Fridays: Sweet as can be

I promise I'm not one of those people who starts a blog and then just dumps it.  Handwritten diaries - yes.  I frequently start and then drop a diary at the turn of a dime.  The problem at hand is that I tend to forget to take before and after shots, which kind of makes this not as fun. 

Also - the other big thing is that I don't own a sewing machine, which means I do everything by hand!!!  As my friend's mom, more or less, said:  "You're crazy!"  Yes.  I'm insane.  I'm well aware, but I've moved at least 6 times in the last 3 years, which means an apartment retention rate of ~6 months.  There's a valid reason behind this.  I work on 4 month rotations, which occasionally calls for me to live outside of the city.  It's not because my apartments have [always] been shady.

ANYWAY, the long and short of it is, I don't think a proper sewing machine would be able to handle all that packing and unpacking, especially when I'm generally living in confined spaces.  Plus - poor college student budget?  A Pfaff would not fit anywhere into that.  Hence.  Hand-stitching 'til my fingers bleed, because screw thimbles.

I thought I'd take this entry in a slightly different, yet still crafty, direction.  Aside from the sewing thing, I really enjoy cooking.  Having a giant sweet tooth, I love making anything involving sugar.  Today's treat of the day?  Fondant, of course.

I loved playing with clay as a kid and always wanted to try a hand at marzipan.  The problem was, I disliked the flavor of almonds, and still kind of do.  Browsing through AllRecipes.com, I stumbled across something new and fun - marshmallow fondant.  And here is the easiest recipe I found.  Ever:

- One 14oz jar of Marshmallow Fluff
- Copious quantities of confectioner's sugar (usually about a half to 3/4 of a 1 lb bag...)
- Food coloring (optional)

...That's it.  Mix it all together until it's stiff to your liking, and you've got a pretty cheap, decent fondant.  Granted, it doesn't taste nearly as good as fondant from scratch, but it does the same job:

This was the first fondant cake I ever made.  The little flower bits are made from a petit fours mold that I stuffed with excess cake and some frosting :)  Super yum. 

This one was a bit more recent.  It was a welcome home gift for Dillon, who loves lemony sweets.  So, I made a lemon cake from a Duncan Hines mix (I tend to cut corners when it comes to baking, just because it doesn't always mean I'm skimping on flavor, and I don't have a lot of time to make things completely from scratch).  The dragonfly was done on a whim, so didn't turn out as well as I would've liked.  I was quite proud of the lotus, though.

Easy as pie, and just as tasty, too.

Next up:  How to candy just about anything.

TGIF and Jean Skirts

It has been one of those weeks at work.  One of those... crazy weeks where my professor has been at home sick for three days straight, leaving me with virtually no work this week.

You don't have those weeks, too?  No?  Oh.  Okay.  Just me.  Well, needless to say, I'm aching for something to do other than stare at Excel.

Anywho, it's summertime in Pittsburgh, and that means hot 'n muggy weather!  Today the high is 91˚F, and my apartment is not taking kindly to the fact that I don't have AC.  I need a piece that is going to keep me cool.

I raided the old, unworn clothes sections of my drawers, and even asked Dillon if he had anything he'd be willing to part with.  Between the two of us, we had a pretty fair collection, though I found that I was more drawn to fixing up Dill's things.  He wears clothes about a size up from me, which means I get more fabric and more wiggle room to deal with.  Case in point - he had a pair of older jeans that were now just too small for him, but a little too wonky-looking on me.  Too bad I don't have a before pic, but we all know what it feels like to put on a pair of pants that hug you in all the wrong places.

After a little Google Image browsing for "upcycling jeans", I decided to take just about everything apart and make a new jean skirt.  One of the more common ways to make a skirt is to just take apart the legs at the seam, but then you get that awkward crotch gap that you need to fill with more fabric.  You know - the one that says, "I'm crafty but a little lazy."  Also, I didn't have much denim to spare for filler.  So I decided to go a different route and just cut everything off from the zipper down.  I then cut the legs into panels and sewed them back on.

What I ended up with was this cute little number:

Not too short, not too long, slightly asymmetric (on purpose, I swear!) and the best part - it's a skirt with HUGE POCKETS!

Also handy - the little flower patch was something in the tool box I bought, and the ribbon had been leftover since my freshman year, when my sister sent me a cookie care package (she's the best person ever <3)

Project status?  Success!  My only complaint is that, the waist is a little stiff, so when I sit down, it tends to ride up my waist. 

Remember, my friends.  Good girls sit like this:  X.  

Finding El Dorado

For those of you who don't know me personally, I'm a pretty thrifty person.  My boyfriend, Dillon, recently introduced me to one something that really feeds this tendency - garage sales and the like.  Most of the time, you just find little knick-knacks and older items - nothing of serious interest.

Other times you come across a treasure trove:

Top Tray - More needles than I'll ever need!

Blurry, but lots of small spools

Originally a huge mess.  Dillon made the dividers for me <3

Carlow University, one of the many schools in the Pittsburgh area, holds a gigantic yard sale in one of their auditoriums every so often.  I went with Dillon for a lark, expecting it to be a book sale, mainly.  Instead, I came away with some great items and that little baby up there.  Cost for that whole box?  $5.

When I got home, Dillon had me open her up and visually catalog everything in there.  I didn't count up everything, but the contents easily amount to:
- 50+ spools of thread
- 20+ needles of various sizes
- Bags of buttons
- Iron-on hem (not my favorite thing ever, but if I need a quick fix, it's alright)
- Multiple meters of elastic
- LACE (love.  So much love.)
- Tape measurers and rulers
- Pin cushion loaded with pins and safety pins
- Knitting needles 

Whoever originally owned this was quite the seamstress.  The craziest part was looking at all the old price tags that had been left on unopened packages.  250-yard cotton thread spools for 25 cents.  Those things go for about $2-5 these days, for reference.  It was as if I had found a time capsule from the late 1960s (approx date verified by some packing labels).

One of the best items was this:

I doubt you'll find an officer wearing these anymore.  There are six that are about the size of a quarter, and maybe 4 the size of a dime.  I don't know what to do with them.  It would seem odd for me to wear them myself, but it's too sad to just let them sit in an old tool box for the rest of eternity.

Part of my decision to go back to being crafty was my fortuitous stumbling across this cache.  I wasn't going to get it at first, but Dillon gave me a nudge, and it was all downhill from there.  :D

Next up - my first upcycling project.

Because a project a day keeps the boredom away.

I've started blogs again and again throughout my young adult life.  I was one of three or so of friends who kept up with a regular Dear Diary for several years, followed shortly by a Xanga, a LiveJournal, and eventually the little blogspace on MySpace.  Each of those had a serious flaw - they were all boring rants about how I hated my adolescent life.  It lacked an unifying theme, other than "life suxx, and I spell remarkably well, but I choose to ignore that skill for the sake of rebelliousness."

Well, let's try again, shall we?

This time, I'll try to actually be productive (hah!  two birds with one stone, and you'll see why in a sec) with my blogging.  How so?  Aside from being a full time student in engineering (read:  crazy), I've been crafting since my hands contained any sort of motor function.  Having hit a bit of a slump in life, I've recently turned to the second love of my life (engineering, of course being my first), sewing and designing.  As often as I can, I'll post my own creations, regardless of how bad they are.  My own personal fail-blog, maybe?

We'll see.

Coming soon to a blog near you:
-Tee shirt revamps
-Sweater boots
-Bandeaus
-And much, much more!

Until the next.