unsure of what to do with all these, maybe I'd add more and try selling again or..Well, it doesn't matter, I like keeping "them" for now, they make such pretty display anyway.;-)

Photos are below.

The one on the top is my first cross stitch.  Below is my sis Honey's work.

It depicts the crush I had on a PBA player, Victor Pablo. ;-)