Edit your jeans

Big announcement: I'm pregnant! I thought I'd preface the post with that for a few reasons: 1 - it might be a little weird if I randomly showed up with a baby on the blog later this year. 2 - I wouldn't want to keep you people in the dark forever. And 3 - I wouldn't have bought new jeans if my old ones hadn't become too small because I love my old jeans. Oh and 4 - now I can tell you part of the reason I've been posting so sporadically is the ridiculous tiredness that is the first trimester (glad to be done with that!).

I really didn't want to pay full price for something that can't be a permanent part of my wardrobe, so I've been hitting the sales and clearance racks. I found a pair of jeans that fit great and were comfortable, but the legs were very flared. A little too flared for my taste. I think they were on clearance for $15, so I didn't want to pass them up since I was pretty sure I could fix them.

And I was right. Yay! This is how you can take flared jeans and change them to bootcut (or skinny for that matter). From pinning to having everything done, I would guess it took me less than 30 minutes. Definitely worth saving more than 50% in my opinion. Bootcut vs. original flared leg

I didn't cut my jeans so if I decide I want them flared again at some point I can just take out the seam. This gives you an idea of where to pin (disregard the random black spot + blue blue dot, no idea how those appeared):

I just folded the excess on the inside and pinned it so the original seam went more straight down instead of coming out to the front (not sure that made any sense at all). The bottom seam was too big to fit in my sewing machine, so there was about an inch at the bottom I hand sewed. I didn't really worry about making it super sturdy since the rest of the leg was already sewed on.

You can kind of tell from the picture above that I just kept the original seam and sewed over it. You can't tell unless you're really inspecting the seam up close and this way it looks like the jeans were made that way. I guess this wasn't the most detailed or informative post ever, but if you want more details feel free to get in touch. You could do this with any jeans, not just maternity. Here's the finished product:

Thanks for staying with me since I've been so spotty with posting. I actually already have another project halfway finished, so hopefully I can share that soon(ish)! Aaand I'll work on getting some better pictures for that one too : )

Knit Baby Dress

Well I get the award for worst Christmas vacation photographer EVER this year. Seriously. I have less than 20 from the two weeks we were on vacation. We did really enjoy being with family, I just didn't turn my camera on very much. I thought I'd share one of the presents I made this year (that I actually remembered to take a picture of).

I used the Warhol Dress Pattern from Made (you can find it here). I love how this dress turned out. Since it's knit fabric it seems so comfy. It shouldn't surprise you that I forgot to take any pictures of my niece actually wearing the dress. All I have is the dress on a hanger and a tiny picture cropped from a family picture.

 

This dress was fun to make - you know how some projects are really great once they're finished but during you're thinking you were crazy to make it and you wish you hadn't already cut out the fabric? This isn't one of those. It came together pretty quickly if I remember right.

I did have an almost project-ending mistake though. The knit I was using was very thin (thinner and stretchier than tshirt material). Of course I didn't practice with it much ahead of time because that would've been smart. A piece of the armhole got stuck IN my machine. I was definitely sweating those few minutes, but I managed to free it with minimal damage to the fabric (and by minimal I mean there was damage but it was hide-able).

So if you do make this dress, practice with your fabric first (or just be better at sewing than me). I did make an adjustment to the pattern. I added trim to the bottom hem similar to the yoke of the dress. I thought it looked nice and my material was really thin so it was easier to sew with an extra layer of fabric.

I'm hoping that this dress will last for a few months (or more) because there's room to grow at the top and as it gets shorter it can become a long top instead of a dress!

Gingerbread Houses

This year was our 2nd annual gingerbread house party (I was going to call it a gingerbread house making party, but Hubs said that was too wordy). It's pretty easy to put together and it's always fun to see what other people come up with when they're building. I was going to do a post about how to host one of these and give you all of my tips and tricks. I was also going to do that about a week and 1/2 ago. I'm just guessing no one is going to throw together a last minute gingerbread party in the 5 days until Christmas so instead I'll show you pictures of the houses we made and you can email me if you really want the details, ok? :)

Now before you think I'm crazy I spend an entire day making tons of gingerbread, let me tell you we use the term gingerbread house loosely. As in we don't use gingerbread. Graham crackers work great and require zero effort in the kitchen on my part (yay!).

We supply the "gingerbread" and glue/icing and ask each person to bring a bag of candy (or two). This way you don't have to buy pounds of candy and you end up with a good variety of stuff to work with. I made a big batch of royal icing for people to work with. This year the recipe I used wasn't so great and I broke my beaters. Oops. Thankfully it was mixed enough to hold things together. Here's another royal icing recipe I found (it should be better than the one I used since it has almost 5 stars after lots of reviews...I wish I used this one!). You can divide the icing into ziploc bags or disposable icing bags for each person/team.

And now for the pictures...

Um, not sure if this one had a name, but it wins for the tallest!

Grandma's Kitchen - complete with Grandma and pots on the stove

Beargraham Air Base - I think there's a little too much detail on this one for me to explain it all

Not just your standard "gingerbread" house - this one even has a balcony and an open garage door!

Our beach house - on stilts with a fish cooking on a fire out front

And that's our party in a nutshell! I would say I'm taking a little break for the holidays and I probably won't be posting as much, but then I realized I've kind of already been taking a little break and I haven't been posting very regularly the past month or so. So I guess I'm just trying to say don't hold your breath for a post in the next two weeks. We'll be having fun doing family things and I haven't gotten quite crazy enough to take my sewing machine with me on vacation yet! I hope you all have a great holiday!