Monthly Archives: June 2011

Secret baby.

Posted on by
1

Technically the baby is not a secret, but the gender is. A secret kept from all by the doctor and the baby. Or probably just the doctor and anyone else who reads the medical chart. I suppose I could have called this post ‘Burp cloths’, but I have about 10 of those already (see here, here and here) and I wanted to mix it up a little. Was it worth the time to explain a poor choice in today’s title? Probably not.

What to make when your friend is waiting to find out the sex of her baby? Some adorable gender-neutral burp cloths with cute little nicknames on them.

Oopsie.

Posted on by
1

I realized yesterday that I forgot to add the ‘before’ photos to my dyed sweater post last week. For those of you who felt cheated, fret no longer. For those of you who didn’t notice, you probably should have felt cheated. In the future when you see the ‘after’ of something, you should always be curious about the ‘before’. Just a little life tip from me to you.

In addition to sharing the ‘before’ photos, I also have to tell you that the first day I wore this new and improved sweater to work, I got a giant hole in the right elbow. When you consider that it’s 5 years old and I stirred it in a pot with simmering water, vinegar and blue dye for 30 minutes, it’s not surprising that the already worn threads decided to bust on me. I have no idea how to mend a hole in a wool sweater and have it look good, so I turned to my trusty sewing machine in order to remedy the situation.

Step one: Apply clear nail polish to the edges of the hole to keep it from spreading further. As with the disclaimer when I fixed my couch, I have no idea if this actually works. (Also, I put a piece of paper inside the sweater to block any nail polish from getting where I didn’t want it.)

Step two: Cut out elbow patches. I used some faux-suede I had and sort of made up a shape and size that I thought looked right.

Step three: Adhere double sided interfacing to the elbow patches, peel off the back and adhere them to the sweater. (I used this interfacing, which actually comes in handy for a lot of projects.)

Step four: Sew patches to sweater.

Step five: Have your significant other take photos of you in a well-lit alley.

 

 

 

What I Wore Book Giveaway!

Posted on by
Reply

I’ve been following the blog What I Wore for about a year now. I discovered it through a friend when I was in New York and have checked it pretty religiously since then. Jessica is so fantastic that someone even paid her to write a book about her personal style. It hits the shelves in 10 short days, and in honor of that she’s giving away a free book to 10 people. (I’ll probably buy the book anyway, but free stuff is always more fun.)

See her original post about the book giveaway here. (FYI, if you have a blog and are into fashion you can re-blog her post to enter the drawing too.)

And here’s a little note from Jessica’s original post:

I’ll be giving away 10 signed copies of What I Wore: Four Seasons, One Closet, Endless Recipes for Personal Style plus a personalized illustration (of you!) to one extra special reader!

What I Wore illustrations

To enter: REBLOG or REPOST this giveaway on your site and link back to this page. (If you don’t have a blog, you can e-mail whatiworebook(at)gmail.com your pre-order receipt as well.) You must enter the link to your post in the comment section below (so I can find you!)

Contest Ends July 12, 2011 11:59 EST. Official rules here.

 

Book Club: #8

Posted on by
3

How I got through all my years of schooling without ever reading this book is beyond me. But I finally read it last week, and it was even better than I anticipated. If you haven’t read it, go to the library this instant and pick it up. This instant I say.

Instead of babbling to you about why I liked it, I decided to take an excerpt from Wikipedia:

“The novel is renowned for its warmth and humor, despite dealing with the serious issues of rape and racial inequality. The narrator’s father, Atticus Finch, has served as a moral hero for many readers and as a model of integrity for lawyers. One critic explains the novel’s impact by writing, “In the twentieth century, To Kill a Mockingbird is probably the most widely read book dealing with race in America, and its protagonist, Atticus Finch, the most enduring fictional image of racial heroism.”"

 

Baby pepper.

Posted on by
4

This is completely random, but I felt the need to share. A few days ago I was cutting up vegetables to put in a salad, and was completely shocked when I cut the pepper in half. There was a separate mini green pepper inside the red pepper. At first I was startled, because it’s not every day you cut into a vegetable and find something inside, and then I was completely freaked out. I mean if there was even a smidgen of a chance that I was pregnant (Which there isn’t. And I’m not.), finding a baby pepper inside a bigger pepper definitely would have been a reason to get a pregnancy test. Right?

The Field House in Ballard

Posted on by
Reply

Whenever I need some outdoors fashion inspiration (If you know where I work then you’ll know that this is often. If you don’t know where I work it’s because I don’t want you to know. No offense.), I like to head over to The Field House in Ballard. It’s a (mostly) men’s retail store, full of brands like Filson and Pendleton. The labels they sell combined with the decor inside the store pretty much just scream, “SEATTLE”.

While you’re in Ballard, you should probably stop at Caffe Fiore and get a coffee. Tell them Becky sent you.

No, not really. They have no idea who I am.

 

As promised.

Posted on by
2

I mentioned last week that I got a pair of thrifted shoes (from Buffalo Exchange in Ballard) and turned them into my new favorite pair. This time I used Lincoln Shoe Dye, (that I bought at this store in Ballard). My only tip from this round of dying would be to use something other than masking tape to cover the leather you don’t want dyed. Does that seem obvious? It does to me now. But unfortunately I used masking tape and I know for sure that the dye leaked under the tape. Thankfully the leather was black to begin with, so the brown dye won’t actually show. Phew. (If anyone has any tips on what the best method is for dying part of a shoe only, let me know.)

Before:

After:

Book Club: #7

Posted on by
Reply

This book was overwhelming. If I had to use only one word to describe Schindler’s List, that would be it. I’m sure we’ve all seen the movie and could throw out our own adjectives; sad, horrifying, shocking, insane and inspirational to name a few. But like most books, I would say that this one was better than the movie. (Although if you haven’t seen the movie or if it’s been a while, I would recommend watching it. Schindler’s List won 7 Academy Awards in 1993.)