When Not To Be Thrifty

A while ago the Bloggess posted about getting her red dress.  


"For one thing, it’s not sensible.  It’s impractical.  It’s bright red and vibrant and shocking and “inappropriate for a woman my age”.  And I have no shoes to go with it.  And I have no place to wear it," she says.  If you haven't read that post, do it NOW.  You will probably cry because it's so beautiful.  


For me, my impractical, not sensible, nowhere-to-wear item was my wedding dress.  I looooove my wedding dress.  I can remember the day I went dress shopping, Feb 2007, looking through all the dresses and stopped and thought, "That one. That one." And I still love it.  Sometimes I even try it on and walk around the house and say to my husband, "Look at meeeee!" Yes, it still fits.  And I love every inch of it.


As you all know, I'm having a garage sale because I'm super broke and I have lots of crap nice things I don't have room for.  The practical side of me, the side that was trying to think of any way possible we can keep our house, decided to sell my wedding dress at the garage sale.


I opened up the garment bag to take out the veil and make sure it was hanging right, and immediately tears started rolling down my face. I took a picture, and sadly marched it downstairs to be priced and taken to the garage.  I said to my husband, "Look. Isn't it beautiful?" with tear-streaked cheeks.  He said the most wonderful two words he could ever say (other than "I do"): he said, "Keep it."  


I argued we needed the money, it's serving no purpose, etc. etc.  He put his hands on my shoulders, looked me in the eyes, and said, "Keep it."

Sometimes it's not all about being thrifty.  Sometimes it's about listening to your heart.  And not selling your source of joy at a garage sale.

A New Look and Thrifty Finds Thursday

Thanks to the tutelage of Danita over at Finding My Spark, I now have a kick-ass look to my blog.  And now I'm jumping up and down in my chair, because she's listed me as one of her people to stalk! I mean, blogroll.  

Why yes, Spark, I AM a cheap date.   :) Happy day!


NOW on to Thrifty Finds Thursday!


......um......   soon.  Today. I promise.


*Update* @ 12:37am.  I have not gone to bed yet so it is still Thursday in my head.  Once you see what I've been doing all day, you will forgive me. Or not. I'm too tired to care.


My Thrifty Finds Thursday is an inverse one today.  You come to my house and buy my junk items full of crafty potential. Today I was prepping for the garage sale I'm having tomorrow and Saturday.

Doesn't look so bad, right?  Wrong. That's barely half the stuff.

Now do you see what I mean? It takes a lot of work to price every single little thing by yourself.  And then position them for optimal extraction upon the morrow.  But my living room was still a hot mess at 8pm. Even Teddy was afraid of the blob.

Finally, I am as ready as I'll ever be.  At least everything that is going to be for sale has a sticker on it and is now residing in the garage.  It's supposed to rain tomorrow, so yay for that.  I hope people show up and buy all this crap these treasures.  For real though, all the clothes are in really good shape.  They just don't fit me anymore.  And everything is really cheaply priced.  So, if you live in the middle of nowhere, be sure to stop on by.  

Yours, with all my heart

I just got another Postcrossing postcard in the mail today and it is AWESOME.  Everything I love in a postcard and more.  I think this might be my favorite one ever.

Do you see the vintage lady? The scalloped edges? The muted colors? I *might* pass out from all this excitement.  Somebody hand me a margarita.

It says, "Hi Jenny, I send this poscard [sic] from Siegen, a town in the west of Germany.  The French text means; Yours, with all my heart.  Take care! Irmgard." As you can see, Irmgard, my new best friend, has also included some super sweet postage, a couple of stickers, and the freaking weather.

Swoon!

Sewing Box Makeover

My sewing stuff had been growing and growing...sorta like a blob.  A blob made of pins and fusible webbing and chalk.  I had my sewing supplies stashed in literally seven different containers, when I decided that I needed to do something.  I wasted a lot of time looking for stuff. Way too much time.

I found this sewing box at a garage sale last summer.  It comes with this neat clear inset that holds thread and bobbins and stuff.  I think I paid a dollar.  And that included the vintage 60's dress patterns that I found inside (and intend to sell on eBay! Score!).  Here it is.  Looks all right, yes?

No.  That is plastic we're looking at, folks.  Wood-grained brown plastic. Gross.

Here's a shot of the spacious inside, as well as my first (failed) attempt to make the inside less awful.  Don't worry, I tore it out later.

After almost a year of thinking about what to do with this thing, my scissors got together and formed a strike until I made them a bigger apartment.  

So outside we go, and taped up the hardware with painter's tape. 

I lightly sprayed it with white spray paint, hoping and praying that it wouldn't just scratch off and look worse than ever.  Here is Teddy inhaling Spray Paint fumes and trying to get me to throw his toy.  You can kind of see how big it is if you use the dog and the spray can for scale.  It's spacious.  My scissors could live here and have a few friends over.

Here is the outside and inside lid after I got all 3 coats sprayed.  I purposely left some of the grain dark because it looked cool.  Besides, if I didn't like it, I could always go back and paint it again later.  I left the inside alone, because I wasn't sure what I wanted to do with it yet.

I sprayed the inner part where the clear thing that holds all the nifties sits, thinking maybe I could just cover the rest in fabric?

Nope.  I tore off that piece in the above picture, and used spray adhesive to line the bottom of the box.  I used that little roller to smoosh out any air bubbles.  Yes, that's a technical term. Smoosh.

I let it dry for a few days, then sprayed the entire thing inside and out with clear spray paint.  I thought maybe that would help with the scratch issue.

Finally, you get to see a picture of the awesome clear-tray-top-thingy.  Is it not amazing? Are you not envious?

Here's what it looks like now, sitting on my sewing table.

I still need to rig up some sort of handle for the lid, but for now it works like it is.  

I thought about maybe painting the raised portions black, like the sunflower and just the borders of those squares on the sides.  Maybe the "molding" on the bottom, too.  I don't know what type of paint I would use, though.  Not spray paint, but I don't know enough about paint consistency and stuff to choose the right paint the first time.  

Mainly I haven't because my scissors are now secure in their new home and no other crafting implements have banded together against me.  Or I'm lazy.  One of those. 

Typical Sunday Morning (Posted on a Tuesday)

Typical convo @ our house:


Me: Honey will you come look at this pee stain so I can know which dog to punish? 
Nate: Sure. 
(follows a lengthy discussion on the sizes of our dogs and their respective bladders, motivation, and timing) 
Nate: Teddy did it. 
Me: Great. Revenge pee or I've-gotta-go pee? 
Nate: Middle-of-the-night pee, I think.
Me: Guess we'll have to stop letting him sleep in our bed, then. *sigh*.


The culprit:

Click image to enlarge

This is Teddy.  As in Teddy Bear.  No, I did not name him. That's the name he came with at the shelter. Yes, I totally would have named him that if I had thought of a name that awesome.

It's all about the comments.

The Bloggess recently directed me to this awesome parody video of Miley Cyrus' "Seven Things." No, it isn't about hating on Miley.  It's about blogging.  Here is the link because I can't figure out how to embed a video.

http://www.tellingdad.com/2010/say-the-things

That video embodies everything I feel when I see "0 Comments" after a long post!  I have a blog. A tiny blog, about the things I love, you see.  And I have only gotten 2 comments. EVER. One of them was The Bloggess, because she's so awesome it hurts, and one of them was another crafty blogger.

My family members sometimes say to me on the phone, "Oh I read your blog last night, it was so funny!" And for the hundredth time I say, "You should comment!"  They reply, "No, that's too much work.  I can just call you." Facepalm.

You know you suck when your own relatives won't even comment on your blog.

Tutorial: Postcard Album Makeover

I love collecting postcards.  I don't love letting them sit in a drawer/box/basket somewhere where I can't look at them.  So I decided to make myself a postcard album.

Time: 30 minutes

Supplies: 

• 1 yard of fahhbulous fabric
• 1 photo album 
• Spray adhesive
• optional: Stitch Witch (or any other iron-on hemming

Cost:  around $4

Obtain a photo album with inserts that will fit most 4"x6" postcards.  Make sure the photo insert pages are removable, like a binder. This is the one I found *shudder*.  Find some awesome fabric, preferably of a weight that won't show the hideous design through one layer.

Take out the photo inserts.

Measure a length of fabric to fit 2" overlap on the top and bottom, and enough fabric on both sides to fit all the way to the middle.

Optional: I wanted clean, nice edges, so I decided to hem them with Stitch Witch fusible webbing.

This is what it ends up looking like:

Everything nice and neat :)

Align the album where you want it on the fabric.  I used a blue pencil to lightly draw guide marks.

Here's a random picture of my ShihTzu, Teddy, wondering what the heck I'm doing.

Treat the spray-on adhesive like you would spray paint. Use painter's tape to cover the areas you don't want sticky yet.  I recommend doing this outside.  Spray the adhesive on the inside of the fabric.

Using the guide marks you made earlier, stick the outside of the photo album to the inside of the fabric.

Using the same method as before, spray the top and bottom edges with adhesive and affix to the album.

Spray and adhere each side panel to the album. For the side panel that was to cover the ugly metal part I simply cut lines where the rings would poke through.  If you wanted to be more classy, you could probably cut tiny holes instead, but that is too much work for me.  Oh, and I used that roller to make sure every nook and cranny was stuck to the album.

Here it the inside of the album with both side flaps affixed.

Here it is closed once it's done:

And a side shot:

And voila! You have your very own custom-made postcard album.  Enjoy!

T-shirt: Boxy to Foxy!

A friend of mine gave me an awesome t-shirt that I totally love, but it was big and boxy and not lady-friendly, if you know what I mean.  So I fixed it.

I don't have a before picture, sorry.

Here's during, I laid a shirt on top of it that fit well and pinned it where I wanted to sew.

Click image to enlarge

Here's after. Look out! Foxy t-shirt!

Click image to enlarge

And yes, those are gushers on the right. They are gluten-free and pure awesome.  And yes, it is June, and those are snowman salt and pepper shakers on the left.  I'm too lazy to clean them out and we haven't used all the salt and pepper in them since I filled 'em up in November.

Today's Little Bit of Awesome

Lifesavers mints come individually packaged so when I found this I immediately thought, "BONUS!" haha.

Yeah, yeah, I know they weigh those bags to determine how many lifesavers go in there.  I like to think otherwise. :)

That Great Camera In the Sky....literally...

Click image to enlarge

When I was student teaching, I would get up at the crack of dawn and drive about an hour to my placement school.  This meant that I got to see the sunrise every morning (yay!) from my car window while I was driving (boo).  Here's a classic example.