When it comes to dressing up while flying, we don’t do it by halves.
Back in 2007 when I flew for the first time to visit my grandmother, I made a brown and white hounds tooth suit specifically for traveling. The suit has a vintage flare, so I paired it with retro heels, my mother’s brown hat and my sister’s white gloves. Traveling with me was my dashing brother in his dark suit, bow tie and top hat! We really made quite the pair, if I do say so myself. Before we had even boarded the plane, a nice gentleman asked if we were actors and then wanted to take our pictures. He appreciated that we just wanted to dress up and set a standard for the modern traveler! We heard many other comments throughout the airports, including some from pilots and flights attendants, security personnel, etc.
My grandmother did not really appreciate how dressed up we were, but we didn’t let it dampen our spirits. She has been affected by family near her and has become quite casual. Somehow I imagine it would have been the other way around fifty years ago; the kids wanting to be causal and the parents dressing up. Oh, well! On the way home, we dressed up again and had our older sister with us as well. It really was quite humorous to be casually eating breakfast with our aunt one minute and then be completely dressed up ten minutes later when she came back to pick us up! Movie stars!? Indeed.
When my four sisters and I flew to visit friends two weeks ago, we dressed up. Not quite as fancy as the trip before mentioned, but dressed up enough. Most of us wore wool skirts in various pleated, plaid or kilt designs with nice tops or sweaters, tall leather boots or classy shoes and hats. All five of us wore hats; pageboys, berets, or vintage hats. Five girls marching through the airport creates attention, but five girls marching through the airport with hats on creates *that much more* attention!
We really enjoyed some of the comments that we received! A lot of people asked if we were related. “Yes”, we replied with glee many times. Several of them went on to ask more questions and finally got to know how many siblings there are. It’s fun to shock people! At the Starbuck’s counter, a lady specifically asked “if we were from England?” She went on to compliment us on dressing nicely, because “nobody does these days.” She herself was attired in nice business-wear, but was just visiting the U.S. My personal favorite conversation was with the shuttle driver as we were exiting the bus. He asked, “Are you a singing or dancing group?” “Nope, we’re sisters”. “Nuns?” he asked in a surprised voice. “No. Sisters as in brothers and sisters” my older sister replied. I inwardly chuckled all the way into the airport.
Sunday, November 2, 2008
Saturday, October 18, 2008
Overwhelmed makes a tasklist
When I feel overwhelmed by everything I need to get done or feel like I need to get done, I make a tasklist. First I break it down into tiny little steps so that I can accomplish "more" or I write down things I've already done and cross them off the list. Either way works wonders! :D
Last night I was feeling quite overwhelmed by the sewing that I need/want to complete before I leave, so I made a tasklist.
Ball gown:
-Handstitch lining
-Handstitch hem
-Gathers on sleeves
Overskirt:
-Cut netting
-Sew netting to waistband
-Complete ties
-Handstitch waistband
-Gathers at hemline
-Finish bows and attach
Wool skirt:
-Sew front and back seams
-Check fit
-Serge side seams
-Install zipper and complete side seams
-Check that I like alterations I made
-Attach waistband
-Attach waistband facing
-Handstitch facing
Corduroy skirt: (finishing)
-Serge seamlines
-Install zipper
-Sew side seams
-Attach waistband facing
-Handstitch waistband facing
-Hem skirt
And on it goes....I feel better already!
Last night I was feeling quite overwhelmed by the sewing that I need/want to complete before I leave, so I made a tasklist.
Ball gown:
-Handstitch lining
-Handstitch hem
-Gathers on sleeves
Overskirt:
-Cut netting
-Sew netting to waistband
-Complete ties
-Handstitch waistband
-Gathers at hemline
-Finish bows and attach
Wool skirt:
-Sew front and back seams
-Check fit
-Serge side seams
-Install zipper and complete side seams
-Check that I like alterations I made
-Attach waistband
-Attach waistband facing
-Handstitch facing
Corduroy skirt: (finishing)
-Serge seamlines
-Install zipper
-Sew side seams
-Attach waistband facing
-Handstitch waistband facing
-Hem skirt
And on it goes....I feel better already!
Sunday, October 12, 2008
Fall - A changing of seasons
Fall is the changing of so many things. Not just the leaves, grass, trees, etc. As I think back on the last few autumm's we've had, it was the season of the biggest changes for my family. If you had told me five years ago where I would be today, you could have knocked me down with a feather! :0
Fall 2004 - We were entrenched in politics. We lived, breathed and ate politics! My eldest sister worked for an official campaign and my dad worked for a state party in a tech position. The rest of us were volunteers. The late nights, the long hours. More often than not, we were in the depths of despair when each election came around, and while that election was no exception, it was somehow different. Our presidential candidate won, though he did not take our state and most of the good candidates statewide lost.
Fall 2005 was the culmination of a tragedy that began in January. It was with the heaviest hearts that we realized we could not do anything more about it. The healing and rebuilding came next. Yes, I could say it was a long, painful process, but it's not over. We are still suffering the devastation. But, God is merciful. He is our hope! We can look back and begin to see the blessings in the aftermath.
Fall 2006 was a joyous time for my family! My oldest brother "brought a girl home to meet the family"! In actuality, she flew to our town. :) Wanting our yard to be perfect for his girl, he supplied us with sod to lay in the backyard that he'd sprayed out a few months before. While we still jokingly resent the work we did, we had such a good time doing it! The excitement of gaining a sister-in-law grew for all of us. They were engaged and began wedding plans in earnest!
Fall 2007 brought the most dramatic change for all of us. We packed up the entire house, loaded it into two trucks and three vehicles and we were off for a new place, a new town and a new state. It was thrilling, hard work, and slightly frightening. We'd been in one place for over eleven years. One becomes attached to the same old; the familiar. I headed back "home" for a month to finish up my job and then I joined the family on Thanksgiving Day. Thus began life without my three oldest brothers within a few miles.
This Fall is an exciting time. I'm finally an aunt!!! I've longed to be an aunt for many years and now that it's finally happened, it's as grand as I'd imagined. And will be even grander when I get to meet my little nephew and the second one arrives! In just over a week, my four sisters and I are flying to West Virginia to visit my best friend and her funny sisters. We'll be attending our first ball, too! So, we are making ball gowns and learning dances.
My younger sister arrived home after six weeks living with my brother and sister-in-law and helping take care of the nephew, the house, canning, etc. That is the longest she has ever been away from her parents and we are all adjusting back into somewhat of a routine. She came with my older brother when he moved all his belongings up here in anticipation of moving here next month. I am very close to this particular brother, so I'm completely delighted that he will be nearby again! Plus, it's just strange doing some things without him!
Stay tuned for more fall memories...
Fall 2004 - We were entrenched in politics. We lived, breathed and ate politics! My eldest sister worked for an official campaign and my dad worked for a state party in a tech position. The rest of us were volunteers. The late nights, the long hours. More often than not, we were in the depths of despair when each election came around, and while that election was no exception, it was somehow different. Our presidential candidate won, though he did not take our state and most of the good candidates statewide lost.
Fall 2005 was the culmination of a tragedy that began in January. It was with the heaviest hearts that we realized we could not do anything more about it. The healing and rebuilding came next. Yes, I could say it was a long, painful process, but it's not over. We are still suffering the devastation. But, God is merciful. He is our hope! We can look back and begin to see the blessings in the aftermath.
Fall 2006 was a joyous time for my family! My oldest brother "brought a girl home to meet the family"! In actuality, she flew to our town. :) Wanting our yard to be perfect for his girl, he supplied us with sod to lay in the backyard that he'd sprayed out a few months before. While we still jokingly resent the work we did, we had such a good time doing it! The excitement of gaining a sister-in-law grew for all of us. They were engaged and began wedding plans in earnest!
Fall 2007 brought the most dramatic change for all of us. We packed up the entire house, loaded it into two trucks and three vehicles and we were off for a new place, a new town and a new state. It was thrilling, hard work, and slightly frightening. We'd been in one place for over eleven years. One becomes attached to the same old; the familiar. I headed back "home" for a month to finish up my job and then I joined the family on Thanksgiving Day. Thus began life without my three oldest brothers within a few miles.
This Fall is an exciting time. I'm finally an aunt!!! I've longed to be an aunt for many years and now that it's finally happened, it's as grand as I'd imagined. And will be even grander when I get to meet my little nephew and the second one arrives! In just over a week, my four sisters and I are flying to West Virginia to visit my best friend and her funny sisters. We'll be attending our first ball, too! So, we are making ball gowns and learning dances.
My younger sister arrived home after six weeks living with my brother and sister-in-law and helping take care of the nephew, the house, canning, etc. That is the longest she has ever been away from her parents and we are all adjusting back into somewhat of a routine. She came with my older brother when he moved all his belongings up here in anticipation of moving here next month. I am very close to this particular brother, so I'm completely delighted that he will be nearby again! Plus, it's just strange doing some things without him!
Stay tuned for more fall memories...
Friday, October 3, 2008
Plans
In the not too distant future I hope to really "start" this blog. But, I'm too busy sewing, trying to keep my creations blog updated, and tackling Fall tasks and projects. For now, it will have to be content with quick-y things until I can feed it something of more substance.
Sunday, September 21, 2008
The Big Read
The Big Read reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they've printed.
1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Underline the books you LOVE.
4) Reprint this list in your own LJ so we can try and track down these people who've read 6 and force books upon them ;-)WATCHING MOVIES DOES NOT COUNT!!!
1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell (not every word, but enough)
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte's Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo
Friday, September 5, 2008
Of all the dreams that ere I had...
...this was the last I expected to come true! (Sung to the tune of "The Parting Glass") ;)
A motherload of fabric given to me!
The neighbor has been telling us to come up and get whatever of her fabric that we want, because she cannot sew anymore due to an injury some fifteen years ago. She first told us this spring, but due to two month-long trips that I took and other various and sundry delays, we weren't able to go up until last Friday and then, I only was able to take two of my sisters with me.
After oohing and aahing over it for a few hours (seriously!), we were persuaded to just "take it all home and decide there!" So, we loaded all nine garbage bags full (relative, you understand - we didn't want to put our backs out!) into her truck and down the mountain we went! After a quick mailbox stop, we got it all out and into the living room.
My older sister was actually the more shocked between her and Mum, but the neighbor called the next day to make sure Mum was still speaking to her! As two of my younger sisters are beyond-their-wildest-dreams excited and so busy making use of some yardage, Mum wasn't in the least upset and took it in stride! She's even planning a few projects of her own!
I was able to choose some fabric for one sister-in-law and my other sister-in-law took all she thought she could use. I've saved some for my out-of-town sister and what we do with everything nobody particular wants has yet to be decided!
I anticipate that I shall be quite busy sewing all winter long and perhaps for a few years to come!
A motherload of fabric given to me!
The neighbor has been telling us to come up and get whatever of her fabric that we want, because she cannot sew anymore due to an injury some fifteen years ago. She first told us this spring, but due to two month-long trips that I took and other various and sundry delays, we weren't able to go up until last Friday and then, I only was able to take two of my sisters with me.
After oohing and aahing over it for a few hours (seriously!), we were persuaded to just "take it all home and decide there!" So, we loaded all nine garbage bags full (relative, you understand - we didn't want to put our backs out!) into her truck and down the mountain we went! After a quick mailbox stop, we got it all out and into the living room.
My older sister was actually the more shocked between her and Mum, but the neighbor called the next day to make sure Mum was still speaking to her! As two of my younger sisters are beyond-their-wildest-dreams excited and so busy making use of some yardage, Mum wasn't in the least upset and took it in stride! She's even planning a few projects of her own!
I was able to choose some fabric for one sister-in-law and my other sister-in-law took all she thought she could use. I've saved some for my out-of-town sister and what we do with everything nobody particular wants has yet to be decided!
I anticipate that I shall be quite busy sewing all winter long and perhaps for a few years to come!
Tuesday, September 2, 2008
What a Labor Day!
It's official! I'm an aunt! :D
After too many years of longing for nieces and nephews, I finally have one: a nephew! My eldest brothers' son was born around 6:30pm last night and bears his father, grandfather and (late) great-grandfathers' name. Yep, he's the fourth! And, boy will he have big shoes to fill!
All of the family is ecstatic! Not only is he the first grandchild on both sides, but he is also the first great-grandchild! He will probably be one spoiled child, but a well-behaved spoiled child. My brother and his wife will be wonderful parents!
After too many years of longing for nieces and nephews, I finally have one: a nephew! My eldest brothers' son was born around 6:30pm last night and bears his father, grandfather and (late) great-grandfathers' name. Yep, he's the fourth! And, boy will he have big shoes to fill!
All of the family is ecstatic! Not only is he the first grandchild on both sides, but he is also the first great-grandchild! He will probably be one spoiled child, but a well-behaved spoiled child. My brother and his wife will be wonderful parents!
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