My weekend in the sweatshop

I had a lovely weekend, complete with at least two long periods of time (over an hour each time!) where I got to sew. Yippee!!

I even spent most of Friday night ironing and sorting my fabric piles so now they're color-coordinated and totally righteous. Like, totally, dude.

I finished a little project I like to call The Abby Top. It's based off a swing-top pattern but I added the snazzy circle pockets a la Soduel's blog tutorial and I will be changing up the straps and facings, thank you very much. Two little girls named Abby who happen to wear the same size will be receiving these little babies.

Abby in New Jersey gets the polka dots....

...and Abby in Iowa gets the flowers. Abby's big sister, Anna, got the mini Anna tunic a few weeks ago. How would you feel if you were the Little Sister who always got hand-me-downs and had to do things Second, and then your big sister got a shirt specially designed just for her? And you got nothin! Well, now she's got something. The Abby Top with a flower pocket.

I didn't like the way the pieces are supposed to go together in this pattern, so for the final version that hits the Etsy shop they will be attached differently and the straps will be wider for modesty. Oh, and the back will have button tabs to close completely in case the girl wearing it doesn't want lots of swing in her top, ya know?

I also ordered a little french mannequin in a size 2T so I can finally display my things on a body form instead of hanging on a stinking hanger with no pizzazz. I think it makes a difference, don't you? Not that this Etsy thing is going to become my new career, but if I'm going to do it I want to do it right.

You may even notice a blog re-do in the next few days. I'm so in love with my business cards and now my Spoonflower feather fabric that I think I'll be incorporating it into the header around here for a while.

- H

Sunday Confession

You know how I bought the Jillian Michaels 30 day Shred workout DVD?

Yeah.

Well, the first day? I only made it through ten minutes of a twenty minute workout.

See, I was doing really good, huffing and puffing and toning up and all, and then my husband started raging through the house looking for his missing money clip. At first he said I didn't have to help him look for something I'd never laid my hands nor eyes on, but then as his frustration grew, so did his desire for me to solve his problem. All while I was jumping around in front of the tv.

So eventually, somewhere around minute ten, he said "OK, I need you to look." And I paused the DVD.

And I never went back to it.

So there you have it. I am in such bad shape that I couldn't even complete a twenty-minute workout the first day.

And the second half of this confession? I haven't done it since then. But I do plan on starting FOR REAL on Monday morning. I'm going to take my measurements and everything.

- H

P.S. He found the money clip in his room under a bunch of his junk.

Sunday Confession...forgive me Father, for I have envy

I don't know if this is a true confession, or just a story of a rough patch in my life. People know about it, so it's not really a secret.

When I was in college, I got myself into a little bit of a spending pickle. I overspent. Way overspent, and it all went on credit cards because who has any money in college?

I was lucky, my parents paid for school but I paid for the rest of my lifestyle by working odd jobs, like managing a tanning spa (can anyone say sun damage?). Unfortunately, those odd jobs didn't pay very well, other than I had a bitchin tan.

So I signed up for the many free offers available to unemployed college students and got a t-shirt plus a free Domino's pizza along with my 23% APR and $75 annual fee.

By the time I was done with school, I owed somewhere around $20,000 on credit cards and had very little to show for it. Believe it or not, that is not what today's confession is really about. The root of my problem was insecurity and envy. That's what this rambling story is about.

See, I had this little problem where I was self-conscious or insecure or sad or whatever, I'm not really sure what the word for it is. I would see a girl who looked like she really had her shit together, you know? Perfect hair, perfect skin, pretty clothes, great shoes, the works. And I would think (subconsciously or consciously) "hey, I saw those shoes at Von Maur, if I buy those shoes I'll look like she does." And by looking like she did, of course I would feel like I assumed she did, too, right?

So yeah, that's bathouse crazy but that's how I got myself into that mess.

The sad part is I would buy things, wear them once and never put them on again. They didn't magically solve all my problems or whatever it was I was looking for a pair of jeans to do, so I would go out and get another ____ [fill in the blank] and so on and so on until I ended up crying on my bedroom floor one day when I added up my total credit card debt. I made about $16,000 a year at that time, so owing more than your annual salary on credit cards is not a good thing.

The long story of how I got out of that mess will be told another day to avoid a ridiculously long post. It involved consumer credit counseling (DON'T DO IT, FILE BANKRUPTCY INSTEAD) and my dad and a very long period of poverty.

Anyway, I don't know why I wanted to tell that story today. I think there have been times since then that I recognize that urge to buy a new pair of jeans because it'll clearly fix all my problems, right? The other day I saw a girl walking into my fabric store and she had it going on. She had gorgeous blonde hair, a chic black trench coat, cropped black pants and clippity black kitten-heel mules. In a heartbeat I was twenty-one years old again, wondering if I could find those mules would I look as cool as she did and then feel as good as she must feel?

The funny thing is, I have all of the items she was wearing in my closet in one form or another. I know putting together that outfit isn't going to solve all of my problems or give me peace of mind, but it's my brain's knee-jerk reaction to insecurity. That's the crazy thing about life, there are definitely some recurring struggles we all deal with that are our Achilles' heels, you know? That's mine. Thanks for listening, and if I ever ask you where you bought something you're wearing, help a sister out - don't tell me.

- H

Don't forget, today's the last day to go to this post if you haven't put your name in the hat for this week's giveaway yet.

Sunday Confessional Update

Since I'm having trouble remembering some of the more embarrassing things I've done in my life to confess to, I thought I'd share a funny little update to a previous Sunday Confessional story.

Remember this one? Where I shared my husband's weird hoarding behavior and the fact that I take garbage to my mom's house to get it thrown away?

Well, a month or so ago my husband had to go out of town for work. I was also on a business trip that week, so my mom flew up to stay with my kids and then when I got back we worked like animals to get my basement cleared out and cleaned up in order to put the house on the market.

The house never went on the market, although I'm still hopeful that might happen this spring.

The funny part of the story is that while we were clearing out the basement, we came across a near-empty metal filing cabinet that hadn't been touched or looked at for six years. I told my mom to pull the files out of it and set it up on the street, where some lucky winner would repurpose it at their house.

I also found a box with various assorted contraptions that looked oddly familiar but I couldn't put my finger on it, so that also went into the trash headed for my mom's house.

The rest of the garbage that was truly garbage went into our garbage cans.

Well, my husband came home that Friday and was peevish that we'd had the nerve to clean the house, and was worried about what might have been thrown away. So he went through the trash, as usual. He found nothing but garbage, but it still ticked him off in his own charming but mentally ill way, and it was a rough patch until I left for Florida with my kids and my mom the next day.

A few weeks later, all hell broke loose. Apparently, my dumpster-diving next door neighbors, the hippies who hang plastic twirly-gigs from the trees in their front yard and leave Christmas lights up year-round, brought the metal filing cabinet into their garage. With a thousand other pieces of furniture and detritus they've collected from the street curbs, half of which were mine at one time or another.

My husband saw it.

You can imagine the fallout. It wasn't pretty.

So let this be a lesson to you.

If you want to get rid of something, you actually have to get rid of it. Take it miles away to a relative's house and put it on their curb so your weirdo hippie next-door neighbors don't bust you trying to get rid of it!

Oh, and that box of assorted odds and ends I threw out? It was a hand-steamer-cleaner thing that I bought off QVC ten years ago and my husband used to clean the cars. Oops. Good thing Target carries those, I've been saved.

Sunday Confessional

Today I don't have a confession to make. You know why? Cause I'm not the one who needs to confess what they're doing these days. Nope, it's not me.

I could tell about how I used to write myself notes to excuse me from class and forge my mom's signature, but I'll save it for another Sunday.

Oh, wait, there is one more thing. I don't like granola. So there.

My Sunday Confession

I should probably save this one for Easter Sunday. But I just thought of it, so I'm going to share it this week.

I really don't like Easter.

I know, this is somewhat like admitting you don't like Santa Clause or candy.

But I really don't. I don't like Easter Sunday, specifically.

It's all very understandable. My family is Lutheran. I grew up going to church every Sunday. On Palm Sunday, we would march into church in our fancy clothes, waving our palm branches and singing songs. Hooray! Christ has arrived in Jerusalem! He's brought the word of God with him!

The service always ended the same. The lights in the church were turned completely off. We all left in silence. You'd think this would traumatize me, but it didn't. This was somehow not as depressing as the following Sunday, Easter Sunday.

On Easter Sunday, my dad insisted we go to Sunrise Service. It started at 6:30 a.m. and we lived about 40 minutes away. You do the math.

Then we'd get to church and the lights were still off. We walked in and took seats in the dark. In silence. As the service got going, the lights slowly came back on and the songs started up again and by the end ~ hooray, Christ is risen! Yay! Let's go upstairs and eat our Easter Sunday breakfast in the celebration hall!

But I never quite got over the trauma. The coldness I can still feel in my bones every Easter Sunday. The fatigue from being yanked from my warm bed while it was still very dark black outside. The depressing start to the service. The smell of an old musty church that's heat and lights have not been on for a week.

Not to mention the fact that going to Sunrise Service meant the Easter Bunny didn't visit our house after we moved back from Geneva. My brothers probably could have cared less, but I kind of missed the egg hunts and candy baskets.

So to this day, if I can avoid going to church on Easter Sunday, I do that. I think God understands. It's not the message I don't care for. It's the memories.

P.S. I also dislike Lenten Roses. Don't tell the Master Gardener Club, they might kick me out.

My Sunday Confession

I totally had a doozy lined up for today. I remembered it while I was in Florida, and it was a biggun. But I've forgotten it.

Such is the feeble mind of an aged woman. I remember nothing.

So, this one is kinda lame.

In order to throw things away in my house, I have to take them to my parents' garbage.

My husband is a bit of a hoarder. He goes through the garbage to make sure I haven't thrown anything of his away. Even if it's broken parts to something we don't use anymore, I'm not allowed to throw it away. For instance, we had a Shark floor sweeper that went kaput. It sat on our kitchen porch for three months because I wasn't allowed to throw it away, despite his admission that it could not be salvaged. I finally ran out one morning while he showered and got it to the trash man just in time. He hasn't missed it.

You can imagine, this behavior (of his) would not be conducive to an organized, fairly neat household. So I improvise. I shred papers that need to be thrown away. That way he never sees them in the garbage. I typically shred junk mail before he gets home in the evening or he'd save it. For a long time.

Then the big stuff, I take that out to my parents' house. Their garbage goes out on Thursday. Ours is Monday. That way, I have staggered opportunities to throw things away.

It's kinda nuts, isn't it? I suppose in a way it's lying. But I have to admit, I'm OK with it.

Two weeks ago, my mom came to stay with my kids while I had an overnight meeting and my husband was out of town. When I got home, we worked super hard to clear out a lot of the garbage in my basement. I sent my mom home with bags of garbage, but a few things I did throw in our trash cans. These were the things I thought were the least offensive. The most obviously valueless garbage-y items. He went through the trash when he got home and freaked out.

So yeah, I will continue to transfer trash. Probably more so now that he's on alert that I might be throwing valuable things like orange peels away.

The Sunday Confessional

You didn't think I was going to go a Sunday without making my huge confession did you?

This one is a doozy.

This was from a long time ago. I was a freshman in college and really enjoyed the first year. I slept as late as I wanted, I stayed up late, and made new friends. You know the drill.

What I didn't do much of was study or go to class. It was as if my sudden freedom was intoxicating and I had no moral compass forcing me to go to class. As you might imagine, some of my grades weren't the greatest, especially the second semester.

My first year's transcript came in the mail that summer and I opened it. I had a D. My cumulative GPA was not good.

My mom is a teacher. You don't get Ds in her house.

So here's what I did, and I'm not proud of it.

I made copies of the transcript. Mind you, it was safety paper and when I copied it it read copy copy copy all over it. Never mind that, I worked around it.

I took scissors, tape and white-out and I changed my grade to a B and adjusted my GPA accordingly. I whited-out all the copy copy copies.

After my art project was complete I stuck it back in the opened envelope and left it on the counter for my parents. And you know what? My mom was still upset with my grades and disappointed in my performance.

Imagine how she would have felt if I'd have shown her the D.

It's all worked out. I graduated from college with a less than stellar GPA from a less than stellar school, but I have a great career and I'm not a total loser. Partial loser, maybe. Not complete. It just goes to show how much grades matter in Real Life, right?

OK, that felt good. Just don't tell my kids in fifteen years.

The Sunday Confessional

This week's confession isn't very racy.

I ate two bags of Culver's cheese balls today for lunch in addition to my cheeseburger. They actually call them cheese curds but for some reason I think that name is gross so I call them cheese balls. They're lovely little balls of cheese goodness. And I ate two bags. Which isn't good.

You may recall I've gained ten pounds in the last month. My weekend Culver's lunches is partly to blame. I shouldn't even be eating there at all, let alone being so gluttonous to eat Cooper's side item, too.

I'm a mess. I need an intervention.

Somebody stage an eating intervention for me, would you?

Time for the Sunday Confession

Yep, it's Sunday again, friends. Time for Heather to make an embarrassing confession!

This one won't seem embarrassing if you've never had kids. Or if you had them but it was sooooo long ago that you sleep through the night again. Or if you had them but you don't remember actually raising them. Like, for instance, if you're a dad.

For everyone else, you'll understand why this is Wrong.

My son is fifteen months old. And I still give him...get ready for this....bottles! {gasp}

I know, my pediatrician gave me the requisite "he's ready for sippy cups now" speech when my son turned a year old. And I did dramatically reduce the number of bottles he was getting. And I even made the extremely difficult Great Milk Transition.

I'd done all of this before, you know. I have a three-year-old. So this time, it should be a piece of cake, right? Uh...not so much. I have trouble with this child, doing the old Tough Love routine. Plus, I'm tired. It's so much easier at 5:00 a.m. to give him four ounces of warm milk in a bottle and put him back to bed to sleep until 6:30 than to...well, what would be the worst case scenario? He screams for his bottle? He won't take a sippy? All of the struggling will fully wake him up so that I, too, have to wake for the day at 5:00? I don't know.

Honestly, I don't know. I've never tried it. I just keep giving him bottles.

Well, there's a lot more to the story, like how he wasn't gaining weight like he should and how I kept up with the formula because for a while it was all he would eat and how I worried that his brain wasn't growing like it should because he wasn't taking in enough calories and how I like to sleep did I mention that part but anyway the gist of it is that he still gets bottles.

Monday is his fifteen month appointment. I will be in Dallas. Daddy will be taking him. So of course, none of this will be relayed to the doctor because Lord knows Daddy doesn't know anything about the child's milestones. I mean, he knows he still gets bottles, but if you were to ask him he wouldn't be able to tell you when a baby is supposed to stop getting bottles. By the way, it's one year.

Well, that's it for my confession today! It feels good to get it off my chest. No more shame.

Let's Go to Confession

Sundays are a tough blogging day for me. By then my brain has turned to mush and I'm usually plum out of ideas to write about. So I thought, "hey! Let's implement a blogfessional, where I have to make an embarassing confession each Sunday!" Cause Lord knows I got a million of 'em.

Sounds like a great idea. I'm not Catholic (in fact, I'm Catholic Lite, we call it Lutheran), but confessions are good for the soul.

So here goes, my first Sunday Confession:

I was thirty years old before I knew what to do at a Yield sign. Seriously! I knew I was supposed to slow down, but I never knew the actual rules behind Yield signs until I met my husband.

I think a lot of people don't know that you're actually supposed to stop at a yield sign if someone else is turning. For instance, you're in the right lane, and you want to turn right and have a yield sign. Someone else in oncoming traffic is turning left (so they'll be going the same way you want to go) and they do not have a yield sign. You are supposed to stop for them!

This I didn't know. I can't tell you how many people I must have cut off over the years. It wasn't until I was riding with my husband in the car and he'd get road rage over someone not yielding (stopping) properly that I finally learned how to really handle a yield sign.

Now I see people blowing through them all the time, but I cut them slack and I give them a wide berth. I know they just don't really understand it. They slowed down, they tapped on their brake pedal. They just didn't know you actually have to stop if a car in the right-of-way wants to come.

Whew! That feels good, to get that off my chest. Now it's your turn.