good day at the Goodwill

I ran by the Goodwill while I was out today and got some great deals. In addition to all this, I also got a pillow (too absolutely ugly to photograph) to use the form inside for a pillow cover we brought back from Hawaii.

Sara Vowell and Geraldine Brooks hardcovers: not dirt cheap but worth it! Rubbermaid 1 quart bottle for .99--score!









Now for the real treasures:

How about this beautiful Indian skirt--that's gold embroidery and sequins on there. The Indian lady I met there was curious about what I was going to do with it. I don't know ... pillow covers? $5.49

Black velvet polka dot tablecloth. This will be a great addition to the Halloween Party kit. $2.99

Cole Porter on vinyl with this great cover! That's going in a frame for sure. Now I have to YouTube "A Little Rumba Numba!" $1.99

And to top it all off, how awesome is this cotton canvas from Ikea?! Two giant curtain panels--5.5 yards of 100% cotton! What will I use it for? Who can tell? Something very cool indeed. $9.99





I got the entire haul for $34.42. Not bad! I promised myself I would stay out of the clothing and just look at the housewares. Next time clothes!

more julia

Here's the latest in my own personal Julia Project--the one where I only cook the things that look good and easy. No aspics or duck boning here. Mastering the Art of Easy French Cooking.

Vichyssouise (cold potato leek soup). Heavy cream, fresh chives, baguette on the side. Good when it's going to be 92 degrees today.

I really need to learn more about photographing my stuff. I swear it looked better in person.

... and some little things, too

While helping out with some Big Things at the campaign office, I thought it would be fun to have some appropriate team apparel.

In 2008 I made this appliqué t-shirt and it's getting some more use this election season.

Last year I got this shirt but it never fit. (Why if you can wear a Youth XL is a Men's S too small? I have since learned to only buy Ladies' cut t's.) So I decided to try one of the t-shirt refashions I have seen on my favorite blogs. I cut up the middle of the sides and up the sleeve seams and inserted this print panel.

I also cut off the neckband and attempted this hemmed-and-raw edge -- hopefully you can see it in this photo. I'll give it a spin at the office on Tuesday!

P.S.  I also thought it would be fun to have some high school spirit wear to wear to watch Frances cheer at the high school football games (and no way was I going for the rhinestone "Cheer Mom"). So I whipped up this appliqué number. I've worn it a couple of times, but no one seems to have noticed  -- hopefully that's because it's so professional looking (and not because they're afraid to mention it).

happy birthday, julia!

In honor of the 100th anniversary of Julia Child's birth, I made her Reine de Saba (chocolate and almond cake) or as it's known at our house, the-best-cake-I-ever-had.

It's been so hot here that the mood for baking didn't strike until 9:00 pm--the earliest you could even consider turning on the oven. I frosted it with her Glacage au Chocolat, but because we were far too impatient to wait for the cake to cool (and it was already after 10:00 by that time) I over-cooled the icing and spread it on the hot cake. You can see it melted and ran down the sides and created a pretty cool ganache kind of vibe.

Making french cake at 9:30 at night seemed like a very New York/Julie and Julia thing to do!

(Thanks to Frances for the great photo.)

dress to tunic

I think the look on Frances's face pretty much says it all. This is a failed dress attempt from a year or so ago. The fabric was some I bought without a project in mind several years back (back when that was unusual for me!) but then I found a sundress pattern I thought was so-o-o cute. Beware the cute pattern with only a drawing, not a photo, on the envelope. Maybe it would have been cute if I had drawn the dress instead of sewing it.





But what to do with the two-thirds-finished dress. Clearly NO ONE was ever going to want this, so it didn't make sense to finish it, but there was so much fabric there, it seemed a waste to just throw it away. So how about a fresh, fun tunic for yoga class?

Given the overwhelming largeness of the dress, it was surprising that it took quite a bit of creative cutting and pasting to get the pieces for the tunic out of it.

Now all I need is a quick trip to Forever 21 (I never thought I'd say that) for a pair of coordinating leggings and I'm ready for yoga class!

Fabric, fabric everywhere...

Sometimes you go shopping for fabric and sometimes it just lies down in front of you. I took Frances to Forever 21 to look for some shorts and found this skirt in the buy-1-get-1-free section. The skirt isn't a good shape for me, but 2 of them (for $12) will give me about 3 yards of really cool cotton broadcloth to make something else with. Maybe a nice simple A-line skirt...

Not the new outdoor fabric

This is not the laminated Anna Maria Horton I ordered for the back porch. It is what was in the package from Fabric.com when I opened it up. The nice folks at Fabric sent the right stuff and told me to keep this 1.5 yard length of really nice slub cotton. Yum! I wonder what I'll make with it?

Hey, how about this? I thought this fabric
looked awfully familiar!