Project Run-away

Oh dear, oh dear dear dear. I have to say this season is not impressing me at all. Can we go back to the good old days and relive season 4 with all the big avant garde looks from Chris Marsh and Christian Siriano, I mean I’d even take the constant production of draped jersey dresses from Rami Kashou over this weak excuse for fashion that these ‘designers’ are churning out. They’re no longer making runway looks they’re making ready to wear clothes. We see now the effect of Gretchen’s win from last season. From being called ‘boring’ ‘safe’ ‘drabe’ and ‘mall clothes’ to winning the season, and now it’s boiled over into this season. The challenges are so piss poor that it’s just uninspiring.

I know I didn’t do a blog for challenge 4, I was hoping to catch up a bit this weekend and be able to post a finished first challenge look but my mother hates working with knits. They’re too malleable and floppy for my mom. it also doesn’t act like the fabrics she’s most used to working with, like cottons, so it’s very trial and error. I now have a new guideline of  “don’t you dare do anything with knits again” *sigh* ok. But the 2 knit pieces are almost done and it’s just the cotton jacket over top which, as soon as we find the fabric, will be easy as pie to go together. Or so I’m told.

So anyway episode 4 was to design a look for Nina Garcia that went from day to night and if into her laundry list of demands. This challenge is an easy dress challenge. We’ve got the fabric and design (pattern) all picked out. It’s just seams and a single button. Oh happy day we might finish it in less than a week! I’ll finally get a dress I’ve been wanting finished, double win.

This week’s challenge was so shitty. First, it’s another team challenge and they had to race to see who would be the team leaders. really? we can’t just do the velvet bag again? Then, it was reveled that the race went along with the theme of the week which was to make 3 fashionable looks that went with Heidi’s new New Balance sneaker line, was sporty, and had to have either suede or denim in each look. Oh dear. The results were so over shadowed by the amount of drama that went on. I think I’m just about done with Project Runway. Unless big changes with producers are announced this is going to be the last season I watch. For reals. I’m not the only one who’s saying it either, Laura and the boys have had a few choice things to say about this episode.

Ok onto what I’m going to do with horrible challenge. ok first off I almost never wear sneakers other than my high top converse. Even while in University I never just slopped about in ‘comfy’ clothes. If was wearing sneakers and no make-up all my friends were like “OMG who died?”.  The sneakers are a no go but I will keep in the idea of the suede. We have tons and tons of ultra suede at my house that came from my great aunt after she died. No idea why she had bolts of the stuff. There’s a gorgeous chestnut color though that we’re going to use for a city short with a vest, though not sure about what type of top. I really hate to do a 3 piece look again but all these stupid challenges are constantly about producing separates and I’m not sure what else to do. This time though, no knits, so it should go faster….

Edit: unless that is we have a hurricane the knocks out power for 2 days. At least it was only 2 days this time (Bonny it was out for 8 and Isabelle 7). During the black out my mother and I did what we could of cutting out patterns, finding and selecting fabrics, and making a trip to the fabric store to find patterns. My mother is talented but she does not trust herself without a pattern, I am proud of her for how much she is altering these patterns though for fit and design, though.

deal-o-rama

This morning my mom and I went to this big charity sale held at a local high school. The sale was of a collection of things donated by residents of the Westminster Canterbury, which is a retirement high rise. The proceeds then go to cover the cost of care which the residents are given. The people who live in Westminster though, for the most part are super loaded. Lots of retired military officers and their wives. The sale was advertised in last Sunday’s paper and since then my mind has been thinking up all kinds of amazing vintage goodies that would be in store for me. We got there about an hour before they opened and there were only about 20 ppl in line. by the time it did open though there was a line that wrapped half way around the school.

The things on sale didn’t quite match up with my wild dreams, there was no vintage Chanel purse for $50 sadly. Though they did have some really great things. I got 8 items and spent less than $35. Mainly clothes and shoes because the jewelry was crap by the time i fought my way over there, the books were all military history and ‘best sellers’, and the purses were kinda crappy. But oh well I am still very happy with what I got.

A Blazer

A sweater

and a capelet

a cool little chinese tea pot

a bag (saw one just like it at a consignment place for $40, very happy I found it for $2)

Which then brings us to the shoes. The shoes didn’t disappoint in the slightest. The only sad part about the shoes if how few were in my size. Oh well I was still able to snag a pair of Stuart Weitzman’s for $4

A pair of suede Michael Kors for $4 (not a fan of most of his designs but for that price sure why not they’re cute)

and the creme of the crop

Vintage Salvatore Ferragamo’s for $7!!!

Those were my most expensive item of the day I might add. 🙂

I was very shocked to find them and several other in larger sizes at the sale. Back in March my BFF bought a new pair for herself for her birthday and paid 400 euro or roughly $573 for them… and I paid $7.

After today I feel totally secure in my thinking that one day I will find a Chanel purse in good condition for $200, for I have mad deal finding skillz.

The sale goes on until Saturday but I really doubt I go back because there really wasn’t anything else worth having. I felt sorry for the people who were still waiting to get in when we left 2 hours after the doors opened. SOOO glad that we got there early!

Challenge 3

If you’re paying attention you should be going “huh? 3? what happened to 2?”

Well….

Last week’s episode of Project Runway was the “unconventional materials challenge”. This season the contestants were taken to a NYC pet store and give $300 for supplies. I love the unconventional challenges and how it makes the designers push the limits and design amazing garments. The problem is in my challenges I’m using the guidelines the designers are given and then turning them into items that can then be worn and added to my wardrobe. If I were to try to mimic this challenge I’d have to use fabric instead of hamster bedding and then it is no longer unconventional and the essence of the challenge would be completely lost. Also with the fact that we still haven’t finished the first challenge due to other projects…, it’s best to not burden my mom too much with doing 3 challenges in a week. To read about last week’s challenge check out  Tom & Lorenzo and Laura Bennett’s blogs.

Ok so onward! Challenge 3. It was a bit crazy. The designers were dressing stilt walkers this week. To tell you the truth I really didn’t get this one. Why stilt walkers? And why an outdoor runway in front of fans when they didn’t get a say in the vote? (historically when the public gets to see the looks they get to vote on them) I also didn’t understand what the judges were looking for. I mean it’s stilt walkers and they had $500! I was expecting huge avant garde looks coming down that runway. I wanted oversized dresses and boats on their heads! I thought something like this would be the  coming down the runway

Instead we got this

Huh? Also all the more avant garde pieces were on the bottom for being too costume. The winner is the one on the far right. See it? It’s the all red Gucci Fall 2011 knockoff. (which if this Anthony dude keeps knocking off designers and ending up in the top 3 [his pet store dress screamed McQueen] will be a whole other rant of a blog) Gotta say none of the looks were amazing and the bloggers agree with me. Laura and Tom & Lorenzo

Ok so normal clothes, just on really long legged people. This actually is going to be really easy to translate for me, I mean I’ve got legs so long they might as well be stilts… ok well not really but they are pretty long, which makes finding pants really hard.

The plan is brocade blazer with wide legged trouser and a sheer creme colored chiffon top with a high neck and pussy bow. The idea of the shirt is to hint at/ give a nod to/ maybe kinda knock off Valentino’s sheer femme tops that they’ve done this year. What? I’m allowed to knock off if I want to, I never claimed to be a real designer by going on a fashion designer tv contest.

It’s another 3 piece look, which my mother has already told me that if I keep having multiple piece looks to finish in a week she’ll strangle me. But hey it’s what worked with the challenge, hehehe. Next week sounds like it might be a nice dress project though.

Pictures of the completed first look and the started 3rd look to come in the next few days.

results?

yea no results yet from the first challenge. My mother got roped into make 2 smocked baby gowns for my cousin’s wedding (which is next Saturday) so her 8 month old nieces can be pulled in a wagon during the ceremony. Ugh.

So because she’s again doing baby clothes we haven’t done much on the Project Runway first challenge.

By the time she’s done with the baby stuff we’ll be 3 challenges behind. *sigh*

Hopefully things will get done and this won’t be just another failed attempt of making a wardrobe for Lauran.

First Challenge

Thursday night kicked off the new season of Project Runway and the first challenge was a really strange one. The 16 contestants were woken up at 5am told ‘we’re having a come as you are party, so grab a bedsheet, and follow me’ and Tim Gunn took them on a morning stroll from East side Manhattan, along 42nd st, through Times Square and to Parsons all in their PJ’s. Once in the work room they were told that the materials for the first challenge were what they were wearing and the bedsheet. In a side room their were buttons, zippers, different trims, embellishments, and dye supplies. The results were the normal array of genius and hot mess. The guy who won should have won, the guy who was shown the door, needed to be shown the door.

To give you an idea of what the results were like here’s the winning design before and after

Very good job to Bert! (the winner) I’m not going to talk about the contestants or the drama of the show for that you should check out the blog of  Tom & Lorenzo or former Runway contestant, Laura Bennett’s witty Lifetime blog.

Ok so now for Mom and I’s side of the challenge. We’ve decided, because mom has a ton of fabric stashed away, that instead of cutting up my pajama pants and top we’re going to use like fabrics from her collection. This is a bit of cheat because instead of having to work with piecing together pant legs we’re going to have a full piece of fabric, but whatever.

Say hello to my jimjams that will be acting as inspiration.

Not the best, I know, but not all of us can sleep in Alexander McQueen Plato’s Atlantis inspired jammies (but I would if I could!)

First thing first I sketched out my design.

Not the best sketches ever, but they give an idea and well I never went to design school and learned how to do awesome sketches. With design in hand now it was time to pull fabrics.

Pulling inspiration from my grey and white, Target sale rack, striped pj pants, I pulled this piece of material out of the stash.

and this to mimic the purple t-shirt

For the short cap sleeve vest I’ll be using my ‘bedsheet’ material which will be a 2 1/2 yd piece of navy blue cotton blend (yet to be located)

The idea is to dye the white plaid to a grey. Going to swatch test this tomorrow, desired outcome would be grey with the plaid being a darker charcoal. Fingers crossed that the plaid will actually remain and won’t just get dyed away. The purple is going to make a tank top, kinda generic but the main points of the outfit will be the skirt and the vest. Work on the project starts today, so wish us luck!!

New Dresses

I have been doing way too much internet shopping over the last few days.

That being said I now have the AllSaints dress I was dying to have for my cousin’s wedding and 2 other All Saints dresses. During my last trip to NYC in May I was looking for dresses for weddings, stumbled into AllSaints and fell in love with a dress that was waaaay out of my price range. Chestfallen I took tons of pictures of it in the dressing room with the intent of knocking off the dress.

 

When I showed my mom the pictures she was a little wary because there’s a lot of beading on it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A lot of beading

and of course on the back too (huge pet peeve of mine if the embellishments/patterns do continue onto the back of a garment I hate it, doesn’t matter how cute it was before i saw the back, i will hate it cause it looks trashy. thankfully this had embellishment on the back)

And the thing about the embellishment is it’s not just beads, all those rows and larger beads are shell!

and there’s a lot of detail too check out the collar.

Needless to say the dress was stunning but I was totally bummed out about it being so expensive and them not having my size. (I wear a UK 6 or 8)

On Tuesday though Hautelook had a AllSaints sale, no this dress was no in it but it make me wonder on wednesday if AllSaints would be having their summer sale right now. And they were and this dress miraculously was in the sale and was over 50% off putting it well in the price range of dresses for summer weddings. yay!!! I can’t wait til it comes I’m so excited!

You’d think that would quench my buyer’s itch but no, I had to find this. London Fog blue patent leather tote bag.

Amazon has it for really cheap though so I might have to get this in the next few weeks. 😉

 

ps the Shell dress is so going to Vegas with me this fall when Jonathan and I go on holiday.

pps Project runway starts tonight!! get excited!

cooking on a whim

Yesterday my brother and a friend went spear fishing and he brought home 2 fillets of Tautog. Tonight my dad and I decided to cook dinner with them.

We prepared the fillets by first seasoning both with Chef Paul’s “Magic Seasoning” (I know, but admit it, you’ve used it too at some point) and a french seasoning salt from DishD’lish by Kathy Casey (no clue, it was a gift to my parents and tastes awesome) we then added a squirt of lemon, a drizzle of Santiago Station Sauvignon Blanc white wine, and olive oil. The fish was then wrapped in tin foil and put into the oven at 400F for about 20 minutes.

While the fish was cooking we made the rest of the meal. We decided to do a rice dish and sauté some green beans.

The rice was my concoction which i put together just by throwing things in a pot. I started with organic Basmati rice, which I rinsed and brought to a boil with 2 cups of water as instructed. While the rice was boiling I cut up carrots and onion then sautéed them with some olive oil in a pan. When the rice was almost done I added the carrot and onion mix as well as a sprinkle if black truffle oil. Removed the pot from the heat and let it sit as I began to mince some fresh rosemary from the garden. I then added the rosemary, a sprinkle of cumin, and a few dashes of garlic salt to the rice. I the added some fresh halved cherry tomatoes from the garden to the pot and replaced the lid until it was ready to plate.

While I was preparing the rice my dad was working on the green beans. The beans were another fresh from the garden component of the meal. Dad cut the ends off and then sauteed the beans in a pan with a dash of olive oil, soy sauce, and a very small sprinkle of garlic salt (shh don’t tell mom).

I was a little worried about how the soy sauce would work with the rest of the flavors but actually it complimented very well. The beans were a little salty though and the rice a little on the soft side. The directions said 2 cups for soft rice 1 1/4 cups for firmer rice. Next time I’ll go with less water and more cumin to give it a little more bite but for a first attempt when I didn’t really know what I was doing it turned out great! Now the rice just needs a name…

I even plated the dinner. 😀

projects

even though I do now have a job I still have an insane amount of time on my hands due to having so little hours. I wanted full time but the only person who has that is the manager which is horse excrement. I’m going to make my concerns known next time I work with my manager. Anyway in my loads of free time I have started some projects.

The first project was to fix a dress. About a year ago I made the mistake of wearing a loved American Apparel dress when I was using bleach. I, of course, got a large drop on the dress.

I then had the bright idea to try and save the garment by making a bleached out design. But having no plan of attack and just going at it with bleach it ended up looking like this.

*Sigh* didn’t end up being anything that could be seen in public. A friend of mine had a bleach accident with a dress of hers at the same time as my disaster and her wonderful sister was able to tie dye it out and made the dress look super cute. So I asked if her sister could give my dress a go. Signe kindly looked at it but said the dress was too far gone for help. So I put it away for about a year determined to find a way to make this dress work.

When I moved home my mom suggested that I try using Rit dye to fix it. So i decided on a color. Bleached the dress the rest of the way out and this week I dyed it navy blue.

Using Rit is really easy just follow the instructions on the package. I did mine on the stove top cause I was dying so little and cause I didn’t trust that it would have no lasting effect on the washing machine.

The final color came out really nice looking.

Yay! I saved my dress. Very happy about that.

Another project that I’ve been working on with results to come is painting this picture frame.

I know I’ve posted before about sewing projects but then never actually finished them.(other than the faux fur coat) This is due in large to my mother working tax season until april and me being out of town with archaeology work every week. Now that both of those things have ended we are actually getting some of these projects done!! Here’s a fabric pallet that’s going to be 3 different pieces.

I love apricot colors. They’re going to look super yummy.

My mother has also put forward a rather crazy idea which will enable her to use (get rid of) a lot of her fabrics and which will give me a whole bunch of new looks. The new season of Project Runway is starting on the 28th and my mother has always wanted to do the projects along with the contestants. This year I’m home and she’s very serious about this so we’re going to do it. Our challenge is going to be a bit different. Instead of having 1-2 days at the most she’s going to do a project a week. After watching an episode we will brainstorm and she will have a finished product by the next week’s show. We’ve got a few ideas already for dress challenges.

As for the wacky ones where they use food or flowers or something we’ll do a work around, probably a fabric with the print of flowers, food,etc. There’s actually a mushroom print cotton fabric that I saw at the store which I really like for some unknown reason. I’m secretly hoping that they do a food challenge so i have an excuse to get a bubble skirt out of it cause currently mom thinks it’s ‘too weird’ to actually do. Anyway all of this will be blogged about so watch this space and get excited!

Succulently Sweet

Yesterday my BFF and I spent the day together and ended up buying and planting succulents. This week also I created a profile over at LOOKBOOK.nu. Since I had yet to have posted a look since I’ve been sitting around the house mainly we decided that a little photoshoot was needed.

This is the picture I put up on LOOKBOOK of the outfit. Fun enough the whole look is from Forever21. I didn’t realize until we took the pictures cause I’ve bought each item during different excursions to the store.

The succulents were very fun and look very pretty. The little picture are the top of the collage is my first terrarium and I’m very proud of how it turned out.

These are a few of Gillian’s

And here are mine. As you will notice there are 2 that are empty. I had left over succulents at the end of our hang out time so i went and bought 2 more jars. the big one is going to have 5 of the left over succulents in it and the little one will just have one. I think I’m going to do a post of how to make a terrarium with succulents. It’s very quick, easy, and fun.

Oh also if you’re on LOOKBOOK please go hype my look 🙂

here and there

I’ve not been updating much cause well it’s been really mundane recently. The work at the archaeology gig has finally run dry. I’ve been keeping busy by putting in applications at different places. Most have gone to finding jobs in the UK. Put one in to Museum of London at the beginning of the month. Still haven’t heard back so I’m not too hopeful there. Tomorrow I’m putting in 2 more for different positions also at Museum of London, sounds like they’re both for field archaeologists but it also sounds like they sponsor visas so I’m not too picky. In the meantime I’m getting close to landing a retail job here to tide me over.

Today I got a call saying that they were going to check my references and that they did want me to come in and do an unpaid shift so they can see me in action. I’m fine with both these things as long as I have a goddamn job at the end of it. My references are great and I’m awesome when I’m in action so I *should* nail this thing and be hired by the end of the week.

Today, however, I sat on my ass. It felt kinda awesome. I got to sleep in instead of getting up at 5:30am, packing a bag and driving to Williamsburg. I think the best part was not having to drive through morning tunnel traffic. I played video games most the day, cuddled with the cat, chatted with Jonathan, and finally got around to watching Sherlock (which is a really awesome show, if you haven’t seen it look it up, it’s completely brilliant!)

I’ve also been listening to a lot of Passion Pit (there are 2 songs by them in my last post if you missed it) They don’t have a lot of music videos which makes me sad. 3 of my favs aren’t on youtube so here’s some of my favorite bits of their lyrics.

Cuddle Fuddle

Now I feel silly, selfish and dizzy, but I got this feeling that you’ll forgive me

And oh my [guy], just please don’t ever let me go
Yeah, sometimes we’re high and sometimes we’re low
Put up with me and I’ll make you see things are better when you’re with me

Better things

baby don’t be unhappy
baby don’t be sad
better things are coming
i swear there’s truth in that

do you miss me like i miss you
do i miss you like you miss me

Live to Tell the Tale

god bless that smile on your face
god bless the seeds in the ground
god bless my family’s keen gaze, oh,
i know that whatever happens to you,
whatever happens to me,
i hope that i’ll fall asleep
knowing that you’ll always be
the story with no ending

i never thought you were here
you’ve never left me, have you?
you’ve never left me at all–not once, and i’m sorry i’m such a bore(?)
i’m sorry i am so hard
i swear to god, i’ll be good
from now on

Wow how teenagerish I posted lyrics in my blog…eh whatever not too bother.

 

Oh also R.I.P Ryan Dunn, not sure how you survived half the shit you did on Jackass, Viva la Bam, etc but you did and I’m truly sad to hear of your passing.