Renaissance Fair time again

Yep.  Its that time of the year again.  I LOVE me some grown-up dress-up.  So what if I never outgrew being 5 and pretending I was a princess?

Years past I have posted random stuff really.  This year is no different.  I am making a peasant/middle class outfit for a friend's girlfriend (she is a friend too so I am not sure why I said it that way, but whatever.  My brain is worthless today).  I had a lot of fun picking out design ideas for her.  Here are the sketches of my initial designs:

This one was my fav, but it was too "upper class."  Darn. I really wanted to make it, too.

Don't know why my scanner beheaded these ones.  Guess my drawing leaves something to be desired.

She liked something along the lines of the drawing on the right from the second set of sketches.  So I am partway through the costume now.  I made the top (from a commercial pattern [Butterick 6196] with some tweaks, of course) and I made all but the clasp on the underskirt, although I made a mistake in my pattern and it will be a bit shorter than I wanted.  I made an 8 gore circle skirt out of triangles but forgot I had to remove some from the top for the waistband.  Oops.  So now its 5" shorter.  Still looks great. Next time I will use trapezoids.  Or make the triangles longer.

Pretty standard, really.

I have the design done for the overskirt, but haven't drafted the pattern yet.  All it will really involve is taking measurements and doing math.  Gross.  Since math went SO well for me on the underskirt.  Its a different style though, so it should be okay.  For this one I am doing a new (to me) technique that takes the waistband out of the center.  I have a skirt that does it.  Basically, you cut two huge semicircles (I'll be doing it with triangles to get the handkerchief hem) and stitch them together except for like 25" or whatever in the very center, and sew the waistband to the middle bit and put your elastic in there and BAM.  You have a SUPER easy skirt.

I will also be making a boned bodice.  That should be pretty straightforward and I plan to use the aforementioned Butterick pattern as my base.  I may make some modifications to the shoulders to add a little flair.  Not sure.  I also (time permitting) want to make a pouch and hairnet for her.  I saw a REALLY neat tutorial on Pinterest on how to make a hairnet, but its in German, so wish me luck.

Also, I made this last year and forgot to post photos.  I have NO idea how I made it anymore since, as with most things, I planned to write down the instructions later since I was too busy to do it as I was working, and now a year has gone by and I have completely forgotten.  I don't even have the finished piece anymore as it was commissioned and is now with its new owner (not that I can't call him up and ask for it back for a day, but still).  When will I ever learn?

An awesome cotton cross body pouch with adjustable strap.  YEAH!  And yes, that is a recycled belt buckle.

Other than a few repairs to my court dress after some abuse it took last year (mostly eyelets coming out... I need to get a proper riveting set) and maybe getting around to a pair of proper breeches for the hubs, I think that is it for this year.  I have not been sewing as much lately since my wedding veils have taken off, and it feels REALLY good to flex that creative muscle again.  Its funny how I binge and then hate sewing, then when I go back I can't remember why I got sick of it!  I'm slowly adding some stuff to my Etsy shop so maybe I can make sewing more a part of my everyday again.

Bleach pen shirt for the cotton anniversary

This is another t shirt craft that I made with a ruined shirt.  Somehow it managed to get some bleach speckles on it - nothing huge mind you, but ugly nonetheless.  Hubs wears these as undershirts anyway, so it stayed in rotation for a good long time, but I finally got tired of seeing him wear it NOT as an undershirt and cringing at the orangey-brown bleach marks.  So I on-purpose bleached the heck out of it!  Stylishly of course...

Stupid bleach spots... I'm gonna cover you!

I made this do double duty as an anniversary gift for Hubs.  I am trying to do a handmade gift every year that corresponds with the traditional list of anniversary gifts (year one is paper, year two is cotton, year three is... well we haven't gotten to 3 years so I don't know yet haha).  Last year I made him a photo book on Blurb.com that was a fairytale starting with how and where we met all the way through our son's birth and so on.  It spanned about 6 years, so there were lots of great pictures and it was both sweet and funny.  This year, I took his shirt and wrote the lyrics to "Lucky" by Jason Mraz and Colbie Caillat.  Bleach pen shirts are all over the interwebz, so I wont go over board on the instructions, but I will share some of my experience with you.

You will need:
a Clorox bleach pen (don't get the color safe one!)
a dark colored t-shirt, preferably a ruined one :-)
several pieces of cardboard that fit in the sleeves and across the whole center of the shirt
latex/rubber gloves
a printed out sheet of your lyrics, poem, whatever
a large work area (I used my floor, but the kitchen table would have been easier)
A full bottle of hydrogen peroxide
A sink or tub for rinsing
a load of whites in the washing machine

Step 1: Arrange your cardboard inside your shirt under the area you want to write on first.  Make sure you slip it between the front and back unless you want bleach bleed through.  I guess that is a look if you want to go for it, but the bleach will soak through unevenly, so beware.  Figure out how you want your writing to look.  If you want, start below the collar to write straight, or you can write on a diagonal across the whole shirt, or you can do a spiral or something else cool - use your imagination.  The song I liked has an interlude by both singers, so I wrote one on each side of the collar then the chorus started across the whole middle.

Step 2: Put on your gloves and begin writing.  Use the narrow tip end of the bleach pen and GENTLY squeeze as you write.  To get it started you may want to dab at a piece of scrap something to get the tip of the pen wet with bleach gel.  You don't need a lot of bleach to make it work, and the less you get out the less it will run and get "blobby" so a thin layer is best.  Just make sure it looks a little wet.  Don't worry overmuch about your penmanship as it will look cool and stylized and nothing like your actual writing, but do leave a little extra space between letters so they don't run together.  Mine is only barely legible, but I like it that way.  Make your letters as big as you want to fit your words well in the pattern you have chosen.  I did a mix of cursive and all caps to lend emphasis and style.  If you want, you can write in chalk first and then trace your letters with the bleach, but I am not that patient, so I went for the big time right away.

Step 3: Write fast.  No, seriously.  You can really damage your shirt if you go too slowly because just like when you get highlights, the bleach is blowing out proteins in the fiber of the shirt which removes the color, but can create holes if you leave it too long.  As you move down the shirt you can skooch the cardboard down with you if you don't have a piece big enough to cover the whole thing, so you aren't bleeding through.  You run less risk of bleed through once you are done writing on the section unless you have saturated the fibers with bleach, which I already told you not to... just sayin.

Step 4: If you are concerned about taking too long to do the whole shirt, take the shirt to the sink and wash out the excess bleach.  Leaving your gloves on, run some water over the shirt and quickly rub out the bleach under the stream.  Work from the top to bottom (or from the words you wrote first to the ones you wrote last).  If you work reasonably quickly and rinse well you wont bleach out the background by rubbing the gel over it.  Squeeze out the excess water.  Pour a little hydrogen peroxide over the lettering until the shirt is saturated, let it sit for a minute or so, then rinse it out.  This will counteract the action of the bleach so you don't continue the chemical reaction blah blah blah.  I used vinegar for mine, but apparently that is super dangerous as the leftover bleach and vinegar can create an INCREDIBLY dangerous gas, so don't do that.  I read up on it since and supposedly peroxide is much safer.  I'm no chemist, so if you injure yourself, please don't sue.  I'm just doin my best here folks :-)  I think I rinsed mine well enough to not run any risk of the chemical reaction, but please be safe.  The gas is so dangerous we are talking one good whiff and you are DEAD.  Double Plus Ungood.

The downside to all this is that you will want to let your shirt at least mostly dry out if not totally before you go back to working on it.  Remember how impatient I am?  But the upside is that you will end up with a much more consistent text color rather than having super light at the top and super dark at the bottom, and the top will be less likely to develop holes over time as you wear the garment.  Again, that whole less damage to the fibers thing.

Step 5: When you are totally done, rinse out the bleach as described in step 4, peroxide it and let it soak for a few, then rinse thoroughly.  Toss in the washer with whites that can handle the bleach (no silk undies) or in an empty washer but shame on you for wasting water, and run a full cycle on hot with two rinses.  I added vinegar to my fabric softener container so it would rinse with vinegar and stop that chemical reaction some more, but again, its up to you to determine the safety factors.  Dry as usual.  For the next few washes you may want to avoid washing with darks that may be damaged by bleach, but by this point with all the chemical neutralizing we have done, you are probably pretty safe.

Bottom Line:
shirt: free for me, but a new one runs maybe $5
peroxide: $1 from the dollar store, maybe less.
Bleach pen: about $3

Total - for me, $3.  Not bad for an anniversary gift!
If you have to buy everything, $9 (depending on how much writing you do, you may have enough bleach pen to do more shirts, too!)

Time: with no stops for rinsing, about 30 minutes plus washing and drying.  With stops for rinsing, about 2:30, maybe more if its a humid day.

I plan to play with this for more shirts that have been ruined by stains, bleach, etc, to give them a cool new life.  I also want to try the spray bottle bleach with a stencil method as that seems like it would go faster and has different options for graphics and large images.  I'm pretty happy with how it turned out and the hubs says he will totally wear it, so hooray!  Happy anniversary baby!

Bigger box is not always better

Costco is great, right?  Everything anyone could possibly need all under one enormous roof.  Food, clothing, electronics, jewelry, even a gas station and auto repair center!  Who doesn't like a one stop shop?

Also, you have this cool membership card that allows you access to all these great deals on bulk items!  Who doesn't like being part of an exclusive club that saves money?!

What a great package!
Almost.

I love Costco and its other big box companions up to a point.  Don't get me wrong, I shop there from time to time for things like rice, flour, sugar, and canned goods (I go through an ungodly amount of these cooking from scratch all the time), but I always have to do some serious math while shopping because not everything is a good deal.  I am a huge bargain shopper, and I can tell you off the top of my head how much general canned goods, dairy of various types, and meats should cost, on sale, at least for my part of the country.  That serves me well, because I can calculate how much the items at Costco are costing me per unit and compare to my grocery store deals.  And guess what.  Costco is often NOT cheaper.  Not by a long shot.

Here's the rub.  Costco carries name brand products.  Buying in bulk means they don't carry a wide selection of items.  Sometimes they also have their Kirkland store brand, which is often times cheaper, but if not, you are stuck paying name brand prices.  Grocery stores carry name brand, store brand, and off-brand products.  Especially with store brand stuff, they can deeply discount and still make a huge profit margin because they don't have distributors to pay or minimum prices to meet as set by the company.  Therefore, you, the consumer, can pick them up for cheap on sale.  Costco stuff doesn't go on sale.  Costco prices are lower than regular grocery store prices on brand name items.  But don't go blindly assuming that you can do better at Costco than at your local grocery store.

When you add in the cost of the membership, unless you are buying big ticket items like electronics, are doing a lot of catering via their deli, or buy a LOT of things in bulk, its hard to justify doing much shopping at Costco.  You have to save more than $50 per year to just break even. I also think people go bulk happy and get overly excited about buying 6 tons of canned beets, so maybe some of the purchases are a little unnecessary.  Its hard to ignore all the cool stuff, especially when you are "saving so much!"

However, Costco has its place.  It does offer cool stuff like organics and uncommon items like quinoa, bulgur, etc.  It does offer a break on things that seldom go on sale, like flour, sugar, some produce items, etc, and buying those in large quantities really does beat the grocery store prices, if you use it all up in time.  The Kirkland brand stuff is good quality and you can save a bundle over the national brands.  If you already buy a lot of brand names and packaged foods, you can save some money.  For things I don't like to sacrifice quality on, such as toilet paper and paper towels, I like the Kirkland brand because it is still reasonably priced.

Some tips for getting out with your wallet in tact?
1) STICK TO A LIST! Costco is very alluring, but unlike the grocery store where an impulse buy may cost you $5, Costco can easily hit you at $20 or more.

2) Know your prices.  If you know how much a sale price for cheese or meat is before you shop, you can make the best selections and skip the not so great deals.  Keep a calculator handy if you need to!

3) Shop with friends and family.  I piggyback off of my in-laws' membership so I'm not out the annual fee, otherwise I don't think the savings would amount to much.  We also split large boxes of some stuff so we can cut the cost in half and are less likely to waste items that have gone stale or spoiled.

4) Only go periodically and buy products you know.  I wait till I am out of several items before I make a Costco run.  I come home with less unnecessary items if I go less frequently, plus my grocery budget has a chance to build up before I drop $150 on one grocery trip. Also, I try to avoid lots of new items so I am not stuck with a huge case of something I don't like.

Well, there you have it!  Big box stores can be a great way to save for your family, but be careful and compare prices. These tips also apply to dollar stores, so know your prices, stick to a list, and you will be okay!  Happy shopping!

Things they don't tell new moms

Several of my friends are expecting and due very soon or just had babies.  And lots and lots of us have small children and are going through that insanity all together.  I decided I would dedicate a blog post to non-traditional advice.  Here are some of the most useful things I was told, or I seriously wish someone had told me so I didnt feel like an idiot or like a horrible mom.  These are my top 10 pieces of advice for new moms (dads, too, but this is written with moms in mind).

1) Your kid will roll off the bed, couch, or changing table, eat dirt, hit his or her head, swallow a non-food item, bleed on occasion, and otherwise attempt to maim himself/herself.  This is normal.  This does NOT make you a bad parent or neglectful.  Someone once told me that moms in Africa let their babies touch the fire once so they learn not to touch fire.  This is how they learn, and truly, what doesn't kill them makes them stronger.  Babies are built to learn things the hard way.  And you CAN NOT watch them every second.  See also: running fevers, diaper rashes, and throwing huge tantrums in the middle of the store.

2) You will hate your baby from time to time.  Some people feel it more than others, but at some point you will probably be so exhausted, frustrated, confused, and overwhelmed, you will want to give your child away or maybe even be tempted to do something like throw them out the window (my personal feelings on many an occasion when little man would not sleep for love or money).  This is normal.  You aren't a bad mom.  The thoughts are super scary, but you wont hurt your baby (if you think you will, seek counseling - the feelings are still normal but you could probably use some help).  You are totally capable, and you CAN do this, but you need a break.  Go get a friend, dad, your parents, a neighbor, anyone.  Take a few minutes to yourself, and longer if you can.  If no one else is around, put the baby in a safe place like the carseat (inside only please) or crib and take a break.  Go to a place you cannot hear him or her and breathe.  Don't watch the clock, just chill for a little while until you feel better.  You still need a real break later, but that will help get you through.  When you can, take a long shower, go shopping, or do something without baby for a while and focus on you.  You need breaks, and your baby needs to get used to periods where you are unavailable.  (my mom said she wanted to smother me with a pillow once just so I would stop crying... not really maliciously, but still shocking unless you are living it!)

3) You deserve to have a partner for night feedings.  So many moms who are on maternity or stay at home feel that if dad is getting up to go to work, he must sleep undisturbed all night.  WRONG!  If you are bottle feeding, let dad take a shift overnight.  If you are nursing, try what hubs and I did - he woke up and diapered, then I nursed little man back to sleep and put him back in his cosleeper.  The little extra help kept me from waking up totally, so all of us fell asleep faster.  Do what works for you, but just because he is at work does not make dad unavailable at night.

4) Keep an extra outfit in the diaper bag.  Not for the baby; that goes without saying.  I am talking about YOU.  And as soon as you leave it in the trunk of your car someone else will drive.  And there is nothing worse than smelling like poop from a blowout diaper or like vomit from that one last burp at a fun party that you really don't want to leave because its the first one you've been to in weeks.  Wearing your old gym shirt is better.  I promise.

5) You do not need every dang gadget on the face of the planet. Baby manufacturers do not make products to make your life easier.  They exist for one purpose only: to separate you from your money.  Aside from the basics like a crib, carseat, and high chair, stuff that you do need you can probably borrow.  I have a swing up for grabs.  And let other people buy the toys.  If you have any surviving family members they will spoil the heck out of that kid.

6) Ask for help.  You can't possibly do all the laundry, make meals, take care of older kids, blah blah blah, and be superwoman.  Women before us had sisters, mothers, in laws, friends, etc to help them with new babies.  We as modern women need to learn to ask for help.  Chances are all of the above would LOVE a little face time with the new baby while you shower or would love to come over and bring you a lasagna and give a kissy and a snuggle to the bundle of joy.  The flip side of this one is that people are NOT allowed to come see the baby unless they do something for you, ie: bring food, clean something, baby sit, etc.  People will break your door down wanting to visit.  Put those visitors to work!  They probably don't mind and even if they do, that will just ensure they don't come back to bug you.

7)  They will not remember their first birthday.  Or Christmas.  Or Easter, or Valentine's Day, or Groundhog Day, or Arbor day.  Don't panic if you don't pull out all the stops for every holiday.  Sometimes you're just too tired, and that is okay.  A quiet little gathering at home with just you two or three is just fine.  No one will be disappointed.  Promise.  In ten years no one will even remember.

8) No one knows your baby better than you do.  Read all the books you want, listen to the doctors, listen to parents, friends, strangers, but follow your heart.  Your mother's intuition and what you feel is right for you and your baby is almost always the best answer.  I hesitate to say always for fear of the exception trolls, but in my experience, always. Parenting comes with some tough decisions: cosleeping, feeding, discipline, teaching, potty training... Others know what worked for them, what worked for the majority, or what works scientifically, but only you know what works for your family.  With that, ignore any conflicting advice, including the ones listed here as it applies.  Tell pushy advice givers that you will "take that under consideration" to get out of agreeing with them.

9) Your nursery does not need to look like it fell out of the pages of a magazine.  Buy stuff that you can second hand, so long as it is safe, in good condition, and not recalled or anything.  Not everything has to match or follow a theme (or even be gender appropriate colors).  It will be a whole lot easier to dress your baby in a fancy dress that will probably be pooped and spit up on inside of 5 minutes when you only paid $5 and not $50 for it.  It will stress you out much much less when something does get ruined.  Plus, other babies only stay in clothes for about 5 minutes, too, so many used clothes look brand new because they were only worn once!  And trust me, your son doesn't care that he is eating off of bunny rabbit plates and got dried off with a pink towel.  It will not scar him for life.

10) He/She is just a BABY.  Babies don't do naughty or annoying things on purpose.  They don't wait till you are eating to be hungry or wake up 6 times between 1 and 5 AM just to spite you.  It will feel like it.  But when you are at the end of your rope, take a break and tell yourself that he or she is just a helpless little one and that you mean everything to him or her, and that is why he or she wont sleep unless you are right there.  Remember how you looked forward to meeting him or her and relish the sweet moments where you are the center of his or her world.


Well, those are my top 10.  What is your advice for new moms/dads?