Sugar Shop

Father Involvement

This video made me smile today. It made me think about how my own father is such a great dad. It also made me think about what a great father my husband is to our son. There is nothing hotter than a man who loves his kids....and his wife of course!

Recycle your Prom Dress

Look at me, all posting three times this month already!Holla!

So since I showed you how I like to Trash a Prom Dress  hopefully you'll allow me to redeem myself by showing you how I recycled a prom dress.

Devin here is one of my nieces friends and I have known her since she was a wittle girl. She bought this dress for a dance and never wore it because she decided she didn't really like it so much. Well her mama told her that she needed to wear this dress before she would by another. Since homecoming was coming up she told Devin to get creative, change the dress up. Smart Mama! So Dev got excited and she went to work sketching out her ideas, I wish I had scanned her sketches but hey these are the details that usually keep me from posting so in order to get this here post up I'm learning to let go of the details, which if you know me (Tara) it's sending me in to spasms. but that's another story for another time...

Here's the before:

... Ahem... I don't sew clothing.. I repeat I have nooooo clue how to even alter anything. Let's not even talk about the time Steve asked me take in a Seattle Seahawks t-shirt that was kind of big. He put the shirt on, came out to show me and gave me a sarcastic "how does it look" I died laughing as I had turned a perfectly good man shirt in to a tight babydoll tee. Not a particularly masculine look for a lean muscled guy. I told him I had some baby pink dove shorts he could wear to complete the outfit. Then he took of the shirt, handed it to me and said here homey I bought you a new shirt. 

So you can see why I didn't want to do this, well I did actually want to do it because it sounded fun but I must have asked Dev a million times are you sure? what if I totally screw it up? She's cool like that and kept telling me it would be fine!

Here is the Before of the back:

So Dev picked out the fabric she wanted to ad. It was a crazy cheetah print ... and it was SILKY & STRETCHY! Yikes! What should I have done here? As I was sewing it rippled which actually turned out cute so I am just going to tell you now that I planned it that way. but, seriously what do you do with silky stretchy fabric so it doesn't ripple? Loosen the tension? Different needle, Longer stitch? Help a sister out would ya!

Before: 

After ...although not yet hemmed:

before back:  look I did such a good job she tattooed my name on her back. riiiiight

Now for the back she wanted hacked and laced...did I say yikes yet? Yikes!

Did I mention I only had about two hours total to do this? We neatened things up a bit after this shot. But she was literally running off to get ready so we didn't get final shots but that was our project redo!

So let me know if this has inspired (the idea....not the sewing ) you to recycle a prom dress. How fun would that be. If there's an interest maybe I'll start a flicker pool. Let me know what you think! Holla at your girl! (a little project runway reference here )

Hope your weekend makes you happy!

Random thought... If you choke a smurf what color does it turn? I just read that somewhere and it made me giggle...

Carnegie - Livermore California

 

I am going to try and post more in 2009 (thanks blog buddies for the requests). I just hope you don't mind if they're photo related although I do have some things in the works that you might think is fun!

See the toy hauler attached to the back of my car? Steve and I got this as our Christmas present to each other. In case you are new here my husband loves anything with wheels and he likes to go fast like I talked about here. A couple of months ago Jumpy kid and I came home from a trip with my mom and sister to find that Steve had bought both Jumpy Kid and myself dirt bikes. Yes, you heard me right, I now have one too.

That's my bike on the right that Steve is sitting on. We had grand plans of going Mammoth Bar

in southern California for our first trip out but there was snow everywhere, yes people we get lotsa snow here in Cali.We ended up at Carnegie which is basically right here in our backyard. It is beautifull and it worked out well as we were able to have all our friends come out to ride and hang out by the bon fire at night.

Here are some of the boys cooking their breakfast with Pie Irons. Let's talk about the yummy goodness you can make with these things. If you have never used these, the kids love it! You butter some bread and basically put anything in that you want. We had scrambled eggs and ham and cheese which were good but lets just say that the peanut butter and jelly ones rocked.

Seriously... putting my baby on this thing freaks me out, but I'm learning to deal with it...really. 

Now this little guy has never really been much of a daredevil. He's a busy kid for sure but he was never one of those climbing on everything or getting into everything kind of kids. In fact he has never been obsessed about riding his bicycle either. So I wasn't really worried when we were about to put him on it for the first time. I thought he would be a little scared and take it easy....

Steve had barely set him on the bike and knelt down to give him a lesson on braking when he took OFF!

Full throttle! I removed my camera from my face and started screaming at Steve to go get him...he doesn't know how to STOP!! Steve is yelling for him to STOP. That's when we see him whip the handlebars full force nearly sending the bike into a roll but no, all wheels came back to earth and he is heading back towards us full speed. I thought to myself "Good! that'll put some fear in him"....

That's when he blazed by us....

and I heard it....

HA HA HA HAAAA!!! WOOOOOOOHOOOOOO!!!!

an evil laugh of a boy possessed with the power of speed!

Who is this child, I thought to myself...

Then I turned and looked at my husbands face...

and I saw it...

The huge grin of a proud father who's son shares his love of the power of speed...

and before I walked away I gave Steve a light punch in the arm and said he's just like you dammit!

The smile never left Steve's face.

The first morning we woke up and Steve had to run back into town for a spark plug (another good reason we stayed local for out first trip) and when he came back he had these for me:

Super cute hot pink and black dirt bike boots. Love that man. So I put on my spank'en new boots and he looks at me with that grin that gets me and wipes his muddy boot across the top of my super clean boots. Hey!! 

...It's tradition he said, you can't ride around with brand new boots.

pshhh! Boys!

Trash The Dress ... Prom Style

Hello Dear Readers, (haha just watched a sappy hallmark movie where Genie Francis played a news reporter and she would start a scene with "Dear Readers...") Wow 2009. I know I have a lot to catch you up on but I wanted to get something up and what better to start the year off with that a crazy photo post.

So there's kind of an obscure trend in the Wedding Photography. It's called a "Trash the Dress" photo session. After the wedding the bride does a photo shoot with her photographer and trashes the dress. Now it's usually not trashing as I have done here. They are usually beautiful shots of the bride in the ocean or something like that... but I like things a bit more ummmm dirty and since I don't do weddings I thought I would do a Trash the dress session Prom Style!

The girls loved it!!

Miss Andy Pandy (my niece Andrea) turns 18 today, excuse me while grab a tissue... lol. How did the time go so fast. Yikes, I was 18 when she was born!!!

She is silly and cool and confident and fun and smart and athletic. She is one of the smartest most level headed 18 year old chicks I know. Happy Birthday baby girl, I love you!

I hope everyone is having a great start to the new year! I really am going to try and post more. I think I need to do another give away soon, what do you think? Can't wait to hear from you!!

xoxoxo

Dena