Vacations Over

We are back from our wonderful vacation.  I’m currently getting our photos downloaded and hope to have a post showing some of my beach creations in action during the trip.

Getting thrown back into the real world again, I have quite a few projects to get accomplished in the next couple weeks.  First this weekend is the wedding weekend.  The weekend where I wanted to make and wear this dress from my pinterest challenge.

I will give you a sneak peak at the dress I am modifying to hopefully look like this one above. 

This dress was a bridesmaid dress from my sister’s wedding a couple of years ago.  It’s not a bad dress, but a strapless dress is hard for me to pull off, and the length hit my legs at their widest part.  Not to mention the gathering that looks cute from the front, but makes you look pregnant from the side.

It's vacation time!

We made it down to the Caribbean and are enjoying our little time of relaxation. We will be back soon, but until them here is our little slice of heaven!

Personal Goals

I bought a pair of white jeans years ago.  Almost 6 years ago to be exact.  They were on clearance and I really like them, except they didn’t have my size.  Or what I thought “my current size”.  So I bought them even though they were two or three sizes too small, and decided they would be my motivation for losing all the baby weight.

They still have the tags on and I still look at them every time I am in my closet.  Now that I have had two babies I had kind of given up on ever wearing them.  My body has changed so much with each child.

In one last push I thought if I could get into them before our vacation, that would mean I had really accomplished my goal.  So I dusted them off and tried them on.

This time around I actually got them onto and up my thighs.  I even really like how they look from the back, which I don’t say about many jeans.

They are flared.  They were purchased before skinny jeans hit the Midwest, but I still sort of like that about them.  I could even get them buttoned.  But let me tell you, it wasn’t pretty or very comfortable, it still creates a muffin top of sorts.

So I will either have to wear them with loose tops or not at all.

Do you have an item of clothing that is your “motivation” piece?  Does it really even help?  I don’t think it has really helped me, but I still hold out hope that someday I will be able to cut the tag off!

Why don’t you just buy new clothes?

This is the question my husband asked me the other day as I was stressing out over all the things I needed to get done before we can leave on our trip.  Not too mention we weren’t seeing much of each other, as I was always heading off to the sewing room when the kids went to bed.

And there is definitely a point to it.  Buying fabric can add up, but it’s usually cheaper than paying for the clothing item in a store.  What you have to remember to add in is all the time it takes you to get the item finished.  I am still at the point that I think I can get something accomplished much quicker than I can.  I will only need to do a few things to finish up something and then look at the clock and realize two hours have been sucked gone.

At the end of the day I have started to make more clothes because I do find it enjoyable.  I like to be creative and this has definitely been a good outlet for me.  Most times though, it would make more sense time management wise, to just go out and buy things.

I was looking at some of my favorite browsing online stores.  You know the ones you look at for inspiration because you can’t really afford to buy any of their pieces.  I happened to stumble upon a dress at Anthropology, this dress is being currently sold for $98.

Now what’s kind of amazing and funny about this, is that I just recently finished up sewing a new dress for myself.  I bought the fabric last year and all together it probably ran me $20.  I used a pattern I already had (Simplicity 1881) and the dress went together really quickly.  Now remember I had completely finished sewing this dress before I came across this one on the internet.

It’s almost exactly the same.  And had I picked out a different color stripe, it would have been a dead ringer.  In this instance sewing the dress was definitely worth my time.  It also gave me a chance to learn a new skill, inserting an invisible zipper.  Mine didn’t go exactly as I wanted, and you can see it peeking over the top.  But now I know how to do it.

This dress will even work in the “in-between” seasons by throwing on a denim or chambray shirt.

Linen Pant Redo–Yes Another One

Just like the brown pair of linens pants I showed you last week, I had another pair of white ones that I needed to alter.

I wanted to keep these a little bit looser for a more casual style.

But I just wasn’t loving it however I styled it.  I think if I do take these along on the trip I will keep them extremely casual and just wear them with a plain simple tank top.

So this one is just a slight improvement.

Tank Inspired Maxi Dress

When something just doesn’t look right…don’t buy it.  If you make the mistake of buying it and then don’t like wearing it…..change it!

I’m talking about this maxi dress, which had a neckline that I didn’t like.  I really wish I would have gotten a picture of the back of the dress, because it looked even worse.
I had an old black tank top that had a slight flow to it, so I decided to cut the tank top short, and then sew it onto this maxi dress.

I also like how this dress can be casual if you wanted it to be, or with accessories you could definitely wear it out at night.  It will be making it’s way onto my suitcase for the trip!

Linen Pants Worn Two Ways

Another vacation makeover is about to be revealed.  I believe this is the outfit I will wear for our day of traveling.  We leave at 5:30am.  Yes actually leave then, meaning we have to be to the airport around 4am.  Hoping I can learn to sleep on the plane.  The bonus is we land at our destination at 4pm in the afternoon and can actually do something that evening.

So my inspiration photo for this project was this.

The whole outfit just looked so comfortable yet a little bit dressy.  I owned this pair of linen pants circa 2006?

They had a huge flair to them and were just a little bit too big everywhere.  So again I turned them inside out and went to town taking off some width on both the inseam and the two sides.

Here is how they ended up.  At first I styled them very similar to the inspiration photo.

And although I might wear it that way on our trip…most days you would be more apt to find me looking like this.

A lot more casual and carrying or following around a two year old!  This one just happened to wake up from his nap mid-photo shoot.

As you can tell, I still kept a slight widening on the leg to make them more boot cut.  Since linen pants are usually made to be more relaxed looking.