New shirt and finished project

My lovely sister went to the Ann Arbor Art fair Thursday and all the boutiques that are normally outside my price range had huge discounts in honor of the event. Knowing I have been wanting a lace shirt she picked up this for me at a really low price:

In this picture I am wearing a flesh tone bra but no undershirt (it was hot and muggy today). Mother was not pleased and quoted her own version of the Bible verse saying not to cause thy brother to stumble, for no reason. The lesson I take from this is if I'm gonna be a ho I gotta do it for real. So no bra  next time!

In other news I finished a project! My friend's birthday is coming up and in true dirt poor student style I made her a present rather than buying something. 

In case it looks farmilar it is my own interpretation of the Chan Luu wrap bracelet. Which is on Amazon for close to 200$. 

 I created it using the DIY tutorial by Ruby Mines. Don't tell my friend but my version cost less than two hundred dollars. Though with how much work I put into it I would charge that much if I thought I could get away with it. 

Eventually (soon) I want to make one for myself with brown leather and jade colored beads, and possibly use a military inspired button. Frankly I love the military trend and plan to hop on it with full force as soon as it is cool enough to wear anything more than a bikini.

Girly stuff

Remember the skirt I made of men's dress shirts from my local Goodwill?

Well here's me (at least the bottom half of me) in it!

Please ignore my sister's messy bedroom behind me.

Allergies, and Spiders.

Oo. I skipped a couple of days there. Well it was for good reason. Thursday I was laid out flat with a full on allergy attack. I did everything right that day too. Nasal rinse, went for a run (I still hate running but I like what it is doing for my endurance and the fact it makes my muscles stand out *flexes*), went to tae kwon do class, and managed to work through it all. Turns out it only delayed the inevitable. So I was laid out on the couch with my brain leaking from my nose and nothing I could do but take a benedryl and a nap.

Friday I spent the morning cleaning the basement. Due to my family's variety of projects the spring cleaning has been occurring in segments. I got a head start on the basement. Frankly it looked as though Morticia Adams, Lily Munster, and Wednesday Adams had a tea party. I vacuumed up so many spiders and spider webs it began to feel like inter-species genocide. After a quick 20 minute visit with the boyfriend I headed off to tkd once again. When I returned my father had found time to work on one of my projects. Namely my car.

Since finals week back in late April my car has been dead in the water due to a cracked oil pan that occurred on my one night off. The best part is I don't even remember hitting anything. But thanks to those projects that have kept my family from maintaining our household my car got little to no attention once my father and his friend towed it back to Midland from Lansing (yup stuck with MSU students during U of M's finals week. It was a swell time)

Originally my plan had been to return home from tkd and head out again with my bikini in hand since a friend had invited me out to her lake to enjoy the last few hours of sunlight. But I couldn't leave my car and my father (mostly my car). With some wiggling and some googling and a lot of bolts to unscrew we (mostly my father since at a hundred pounds I can barely force a bolt to turn in any direction) managed to remove the oil pan. While my father was hoping we could repair the oil pan, I knew that because of the location of the crack it would have to be replaced. Luckily it is fourth of July weekend so everyone is having a patriotically inspired sale. Score one VW oil pan for a 2000 Jetta  for the low low price of $42 (significantly less than the $275 the dealership wanted for the part).

There are days I love the information that can be so readily accessed on the internet and that was one of them.

Today I am accompanying my sister to work so that I can use her car rather than being stuck here with out transport. There are a couple of vintage and fabric stores near her place of employment and I am hoping that I will stumble across something cute and cheap and usable.

Denim Remix

Scrooge McDuck is my hero. I want to one day swim in a pool of gold coins (with proper safety measures to prevent drowning of course) So I like to try to save my money. 

On the other hand I love new stuff. And these past few months I, the reformed tom-boy, have embraced my girly side. This has led to purchases like new shoes, a new dress, and a really cute pair of earrings. Unfortunately these things have dipped into my gold swimming pool fund. 

In an effort to preserve that fund I am trying to re-use and/or re-purpose clothes I already have. So I present the jeans I fixed for $1.70. 

To the left is the before picture, to the right is the after. For a cheap box of dye i was able to breathe some new life into these faded jeans. I still need to cut and hem the bottom of them though since they are too long so the bottom is all torn up.

I am also considering trimming these jeans down into skinnys but I am hesitant to do so since they are a really nice boot cut and fit just perfectly over most of my shoes (minus the Boots o' Doom) Hopefully these will be finished by the end of the week so I can have options to wear for the holiday weekend. 

Men's Clothes into Cheap Girl Clothes

Being a huge fan of DIY any excuse I have to make something I take. I work at the Michigan Renaissance festival and I love making my own costume bits. Living at home for the summer is so nice since my little sister (Like my little brother only little in age) and her expensive sewing machine are home for the summer too.
My latest project was a skirt made from the sleeves of men's dress shirts. I stumbled across a tutorial on ThreadBangers.com (Video Tutorial)

My skirt wound up looking a little different than theirs:


Eventually I will post pics of myself modeling the skirt. It hits just above my knee and makes my legs look long. And every short girl knows any item that makes you look taller is a good thing. Also since I used white shirts I have to wear a slip underneath it because the skirt is a little see through. Though my decision to use the white shirts instead of colored ones was the tie.



The beautiful shiny forest green with the gold Fleur de Lis just tickled my fancy. I love the look of the Fleur De Lis, and since I am part French I consider it part of my extremely mixed heritage. Upon finding this tie at GoodWill I knew I was going to use it for Something. Even if I didn't know at the time what it was. I wound up making belt loops for the tie out of the button hole side of the shirt. Originally I was going to just tack the tie to the skirt but this allows me more freedom with the colors I can use.

Now I just need a cute shirt to wear with this skirt, on the plus side I already have the perfect shoes.

Hi World! Let's start with dinner...

I am interested in pretty much anything. I love having at least basic knowledge of a variety of subjects.

One subject I find particularly fascinating is food. Eating, smelling, tasting, shopping, every part of the culinary experience is akin to the sensation of finding a 5 dollar bill in your pants pocket. (With the exception of prep work, which can be really tedious, though some good music and sharp knives help)

Tonight I made dinner for my family. Since we are on a tight budget the trick is to use ingredients that are in the fridge already or come cheap. So even though I was really really craving red meat (a trick for curing that post-time of the month yuckkies) I found the chicken breast we had in the fridge and made an old stand-by, Chicken and veggie stirfry.

The vegetables this time were a red bell pepper and a pound and a half of fresh green beans. It was a good thing I had that extra half pound of beans since my little brother (Little only in age, size-wise he has a good 6 inches and 30 pounds on me) had invited a couple friends over. The food turned out delicious and juicy.

This last bit was a bit tricky. I am a little paranoid about my food, especially pork and chicken. When over cooked chicken becomes dry and not unlike eating a cotton sock. When under-cooked the slimy texture puts even the most slippery eel to shame, plus the risk of disease exponentially increases the "ick" factor. So the trick with cooking chicken on the stove top is to cook it at a high enough temperature that you get a nice caramel brown color on the outside, but not too high so it doesn't burn when you try to cook it all the way through. Using the singed chicken bits left at the bottom of the pan as a base for any sauces enhances the chicken flavor (Yes chicken does taste like chicken if you do it right).

The end result was this:

While the presentation was rather basic it tasted better than it looked.

I was also craving pie. Apple Pie. So this happened:

It was also yummy. Unfortunately I have yet to perfect my pie baking technique so the filling was a little watery. Still good but the slice kind of disintegrated once it was separated from the rest of the pie.

Currently I am finishing alterations to a skirt while watching the original karate kid. I'm kind of hoping to dream with "You're the best, around. Nothing's gonna ever keep you down." as my soundtrack.