Day Thirty!

Wow this has taken me forever to post my last outfit! I really did finish in right around 30 days, maybe a little longer because of weekends, but pretty good. Next will be the sum up post. So we'll get right to the 30th outfit.

 Do I look a little excited to be done?

I can't believe I hadn't worn this outfit sooner. It's definitely one of my favorites now. With or without tights it can move from season to season.

What I wore:
Black dress
Grey cardigan
Black belt
Blue suede shoes

Welcome baby cardinals

This little surprise is what we found today in my rhododendron! A couple weeks ago I remember a very aggressive mama cardinal around when I was weeding my fenced garden, well now I know why. She was protecting her daughters!

Easter Sunday missing our girls

Here we are on Easter morning. Not a great photo of any of us but you get the idea. Daddy wore his skinny suit thats a little big now with his egg tie, thats always a hit! I made my black skirt with the Kwick Sew pattern on the left. Love the pattern, really well written but I made to big. I'm going to make another one smaller maybe I'll wear it for the retirement party. I bought a really nice piece of dark jean fabric and a medium kinda robin egg linen, that I want to make skirts out of. Oh and my top was an estate sale find from Memphis.
Emma looks sad without family around!

Good Friday in the burgh

Yes my lettuce is growing even though our temps are still in the mid 30s at night.I planted leaf and arugala lettuce and some onion sets. I think these are red onions.

At the top of the garden I planted a thin row of sweet onions, look hard you can kinda see them.
Daddy and me colored our eggs this morning and miss our little girls. I hate to complain but its just not the same without you both. At least you should know your both truly missed here. I miss your over dyed artistic approach to egg coloring!

Crown Smoking Jacket

Well here it is so far. Its way harder than it looks. I used the Simplicity pattern for the robe and shortened it. Hopefully it will resemble a very cool smoking jacket. I don't know, I'm worried the crown bottle bags won't really hold up but I guess its the idea, right? The red white and blue fabric is the lining fabric, hopefully the stabilizer that is so badly needed. The collar trim part, I'm making out of his flying scarves from the fighter days and he has to choose his favorites, I'll probably need three, so there will be added craziness. Then imagine some not all of his patches as well I guess embellishments! The patch dilemma is, your dad can't find his helmet bag with some of the patches he really likes, that are priceless! Well I hope this made you smile. What was I thinking?

pie

Here is the hat that I made for Abby. It is from a new website called www.pickles.no. They have a lot of neat patterns. You should look at them and let me know if there is anything you want, I will try to make it. (the english ones are near the bottom)

The pattern of this one was way easier than I thought it would and and turned out perfectly!

Here is a picture I have been wanting to take for mom. It is on the way to the hospital in St Petersburg and every time I see it I think of her. Last time I went to the hospital I finally remembered to take the picture on the way back. It wasn't until I looked at it later that I realized there was an advertisement on them! That wasn't there before!! Oh well still a neat thing to see on the side of the highway.

This is the art festival that I went to this weekend at the park by my apartment. There was a lot of very unique things here. I only bought a pair of earrings made out of old broken china. All of that lady's stuff was very fun. Her website is www.crackedupjewlery.com if you wanted to look at it.

This lady made very pretty dresses out of old handkerchiefs I would have bought one but they were $100 a piece and thats too much for a casual dress I think.

All of this stuff was made from metal I thought maybe mom would get some inspiration! I really liked the tree on the left.

Here is a mom duck and her ducklings that walked by me while I was reading in the park after the art show.

Finally, one of my main accomplishments of the weekend. I made a strawberry pie completely from scratch! (strawberries were on sale at the store)

Here is the final outcome. I think I got impatient and cut the pie before it was completely cool so I thought the middle was too runny. The next day however I cut a perfect piece of pie with no running strawberries! So it did work! woooo!

Visitors!

Last weekend Abby and Kellen drove their new car all the way down to see me! We had a great weekend going to Harry Potter and hanging out in the pool. This is what I made them for their welcoming feast when they got here at 1 AM!

I tried these new jello shots in the rinds of fruit. Here are my original pairings : 3AM vodka with passion fruit jello in oranges, Sweet Tea Vodka with lemon jello in lemons and Don Q Limon Rum with lime jello in limes. They didn't all really work out because each type made more jello than I thought. I ended up with mostly the passion fruit and some lemon and lime. The lime however was not very good. The others worked pretty well.

To make them I sliced the fruit in half and emptied out all the inside so just the rind was left as a bowl. I put each rind half in a cup cake pan and filled each to the brim with jello then put it in the fridge until they hardened. Once they were ready I sliced them as you would the fruit normally. They can be seen in the last picture.

I also made little steaks with goat gouda cheese basil and raisins rolled together, little potatoes, and a smores pie.

The pie was a little messy but definitely a recipe keeper!

Here is everything I made for the guests! (jello shots, potatoes, steak rolls, and smores pie)

The hat I knitted for Abby and will be seen better in the next post.

I think it was a fun welcome feast and a wonderful weekend! I'm so glad they came to visit!!

my first homemade furniture

Well I have been traveling a lot lately it seems so I haven't made anything new other than a hat I knitted on the way to London like the green one I made earlier. However, yesterday I had the day off (until midnight at least) and was feeling crafty so I decided to make a pouf to sit on or use as a table out of old t-shirts. I've been trying to figure out what to do with all the t-shirts that hold so many memories but I never wear so I thought this was a good plan. This was my inspiration:

Mine didn't end up looking anything like that one but its growing on me.

I started by cutting out the best parts of the t shirts in triangles. I may have gone a little crazy with the cutting.

Then I sewed the flat ends together to make 8 pieces. Gourd was trying to help but really just making everything hairy. Notice he chose the one color that his white fur would show up best on.

Then I sewed all eight pieces together. The plan was to stuff it with the scraps of the t-shirts. It turns out it is WAYYYY bigger than I imagined it would be so I bought cheap pillows at walmart and stuffed it with that. I'm still not sure that was the perfect stuffing as it is not very solid like I wanted it to be but I couldn't think of anything else at the moment. Then I put another t-shirt circle on the top. Here is the final result:

From the top:

From the side:

And the bottom:

I still may change the stuffing if I can think of anything better. And I'm also kind of disappointed that the shirts on the bottom don't really show at all. The circle top would be easy to take off and put back if I need to. For now it works just fine as my first home made piece of furniture! What do you think?!

Day 23 through 29

It's very hard to update the blog when you have company! Here's another sum up post.

Wednesday I had training again so got to wear jeans. I wanted to look nice since I was picking my mom up at the airport afterwards.

What I wore:

Jeans

White button down

Blazer

Black boots

Thursday was the last day of training. My mom brought a bunch of vintage scarfs and showed me a cute new way to tie them! This is just around my neck and then tied in a bow on the side. Cute and not so crazy frenchy.

It was so cold in training that I'm not sure if anyone saw this outfit! They just saw my black trench coat but I looked cute at the nail place after work.

What I wore:

Jeans

Black boots

Pink rose sweater

It was super sunny on Friday. My mom took my picture outside. 

I'm a little sad to see winter go because I'm loving my wool skirts! I will just have to make some more skirts out of summery fabric.

What I wore:

White cardigan

Plaid skirt

Black boots

Friday night we got a new car! I changed into jeans when we got home and had a quick snack, then off to the Ford dealership. We ordered a new Explorer back in early January and it finally came in! I LOVE it!!!!! It's all voice activated so you don't have to touch any buttons while driving. We got navigation built in so we are ready to take some trips.

What I wore:

Jeans

Teal top

White cardigan

Black boots

Saturday we took the new car to a bunch of estate sales. Too bad the furniture was priced ridiculous but I got 3 vintage dresses, a scarf and a copper mold for my kitchen. My mom bought a vintage top. One estate sale had a ton of vintage clothes, some from every decade. It was neat to look through them all and try on! I was the only one trying on, but I want it to fit if I pay for it! Some of the clothes still had the tags on, crazy.

What I wore:

Jeans

Black boots

Black cardigan

Black camisole

We didn't do anything on Sunday, so the next outfit was yesterday, Monday. Back to work.

Kellen took my pictures yesterday.

What I wore:

Teal top

White cardigan

Purple skirt

Lavender pumps

And finally today. Second to last day of the 30 for 30 challenge. I'll reflect on it all tomorrow.

I'm loving this skirt too. I'm definitely going to try and line more pencil skirts for the summer. It's nice not having to wear a slip everyday.

What I wore:

Black boots

Black bow skirt

Pink rose sweater

Days Eighteen through Twenty-two

Instead of writing a bunch of posts, I thought I would try and catch up all my outfits! Sorry for the heavy pictured post, but here it goes.

On Friday I wore my plaid dress again for Day 18:

Different cardigan over top and boots. Easy.

Friday night Kellen and I went out to dinner at a bar in a little town by our house. I switch to jeans and kept the same sweater on. Day 19:

These jeans are the best jeans ever. They are Buffalo brand from Macys. I LOVE them. They have only been in the dryer once, Kellen switched the wash, errrr. But still haven't shrank in length. I love the fit with a little flare at the bottom. 

Just a camisole underneath a cardigan for a casual dinner out.

After we got home we found all our patio furniture blown about the yard. See the chairs?

One over by the fence on the side of the house.

Three out half way across the yard! Must have been a huge windstorm while we were out.

All indoor pictures from the weekend. We are getting lots of rain lately, that means it's spring in Memphis! 

Day 20: Jeans, teal top, grey cardigan and boots

Saturday we went to lunch at a new pizza place and got Vampire Killer pizza (garlic, red onion, kalamata olives and anchovies). It was super salty. Neither of us had ever had anchovies on a pizza. I think if they hadn't put garlic salt or olives on it would have been good, but it was pretty salty. After lunch we finally used our movie coupons we have had since last year and saw True Grit. It was really good. 

I didn't leave the house on Sunday, so Day 21 was yesterday - Monday. I love the color of this skirt. I think it looks very similar to Honeysuckle - 2011 Color of the Year. It's very pinky coral, very pretty. I wore the skirt with a white ruffled top, grey cardigan and black boots.

Day 22: Mardi Gras! I wore my purple turtleneck, jeans and boots. Pretty easy day. I have training all week so I get to wear jeans! I had to go into work last night for a late meeting so I wanted to still be dressed up. But Tuesday - Thursday I'm definitely wearing jeans!

Check out my peacock headband!

Alright, all up to date. Time to break out the beads and have a Hurricane!