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 :)