Sunday, October 31, 2010

New out September 2010-Pattern Review Book

I saw this in the boostore today and thought it look pretty good.  However, I am cheap and did not want to spend $20 for it but at Amazon it is only $13.59.  The ratings are great too. 


On the other end of the price spectrum is this book also from Amazon and with a 5 star rating. Fitting and  Pattern Alteration.


This little baby, 496 pages and $100.49 must be really good but that 49 cents will keep me from purchasing it this year. Ok, this lifetime "smirk".

I love books but these past couple of years I turned to buying from the local book sales.  Honey and I went to the local library sale a week ago.  I was not feeling great and only bought a few books because I wanted to go home.  The books were a bargain at $2 for hardcovers and 50 cents for paperbacks.  I got a great 1963 cookbook that I love.  It has wonderful original illustrations and the recipes are ones I'll be using too.


Wednesday, October 27, 2010

Greatest thing since sliced bread! IMHO

Ok, it is not sewing, not even crafting, but you still need to know about this with the holidays coming.  Then the next thing you know it is New Year's with those darned resolutions.  You'll really thank me then.  So on to the "Greatest Thing".




It is listed at Amazon for $24.69 but I bought mine today at TJ Maxx for $12.99.  Sorry, they only had the one in my store.  I love chopped salad and had been using my kitchen shears to do the job and wishing for something better.  Boy, is this better!  So easy and the salad we had for dinner tonight was great.  It tasted like those expensive salads from nice restaurants.  I used a small plastic box of salad 50/50 blend, a Pink Lady apple, dried cranberries, buttermilk bluecheeese, walnuts, and roasted chicken breast. I tried a new salad dressing ttoo, Teresa's brand of Watermelon-Cucumber Vinegrette. This is a very light dressing, not too sweet and I think almost everything commercially made is too sweet. Oh, and topped it with croutons of course.

I give this a 5 star rating and I don't think I have ever given anything a 5 star rating before.  Buy one and impress your dinner guests this holiday season, enjoy a quick light dinner after a long day shopping, and get ready for the New Year diet resolution all with the same purchase.  See--definitely worth your dollars.

I'll try and post soon with some crocheting I done in the past and a new project I am working on.


 

Thursday, October 21, 2010

Pretty Snazzy Looking Homemade Dress Form

Directions from Threads magazine
Click link above for complete instructions

Sure, you've probably seen a version of a homemade dress form before.  But did it look this great? 

Wednesday, October 20, 2010

Southern Living Xmas Book is not new!

I have a small collection of Southern Living Cookbooks and Christmas books.  Last night I took out two of the Xmas books, 1999 and 2005 issues.  After looking at them both I realized that I was seeing the same recipes! Then today I purchased 2 of the 2010 Xmas books at Dillard's Department Store.  Guess what?  The same recipes are in the 2010 books too!  I am returning these two books, after all I have the recipes, only the cover was new.  And of course I did not look to see how many recipes are the same but it is fair to say that many are the same in 1999, 2005, and 2010.  These are my last purchases of Southern Living books of any kind.  It really is too bad this used to be a good company.

Tuesday, October 19, 2010

WARNING!! Fashion TMI

So this has been on my mind since last week when I saw the back cover of a ladies magazine.  The back cover was an advertisement for Fruit of the Loom panties "Don't be embarrassed by panty lines".  When did panty lines become an embarrassment?  Of course, I mean this in the normal course of things--normal clothes with normal underwear with a normal fit with normal people.

See the problem here?  My normal is not your normal maybe.  Actually I am happy to see that people are wearing their panties.  It's the no panties, thong songs, too tight pants, and butt cups that I find disturbing.  And in full disclosure:  I worked at a university and one of my programs was Dress for Success.  Also, I did classroom workshops on Professional Dress, Resume Writing, Interviewing, etc. 

In these workshops I did not address underwear but did talk about "butt cups" meaning your skirt fits too tight and cups under your butt.  I also spoke about "Boobage" not cleavage but "Boobage" meaning you wore something low cut to a job interview, showed your taa taas and behold you are a BOOB!.  Don't show your "boobage" during the day and especially at a job interview.

Back to panty lines.  Panty lines from thong songs means--if I can tell you are wearing thongs, I can see your pants climbing up your butt, your butt dimples, and other TMI. (And I mean if I see your thongs--maybe you have good clothes on and I don't see your secret thrill.) I once worked with a woman (not in higher ed) who wore thongs with her too tight pants, and I could have counted the cellulite dimples on her butt.  She also wore low cut blouses that showed the hair on her chest and did not shave her moustache either. This did not make her a bad person just a person with bad fashion sense and poor grooming habits.

That is the back view from wearing the wrong underwear.  From the front we have the dreaded "camel toe".  Yes, I know, it sounds ugly and makes me cringe.  But please, I don't want to see it let alone have to write about and warn people to beware of this terrible creature.

Then there was the higher education conference I attended.  One of the speakers had on a too thin shirt with a too thin bra and her high beams were on.  I'm sorry were you saying something?  I hated to do it but for the critique on the conference workshop I suggested a change of clothing for the next day without the distracting high beams.  She got the message and wore more appropriate clothing the next day.  Really, I hated, HATED, to do this but not doing anything seemed even worse.

My mother always made sure that I had the appropriate underwear for my outer clothing and sometimes just matching underwear for special occasions.  I had a strapless bra in my early teens for a top that had lace straps.  My mother made that top and the matching jacket too.  For my junior prom I had a beautiful yellow chiffon halter dress and matching long half slip and panties. 

So now that I have convinced you that I am either wearing bloomers or granny panties I will share that they are French High cuts.  They are also hard as heck to find these days.  When I was younger it was bikini panties but those days are over.  I think panties should cover, should contain, and control those things that need controlling, containing, and covering.  Panty lines showing?  This should not be a problem unless the outer clothes are: Too thin, too tight, too short, too. . . .well you get the idea.

So a posting with no photos?  Really?  These are things you don't want to see.

Friday, October 8, 2010

Okkkaay, so maybe NEXT week I can blog

Another trip this week to the doctor for different meds--BLAHH!  I am sick of being sick!

The fews things I did accomplish this week are:

Meeting with the non-profit lady and showing her my work on the database.

Doing my first batch of letters for the non-profit group.

Baking a pound cake.

Baking buttermilk bread.

Bathing Dog #1 early in the week.  Did not feel well enough to manage doing the two on the same day like normal.

Bathing Dog #2 this morning.

And lots of laundry for today so I guess I am off.

Project I hope to get started today--crocheting an afghan for a Christma gift (perhaps, maybe I'll keep it)

Have a great weekend and I hope to have something blog worthy soon.

Friday, October 1, 2010

Maybe next week I can blog

I have been sick and not on the computer except for a couple of days these past two weeks.  It's the usual stuff for this time of year, sore throat, clogged head, etc.  But finally I think I might be getting over this with the help of about 4 bottles of medicine including antobiotics.

The one thing I have accomplished these past two weeks is a lot of reading.  I did take time to post them on Good Reads although I have discovered no talent for writing book reviews.  This is an art that must be learned and there are some sites to help learn this.  Maybe I'll invest a few minutes on that one day.

The only other interesting thing in this house is the high drama dog fights.  In the past two weeks we have had 3 fights!  First fight, Dog #1 had a hole in the butt bite, this is almost healed, fight two, Dog #1 got an ear bitten.  Head bites are always the bloodiest and with her shaking her head our house looked like a crime scene.  Now I need to purchase a new lamp shade since I had to throw one out due to blood speckles all over it--yuck!  Fight three was last night, Dog #1 got a small bite on her side plus a few head bites and Dog #2 got bitten on the area where her front leg meets her chest.  She is sore and walking very slowly today.

It has become clear to me that you could get murdered in our neighborhood and no one would notice.  After all the noise last night from the dog fight no one seemed to notice at all. This is probably a good thing since the Honey ran out of the house in his underware to help me break up the fight. I lost my shoes and jacket during the fight,  Dog #1 lost her collar at some point too and Honey lost his temper :)  I don't know why but I am always calm during these things and follow up immediately with checking dogs for damage once they are separated.  Honey is still cussing and threatening to kill the dogs.

Oh well hopefully things will return to normal next week for all of us.