Restricting the bask to directly under the heat lamp.Filed under: Gifted it, Made it, Uncategorized | Tags: baby, blanket, crochet, green, present, yarn
Ok, they’re not clever. But I think they’re sweet. And I still have some of the teeny blankets my mom-mom made for me and for my baby dolls. Plus the crochet makes less noise than the sewing machine late at night when one of us feels like a movie.
Happy blankie, baby!
I have been itching for a compost pile for quite some time. Like a couple of years. I grow all kinds of crap year-round.
And I hate waste, shy from throwing *anything* away and also despise stinky garbage taking up the whole alley. Landfills are sad enough without junking ‘em up. Also, buying dirt is stupid. You know.
When you share a yard, though, it’s hard to make your neighbors deal with a pile of rotting food and leaves no matter how much they’re into gardening (which they are). Tried a quiet depressed corner of the new yard, but a soggy cantaloupe was my own final straw. Leaving organic decay out in the open is Just Not Done. Plus, it was drawing over rats from the impromptu frat house on our other side.
So I finally got around to making this urban composter courtesy of You Grow Girl. Mister was pitching a fit about the scraps languishing and growing fuzz on the kitchen counter, even in this cutely countertop composter we got for our wedding.
Sadly all I needed to do was get my hands on a tub, an opaque tub with a lid on it.
Thanks, Menard’s, for a $3.33 sale last week on a blue plastic tub with lid. Believe it or not, the thing’s made in the U.S.A. Dug out the drill, and within about 10 minutes, I was in business.
With two reporters in the house, there’s newspaper galore lying around. And we cook a ton, so there’s lots of scraps, too.
All my plant clippings, all the junk that falls off the trees in the neighborhood, all the coffee grounds that otherwise just end up in the stinky alley garbage, and all the scraps from beautiful summer produce will now make my growing richer.
I feel so much better about getting rid of things when I know they’ll be useful and not wasted.
Filed under: Love it, Made it, Printed it, Read it | Tags: invitation, news, print
We made invitations to look like news.
Used these seal and send invites bought from LCI paper. They fold up nicely into a small packet that’s self contained.
And has a detachable postcard at the bottom that works suitably for a reply card (my mother won that debate).
It was the closest we could pull off to these AMAZING invitations I found at Tugboat Printshop on Flickr. We’re writers, not printers, so we had to cheat a little bit. Also, no envelopes and no extra paper waste (think: those awful little tissue paper inserts).
Ecru paper looks old since we’re both newspaper reporters getting married in an old Philadelphia newspaper building. Used some story text from Bruno Mancari’s murder trial where we met, to add some gray texture to the front.
And the story chosen recounts the outburst in open court of a witness’ wife who shrieks before the judge and jury that her husband (who now has taken the fifth amendment and reneged on his deal with the state) still! has! a! deal!
Lesson learned: Stand by your husband, even when he’s accused of burying a hammer in some poor slob’s brain. ESPECIALLY when he’s accused of such.
The Liberty Bell has remained a strong image throughout the few things we’ve had printed, as have the pointing fingers that appear on the front page of the real-life Public Ledger. The Liberty Bell was to be the main event on thank you cards, too, but my Mister protested about his Chicago roots. More to come about those cards soon.
Will just say for now that screwing up the plan often leads to a better plan. And securing a reputation for being a little off-kilter is a worthwhile enterprise that may spare later headaches.
Filed under: Love it, Made it, Sewed it | Tags: dress, gold, pattern, silk, taffeta
I never thought about weddings as a child or young woman. I guess I hoped I’d find a friend to spend my life with, but how the party went down I knew not. And from going to a whole big bunch of weddings in my 32 years, I knew I wanted the day and the occasion to fit the people involved, not the other way around. Because it’s not a dream, it’s a happy day.
The one thing I did think about was the dress. I started sewing in high school while broke at a prep school. Figured out pretty quickly I could have really amazing dresses for dances if I made them myself. So every time there was some special event, I made a dress: senior prom and college graduation ball. I sewed for my sister when she wanted something particular, too.
Of course, I must have thought, I’d make my wedding dress. Buying ready-made polyester satin made in China wasn’t going to cut it, and I wanted a simple enough shape. Even the plainest silk dress I tried on had four digits. The two I liked best would have more than doubled what I wanted to spend, with all the alterations. In fact the alterations on the last dress I considered were going to run about what I wanted to spend on fabric. Also, I live in the city home to Fishman’s Fabrics. Also, another amazing place called Vogue Fabrics.
So why not blow the budget on the silk and screw the formality? Tell the bridal shopladies to keep their dreams because I’m going to make a dress?
So here goes. Vogue pattern 2931 (sans bow and w a few other alterations). Gold silk taffeta obtained from Fishman’s, lined with the sleekest, softest gold silk from Vogue Fabrics.
We’re getting married! In May in the old part of Philadelphia. And now that locations and invite lists are settled, it’s time to do fun stuff now!
I love the man whose life is getting joined to mine, and he’s a reporter, too. I don’t love the wedding industry and all the consumerism, and how it turns people who love each other as families and friends against each other with so many “musts.” Our inner reporter proves too skeptical to take wedding salesladies at their word (I’ve gotten through a bunch of stores without uttering the word, claiming accurately that it’s a Very Fancy Party.)
So we decided to skip some of the nonsense, and recreate some other nonsense ourselves.
Here’s how we asked family and friends to save the date: We think it’s amazingly good news.
I found the engraved liberty bell and old-timey poster fingers online. The party’s going to be in the old Philadelphia Public Ledger, the city’s first penny newspaper, and one of the original front pages had “fancy” ads introduced by such a pointing finger.
Printed out the postcards, two to a page, on a regular printer, using good cardstock from the Hobby Lobby.
Then my dad helped us trim and separate them using his original carpenter’s square from when he first became an apprentice. If I’m 32, he went through carpentry school maybe 35 years ago.
We marked the back side of a glass cutting board and sliced through with a utility knife.
I think I’ll use postcards as much as possible. You get the news faster when there’s no envelope.
