T-shirt to Tank Top

Last week, in a sewing frenzy, I also tackled the project of turning a couple of my t-shirts into tank tops. I found the project on Pinterest (but I’m not a Pinterest junkie, I’m really not).

The project was easy: just a few slices here and there with scissors, only two straight lines of sewing, and ta-da! All done.

I made my first tank top out of a bright green t-shirt that I got last summer for something I wasn’t really even a part of. When I finished and tried it on, Mark told me it looked a little weird… like a tank top but really baggy (as most t-shirts are on me).

So, I decided that I needed to take the shirt in on the sides. Easy-peasy. I measured myself, did a few speedy calculations, snipped the excess fabric, and sewed up new side seams.

My calculations were disgustingly inaccurate, and I ended up with an hourglass mini-shirt that makes me look like a Barbie-wannabe. Or at least, it would if I could even get it over my shoulders:

With a few deep inhalations and exhalations I released my innate desire to never make mistakes, and I started again with a new t-shirt.

Trial number two went a little better, but again, I cut before I sewed, so when the resulted t-shirt tank top was just a tiny bit too small, I was stuck. 

I took a few deep breaths, gave up, and put the project away for a few days.

When I finally got back to the project, I was a lot more careful. I sewed before I cut. I didn’t try to fit myself into too small of a shirt. I made a few other minor modifications.

I was pretty pleased with the result:

Not Quite Working Magic

I think my sewing machine weighs about 50 pounds. Really. Maybe you can’t tell from the picture, but this baby is solid metal. 

The instructions make me chuckle and I’m reminded that this is the image I’m meant to aspire to. That’s why I’ve taken to wearing high heels anytime I sit down to sew.  Kidding, kidding. 

But I say all of this in the most affectionate way possible. I inherited this sewing machine from my mom. It’s the sewing machine she bought herself when she went off to college (and for those of you who are glancing back at the picture of the instruction booklet, no my mom did not go off to college in 1941).

When I open up the sewing machine and inhale the distinctive thread-y smell, the one that makes me think of the miles and miles of thread that have flown through the inner workings of this machine, I picture my mom. I remember dresses she made me when I was little, dresses she made my doll, and various other garments that have flowed out of the machine as if by magic.

“Magic” is not the word I would use to describe what happens when I sit down at the machine. Couple that with the fact that I have to lug this 50 pound monster across the house and onto the dining room table every time I want to use it, and you can probably understand why I don’t get it out often.

I had the idea a few weeks ago to permanently settle the sewing machine on the desk where I used to sit and do my devotions in the morning. Since Mark rarely if ever sits at the desk, he didn’t mind, and it’s only me that has to muddle around bewildered with my coffee cup in the morning, trying to find a place to set it down.

I have done some more sewing, since I haven’t had to move the machine whenever I want to use it. With the help of a friend, my renewed enthusiasm for sewing has given birth to a cover for my new e-reader:

If you’re impressed, it’s only because the pictures were taken so far away. It’s really not that impressive.

Here's the inside:

Here's the inside after I wiped off all the finger smudges. I was just going to include this cleaned-up picture, but the contrast was too funny. I had to swallow my pride and share:

But I have high hopes. I’m planning to try to make another cover now that I’ve gotten the hang of all the tricky steps in making this one. Maybe, just maybe, I can become proficient enough with this little craft to turn it into an adoption fund raiser.

Yes, adoption fund raiser. More to come on that tomorrow.

In the meantime, I just might get out my cutting board and some scraps and see whether I can force my sewing machine to produce some magic for me.

If Only I Could Have A Dog

The last couple of weeks have been pretty cruddy, but I'm starting to pull out of it. I can tell because I'm starting to think of starting new projects. When I'm feeling sad, I look at all of my incomplete projects around the house, and I feel depressed. When I'm feeling happy, optimistic, I ignore all the projects sitting around my house and start to think about new projects I would like to start. Notice, neither state of being gets old projects done. 

Well, really, I'm not as unmotivated to finish projects as all that. It just takes me a while. And I can come up with project ideas a whole lot more quickly than I can finish projects. I don't think I'm alone in that.


Anyway, the whole point of mentioning projects is to say that I'm feeling a little better than I was, oh, a week and a half ago. And my desire to blog has been renewed. The only problem is that I'm feeling slow and dull and can't think of anything interesting in my life to blog about. The dullness probably isn't but feels like it is a result of our sugar detox. I really, really want brownies. I've been thinking about brownies multiple times a day for the last week. Brownies and cinnamon rolls.

But there's no story in that. I wish I had a funny story to share about what my husband and I have been up to, but I really don't. We're planning on starting our taxes tonight, so I may have a funny (or painful) story to share tomorrow, but right now I just can't think of anything.

We're dog-sitting for the evening, for a very kind and generous couple from our church. I've written about this little dog before, here. She's a sweet little dog, and she reminds me how very much I would like to be a dog owner.

I imagine that if I were a dog owner, I would have many interesting things to write about. James Herriot wrote a whole, often hilarious book about dogs. I'm sure I could come up with a few entertaining blog posts.

If I had a dog, I could write an irate blog about coming home from work and finding that he had nosed his way up onto the counter and eaten all of the brownies I had sitting in a pan. (Right now that sounds especially dastardly.) I could write a blog about how when he travels in the car with us, he strikes up a mournful note that he seems to hold for hours on end. I could write about how he's taken a special interest in the little boys who live across the street, and because he always wants to go play with them, we have finally found a way to introduce ourselves and make new friends.

Just think of how interesting this blog would be if I had a dog!

However, I do not. And so, you get to hear instead about how all we really did this week was go to work, come home from work, eat a few meals together, watch a strange movie, and not finish projects. Just the hum drum of two working adults. But for all that, I don't always mind the hum drum. But for the sake of this blog... if only I could have a dog.

Half-hearted, Undefined New Year's Resolutions

As we look forward to the New Year starting tomorrow (gulp), I realize that I have made a lot of undefined, half-hearted resolutions over the past week, but I have yet to figure out how I will fully carry any of them out in the new year.

Half-hearted, undefined resolutions:

1) follow sugar detox plan to cut most sugar out of Husband's and my diet (in reference to what I have read about excessive sugar consumption's connection to polycystic ovary syndrome)

2) start to make most of our food from scratch, buying as little processed food items as possible

3) start charting my cycles using the thermometer method (to see whether my body actually does have cycles, despite what it would lead me to believe)

4) eliminate most, if not all, chemical cleaning and hygiene products from our house and replace with homemade non-toxic cleaners

See? Not very defined. And at this point, whether I (and Husband, since much of this includes him) will be able to act on these resolutions is questionable.

For example, we have a flat-topped stove in our house. I love that stove. It is so easy to clean.

Plus, because it's flat, it doubles as work space for us when we are already using our two other limited counters for cooking. Not really a good idea. When one turns a burner off and takes a pot off of that burner, there is no reminder that a burner is still hot except for one tiny pale red light on the face of the stove above the burners. One of us (I won't say which) doesn't usually have trouble remembering not to set combustible items on hot burners, but one of us has forgotten on several occasions, resulting in charred oven mitts and, most recently, a melted tortilla bag.

The blackened brittle oven mitts were a slight inconvenience but quickly replaced. The melted tortilla bag was more irritating. Most of the plastic pulled easily from the stove, after it had cooled, but it was still obvious, to any eye, that something very red had been on that burner that shouldn't have been.

When I was younger, and silly putty and play-dough were in vogue, I used to like to press newspaper into one or the other, in order to see a perfect imprint of the picture. Colored comic strips from the paper were best for this purpose. What was left on our stove reminded me of that childhood pastime. There was no dimension to the plastic that was left, almost as if it had been painted on the burner, and I thought I could almost read the words from the tortilla bag, painted backwards onto the burner.

We tried to scrape the picture off with a spatula. And then with spoons, but to no avail.

Finally, Husband suggested we get out the Goo Gone to see if that would do the trick.

Husband was hanging a cork board on the wall for me when I got out the Goo Gone to try my luck again on the pasticky stain.

It came off easily under the chemical influence of the Goo Gone.

"Ahh... It worked!" I called to Husband in the other room.

"Good!" I heard. And then, "Do you think there's a non-toxic homemade cleaner that will replace Goo Gone?"

Alas.

Obviously, whether Husband and I can commit to my resolution fantasies is yet to be seen.

Malted Hot Chocolate Mix Recipe

Malted Hot Chocolate Mix

25.6 oz. pkg. powdered milk

6 c. mini marshmallows

16 oz pkg. instant chocolate milk mix

13 oz jar malted milk powder

1c. powdered sugar

6 oz. jar powdered non diary creamer

½ t. salt

Pour 1/e c. mix into a mug. Add ¾ c. boiling water and stir to dissolve.

Just to let you know—you need a really big bowl to mix this up. We wanted to double the recipe, but we ended up needing to make it in two batches. Even then, just mixing up one batch we had to use our two biggest bowls. We still ended up with powder on the floor.

Speaking of powder on the floor, do not dust your house before making this mix. Every surface in our kitchen and dining area ended up with a film of chocolaty powder over it by the time we were done mixing and pouring into jars.

One final editorial note: I'm not sure if we used the right malted milk powder. We used an Ovaltine Malted Chocolate Powder. The recipe didn't taste very malt-y, so I might try to find something a little more malt-flavored next time.

This recipe was taken from Gooseberry Patch Christmas 2010 magazine.

A few Christmas festivities

Husband and I got our Christmas tree set up earlier this week. I was having a little bit of a hard time getting excited about Christmas because we hadn’t seen a hint of snow yet. (If I ever end up spending a Christmas in a tropical climate, my Christmas spirit is going to be really confused.)

However as you can see from this picture…

…we now have snow! And please note how the snow is clinging to the trees in this picture. In Iowa, snow rarely floats softly to the ground. It drives, whips, and lashes, but rarely does it float. Yesterday, it floated.

The snow had perfect timing too, because Husband and I had set aside last night to work on gifts for friends and coworkers. Watching the snow drift slowly down outside made me relish the twinkling lights on our Christmas tree, warm air gushing from the floor vents, and gift-making.

We decided to make hot chocolate for our friends and coworkers this year, and as you can see from the picture below, we are not above mass producing gifts.

I hope the start of your Christmas season has been joyful (as in, I hope you’re taking time to revel in the mystery of Christ’s birth) and delicious (as in, I hope you’re baking lots of yummy cookies and drinking lots of hot chocolate).

I Blew It

I was hugging Husband and looking up at his face, but he wasn’t looking back at me. His eyes were trained on my desk. His eyebrows raised incredulously. “What is that?”

“Oh,” I giggled embarrassedly. “A… book.”

I blew it. I blew it intentionally, even with a six-foot-two conscience raining meaningful glances on me.

You may have guessed what I did. I read a book that wasn’t mine. A friend did loan it to me, which is kind of within my rules, but I asked her for it. That’s definitely not within my rules. What’s worse, I stayed up really late reading it. And what’s worse still is that when I finished it, I promptly went to the library to check out the second book (on CD though, this time). And I’m fairly sure I’m going to finish the series (a total of four books) before I go back to my own collection.

I’m irritated with myself. And yet I still want to finish the series. I was thinking to myself this morning, why in the world did I have such a strong desire to read this book, right now, when I’m supposed to be reading through my own collection?

The answer that I came up with—and I’m pretty sure it’s close to the mark, if not dead on—is that I wanted to read something that didn’t matter.

I don’t buy books willy-nilly. Mostly I buy books that think will have some significance for my life, books that I will want to reference later. And for that reason, I have been reading only books that matter in the last two months.

This time, I wanted something that didn’t matter. I wanted an escape.

And because I’ve come to that conclusion and I’m pretty sure it’s accurate, I realize I have some soul-searching to do. The last month and a half have been pretty stressful. But if I feel an almost overwhelming desire to escape into a novel, then I have obviously not handled the challenges gracefully. Or rather, grace-filled-ly.

I read in Matthew 17:21 just a few days ago, “… I tell you the truth, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.” Of course, Jesus isn’t giving his disciples a blank check to go spend on whatever they want, but he is saying to them, With Me, nothing I ask you to do will be impossible.

I have the Holy Spirit living inside me. Nothing God asks of me should feel impossible or drain my reserves. I shouldn’t even be using my reserves. I should be using God’s. It’s time for me to soul-search and try to relearn how to tap into God’s resources to do what He asks me to do without trying to do it myself.

Project Updates

Natural Hair Care Update

As many of you know, I haven’t been using shampoo or conditioner on my hair for the last two months. You can read about my plan here.

I feel it necessary to offer a quick update of my hair care because some things have changed:

1) I have gone back to the apple cider vinegar hair clarifier. The honey didn’t seem to make much of a difference on my hair, and honey is more expensive. Plus, for a reason that I still have not figured out, my bottle of honey conditioner began to smell absolutely terrible after about two weeks of sitting in the shower. Honey doesn’t go bad in my cupboard; so why in my shower? I still don’t know. But in any case, that was enough. I’m using vinegar again.

2) I have started conditioning with coconut oil occasionally. My hair continued to be pretty frizzy most days, to the point where I was almost ready to give up on the whole business and go back to traditional conditioners. However, I’m glad that I did give coconut oil a try because it has worked wonderfully. A very little bit goes a very long way, which leads me to believe the large jar I bought is going to last me probably for the rest of my life. I had been using coconut oil after every wash (so, every four days), but now I’m using it every other wash or every three washes, depending on how my hair is feeling.

Facial Cleaning Method Update

As you may know, I don’t use a traditional face wash. I clean my face with oil.

In general, I’m not sure anymore what I think of this method of washing my face. I love how I only have to wash my face once a day with this method. And in general, my face is much less oily than it was with traditional face washes. And I still love that this is better for my body and better for the environment. Those are the trump cards. I do, however, have a few concerns and/or complaints:

1) Some nasty breakouts in the last month, more so than I’ve seen since junior high. Face-wash-induced? Hormone-induced? Hard to say. I’m going to give it another month and see what happens. I have read that adding essential tea tree oil can be helpful for acne-prone skin. However, I haven’t wanted to spend the money on that yet. Adding tea tree oil might push this face wash method out of the realm of economical.

2) I have to wash more washcloths now because I didn’t use to use washcloths to wash my face.

3) This method is more time consuming than a traditional face wash, so when I’m especially tired or in a hurry, I get a little impatient with the time this takes.

Book-Reading Challenge Update

Two months ago, I decided that I wanted to read through all of the books on our bookshelves. We have a lot of books and, embarrassingly, I haven’t read nearly all of them. I decided that it was high time I remedied that.

I challenged myself to read all of those books, and to refresh your memories and mine, these are the guidelines I’m following:

1) I may not check out any library books or read any library books while completing the challenge.*

2) I will update with my progress every two months.

3) I may, however,  read book our book club selected each month.

*Exceptions will be made if a friend or family members wishes to loan me a book. I may, in that situation, except the book and read it.

My progress has been so dismal over the last two months that I didn’t even want to report. And I certainly felt no need to update the pictures of my bookcases.

This is my progress. Besides one book club book, I have read two books. Two. That’s it. I normally consider myself an avid reader (and I’m a librarian, for crying out loud), but this just goes to show how incredibly busy the last two months have been for Husband and me.

From my bookshelves, I have read:

Closing the Achievement Gap: How to Reach Limited Formal-Schooling and Long-Term English Learners, by Yvonne Freeman and David E. Freeman

I bought this book a while back because of the adult ESL class Husband and I teach. Although this was an interesting read, it was actually geared toward teachers who teach school-age English Language Learners.

This Present Darkness, by Frank Peretti

This really was an excellent read. I didn’t think it was necessarily well-written, but the subject matter was just what I needed (more on that another time, perhaps). In the U.S. we’re pretty quick to shrug off the possibility of spiritual warfare in our lives. After all, there has to be some natural and logical reason for everything, right? Although Peretti’s story is fictionalized and imaginative, the theme rings true: there is spiritual warfare, and prayer does make a difference.

I am also in the middle of two other books: One Thousand Gifts, by Ann Voskamp and Mountains Beyond Mountains, by Tracy Kidder. Both of these are very, very good books, but I’ll withhold any reviews or opinions until I’ve finished them.

A Mopey Morning

Our lives have been so busy lately that it seems to me to be a miracle when I have the chance to sit down and write a blog.

Today I woke up in a bad mood. I was tired from a fitful night’s sleep, and I was not looking forward to a day of work at the library. My co-worker and I had planned a Fancy Nancy party for girls and their moms and a Father-Son Marble Amusement Park Building party. Both events, of course, turned out to be lots of fun.

On days like today, I have to remind myself how much I would have loved to get dressed up with my mom and go to a tea party to play games and eat dainty food. And I have to remember the fun of seeing a dad and his son constructing a ‘ride’ for a marble together. Usually the boys want to take all the toilet paper tubes, plastic containers, egg cartons, and PVC pipe home with them when they are done so they can reconstruct their masterpiece at home. Do we let them take our toilet paper tubes? Oh, yes.

Before I left for the library, however, I was feeling mopey. Mopey about not having many friends in this new town yet. Mopey because of college friendships that are changing because of being long-distance. Mopey about our erratic work schedules and how that affects Mopey Item Number 1. Mopey about family being so far away. Mopey about the clutter around our house. And about a scrapbook that will  never be completed because I don’t own scrapbooking tools and am far away from my mom, whom I used to always scrapbook with. Oh, there was so very much to be mopey about.

Now, since arriving home from the two parties at the library, I am feeling much better about life as I know it. As was mentioned, sitting down to write a blog with spare time feels like a miracle, so I am trying to treasure it as such by burning a delicious smelling candle next to me and creating some creativity ambiance.

Please no comments as to whether creativity ambiance was achieved.

Part of my discontent, I’m sure, is rooted in the fact that I am overly ambitious on starting projects. Because I have so many projects going at once, I never seem to finish any of them very quickly.

Here’s a complete list of ‘project piles’ sitting around the house, physically or symbolically:

• ESL lesson materials for our ESL class
• Spanish materials for my Spanish class
• Letters to respond to
• Prayer notebook I started to create (see picture below)
• Blogs
• Plastic bag holder (from a dish towel)
• New afghan pattern, yarn, and hook
• Piano and music
• Books to read

 Here's the prayer notebook I spent spare minutes on this week:

Just writing the list of projects I am trying to work on makes me want to go do something. But for tonight, I am enjoying a few moments of unhurried blog writing while basking in candle perfume.