Today and Tomorrow

Besides being work days, other things are on the agenda.

Today the Poochie gets dropped off for her spa day. The Poochie gets a day of grooming and special attention more than I do. She thinks we are torturing her. She is crazy not to like it.













Tomorrow after work we will be attending a seminar on retirement planning at a downtown restaurant. It includes dinner for two and all the info you need for your retirement and estate planning. Considering the husband retired last year, we might be about a year too late on this one.

Circa 1860's

An unusual luncheon event at work gave me and my 7 co-workers a day out at a Civil War era home.

My boss' son and his wife own the home and have lived there for over 20 years. They have re-vamped it and it is beautiful. The old look mixed with a modern touch. I would love this to be my house. 

My guess is probably 15 foot ceilings if not higher. A center entrance with bed rooms on each side. And furniture to match the era. They actually live there everyday. 

I did sneak some cell phone pictures. I couldn't resist. 

The view from the front. 

The front center entrance. Large round columns.

Front center entrance hall from the inside.

Dining room in the center of the house.

One of the 4 bedrooms off the center entrance hall.

A newly re-vamped bath. It acts as a jack and Jill bath between two bedrooms off the same side of the entrance hall.

The food was just as impressive as the home. A back addition houses a modern den and breakfast area where the lunch was set up. A large butlers pantry between the dining and the breakfast area contained the desserts and coffee and water, sodas, and wine. 

A small sampling of food that I enjoyed was sliced honey ham, cool cucumber salad, finger chicken salad sandwiches, pimento salad, rolls, an orange jelled salad, a variety of nuts in some kind of sauce, sliced tomatoes, and other dishes. All served buffet style. And several pound cake varieties, cookies, and brownies. 

My favorite was the cool cumber salad. It was delicious. Round slices of cumbers, thin onion slices, taste of maybe Italian dressing(?), red grapes, tomato cubes. And maybe a few other ingredients. 

I like work days like this

gin

 "I sought The Lord, and he heard me, and delivered me from all my fears." Psalms 34:4

The end of the day

It was an easy day in the kitchen. And a full day of house cleaning. 

Breakfast was egg and a side of wheat toast topped with homemade jam.

Lunch was green salad with home grown tomatoes from sister-in-law, onion, grated cheese, and sliced boiled egg.

Dinner was fresh made chunky chicken salad with grapes tossed on a bed of lettuce and a side of crackers. 

Then, by the end of the day I had ruined my healthy nutritious meals with fresh baked cookies for dessert. The easy way.  

Picture of the week

I have my very own I-reporters out and about who send me pictures of their week. This large red fish caught in the gulf last week during the end of red fish season. I don't know the size and weight, but I did get a package of fish to cook.

gin

Blue and white baby dress

I am on a roll sewing baby dresses. They don't take much fabric, unless you make one like this with 4 layers in the skirt and 4 different fabrics. A size 9-12 months. There really is no pattern. And it's technically not a dress but a two piece set.

The skirt:  A circular pattern of 4 layers of fabric. One each in a white and a blue in a soft satin. One layer in a sparkle blue translucent. And one layer in a blue/white lace. And a fish line roll hem that I just learned to make recently. 

Front of Skirt

Back of Skirt

The top: Using the blue, white and the lace. And lined with the white. With a white ruffle and a lace up back.

Two bows made from the white fabric. One to place on the outfit top and one to place on the back of the skirt. And one more made for the hair bow. 

I am spending way to much time sewing lately.  The house, the laundry, and the dinner are all being neglected. And my sewing area is one huge disaster. To remedy that I just have to not learn any more new sewing techniques. 

Yum

Linked with Oh What A Happy Day Party.

I had all great intentions to make 4th of July cookies and decorate them. My oh my, where did the time go. So I bought a few just for myself. 

At my happy place

Mondays can be not as much fun as the previous 2 days. Mondays are sluggish. You need a pick-me-up.  Watching the clock till lunch. 

At lunch I went to the Linen Outlet. It's thousands upon thousands of yards and yards of every color, texture, and design of fabric in a thousands upon thousands of square feet warehouse.  Looking at rows and rows of fabric bolts sorted into the color wheel. The rainbow has come  to life.  I choose the blues, the color of the ocean. 

There is more than just fabric to offer. There is thread, trim, ideas, and on, and on. 

Here are, in random order, just a few pictures I snapped just inside the door of my happy place. 

Sewing A Fish Line Hem

I had finished the RWB pageant outfit. And it is ready for the day in 2 weeks.

But deep down inside I really wanted to try a skirt with the fish line hem. I like that look. I have looked at a lot of video tutorials on the web and I think I can do it. It may take some practice tho. Of course I had to go buy some more fabric. Just one yard of blue and one yard of red. Which is way more than enough. At $4 yard, it's worth to keep it on hand. I already had the white.

Of course there is always a supply of new fishing line around to sew with. I just had to explain that I needed it to sew with.

A quick review of how I did it. Cut 3 skirts from my pattern, one red, one white, one blue.  (Look here to see Part 1 and look here to see Part 2 of the sewing process of the RWB outfit.) The bottom tier is length of pattern and the other 2 tiers are each cut an 1- 1/2 shorter, so the 3 pieces form a tier. I aligned all 3 pieces together at the waist and stitched them together with a zigzag stitch to keep them together and to keep the waist edge from stretching out.

Set my stitch to a zizzag form of stitch and tested it on a scrap piece of the fabric. Its not a true zigzag but a double wide zigzag close-together-stitch to catch the fishing line in between the stitches side to side. Hope that makes sense.

I then measured length of fishing line to go around bottom of hem skirt. Wrapped fishing line around an empty thread spool and taped the end and microwaved for 4 minutes and let it cool on the spool before unwinding it. At first I only microwaved for like 1 and 1/2 minutes and realized it needed more. So after some time adjustments, I used 4 minutes and it seemed to work how I wanted it. (All this was in the tutorials.)

Then, free handedly, no pinning or ironing, I placed the finishing line on wrong side of fabric at hem and turned about 1/4 inch fabric up over it and began to zizgag, leaving about a 3 inch piece of line out before my first stitch. I zigzagged right to the edge and as it stitched and back and forth and had the fishing line in between the width of the stitches it made a nice tiny round hem.

Finish the waist band off with a stretchy elastic sequin trim.

After all 3 tiers completed, I trimmed the excess raw edge off, very carefully. It came out perfect.

  

I surprised myself. And you can too. It's easy.

Now I have 2 skirts and 1 top.

Last Week

I can tell you about the flea market I stopped  I took a $20 to make a quick run down the isles to see if there was anything I liked, I needed, I couldn't live without, and that I just had to have. I wasn't looking for anything in particular, which was a good thing, because there was not much there that caught my eye. But these two items won the day. $5 each. I needed some high chairs. Yes, some high chairs. Meaning more than one. Cause you know I have two little ones. These were perfect. They are portable and can be put away when the littles are not here.  And, oh yeah, $5 each.



I could bore you with more pictures of the littles.  So here's just one still photo from a video from my week with them last week. Crawling races. Fun.

I would love to show pictures of my visits with family last week. I did visit, but took no pictures. Had a nice dinner with them and chatted on two different days. Fun.

There was a few daily strolls down the street to get the little one out of the house. We were both getting cabin fever. But, gosh, it was so hot. And, so many doorbell rings to answer. There was the Terminex man twice. Two different guys at two different times. The UPS guy. And the one guy who had the wrong address.  And I can't forget the ice cream truck. I heard him everyday at 5 pm. Yay for me for not going out to meet him, not even one time!

So it's back at the old grind.

gin