A Domino Effect

The dress above (picture of which I pinched from the t’internet) is from Oasis. Cute, huh? To my surprise, and amazement, I found one in a charity shop on Saturday morning for a measly fiver. It was priced so cheaply because it was damaged – I’ve no idea what the previous owner was trying to do with it, but it had several holes around the waistband, a few frayed edges and it generally looked a bit shabby. I knew I’d have a bit of work to do to spruce it up, but at the time I thought a little hand stitching around the waist and a nice chunky belt to cover up any flaws would be all that was needed.

I got it home, tried it on and realised, to my profound dismay, that I had grossly underestimated the size of me in comparison with the size of the dress (hate it when that happens!). There was NO WAY this thing was zipping up – I would have had to get rid of both boobs and probably a few ribs as well before it would go anywhere. And forget about breathing after that! I was mad, especially because I almost never take anything away from a shop without trying it on first – Saturday was a freak exception which I put down to there being a crazy person with half the stock of the charity shop in the changing room - I couldn’t be bothered to wait.

In my dismal state I put the dress in a corner and settled down in my rocking chair to sulk for a while, whereupon I was suddenly slapped in the face by a colossal desire to be destructive. Before I knew it I was attacking this preppy pink delight with my sewing scissors, hacking the skirt from the waist, severing hundreds of tiny, and extremely tight, stitches and discarding reams of raspberry coloured thread left, right and centre…

A mess, granted.  But there were better times to come.  I quickly made a black waistband from three random scraps of elastic I had in my sewing box, gathered the newly hacked bottom half at the top, and then sewed the one to the other, exercising lots of patience so as to get as straight a line as I could.  Similar to the 20 minute skirt from a few weeks back…

Ta Da! Nice right? And it fits! I could happily eat three loaded platefuls of carbs in this thing and not feel constricted at all! I’m going to attempt this on Friday at the local Italian…

Oh, and I’ve still got this bit…

I’m not sure what to do with it though – it’s far too pretty to throw away, but if it’s ever to fit me it will need serious expansion work at the back. All suggestions welcome!

Happy Mondays everyone! Hope you all had nice weekends doing whatever it is that makes you happy!

I had a lovely couple of days, relaxing in the sun, catching up with an old friend, sewing, sewing, sewing and eating lots of yummy food, including this brocoli and courgette (and cheese, lots and lots of cheese, mmm) pizza, which I made last night. I took a punt and chucked some oregano and some rosemary in with the dough as it was whizzing around in the breadmaker – I don’t know if I could really taste much difference but it certainly smelled and looked appetising!

I also made a start to my list of mini goals for the month, crossing off the first one (it somehow feels more productive to be starting with the very first thing!). So my previously unloved notice board has had a nice little makeover, and is now hanging in my room, awaiting adournement with lots of eye-pleasing bits and pieces. I covered it with some nice cheery material, and pinned a few cards and flowers etc on it to get me started. It’s nice to have a visual reminder of films I’ve seen or gigs I’ve been to, as well as the odd inspirational magazine article and whatnot – you never know where the next idea might take you!

As well as notice board covering, I began work on re-zipping my old raincoat (goal no 8). Well, what a long time it took me to wrestle the old, broken zip out of its hiding place! I thought Primark was renouned for making crappy clothes destined to fall apart but oh no, that zip was solidly welded to the rest of the jacket – it took me at least half an hour and two cups of tea to set it free with my sewing scissors. It’s history now, however, so I’m going to pop to the fabric store later on to buy a replacement to sew on this evening. It feels good to be getting ahead of the game with almost two goals done in the first five days of the month! I’ve also got another exciting, and very thrifty, sewing machine-related tale to tell tomorrow (can you sense there’s a bit of a sewing craze on the loose here at TC?!), so make sure you tune in!

Finally, to complete the thrifty news roundup, I managed to sell all four items I’d listed on ebay! Massive whoop! They didn’t go for much money at all, but they were completely worthless to me, so any cash I could get for them was a profit in my eyes. I’ve now listed a couple of other things, so am just waiting for the bids to start rolling…thanks to the lovely Kat, Caroline and Elizabeth for their sage advice on this. It’s much appreciated ladies!

Sunny days

It seems like an obvious one, but I’m very, very sure that if it were pouring with rain outside right now I’d be feeling a whole lot worse than I am. The sun is shining, the temperature is up, and I’m going to go and sit on the Meadows after work and finish my book. Definitely not a prospect to be sniffed at.

The American Dream

OK so the prospect of the NY/Cali trip should really be enough to quell absolutely any mumblings of dissatisfaction I might be experiencing at the moment. And it actually is: a single thought about it and I instantly feel all excitable and cheery again. The planning is well underway now, with all of our flights, plus accommodation for our first six nights booked (including two nights at a hostel in Las Vegas called ‘Sin City Hostel’, the e-mail address of which begins with ‘party@sincityhostel’…not sure what we’ve let ourselves in for there). I’ve also got some travel guides on loan from the library so I can do a bit of my own research in the run-up. 6 weeks and 6 days to go!!

Projects

Does anyone else ever struggle to think where they’d be without projects? I do, all the time. Nothing screams ‘satisfaction’ at me as much as a completed project. The predominant themes of my current to-dos are ‘sewing’ and ‘downsizing’, so most of my evenings of late have been spent in one of two places: at the kitchen table with the sewing machine, or in one of our cupboards, filtering my many possessions for candidates to sell, gift or recycle. Both themes are making me feel equally positive: last Thursday I finished my first ever tote bag, made from the stag fabric I got from Ikea, and on Saturday I got to grips with our ‘this is where we keep all of our crap’ cupboard, and came away with tonnes of swag for the ‘to make profit from’ bag. I also found a wicker handbag I thought I’d thrown away ages ago, which I’ve totally fallen in love with again (it’s pictured above), and a coat that’s in need of a new zip (yay, sewing project!). It seems that joy can be found in the most unexpected of places, namely a dark, spider-ridden cupboard full of rubbish. Nice huh?

Charity shop swag

I had a little run at the charity shops on Saturday (as I’ve said many a time before, when the going’s good, you’ve just got to roll with it). I came away with a gorgeous little apple-print dress, a couple of summery cardigans (one of which I’m wearing in the outfit picture above) and a belt, all for mere pennies of course. If I remember later on I’ll take some photos to show you. They’ve all slotted nicely into my newly-cleansed wardrobe, and buying them ignited a little flickr of a business idea within me, which I want to get to work on asap. Exciting, entrepreneurial times ahead!

Google Reader

I absolutely love coming to my Google Reader on a Monday morning, because it’s full of peoples’ weekend posts. I’m rarely online at the weekends, which makes opening Reader at the start of a new week to learn about all sorts of different and interesting things a real joy. I’m usually full of inspiration and ideas after a Monday morning GR session, raring to go again – it’s a great kickstart to the week.

Finally, I realised the other day that I haven’t done a ‘Welcome to my Wardrobe’ post in a good few weeks.  So here’s one for today.  The butterfly skirt I bought for half price from New Look when I worked there (that was the best staff discount EVER btw).  The T-shirt I got for free years ago as it was rejected stock; the scarf is actually the belt from another top; the cardigan I got in a charity shop on Saturday for £3.99 and the bag is the one I ‘re-found’ after it had spent many months (years) in the bottom of a suitcase.

This is a lovely Italian recipe that’s cheap to make, and really quite healthy as well, despite the rather large cheese volume.  I made it last night with two aubergines from my veg box, although the internet tells me you can make it with courgettes or fennel as well.  Here’s what I did…

Ingredients

• 2 aubergines (mine were on the large-ish side, and that made plenty for two people)
• 1 can of chopped tomatoes
• 1 large onion
• Lots and lots of garlic
• A good sprinkling of salt, pepper and oregano
• Several handfuls of grated cheese (parmesan is the preferred option, but I didn’t have enough so I used some cheddar as well, and it made little difference)

Method

1. Fry the onion and the garlic in some olive oil (just for note, Tesco does a really good garlic-infused olive oil which makes everything taste extra rich and garlicky – delicious).
2. After a few minutes, add the chopped tomatoes, salt, pepper and oregano. I also added a splash of balsamic vinegar for some extra kick.
3. While the mixture is simmering on a low heat, slice the aubergines lengthways into thickish pieces, and fry each one lightly on both sides in a non-stick pan (you could also stick them under the grill – that would work).
4. Once you’ve fried/grilled all of your aubergine, layer it all up in an oven proof dish. So a layer of tomato mixture, a layer of cheese and a layer of aubergine. Repeat this until you’ve used everything up, and make sure your final layer is of cheese, which will melt and go all delicious in the oven. You can also add breadcrumbs to the top for some extra golden brownness.
5. Bake for around half an hour at 180ish degrees and serve with lots of fresh, crusty bread and some black pepper.

Ta Da!  Parmigiana by your own fair hand.  A triumph indeed.

Image above from Flickr – Darwin Bell.

I got past what was looking like the curse of having only three completed goals for June yesterday by moving on to finishing the fourth. I bought a kingsize sheet and two pillowcases in this (above) print from a charity shop a few weeks ago (chintzy as all hell, right?). I initially wanted to turn the sheet into some kind of throw to sit on the bottom of my bed, but I soon realised that it would actually be easier, and more practical, to make it into a duvet cover instead. So I bought a plain white sheet from Tesco and just sewed one half to the other, ‘good’ sides facing together. I left a gap large enough on one side to fit the duvet through, and that was really it. Sounds simple enough, right? WRONG!

To say that this one simple project turned into a bit of a drama would probably be to make the understatement of the year. This thing took me a cumulative total of around eight hours, spread over four nights, to complete. I never would have thought that such a simple-looking task could take me so bloody long and cause me so much untold stress and upset. To be fair, the problem is with my sewing machine, not the project itself. My sewing machine seems to want to make my life as difficult as it possibly can by snapping my threads, bunching up my stitches and occasionally just spitting the entire bobbin case out in a huff. It’s like a petulant child: everything seems fine for five minutes and then there’s a sudden tantrum which usually ends with me holding my head in my hands and wondering what it is I’ve done to make this lump of plastic and metal despise me so.

After many, many retries, several hundred deep breaths and a lot of swearing, I finally managed to coax the machine into a place where it seemed happy enough to at least let me finish my duvet cover yesterday morning (that was after I made it roughly half a metre too long and had to cut it down to size)! It’s now on my bed, however, and it looks great. The hard work, sweat and tears (yes, there were tears) was definitely worth it. I also have much-improved levels of patience. I didn’t take a photo of the finished thing because the lighting in my room was terrible last night, so you’ll have to take my word for it. My new duvet cover is probably the most practical thing I’ve ever made on my sewing machine. Combined with the long, hard slog I went through to get it finished, it’s probably one of my proudest home-made achievements to date. Total cost = £11 (£4 for the floral sheet and pillow cases and £7 for the single backing sheet from Tesco). Not bad, huh?