It’s fun to see fashion trends come back around. I’ve watched lots of styles from the eighties show up over the last few years, and it looks like we’ve moved on to the nineties now. I wore overalls in the nineties and I was already an adult then! It’s crazy to think that not only have the styles from my childhood come around again, but now styles from my adulthood are coming back. Urban Outfitters has a cutoff overall dress for $49. You can make your own for a lot less. Here’s how:
My daughter, Maddie, bought this pair of overalls from a thrift store. They are Gap brand and she paid $4.50 for them.
To turn them into a dress, she started by tearing out the inside seams on the legs. Next she cut off the extra fabric from the legs to the length she wanted for the skirt of the overalls. The last step was to sew the front seam and the back seam down. She liked the look of the crooked seam, so she just overlapped the pieces and sewed it down that way. You could always straighten it out if you’d prefer that look instead.
This is a very inexpensive way to get in on one of the latest trends. Maddie styled her overall dress with a polka dot shirt, Chuck Taylor’s, and slouchy socks. Have you upcycled anything lately?
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Art source: Brian Collins Design.
Here’s a photo of a recent dinner at our house. I found the recipe for bacon wrapped green beans here. I will be making these beans again. They were delicious. I served them with baked salmon. To prepare the salmon, I drizzled a little olive oil over the salmon, sprinkled with salt, pepper, and dill, then baked for about 20 minutes. The whole meal was super tasty.
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This is a necklace I made while remembering one of my favorite runs: The Rock to Pier 10K. It starts in Morro Bay, California and ends at the Cayucos Pier. The whole run is in the sand on the beach and the view is beautiful. I haven’t run it in several years since I moved, but I have fond memories of this fun family event. You can see the Morro Rock near the bottom of the pendant. The pier isn’t quite so easy to spot, but it’s near the top of the pendant. This necklace is available in my Etsy shop.
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Today’s project is a Batman sleep mask. I’ve shown you a few other versions of the sleep mask: the owl, the eyelashes, and the glasses. There are directions in the prior examples, if you need them. You can probably just look at this to see that I cut out two pieces of black felt in the shape of the Batman mask, sewed eyes onto one piece, then sewed the pieces together with the elastic attached at the sides.
With the Wonder Woman mask I made earlier this year, wouldn’t this be fun to give to your favorite superhero couple?
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Today’s project is an upcycled coffee cozy. It’s upcycled because I used the embroidered part of a thrifted sweatshirt to make the cozy. I’ve been using the $1 reusable coffee cup from Starbucks lately. After I drink my coffee in the morning, I switch to tea, so I’ve been carrying this cup around with me everywhere. It’s nice to have a reusable cozy to go with the reusable cup.
Here’s the sweatshirt I started with:
I bought it because I thought the embroidery was so pretty. There were stains on the sweatshirt, and it wasn’t really my style as far as a garment, but as a coffee cozy? You bet! I’ve made cozies before and I just opened up the paper cozy from my Starbuck’s cup to get the pattern. For this one, I used an old cozy to get the basic pattern. Since I didn’t want to cut off any of the flowers, I made this one bigger than the one I used for the pattern.
I cut out the shape for the outside of the cozy, then cut an identical one from some pink felt I had. It’s just cheap polyester felt, about 25 cents per sheet at Hobby Lobby. I also cut a row of pompoms.
For the sewing, I placed the right sides together, sewing around the edges and leaving an opening at one end so I could turn it right side out. I also held the row of pompoms in place so the pompoms were on the inside of the cozy at this point.
Next I flipped it right side out, then sewed along the edge of the cozy to give it a more finished look. I tucked in the end that was left open earlier for flipping, and sewed it shut. Then I added a loop of elastic to one end. I should have included this in the first place when I had the right sides together, but I forgot. So, being lazy, I just sewed it on after the fact. Then I picked out a fun button from my button collection and sewed it on by hand, making sure to measure the cozy on my reusable cup before sewing the button.
Here is another cozy I’ve been using lately. I made this one a while ago with the same pattern and felt.
I love adding a bit of personality to my drink cup every day.
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Hello there. The past few weeks I’ve been in a vintage phase. You’re probably thinking that I’m always in a vintage phase, and you’d be right, but lately it’s been more intense than usual. For one thing, I’ve been watching The Wonder Years series on Netflix. I loved that show when it was out and I love it now. When our youngest son was little, he couldn’t watch a whole movie without going outside to become one of the characters. If it was a hockey movie, he’d be outside with yard tools playing lawn hockey. I’m starting to think maybe he got that from me. Since starting the Wonder Years series, I’ve worn my hair just like Winnie Cooper more than ten times. True, I wear a lot of headbands, but normally I pull my bangs back. Lately, the bangs are out just like Winnie’s. So, not only am I liking vintage things, I’m becoming a vintage character. I might be taking this too far.
Then I watched Breakfast at Tiffany’s. My hair has been in a bun a few times since then.
In addition to modeling my hair after whatever I’ve been watching on television, I’ve also been going through a box of old photos and miscellaneous documents from my grandmother. I found this little brochure that mentions Junior League, which I think is cool because I’m a Junior League volunteer in my town. The art on the cover is just plain cute, too.
In the same box I found this photo of my great-grandfather’s pipe. He was an English professor. Aren’t all professors supposed to smoke pipes?
This dress is one that I spotted on ModCloth. I need this. Red, sleeveless and polka dots are all some of my favorite things. Don’t you think this dress would look great with a nice vintage hairstyle?
I found these bathing suits while browsing a 1966 Good Housekeeping magazine. It’s funny how she’s wearing a towel on her head at the beach, instead of a hat.
I tried to make this vintage computer work. This is all I’ve got so far. Any ideas?
The other thing I’ve been doing is listening to old records. We used a ton of grease a few months ago and got our old jukebox working again. We’ve been organizing records and looking for new (old) records, too. I might write a post on organizing the records once it’s all figured out.
Hopefully looking at all this old stuff will inspire me to make some new stuff so I can get back to blogging.
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This is a project done by my daughter, Maddie. It’s a pretty simple project, and quite economical for a unique pair of high waisted shorts. She bought some jeans at a thrift store, then found some patches at another thrift store. She had a few patches already, some of which were from my childhood. First, Maddie cut off the legs of the thrifted jeans. Next she played around with the patches until the shorts looked the way she wanted. Then she sewed the patches on by hand. That’s it. She didn’t use all of her patches, so hopefully there will be another project made from them soon. Because it snowed the day she made these shorts, she paired them with a sweater and tights.
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We had a spring snow late yesterday, so I thought I’d share a few photos. It was pretty weird, because we had our spring break over a week ago! Still, no matter when the snow falls, this California girl is impressed. Snow continues to be a novelty even though I’ve lived here for almost nine years. This was the most snow we had all winter. As soon as there was enough snow to make a tiny snowman, I did. I placed him on top of a tiki torch on our patio. I love the contradiction, that the snowman is somehow taunting summer.
Last night I was outside after ten o’clock because it was so bright out there. I didn’t use a flash to take this photo. I know I need to work on this, because the photo is blurry and far from perfect, but it does show you how bright it was with all that snow. It felt like late afternoon, not night time.
This morning it was still white outside, but I knew it was going to heat up and melt everything, so I took advantage of it while I could. This photo shows two of our trees; one is trying to get leaves on it and the evergreen is holding onto some snow. I love seeing the battle between winter and spring, knowing that spring will eventually win.
Here’s another contradictory photo: snow sitting on the sun.
And, if you saw my post from yesterday, you know how happy I am that high school tennis season is upon us. I guess there won’t be any outdoor tennis today.
The roads weren’t bad enough to cancel school today, so after drop-off I came home and built myself a snowgirl. That’s not wrong, right? Regular grown-ups do that, don’t they? Her eyes are made from the pokey balls that fall in our yard non-stop. Last weekend we were out there clearing them off the lawn {while wearing shorts}. This weekend, they are creating some stunning eyes on my sweet snowgirl.
While I was taking photos the little snowman from last night melted enough to fall off his tiki torch.
The least I could do was pick him up and move him next to my gal.
That was all this morning, and the snow is really melting a lot now. One of her eyeballs has fallen out, she looks like she’s about to fall over, and one of her jazz hands has dropped. Oh dear. It was a short lived spring snow, but it was fun while it lasted.
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It’s spring. Do you know what that means around here? It means high school tennis season! I am beyond excited to be a tennis mom again. My older kids both played when they were in high school and it was one of the highlights of parenthood for me. I’m pretty sure it was a highlight of their childhood, too. Now that our youngest has decided to play as well, it means I have a shot at four more seasons! Woohoo! {I had to throw in that shot pun.} I’m not sure I can pinpoint exactly what I love about being a tennis mom. It could be that it gives me the chance to focus on one child, with no multi-tasking. Maybe it’s the fact that as an introvert, I have always preferred individual sports. High school tennis is the best of both worlds: it’s an individual sport structured within a team. The athletes get to play a singles match and a doubles match, plus have their scores tallied with the rest of the team to determine which school wins. Maybe what I love about being a tennis mom is that there are so many great tennis families here. I get to be around them and soak up their goodness. Whatever it is that makes me love it, I am happy to welcome this element back into my life this season.
Now I know that technically it’s spring, but we are supposed to be getting a few inches of snow today. Good thing I still have my tennis ball snowman wreath hanging on the front door. Procrastination pays off and we will look like we knew all along that we weren’t done with the cold weather. To celebrate the return of tennis season inside the house, I created a tennis ball garland. As you know if you are a tennis player, balls don’t last forever. After a while they get flat, or dead. I’m always looking for ways to upcycle them and give them another life before they hit the landfill. Here’s how I made the garland:
I started with a bunch of dead tennis balls, put them in a vice grip, and drilled holes all the way through them.
Then I found a piece of yellow bias tape and an elastic threader. I think you could use any ribbon or string, I just used bias tape because that’s what I had around. This next part takes a few minutes and a little patience, so wine and chocolate could possibly be helpful to your mental state while you create this.
I just threaded the bias tape through the loop at the end of the elastic threader and stuck it through each tennis ball. Finding the first hole was easy. Finding the second hole is where the patience comes in. After the ribbon was through first couple of balls I got the feel for how to find the second hole. You can see in the photo below that my threader wasn’t much longer than the tennis ball, so I had to smash the ball down so I could get a good grip on the threader to pull it through.
This next photo shows how it looked with three balls attached. I was playing with my camera and trying to focus on the middle ground and it actually worked, so I’m including this shot.
I used a total of 15 balls for this garland. The balls are a bit heavy, so I wanted to be sure they wouldn’t break the string. I used screw-in hooks under my mantle to provide enough support for the weight of this garland. I added a couple of vintage racquets in front of the fireplace and that’s it. {I thought we were done using the fireplace for the winter.}
I love having a little bright color on my mantle and the sweet reminder to appreciate this tennis season while I can. I think the tennis ball garland would be a fun decoration for any tennis themed birthday, or for high school tennis banquets across the country, too.
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