Monthly Archives: December 2010

the weekender: new year’s eve dress edition

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It’s already New Year’s Eve. Everything about it is so overwhelming.

2010 Recaps:
Graduating and officially starting my life
Being fortunate enough to find a job I love right out of college
Going to Portland with my best friend
Serving as editor of The Yeti and publishing its first issue in years
Starting a running club – one of the hardest things I’ve ever done
Being with my boyfriend, who makes me happy every day of my life
Starting this blog, which was terrifying

I’ll work on my 2011 goals in another post.

Until then here are some gorgeous dresses to drool over. I wish I was wearing these tonight (all @ Modcloth).

1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 |

Here are some cheaper, skimpier dresses from F21. They had a lot more New Year’s Glitz.

1 | 2 | 3 | 4 |

Have a Happy New Year everyone!

jars of happiness

It so happens that I’m in a long distance relationship with my two best friends. And when they’re upset or hurting, having a bad day or broken hearted, I just feel awful that I can’t be there to console them.

What better way to cheer someone up than with freshed baked goodies? Meg’s Creations in a Jar are “layered with love.” She makes cookie mixes, soups, cupcakes, brownies, and pies. Since they’re in jars, you can ship them anywhere.

Cupcakes

How pretty are these pies?

And when your long-distance loved one is feeling under the weather, send them some soup.

Loaded Baked Potato

Your friends will be feeling better in no time. <3

 

 

merry christmas

I just wanted to take a minute to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and a lovely holiday season. I wish you a warm and cheerful holiday with lots of love and food.

I’ve been with the family in my hometown for the past few days while taking a Christmas blogging break. I’ll be back in a few days with more fun stuff. In the meantime, have a Merry Christmas!

[image source]

make your own chocolate balsamic vinegar sauce

Chocolate Balsamic Vinegar Sauce

I used a recipe I found at the Kitchn and thought it was rather unique.

The original recipe was a little too tart for my taste, so I added about 1/2 cup of sugar more and an additional 1/2 cup chocolate chips (to melt). It turned out spectacular – sweet and tangy. The Kitchn claims it’s a vinegar, but I think it’s certainly more of a sauce.

I made if for my boyfriend’s sister. It has to go on a plane, so I wasn’t able to package it nicely. However, mason jars work just fine. I bought a drizzling bottle for it to go in.

One day I’ll focus on making pretty labels. Until then, my cursive is all I’ve got.

make your own sugar body scrub

Still thinking of what to get your best friend, sister, or mom?

Make Your Own Body Scrub

You will need:
White Cane Sugar
Raw Sugar, Turbinado Sugar, or Brown Sugar
Cinnamon
Oatmeal
Sea Salt
Baking Soda
Olive Oil
Jars or Plastic Bags

First, I decided on how much I wanted to make. The easiest way to do this, is place all of the ingredients into the container you plan on using.

I wanted to make two jars full.

Here are your proportions. I added half white sugar and half brown sugar in each jar. Then I added about two table spoons of cinnamon to each jar. Then I topped each jar off with about 1/4 cup of oatmeal.

Sugar and oatmeal are great for your skin, they both exfoliate and nourish.  The cinnamon adds a lovely smell, you can substitute the cinnamon with an essential oil, if you’d like. You could also throw in some vanilla extract, but I was out.

Then I poured both jars into a mixing bowl. Once in the mixing bowl, I added about two tablespoons of baking soda and a 1/4 cup of sea salt. Baking soda clears up acne and sea salt is also a great exfoliant and provides your skin with minerals.

Now mix it together.

Once you’ve throughly mixed this, it’s time to add the olive oil. Olive oil ads moisture to the scrub. Just be aware that I used a lot of olive oil for this mix, and that stuff isn’t cheap. I used about a cup. However, I was making a large batch of this. Start adding in the olive oil a few tablespoons at a time.

It’s really important that this mixes throughly into every ingredient.

Eventually your mixture will start looking more like a moist scrub.

You want it to have a gooey texture, like cookie dough.

This is the look mine had once it was completely saturated.

Next, scoop it into your jar.

And you’re done. All you have to do is add a nice label (unlike my boring labels). You can find tons of free cute label templates online.

The cursive is the only thing I have going for me.

Treat a friend to a nice pampering session. The best part about this is that it’s chemical free! There isn’t a need for any warning about getting it in your eye/call poison control/swallow and die. It’s all natural and edible (although not recommended, uh sugar high.) It also leaves your body smelling like oatmeal cookies. I couldn’t believe how awesome the cinnamon and oatmeal made this smell. Feel free to fool around with ingredients and scents, substitute sugars, oils, and flavors. Experimentation is the best part about homemade.

how to make a long scarf [tutorial]

I made this scarf the other day. It’s really long, a little less than 80 inches, and can be wrapped all sorts of ways.

I fell in love with the fabric. I picked it up when fleece was on sale.

Here’s how to make the scarf:

1. Cut out four even pieces. Since I wanted a long scarf, I  folded the fabric in half lengthwise. My pieces were 8 inches wide, but you can make your scarf thinner or wider.  Mark the width with chalk and cut. Make sure you use a cutting board or another device to make sure your fabric slices are even.

The dimensions of each piece is 44″ x 8″. I will be combining two pieces in the middle, which makes the total length around 80 inches (with cutting and trimming, etc.).

Four identical pieces.

2. Create a middle seam. Since I have a colored fabric pattern with lines, I had to take extra care to make sure the fabric pieces lined up to create a symmetrical scarf. If you’re a beginner, it might just be easier to not deal with lining up the pattern. Go for a solid color fabric.

Take the time now to decide what will be the inside of your scarf and which side will be the outside of your scarf. Here are my four pieces lined up.

Using two pieces of scarf, match the middle colors together. In this case,  my middle was going to be navy.

With right sides together, sew the middle seam of each side of the scarf – two pieces for each side. Then trim the excess. Now you should have two long pieces.

3. Sew the scarf.

From here it gets pretty simple. Line up the two sides of the scarf so that the fabric matches – right sides together. Again, if your fabric doesn’t have a pattern, then put your two sides together and don’t worry about having to line anything up.

Pin your scarf with right sides together. Starting at the top of the scarf, stitch down (at 5/8ths an inch) until you reach about 5/8ths an inch from the end, then turn the scarf, and stitch across. Once you reach about 5/8ths from the other side, turn the scarf again, and start stitching back toward the top.

This is a picture of the left side already stitched. Now I’m stitching back up the right side.

4. Stop once you get to the top, do not stitch across. You want to leave an open mouth on the scarf. Once you reach the top, do a few backstitches to reinforce your seam. Trim off the excess string.

5. Trim the seams, cutting off the excess fabric.

6.  Using the open edge of your scarf, reach your arm in there and turn the scarf inside out.

7. Creating the top of the scarf: With the scarf now turned rightside out, you’re going to want to finish the top. Turn some of the top fabric inward and press the seam. Pin it closed.

Now sew it closed, starting with a few backstitches to reinforce the close. Here I stitch very close to the top of the scarf. I place my presser foot at the top of the scarf. This ensures that you’ll sew through the folded top of the scarf.

8. Press the entire scarf flat.

There you have it.

A super cozy fleece scarf.

Side note: Tutorials are tough. I’m still getting the hang of them. I welcome constructive criticism and questions about this tutorial. Thanks!