Retro Romper Tutorial

Hi friends!! I am so excited to share this tutorial and pattern! You can download the pattern for size 4/5 HERE and 6- 12 mnths HERE. If you don't feel like making your own make sure to leave a comment to win them HERE. First I just wanted to mention a super quick housekeeping item. After Dana's bizarro situation HERE (which she of course handled with superb grace and dispensed some invaluable information simultaneously) I decided to license the information presented on my blog (as you can see to the right at the top). I also am probably going to make my pictures unclickable. If you would like to share some pictures from my site I would LOVE it. All you need to do is drop me a line and I will send them your way! I am also working on copyrights for all my patterns (it helps to have a husband who is a lawyer ha!). Again please feel free to use the patterns to make as much as you like and even sell the products you make, just please do not reuse the pattern itself in any form. Muchas gracias amigos! Okay now on to the fun stuff! I wanted to thank my amazing friend in Jakarta who went and got the boots and stuck them in the mail for me and I thought it would be fun to make her cutie a romper. I had just received the cutest striped fabric from Little Lizard King (a great store on Etsy with fun fabric and patterns!). The funny thing is half the tutorial pictures were mysteriously deleted from my camera so a few of these pictures will be from the green gingham romper, don't let it weird you out :)

What you will need:

1 yard main fabric

1/8 yard lining

1 yard elastic

Iron

Safety Pin

Sewing Machine

Scissors

PR&P: Retro Romper Rainbow

This week on Project Run and Play the theme was retro/vintage! I was so excited about this topic, then had a bit of a struggle, as discussed here ha! But thanks to all your comments I remember this is meant to be fun and a chance to be inspired! I decided to go with a project I had been wanting to do for a while, a vintage inspired romper. I love the halter romper from Wovenplay but didn't want it so bootie short :).

When I went for fabric at the local fabric store I found the gingham in so many colors I had to make several and thankfully some of Evie's friends were willing to be my models!

They were so much fun to photography and were just adorable!

I wanted a solid splash of color around their wastes so I made solid color belts to tie around the elastic waist (all about comfort when cuties are involved) :)

I made the fabric flowers that can be worn on the belt, or if they don't want a belt on the halter strap or in their hair :)

I made the girlies little headkerchiefs but forgot that Zahra is in fact tiny, super tiny so everything was a bit big on her cute little frame.

When I told the girls to take a break they were so cute and stood around talking about their boots

My wonderful friend sent the boots from Jakarta and thank heavens Zahra's feet were tiny enough to fit in the green ones

There was some adorable orange gingham but I couldn't find any boots that would go with it. But I had to throw some orange in there somehow.

I knew it would be raining and I while doing my research I read THIS article that talked about lined princess coats for them to wear.

Evie refused to wear her's, I mean threw a positive fit when I tried to keep it on her ha! I love how the colors look together. Which is why I am giving them away as a set!!! If you would like to be entered to win all you need to do is leave a comment! (if you don't want them but still want to leave a comment, I would love still love it) If you would like to make your own the pattern for size 4/5 is available HERE and the 6-12 month size is available HERE. I will be doing tutorial for the rompers on "Make It Monday". Now, if you have a moment and wouldn't mind hoping over to Project Run and Play to vote I would LOVE it! My fingers are crossed that I make it through because I have the best idea for next week :) Thanks for all you support!

Featured!

I am positively thrilled to be featured today on the front page of We All Sew!

I have been going to this website forever it seems and am kinda in shock to be on the front page! (I keep refreshing my browser expecting it to disappear ha!) If you haven't you should absolutely hop over and check out We All Sew. It is a great place to find answers to any sewing questions you have and find other fantastic sewing blogs. I also love their idea of sew and serve-- fantastic. Thanks ladies for featuring me!

Tricks and Trade Secrets Thursday

First I have to say a huge thank you to everyone who left comments on the last post. You were right on the money. I did enter this competition to have some fun and be inspired and I should be true to my personal style and what I love. You have no idea how much the comments meant to me. They gave me the kick in the boot-eh I needed to get out of a funk and movin' again! My family thanks you to because after the boot-eh kickin' I moved on into the kitchen and made brownies ha! By the by, yes the pictures were from this weeks entry, yes there will be a pattern, in multiple sizes (woo hoo) and I will be giving away the set to one lucky winner (unfortunately not the boots though, I just can't part with them). Be sure to check back on Saturday to see the entire outfit, get the pattern, the tutorial and enter the give away! Speaking of give aways.....

The winner of the Couture Cutie dress is:

Erica said... I voted... by the way your blog is my favorite and that is saying something because I have a ton of craft blogs that I look at. 

Thanks Erica! That is a HUGE compliment. I can't wait to get your dress to you so please email me your address so I can wing it  your way!

One Picture, Three Actions
I have mentioned before that I use photoshop actions. Today I thought I would talk a bit more about them. They can be controversial to some but as photography is a love of mine not our sole financial support I feel like anything that helps my editing process move faster is a friend of mine! There are tons of action packages out there. I currently own the following sets, Totally Rad's mix, Lilly Blues entire collection (although I almost exclusively only use "honey" and "simple sue" the rest just sit there), all of Nicole Van's and some of MCP's.

Before we totally jump in let me explain to those who aren't obsessed with photography what an action is. When you are working with a photo in photoshop you take several steps to manipulate the photo into the way you want it. You may be up-ing the saturation of color, blurring for softness, turning it black and white, sharpening it for detail (which is called unsharpening... don't even get me started on THAT). All of these things take several steps often involving layers, histograms and curves. It can get pretty technical. An action is essential a recording of these steps that a photographer has put together and then sold (or given away) for use by others. Once purchased and downloaded these actions will appear in your "actions" drop down menu. Now instead of my taking 5 minutes to get the photo to the desaturated look I love I simply hit the "play" button and photoshop does all the work for me in seconds.

I am then left with "layers" that I can tweak to my desire. I have gone through lots of stages with my photography (I think this is how most photographers are). When I first started I loved the heavily textured pictures that Nicole Van's actions provided.

Then I kinda moved on to loving black and whites and sepia.

These days there are two actions I use on almost all of my pictures and both are from Totally Rad. The first is Boutwell's Magic glasses. This action gives your focus/blur that extra kick into high gear. It is amazing. But be carefully when using because if you don't have good focus to begin with, this action will only augment that fact (even with photoshop and all the actions in the world you still need a great picture to begin with!).

The second is Lux. This desaturates the pictures in a way that I love. I usually drag down the opacity of the desat level significantly but I love how it evens out the tones and subdues flare outs. Both of these actions are included in the TRA "try 'em" download found HERE. I thought I would show you the fun you can have with actions on the same picture. The original picture is one of my favorites that I have taken while here in Timor and is a total candid just happen to capture it photo. It is of my beautiful friend Nicola in the water when we visited the island of Autauro. This is the straight out of camera shot:

It needed some cleaning up but I knew right away I would love it. First I ran Boutwell's Magic Glasses. I always do this first because it tends to darken the pictures a bit. I then ran TRA"s Yin/Yang and lightened up her face. At this point I save the picture so I can go back to it as a base of sorts. After saving I thought it would be fun to mess around with Nicole Van's new set Ethereal. Because I like adding texture to pictures I selected her "sunshine plus texture" action and let it rip (there is also a "sunshine" with no texture if you prefer). I repositioned the flare, toned it down a bit and erased the line it left one repositioned.

This gave it a fun "retro/ I am crazy about sunflare" kinda look. While I thought this was cool I didn't really think it looked very real, so I started over again. This time I selected NV's "Mist plus texture" from the Ethereal group. I thought this turned out, well, very ethereal looking ha!

Finally I had to give it a go as a black and white. I used TRA's "boring old BW" and then Lily Blues "carmel tone"on top  at about 15% because I think every b&w needs to have just a touch of brown to de-purplefy it.

I think this one is my favorite. But then again I am always partial to B&W. Aren't actions fun? Next time we revisit them (which won't be for a while) I will show you some more extreme examples from Nicole Van. She really doesn't mess around as far as actions are involved ha! I hope you learned something worth while!

Then, There Was A Breakdown

This week has been a frustrating one. Mainly due to the lack of Internet and my having to bum off of our sweet neighbor to do anything online but also from my crazy anxiety over the Retro Week theme on Project Run and Play.

When we first got the theme I was thrilled because I LOVE doing retro clothes. But I feel like lately my toned down style is not cutting it for the competition and I need to be more over the top. The problem is this really goes against the grain for me and I am the first to admit I am not good at it.

So, this week I had a bit of a mini melt down. I had finished my project before this sea of self-doubt hit and it had taken a lot of time and a wonderful effort by my friends with little cuties here. I absolutely love the little outfits but once again they are pretty I dunno... "simple"? Compound that by my friend (who I demanded to be brutally honest) letting me know that they are super cute... but maybe not cute enough to win a contest. Ugh a mugha. I have actually begun working on a retro boys suit as a back up but in the middle of that I realized once again I was doing a more classic look not an over the top look. I guess what I am saying is if you have any fabulous over the top ideas and can send me a link to a picture, I would LOVE it. Or should I just go with what I already made? Oh this is totally giving me an ulcer. Maybe I should just be grateful I will get eliminated this week and just end the stress ha! I am planning on catching up with my Tricks and Trades Thursday post and announcing the winner of the Couture Cutie dress this afternoon (Oz time) I just had to get my anxiety out. Hope you lovely friends are having a more stress free day!

Holy Mackerel!

I feel I need to be honest about my motivation behind "What's cookin' good lookin' Wednesdays. Cooking dinner seriously stresses me out. This has been multiplied by a million since moving to Timor where there are always runs on items (currently you couldn't find butter to save your life) so you have to constantly be changing your menus according to what happens to be available at the TINY grocery store that day. The red meat here tastes appalling and if you would like chicken you must buy it whole and then cut it up yourself (which is what we do most days). I am sad to say I am not one of those amazing blogger girls who loves to do every craft and cook, baking? Yes. Coming up with a new meal every night that is nutritious and delicious? Not so much. I thought if I set aside one day a week on the blog to devote to cooking it would guarantee my family gets at least one good meal HA! It is really not that bad. We probably end up doing "Brinner" only once every 3 weeks. Anyway, almost as if to off set the shortage of palatable meat here there are always fresh (and as organic as you could get) veggies and fruits that are super cheap, although sometimes questionable in quality. The other item available in droves is--fish. Ugh. Something else you should know? I hate fish. I know it is totally odd for a girl who grew up next to the beach to hate fish but I do. I try so hard to like it but I always end up gagging. My husband LOVES fish, I mean L-O-V-E-S it and we both really want our children to like it, which means it must be made, and made often. Luckily a wonderful friend of ours who works here with USAID owns a boat and started up his own little NGO. Every weekend he takes out the same group of local guys and they fish all day. On their way home Peter sends out a text letting us know what they hauled in and that it will be available in front of the embassy. The guys then debone, flay... whatever the fishy term is the fish and separate it into generous amounts in freezer ziplock bags for five bucks each!!! All the money the local men keep so it is also a great deal for them. How easy and awesome is that? This week they caught Mackerel. The boys were soooo bummed when they saw they bag. They were totally hoping for "a fish with eye balls" :) (Mommy was sooo grateful for the bag) We received five large cuts.

I kinda thought they looked like mustaches or lips smiling at me.

Sawyer was positively giddy to help me prepare the fish.

He even helped light the grill (All eyebrows remain intact). I didn't know what season works best with Macrel and the internet wasn't work so I went with what my mother in law (who is a fabulous fish chef) uses on salmon, lemon and old bay seasoning.

I cut four lemons in half and Sawyer squeezed the guts out of them

(He also learned the valuable lesson that lemon juice and cuts are not a happy combination-- but he was "brave" enough to continue) We then shook on a hefty amount of the Old Bays and wrapped them all up in tinfoil and threw them on the barbie. While that was cooking I made some couscous.

I LOVE couscous, especially here in Asia when I feel like I am eating a bag of white rice everyday.
Surprisingly enough you can find quite a few varieties of it here, but plain is still my favorite. I couldn't find any fresh peas at the veggie market today so we resorted to our frozen stash. We invited out wonderful neighbor Brenda over for dinner (who also does not like fish), because apparently I need moral support when it comes to eating seafood. I am happy to report that is was delicious!!! The Mackerel didn't taste anything like fish ha! I actually had two helpings (the second was mainly a result of  reminding myself how crucial Omega 3's are and how little I actually get). Evie packed hers away and it only took minor coaxing for the boys to eat theirs. If you are like me and are not a fish fan and happen to get cornered in a situation where you have to eat it, go for the Mackerel my friend. You will NOT regret it. For you fish lovers out there if you have a recipe that involves fish, that you love please send it my way, especially if it ends up barely tasting like fish ha! I hope your dinner was as happy as ours!

Come back tomorrow to find out the winner of the Couture Cutie dress! Thanks for all your comments, I love reading them!

Take A Look Tuesday: Extreme Boys Room Makeover-- or at least a little bit of a make over

Today is our one year anniversary of living in Timor!!!! I cannot believe how fast the time has gone. I still feel brand new to the island. In spirit of that, I thought I would let you in on a side project I have been working on, but first a little background. One of the great yet simultaneously yucky things about the Foreign Service is that the homes you live in are furnished. You can bring some of your own furniture but there is a weight limit so you have to decide what is most important to you. This was great for us since before this we were poor college students so we found this arrangement was totally to our benefit :). The only problem with this is that it is a bit hard to feel like you are "home" when all the furniture is chosen by someone else and chosen with being palatable to several different families that will pass through that house in mind. We are VERY lucky here in Dili and have gorgeous Ethan Allen and Drexel Heritage furniture. I don't know who picked it out but they deserve a pat on the back. The bummer part about it though is all we really brought with us are the crazy amount of pictures I have and since our walls are made of metal (have a I mentioned that before? It is raining right now and with a metal roof and walls it sounds like the world is coming to an end, you totally wouldn't know it when you look at them though, thankfully) there is nothing for nails to grip into thus it is really hard to hang anything. We have been experimenting with different 3M hooks to see what weight they can hold etc. Having said all this I am currently on a quest to make our house feel more like our "home"... because um, we have lived her a year now and I still kinda feel like I am in an extended stay. I am starting with the boys room. While they are still young enough to not SUPER care what their room looks like I am taking over! (Funny side note, as I was typing this Sawyer came out and informed me that he would like the Buzz Lightyear bed that has wings on the back for his birthday, ha! The irony) I have been using Pintrest, which I adore and you can follow mine if you like by clicking on the link to the right, to put together a color board of sorts for what I am goin' for.

I already have the two chevron fabrics pictures above and am planning on making new duvets this weekend. We also received the cool leather shag rug this week (which is super duper stinky). I received the boys personalized Elk prints yesterday and love how they turned out. I have already made the Anthropologie starfish in a bottle knockoff (it can be seen on the table in THIS post). I actually went back and did it a little better the second time around, the starfish...not the table, that challenge was a bear ha! I am really excited to prepare tutorials for the square sitting pillows with handles from Restoration Hardware.  There are a plethora of tutorials out there to make fabric covered pin boards and in the end I don't know if we will have the wall space. The boys room has huge built in wardrobes that span an entire wall (and are made from an orangey wood -ick) We are one of those odd sets of parents who give the master bedroom to their kids. We just figure since we don't have a toy room anymore it is just better for everyone if they have the larger room and thus can keep ALL their toys in there and not scattered all over the house. (Plus the second largest bedroom has a large walk in closet unlike the master- odd right?)
Anyway, I was hmming and hawing about what to do for a play table. I love the one pictured above and thought about having it duplicated. In the end though I really want to support Sawyers LOVE of drawing and creating so I designed a trestle table for them that has little shelves to store baskets containing paper, pens, crayons etc. I took my drawings to a local woodworker and they went to work making it out of gorgeous teak. I was able to pick it up today and am thrilled at how it turned out!

It looked even better once it was all dusted off, there was wood dust flying in that place!

It was fun watching the guys work their magic on different pieces. I totally spotted an Ikea bench being duplicated and another trip trap chair (all of us moms had them made from our friend Jeanne's original, a mere $40 dollars as opposed to $250 ha!) This fellow in particular was an amazing widdler.

When I ordered the table I also brought in one of my large prints from WHCC (if you are a budding photographer this site is the BEST!) and had them make a frame for it. There is no way a frame would make it all the way to Timor in one piece so I thought this was really my only option. They did a beautiful job

(Finn asked me to paint his face like a chipmunk while his friend Roman was over today. I obliged but then later he fell down the slide and cried most of it off. The locals got a kick out of what was left and kept taking pictures with him with their phones)

They were the nicest people! I am really excited to go back Friday and pick up the two stools made to go with the trestle table. I will absolutely be going back to them to have them make the wooden toy bin on castors pictured above. It has been fun supporting a local business and having one of a kind pieces made. I am planning on posting some before pictures together with the big reveal, but I am still waiting on my staple gun to pounce on the fabric head boards ha! So that is what I am working on in my spare time--- yes, this is why it has taken months to get this far ha!