Make your own Crop top!

So I bought a pair of high waisted cloth flower shorts a few months ago. I thought they were adorable.. however when I got home and put them on, I realized I only have longer tank top shirts to go with them... Upon wearing them I got the feeling of "grandma shorts." This was only further confirmed when my friends from church were asking why I was wearing pajama shorts in public... Sigh Alas my try at being fashion conscious failed me!

I was browsing Pinterest for outfit ideas when I noticed that most of the girls in the high-waisted shorts, dresses, and pats all had crop tops. As you know from past posts, I am pretty budget conscious and had already met my budget in new cloths for the quarter, so my choices were either not wear the cloths outside the house or make one. So me being me decided that I could make my own crop top. 

For those of you who follow me on Instagram may have seen some of the steps already a couple moths ago but below is the whole project!! 

What you will need for this project: 

Fabric- about a yard (I did an eyelet lace and did a pink cotton fabric for a liner)

Drafting paper - I used news paper because we had it on hand :)

Marker/pen for drafting

Zipper

Thread

Flexible measuring tape (to measure bust and circumference etc

Small ruler/strait edge

Strait pins

The first thing I did was take one of my existing tank tops and folded it under to the hight I was comfortable with and pinned it to save the hight. 

 

Then I folded it in half and laid it on the newspaper and traced the outline. This will make one quarter of the shirt 

After doing this I realized that my shirt fabric stretches and the fabric I was going to cut was not so I took the flexible tape measure and measured the circumference around my chest and divided that by 4 and adjusted my shirt width accordingly.

Make sure to label this one as the "BACK" part of the shirt and make a seam allowance around the edge.

I then traced the "back part" onto a new piece of paper and cut it out. (wow Olympics...see how old this paper is!?)

 Next measure halfway between the bottom of the pattern and make a curved line to the middle of of the arm part (top right) make another line about a cm on either side of the big line and go up about 4 inches.. (better explained by looking at the pic)

I then cut these pieces out and labeled the bigger piece "center front) with the left side saying "cut on fold" (even though I didn't follow my own directions later... sigh) and a reminder to make a seam allowance. The right side I labeled "side front" and a reminder to add a seam allowance.

Next I made my strap pattern. I did this by measuring the length of how I wanted my strap and dividing it by two, I did the same with the width and kept in mind that I would want my cloth to be folded in thirds. **I forgot to make a reminder to myself to cut on the fold and ended up having to to this part twice. :(***

Next I cut out my Pieces

This is the correct layout for cutting out the big pieces on the folded fabric

THIS I cut out in the wrong order :( So I ended up wish weird from pieces

 I need up having to sew the center front piece down the middle of the front and had an ugly seam down my front. Sadly I did't have enough extra fabric to cut a new piece so I tried to make it work.

Next I sewed all the pink fabric to my white fabric. Then sewed the pieces together in the order below. **Keep in mind you want the bottoms to line up so I sewed from the bottom lace part to the top.***

The hardest part was the zipper, I have no tips or tricks for this yet except YOUTUBE... I had to watch like 6 zipper videos and I got it to work

Finally I joined the front to the back and attached the straps! 

 Here is a pic of me with the finished outfit on my honeymoon....

Ok so things I would change now that its finished, I think I made the shirt too long for the outfit, or the shorts just aren't right because they are a loose fabric they make me look bigger then I am. I'm half temped to see if I can make the shorts into a cute skirt... What do you think? would that be a better option? 

 

I'm a bad blogger :(

Wow I'm behind! I took a little vacation that turned into me not blogging at all! I had all these plans and activities in the works and kinda forgot about them/ got busy doing other things. AKA life happened :)

So! Life update! In the last three months (wow has it been THAT LONG?!) I started some projects for future posts: Made my own shirt (next post), Made a dog bed liner for my new rescue pup (post after next), went on a honeymoon finally, (outfit of the day post coming soon!) my hubby made a farm table for our living room, we finished our Guest room, and most of our office/craft room. We also cleaned out our loft and made it into a music room, but its not quite blog ready. AND my biggest accomplishment is probably getting my kitchen clean to the point that it is both clean AND functional/organized. (I say this because I would "clean" by shoving things in cabinets or to one side of the counter..not anymore (that will be a post too!) And finally I have also just celebrated 3 years of marriage with my hubby (JUST YESTERDAY!)!! I have also been doing the whole couponing and saving on groceries but not as diligently as I was doing the last time I posted! (I do however plan on doing a "savings for the holiday's" post. (I have been saving up stuff and am super excited about it!)

Any how I also have some fun stuff planned after I get all that ^^^^^ posted too! I want to do a post to make bow tie collars for my pets because the holidays are coming up! I'll also do more cleaning and home make over posts as we continue to slowly fix up our house. I'll also do a couple posts for the holidays as I've done in the past.

Any ideas? Let me know and I'll see what I can do!

Until next time Feel free to follow me on my Instagram and Twitter because you can get more up to date posts on those outlets!


Until next time

Bre

Bad mommy to the four legged :(

Yep you read right I was a bad mommy today. I noticed Mitzi had some creapy long nails clacking on the tiles today so I made Mitzi "bang" (or play dead):

This is how I've found it best to do maintenance on her such as brushing her teeth, cleaning her ears and clipping her nails. All went well, my clippers have a guard on them and Mitzi is pretty patient with her nails getting clipped so all was going well.... until the LAST TOE.... yep... the LAST one... WHY ME!?!? So the guard fell off just as I was clipping the last to and then snip! off goes a nice sized chunk of her nail... and then the blood. :( man I felt bad

I do have to note that Mitzi is the ONLY dog I've ever come across that didn't yip when I clipped too far... strange patient dog that she is. So I have done this before to other dogs and have used the quick stop that can be bought in the pet stores.... or I'll use a bar of unseated soap if push comes to shove... BUT I didn't have either! So after some quick research (pun intended) I came up with this:

DIY nail Quick stop:
1. Compress and clean the cut nail
2. With a clean rag or paper towel wrap the toe and hold for a couple minutes to slow the flow of blood.

3. Once the blood is no longer gushing mix equal parts baking soda and corn starch together and pack it around the nail:

4. Leave the mixture on the nail and compress for a few more minutes

5. Dust off the foot, but DON'T dust off where the mixture has caked around the nail. (this will come off naturally when the nail gets a natural scab. It will look like this:

6. Finally don't let your pup move for the next half hour at least. Disturbing the foot can knock off the caked mixture and reopen the wound on the toe and that leads to more blood! Luckily Mitzi is really good at playing dead (if I make her stay like this she ends up taking a nap so it works out).

Sr. Murphy

Well with this last week ending, my first week as a house wife begins! So my OCD kind of set in and I made a list of floor to ceiling things to get done. This is one of the positive side effects from my previous job, we would have daily tasks to get done and after basically detail cleaning for seven years I've picked up a few ideas of forgotten cleaning spots. Since living in our house for a little over a year it's sad but true to say my husband and I have kind of slacked on the cleaning department. So, it is an understatement that I was excited to get our house finally clean! I basically committed to tackling a room a day and made a list of things I knew needed to get done in that time:

So yesterday I was all gung-ho on the front room of my house:

I picked up all the stuff I had laying around, vacuumed and shampooed the carpet, cleaned windows, dusted the wooden pieces (from the pictures I know it looks like  I have a bunch of dead space, that's because my hubby needs to make me a formal dining table...) and started even shampooing the small arm chairs... and then this happened: 

The connector of the upholstery attachment came apart (while the machine was on... WATER EVERYWHERE!; although on the plus side I had motivation to mop the tile haha) and now I have to go find a new clamp and figure out how to attach it... (basically this means I'm waiting until my dad comes to visit next because he's a genius and master tool man) So shampooing aside I went about my day and started to tackle the kitchen, (kinda...more like I started munching on things) made dinner, took Mitzi on a walk and got ready for bed. This is when I noticed it was uncomfortably warm in the house, Mitzi was panting up a storm on the bed and my two kitties were sprawled out on the tile in the shower (the SHOWER...common what cats do you know that willingly go in the shower???). So I wandered over to the upstairs thermostat and noticed it was 86 degrees! (I usually keep mine set to 78)... that's when I noticed the fan/vents were working but the unit itself was not... crap... oh and did I mention my phone had been going off all day with Excessive Heat warnings for the whole week; we're talking temps in the 110's... So I contact the tech that I know from my old job (He is a mater at AC units) and tell him what is happening and he reminded me my house isn't that old and should be under warrantee (genius I tell you!). I call the air company that installed the unit and talk to their emergency call department and they assure me I'll receive a call at 7 am in the morning. So I turn everything off, open some windows find every fan I own and try to get some sleep. Then comes the morning, 7 comes and goes, no call, 8 am comes... no call... I go upstairs at 9 and see this: 

Basically its still super hot and no call.. (meanwhile I'm trying to call them and no answer... so frustrating!) finally around 10 am (this is now 12 hours of knowing my AC is broken) I get ahold of someone, they say nothing about the fact I've called a bunch of times and left messages, and now they tell me that someone will come sometime today. So the four leggeds and me have to hang out in this hot house for the time being until the AC guy shows up.... and since its so hot I don't want to continue cleaning things and get over heated. Hopefully my next post will have more profess pics of my house getting cleaner. So until next time have a great week!

If life doesn't quite provide you with lemons for lemonade....

When I got married two and half years ago I was smack dab in the middle of earning my Masters in Direct Practice Social Work. Most of my fellow classmates were so excited to start their careers after finishing their respective internships and graduation; I however, was not. Why you may ask? Because my wonderful new husband's job was 200 miles south of where we were living at the time... this meant any Social Work jobs/ dreams I had for Phoenix were out the window.

So after I graduated and moved south, I just transferred with the job I had already had for the previous five years. This job had gotten me through college and had never been planned to be THE job, but hey, it was a job and I figured it would at least be a check until I found a SW job in Tucson. This however never happened....

It has been a little over two years now that I've lived down here with my hubby and SW jobs never came to my plate for many little reasons that played out over the two year course:
My (at the time of transferring) part time job became a full-time one and ended up taking up ALOT of my time and energy. The idea and desire for Social Work slowly went to the wayside and I started really concentrating on the company that I had transferred with. This lead to me dedicating my time and efforts to being promoted into management positions and had even kind of convinced myself that this job should be my career.  I wanted to convince myself that this job had become more important then what I had gone to school for.

Except something inside me kept nagging that this wasn't working. I found I wasn't happy most of the time: I rarely got to see my amazing husband because of our conflicting schedules, I had the same issue for mine and his family, the connections and friends that I had had when I lived in Phoenix just wasn't the same, I even didn't go to church for over year because of the schedule! I was becoming a very depressed and unhappy person and for those of you who know me... that just isn't me. My love of relationships with people were suffering and I was miserable.

Finally in the beginning of this year my hubby and I found a church that we really loved going to. We took a class there together and started making friends and making HEALTHY connections. For a couple hours each week I was my old self: happy, confident, excited. Most importantly my relationship with my hubby and God were back on track.

BUT and this is a BIG BUT... any time I went back to work I would revert to my miserable self. I hated getting up in the morning and driving to work. There was a role change at work and I was put on special projects and that was nice for a little bit. I focused on new things, but still I had the same feeling when I woke up in the morning.

So after much prayer and council from family, and my hubby I put my two week notice in this week. After seven years and a month of working for a great company I am ready to refocus. Now the question comes up from everyone: what will you do next Bre??? well to be honest I'm not quite sure yet. I always have my Masters to fall back on (I am a little rusty with the clinical aspect of it but I can brush up) but for now I'm going to finish the MANY things I haven't gotten to in the last two years since moving here.

So on this blog I will document as always my photo shoots I do, but I am going to be adding a new element of my life. I will show house organization, cleaning, meal planning, budget planning some (I took Dave Ramsey's class), any cool projects my hubby and I take on, and travels we do (we still haven't had a honey moon!) Hey and maybe sometime I'll even be blessed with a little one and I can document that exciting adventure as well!

So until then I would just like to document first that I think this is the LONGEST blog (especially without pictures!) I've ever written. Also I would like to thank my family for their support and guidance these last few months and the continued support I will get as this new journey in life happens for me. And finally to answer my post title: If life doesn't quite provide me with lemons for lemonade... then I of course realize that I'm not the biggest fan of lemonade in summer any way! I grab a watermelon and eat that instead!... on a picnic, with my hubby, and dog. :)

Until nent time, thanks so much!
-Bre