Nothing to see here...

Sorry folks. Failed you again, as there is no project this weekend.

I don't say this because I didn't have anything planned (I did) or because I'm lazy (I sure haven't been) or because I had a fun weekend and didn't get around to sewing (literally the least fun weekend ever). 

It's because if this -

And this - 

Apologies for crappy iPhone photos. 

Is this spring cleaning? You may ask. Nope, that's more fun. This is my craft room, post flood. That's right - we had the most random flipping leak from somewhere, still don't know where, that caused over 40 percent of our basement to flood with water - most damage being my craft room. 

Here's the picture: my husband and I, hanging out watching Shark Tank. Suddenly, the power goes off. I say "I'll get the candles from the basement". And off to the basement I stumble (no power, remember? No lights = a Colette who appears to have never stepped in this house in her life. It happens, but that's not the story). 

So I head downstairs to my craft room with the intent of finding candles and the one lighter that we own but can never find. I get to the bottom step and hear a squish - but I'm walking with purpose now so the squish is on the back of my mind. I get into my craft room and my feet get soaked and there's tons more squishing. Through the back of the basement, I see inches of water (past the tops of my feet). I scream "honey!" with the fear of god in my voice. In reply - a loud "what?!"  Mind you, I use that same fear of god voice when I see a mouse, see a shadow or hear a loud noise, so he wasn't all that concerned. Once I said flood though, man, did he come running. 

Mind you, this whole time we're in the dark. Once we finally got to assess the situation and get out a few "oh shit"s, it came back on. 

We finally got the unfinished part of the basement drained (thanks for too little too late Mr Sump Pump) and all of our (soaked) stuff out of our storage space, and got out our wet/dry vac to attempt to save the carpet. Which pretty much immediately began to smoke and became utterly useless. So the hubby and I spent the majority of the night stepping on towels to soak up water, and rotating new ones out of the washer/dryer. 

To make a long story... well, still long, but coming to an end: we rented a carpet cleaner from Home Depot and strictly used the extractor to get the water out. As you see in the above picture, we are pretty much putting all our faith into a dehumidifier and a bunch of fans. Together, we decided to go with the least intrusive (and cheaper) options before we go into calling everything a loss and throwing out all the carpet. Fingers crossed that that is an option we don't have to turn to. 

In summation - bear with me. I'm tired (enough so that I don't even care about googling which "bear/bare" I should have used in that last sentence), and grumpy, and missed out on shopping this weekend. 

However! Silver lining: it's the holiday season, a three day work week is in front of me and Black Friday fun is quickly approaching. I can stick this out. And I'm hoping my basement can too. 

As for crock pot meal - remember the tired and grumpy part? Yeah, well, it shows in my "cooking". 

That, my friends, is the most simple meal in the world. $10 meal a la Wegmans - pulled pork in a bag. Cook in the bag, open bag, eat meat. Boom. 

Thrift Scores

Happy Sunday Funday! I spent a fantastic long weekend with the family - eating good food and having good fun with good people. In the midst of all the fun, I didn't get a project done. But I thought it might be nice to show ya'll the other side of thrifting - finding things that don't need to be changed at all.

I didn't get to take pictures of all my thrift scores, as they are scattered throughout my house and some are in the washer from a recent wearing, but I found 3 examples from a recent shopping trip that will make my point.

First, there was this find from Merona, a Target brand, for $3.

The belt was my own addition - I could certainly swap it out for a thin black one to make it a bit more work friendly.

The next one got my Syracuse-brain piqued, and I couldn't help but pick up this American Eagle find for $1.50.

The last one I could find is a New York and Company printed skirt find for $1.

I'm not a huge fan of printed skirts, but this one was so bouncy and flowy that I had to pick it up. It doesn't look too bad with my homemade chamois shirt, but I think I would be safer with just a plain white or black shirt - or maybe go crazy with a bold color.

And so I'm not completely letting everyone down - here's a sneak peek of what I'm working on, but was unable to finish by the time I wanted to go to bed. (Fail.)

This one may or may not include a video too.... surprise!

Additionally, I did not get to cooking a crock pot meal either...

... but my mom did!
Here's her recipe:
- a big chunk o' beef
- one packet of onion soup/dip mix (less if you're sensitive to salt)
- one can of cream of mushroom soup.
Throw the chunk o' beef in the crock pot, and throw the onion mix on top, followed by the soup. Then, cook on high for 5 hours ("fall-apart tender", mom says) or somewhere around 8-10 hours on low. Mom served it cut up into portions and slathered in gravy, but you can have your way with it when you it is good and done.

Grab some beef, grab some wine, watch some football and enjoy your Sunday night!!

As always, comment away or catch me at thriftysew@gmail.com.

The Green Monster

Happy Sunday Funday, friends :)

Now, all you Boston baseball fans can go ahead and click off - this has nothing to do with the famous baseball field and everything to do with this monstrosity:

Please try not to judge the sweatpants. It's that time of year that it is really, really cold in my craft room, so sweatpants and long sleeves are quite necessary.

Anyway - this dress was a mess. I picked it up because I'm a big fan of green lately, and it was priced at $1. It was one of those situations that you just don't say no to. I didn't have too high of expectations here. I was quite excited, however, to find pockets. The super dropped waist and the tutu like skirt, though... I could go without it.

First thing I did was disconnect the top from the bottom by unstitching the dropped waist. We were going to pull that waist up.

Next (and I failed miserably on pictures here), I put the bottom over the top and sewed it together with a waist that actually falls at my natural waist. This also solved the long length problem and brought it up to an appropriate knee-length.

Before you get to thinking I'm actually getting good at what I do, let me tell you how erroneous that actually is.

Proof:

This is the top of the dress, which is inside out, and the skirt bottom, which is right side out, and the visible seam in mint green. Also known as... my first mess-up.

I had to rip all that out and go at it again. The second time, I made sure to cut the excess top, and line up my seams correctly. Also, because the bottom was a lot bigger than the bottom of the shirt, I ended up making two pleats in the front and two pleats in the back. This was my first time adding pleats to anything, and I only made one inside out. I'm going to go ahead and call that a "win".

Close up of my pleats in the front.

I wanted to change the neckline, but as you may have noticed from my mess-up photo, I was using mint green thread. Unfortunately, I am finding that my thread collection is severely lacking, as every time I look for a certain color... it is not in my collection. This particular green was not in my collection, so I was unable to do any seams that were going to be visible to the general public.

So, for now, this is the end result until I can own a green thread that matches:

Although it is a bit big, I didn't want to make it smaller and lose the pockets. I did take off most of the sleeve and created a cap sleeve so it wouldn't look so large. Also, to cinch it in a bit, I brought out my trusty belt.

I'm actually quite a fan of this dress. Once I change the neckline up a bit (I'm thinking a good ol' V-neck would do fine), it will be within a normal rotation to my work clothes.

Now, for the new addition of my crock-pot meal. It was another chicken pot today - Pulled Mexican Chicken. I'm not a huge fan of red meat so it's only about a once a week thing in our house. Chicken, however, plays a main role in many of our dishes. Wegman's makes it super easy when they individually wrap it up for us...

This recipe is super easy. There's no link, because it's basically a recipe I made up with the combined use of other recipes of it's like. All you need is:
- 4 chicken breasts
- taco seasoning
- chicken broth

First, throw the chicken in the bottom of the crock pot. Then toss in the full packet of taco seasoning (at the end, I added another packet, so feel free to throw two packets in there if you like it well-seasoned). Then, add some chicken broth. I'd love to tell you how much to use, but I didn't have a clean measuring cup so I eye-balled it. I was aiming for 1 cup of broth, but it was probably only 3/4 cup. I tend to go light-handed when I estimate. Then, cook it on low for 4 hours. After 4 hours, shred up the chicken with two forks, and then put the top back on the crock pot and let the shredded chicken hang out in the juice for a while, but turn off the crock-pot so it doesn't continue cooking.

Enjoy! This is especially good when thrown into a tortilla with some tomatoes, lettuce, sour cream and salsa, but I'm not here to tell you how to eat it, just how to make it :)

Denim Dare Me!

So this week I've got a bit of a copycat going on. I've been playing with the idea of chambray shirts. I can't decide whether it's just a fancy denim shirt and children will laugh at the trend in a few years, or if it's a fun trend that I want to jump on. Looking at stores around me, I didn't find any prices that I was willing to pay. For instance...

You can find this Gap shirt here for $59.99. What. A. Steal. I knew I could do better and, with a little work, I could make it perfect. So, I found this and knew it was meant to be.

First thing I did was lit a candle and got some liquid courage... I'm slightly in love with the tiny little candles available at Bath and Body Works. They're cheap, they burn for hours and they smell delicious. I'm good with that.

The dress was a bit big, so I took it in about an inch or so on each side. I did a straight stitch first, and then followed it with a zig-zag stitch to really lock it in there and not have any embarrassing holes should a stitch break somewhere. This didn't have to be pretty because no one would see it. Once it was sewn, I cut off the excess.

Next, I cut the dress shorter. I cut it about waist-length and hemmed up the bottom. I saved the bottom scrap, as it was a rather large scrap and a very soft denim as I'm sure I could use it for something. I also made sure to pop off and save the buttons - never can have too many buttons!

That was that! It was a super simple fix and, in my not so humble opinion, it looks fantastic. Bonus: it's super comfortable. I rolled up the sleeves to make it look like the original and I was good to go.

This is probably going to be a normal addition to my weekend rotation. Until children start laughing at the trend.

In other news, I'm getting back into the habit of doing crock-pot meals on Sundays. These are so easy and laid back and super simple to throw together and go about your day. I've decided I'm going to make this a bonus on my posts - whenever I throw together a crock pot meal while I sew, I'll include the recipe on here as well. I hope you benefit from lazy Sunday's as well by using some of these recipes (often stolen from Pinterest).

Today's Crock Pot meal - Chicken and Stuffing.
Ingredients:
- Chicken breast (skinless, boneless and what have you)
- Stove Top stuffing (1 package)
- 1 can cream of chicken soup
- 1/2 cup sour cream
Here's my favorite part: throw shit in the pot. Put the chicken on bottom and cover with the stuffing mix. Mix together the sour cream, the soup and 1/4 cup of water and throw that on top of the stuffing. Then put the cover on it and stick it on low for 4 hours.
*Disclaimer: As I'm writing this during my 4 hour wait, I can't really tell you it's delicious. It could suck, but that's just the risk you take.*

Happy Sunday :)