Fancy New Dress

We have gone out two nights in the past week and both nights I've worn this little number, newly constructed from four thrift store shirts (Total cost: about $3).



I really dig the horses print -the colors grab me. When I put it with the turquoise my heart just melted.



This was so easy to do - just four seams on the serger, and a few side adjustments. I love the way I feel when I have it on.

Linen and sweater skirt

At the thrift store I bought a pretty salmon colored cotton sweater with a beautiful knit pattern. It was a terrible cut but lovely knitting. Also at the thrift store I found a raspberry colored linen skirt that had cute pockets but was just too short. This weekend in a flash of inspiration I saw that they should be together and this was the result! I love the gentle scallop to the bottom edge, and tone-on-tone color schemes are very hip right now. I'm super pleased, and I have another linen skirt and sweater combo to try this out again this weekend. As a bonus, the sweater arms were chopped off to make some matching arm warmers...

Recycled shoppin' bags

I've seen a lot of good solutions online to the plastic shopping bag problem. Let me show you the two that are working for me. Above: Our big grocery chain has these great roomy $0.99 bags with straps that perfectly slip over the shoulder. They also have an atrocious logo (I mean really, super ugly). that made me not ever want to use them. I solved that, with a net gain of two pockets! I cut the leg bottoms off a pair of thrift-store pants and sewed them on over the logo. People ask me about this bag (and its sisters) constantly.


This rumply thing is rumply because it gets used. It is made from an old super stretchy tee-shirt, and modeled after a standard plastic shopping bag. I have shoved so many groceries in this bag and it's never complained. But for such a big capacity it sure stuffs down small to fit in a purse! I love that I always have it to take with me for any quick run into the store. The straps on this one fit well over the shoulders too. Surely you have a stretchy tee that could have its arms cut off to make a bag? Just take a plastic bag and use it as a guide for where to reinforce the corners and straps. Don't bother finishing the raw edges, they won't unravel, and finished edges will just make the bag less stuff-able.