basement begins

These last few months I have been heavily engrossed in basement rennovations. The whole place was gutted and built from new. With much help from a good friend I laid all the click flooring myself! For me, this deserves an exclamation point, I'm normally the least DIY person ever. But with oodles of inspiration from Design Sponge, I am really enjoying my dabbling in the 'handy' world. I'm obsessed with home decor lately and can't pass a decorating magazine without snooping through it.

Coming from the UK, I'm continually surprised by basements. I can't believe how massive our house feels now, just a few months ago it felt cramped and crowded by all my junk. We now have our master bedroom in the basement, I couldn't resist moving our bed down here, we have enough space for a little sitting area, a little sink vanity and GET THIS PEOPLE, a Walk. In. Closet. YES, my dreams have come true!!!

I scored some lovely second hand couches and moved our tv down to the, herby named, family room, with plenty of room for Molly to crawl about (yes, she is now crawling!)

Everything is still in transition, I have a bit more painting to do and a lot of organizing. Until then..

Lebowski Fest 2009

Taking Quispamsis by storm. All 4.5 of us.

On Friday night we (us and two of our good friends) got together to celebrate our 2nd Lebowski Fest (Here is last years effort). We donned ourselves in our Lebowski garb and roamed the local bowling alley (and a rather embarrassing trip to the corner store) discussing superbly nerdy lebowski trivia and debating our favourite Dude-ism's

I chose to incarnate myself as Gutterball Maude. Here is what the real thing looks like:

And here is what I looked like.

How did you achieve such a costume? I hear you cry. Well, there was a LOT of gold spray paint involved. The fork was the easiest part, it's just a devil fork sprayed gold. The skirt was made from a plastic tablecloth, duct tape and lots of scissor work. For the bowling ball brazier I cut some floral foam in half, made some suitable dents with a wooden spoon, went mad with spray paint which made the foam sizzle somewhat worryingly...

** At which point I called into Shane from the deck "my boobs are disintegrating!", which, after nearly 9 months of Breast feeding, is probably closer to the truth than I care to share! **

Eventually the sizzling ceased and I strung 'em together with some gold ribbon and tada - a bowling ball brazier of maude-esque awesomeness! To top it of I spent two days hunting everywhere for a Viking hat and right up until the last minute I didn't know if I had one available to hire or not. So in a panic I grabbed myself a margarine tub, newspaper, duct tape and, yes, some gold spray paint and fashioned myself a viking hat.

By the end of the night my whole costume was looking a little tired. I think most of that had to do with the gold paint compromising the stickyness of the duct tape. But I soldiered on.

My other duty was to find something good for Molly. I decided to make her a Nihilist. You may not realize but it is reallllly hard to find a black baby onesie. So I ended up dying one of her pink ones (I am always happy to reduce the amount of pink in Mollypop's wardrobe!) and labelling her a nihilist with some fabric paint.

I plan on having a lot more fun with fabric paint in the future. Hopefully with a potato stamp next time like this:

from Bits and Bobbins

For those of you who haven't already watched and re-watched the wonderfully brilliant The Big Lebowski: Stop being silly, go away right now and watch it!

Thrifty DecorBaby

Here is a little sneak peek at Molly's room. I plan on getting it all properly photographed and I DREAM of having it featured on Odeedoh. I won't hold my breath, but a girl can dream. It is mostly filled with thrifted finds, and, unintentionally, there is a lot of Dollar Store content in there too. I love to see what can be created on a teeny-tiny budget.

• 'M' plushie - made with Dollar Store felt
• Origami star - made with D S paper
• Frame - thrited for $1 at a yard sale
• Vintage dress on pink hanger - a gift from my MIL (aka Molly's Gran), who spied it at a Spanish market
• Dress on yellow hanger - found this for $2 at Frenchy's (I think it's supposed to be a doll dress!)
• Dress on green hanger - a gorgeous little denim number, gifted from a friend.

I splurged a bit for the hangers themselves. Couldn't resist.

Thanks

Steenink.

Zombies!

This was me headed out to a friends house to see the movie Rec. Or so i thought, there was too much fun being had, so we never got round to the movie. we did have some pretty in depth conversations about zombie related scenarios. In all seriousness, I obsess over what i'd do in the advent of a zombie attack. zombies are not a laughing matter people!!

jeans - tk maxx - ralph lauren (i've considered picking off the label but haven't ever bothered. i'm not a big fan of being branded)

slip - thrifted at value village, it's really long and opaque at the sides.

braided belt - winners waistcoat - topshop - it was a gift, it's pretty snug!

necklace - salvaged from a broken brooch of mum's hair pin - made by me.

summertime and the living is easy

We have had some shiny-shiny-sunshine these last few days. Thus we have been happily lounging on the beach and swimming. We have a public beach just five minutes from our house. It's been so nice to pack up a bag and go hang out under a shady tree, away from the housework, the renovations, the computer... I find we focus so much more on molly when we are all hanging out on a picnic blanket, we can bask in her laughter and marvel at every little expression. She's become a real pro and sitting up by herself, she has been able to do it in brief bouts for a few weeks, but now she is a total pro. It looks so grown up! TOO grown up!

As promised, I got some photos of the other dress I made. It is made from salvaged material. The flower embellishment is from a vintage handkerchief.

"The revolution will be accessorized"

I happened upon a wonderful thing called the Uniform Project. The lovely Sheena Matheiken has challenged herself to wear the same simple black dress everyday for a year. Her purpose is two fold, raising funds for education in India (you can donate via the site) and to play around with the idea of uniform. She describes it much better than I could:

I was raised and schooled in India where uniforms were a mandate in most public schools. Despite the imposed conformity, kids always found a way to bend the rules and flaunt a little personality. Boys rolled up their sleeves, wore over-sized swatches, and hiked up their pants to show off their high-tops. Girls obsessed over bangles, bindis and bad hairdos. Peaking through the sea of uniforms were the idiosyncrasies of teen style and individual flare. I now want to put the same rules to test again, only this time I'm trading in the catholic school fervor for an eBay addiction and relocating the school walls to this wonderful place called the internet.

Everyone seems to have their own opinion on school uniforms. Having been clad in a school uniform myself for 14 years, I do to. I love that a uniform equalizes the financial disparity among students. And yes, I am well aware that it is possible to tell a rich student form a poor one by the brand of shoes or school bag, still, inarguably a uniform levels the playing field somewhat.

Personally, however, I can't help but feel my adolescent life would have been made a whole lot easier if I'd been able to wear what I wanted. I looked SO bad in my school uniform. This was frustrating since I've always drawn a lot of my confidence from how I dress. Disabling my fashion sense therefore disabled much of my confidence. In fact, just this week someone tagged me on facebook in an old school photograph and I did the unforgivable... I removed the tag! I 'did my time' in that horrible suit of royal blue nylon and I no longer want to be known or remembered that way!

Not only that, but unlike most of my friends, I went to a pretty crappy school. Whenever we'd hang out or bump into each other in our uniforms I'd feel like I was wearing a big dunce hat. Maybe I was/am just too proud. But It would have been nice to have felt on par.

But at the end of the day, I am a mad raving socialist. So bring on the uniforms, stuff a copy of the Communist Manifesto in every pocket, and when we feel our confidence sag, let's just look to Sheena Matheiken of the Uniform Project for inspiration.

In no particular order, here are my top 10 favourites from the Uniform Project:

(I believe I may be pining for fall. Many of my choices are very autumnal.) I love these boots and the teal and dusky rose colour together is perfect:

I need these ankle boots :

The colours and the layering of the tights and the stockings are soooo great here:

floaty, summery, lovely :

BOWS! :

plums and pinks - yes please :

She looks so cute here. Very Audrey Hepburn. The little leggings are lovely.

The side parting, the mustard vest, the bow tie, the socks!

Loving the boots and the layering of tights, stockings and leggings!! I must do this! :

The necklace is very sweet and the little black dress looks entirely different in this one :

Pillowcase dress

I've been wanting to try out the classic pillowcase dress for a while now and the other night I finally got round to it. I didn't actually make it out of a pillowcase as I thought molly is probably still a bit too teeny for that. But, I delved deep into my stash and found some cute blue and white fabric along with a scrap of faux bois for the bottom and the picot edged bias tape was perfect for the arm holes and ties. I was so pleased with this one that I made a second one the next night. I might get it photographed tomorrow if the weather permits. I'm about to embark on my 3rd one just to see how I can vary the shape of it for the best fit. If I find the perfect design I may get some up on Etsy sometime.