Getting There!

Only a few minutes till the trick-or-treater's arrive, so here's what your jacket looks like so far Junior.



"I declare," says Mavis, "I know I have that lift ticket SOMEwhere!"



I think you'll likey. Mother's already put in a request and plans to hit the fleece sale at Hancock if it's still going on. All I've got left are elastic casings and zipper - yippee!

Halloween at the Office

Our Halloween was a lot smaller this year since there were no medical students or residents this month. Could it be that they actually avoid rotating with me because they know I'll coerce them to dress up? Here's one of my nurses, who's pregnant...does it send the wrong message that Hannah Montana's got a baby bump?



Here are Dora the Explorer, and Woody from Toy Story - she decided SpongeBob would be too hot.



Our room decor was really realistic this year - watch me mount this horse!



You can check out previous Halloweens at that tab on the sidebar. (I missed my black nail polish this year - I kinda prefer being Cap'n Jack Sparrow to being Cinderella - much easier to roll around on a chair without a giant skirt, and nobody tries to pull the fur off your dress.)

Jake Hates Halloween

More power to you people out there sewing up Halloween costumes! I prefer to buy mine, and if we can recycle something from a previous year, all the better! We currently own 3 pair of black pants (Ninjas and vampire), 2 black capes (vampire and Darth Vader), a couple of creepy robes (ghouls) and multiple black tops with multiple colored sashes (Ninjas). (Do you need any sort of Ninja weapon? We have it!)

This is what I bought for the dog last year, but he refused to wear it. Here is Lucas "encouraging" him to give it another shot. What is he supposed to be? A smart blonde! Get it?



Here is how he prefers to wear it - I'm guessing he wants to be a young Santa Claus?



And just for fun, here he is in some others. I think the Jimmy Ruff-et was his favorite (I just made that up - it's a gift from God, people).



But Cap'n Jack Labrador didn't go over too well.



Happy Halloween if I don't see you before then!

Why I Love Alabama

Because one day you can go to the woods and enjoy a campout...



and practice your BB gun skills with your Scout friends (note the safety glasses)...



and the next day you can go watch racing boats get ready...



for Thunder on the Gulf!



Oh, and the dress worked just fine with the sensible heels. We even danced on a clear dance floor placed over a swimming pool - never saw THAT before! ("Hey Mary, they're cheering for us - we must be pretty good!" Who knows the movie?)



(I had no idea he could cross his eyes that well...or that I could purse my lips that hard.)

We'll Call This Done

Well, I'm feeling a little homemade in these pictures, but the afternoon sun is very harsh and hopefully the room will be darker. I also need to iron it a little more.



I think the main problem is that it's just too big. The black one was really big and I took in huge seam allowances, but I was scared to cut a smaller one since the fabric was different (shantung vs jacquard) and other reviewers had different results following muslins.



The shoulder seams kind of float over me unless I pull them out away from my neck, and I do plan to double tape my bra straps to the dress - pardon me for the exposure! If I had another week, I'd tweak the fit of the back a little more, but I'm so tired of taking darts in that I'm calling it quits.



I'm also opting for the "sensible" black heels that are a little lower and squared off instead of pointy - I'm apparently the only one in love with pointy shoes these days. These are definitely more comfortable. And I guess overall this came out okay - let's not forget that it could've turned out as bad as this!

Which Shoes?

I'm in the home stretch with the dress - this is a fitting before sewing up the basting for the last time - ignore wrinkles! But I don't know which shoes to wear, so I need your input. This is my favorite pair of black heels, though they get a bit tiresome after a long evening.



Don't forget about my roach-stompers - Dean's LEAST favorite shoe, though actually reasonably comfortable. It's kind of bronzey-gold and you can compare it with the black heel.



I don't think the clear one looks dressy enough - it looks like I'm barefooted and I don't have time to get a pedicure! And this gold-ish one - I bought this pair years ago in Boston and wore them once. They got all kinds of comments but the ties came undone and fell around my ankles after a night of walking around. Dean thinks this is the best color but says they make my feet look like skis because they're so long.



The straps may be too much with the dress.



Once my mom helps me with the final stages (and hemming - God love that woman!), I'll post some more pictures and do a formal review at PR. I'm only concerned because the back now is poofy like one reviewer mentioned, and that lady had to take out horizontal darts to fix it - ACK!

We Interrupt This Jacket...

Yeah, didn't I say I was making a fleece jacket for my sister? Well I actually got the whole thing cut out, then I realized I needed a dress for a cancer benefit we're attending in a couple of weeks. I was thinking of a fancy skirt and top I have...then I was told it should have some pink since it's Breast Cancer Awareness month - doh! A sewing challenge is born. I actually have a chance to sew up that Butterick 6582 retro dress with the smoking hot blonde on the front!

So here's the fabric - it's "polyester shantung" for $12.99 at Joann - I debated the silk at Hancock's, but it was more expensive and even more obnoxious than this color.



And here's the muslin in $3.99/yd jacquard from fabric.com - I considered it a muslin since it was cheap and in the stash for over a year. I think it's a hell of a muslin myself!



Forgive the wrinkles, unhemmed-ness, and hanging threads - I was so excited to finally get it fit that I wanted to take pictures. My mom helped me with alterations and was my camerawoman, but she made me put on lipstick and refused to take any of the poses I wanted. (You know, my attempts at being sexy that are so totally...not. She's so serious sometimes.)



I see a side seam that I need to straighten, but I'm hopeful that the widely spaced shoulders in back will balance the wide load below.



This dress was officially started at 1 PM yesterday and pretty much done by 10 PM, and subtract about 3 hours for dinner, zipper run and Scouting event at 5 PM, and 3 loads of laundry. And this pictured below, which was begun by Lucas at 8 PM and finished at 10 PM after 2 tries. He really did this by himself but didn't understand what I meant by "seam allowance," so the first attempt was half the size he wanted.



The lady at Hancock asked what I was going to make and I told her HE was going to make something, to which she replied, "Are you going to sew on your mom's machine?" He said, "No, actually I have my own machine, but I don't know what I'm going to make yet." She exclaimed that we had a designer in the making (good response, lady, and God bless you!) and asked him to bring whatever he made back in so she could see it.



If you look closely you'll notice his name, and you'll be amazed to know that he freehanded it at the machine. Takes after his mom, that one.

Robot Movies and Boring Trip Photos

We got on the topic of how you would freeze in outer space and Lucas said, "I guess I've just always thought that outer space is room temperature."

I let him watch 2001 A Space Odyssey after he read about HAL in a robot book from the library. If you've ever seen 2001, you can imagine that I skipped long parts of it...the apes at the beginning, the part in the middle discussing the monolith on the moon; but I didn't skip the psychedelic ending - he sat through that whole thing while I was on the phone. At the end, when the giant baby made its appearance (pardon me, the "StarChild"), he looked at me and said, "I don't get it! What was that whole thing in the room?!"



That robot book also mentioned Westworld - one of my favorites! (They actually had a picture of Yul Brynner in the book - I'm questioning the educational value of this book.) But he has to wait a few years to see that one - remember when the robots go crazy they start killing the resort guests - a little gruesome for an 8-yr-old.



And just to make sure you sleep well tonight, here are some pics of Fort Morgan near Gulf Shores.



We live so close and have never taken the kids there - they were mightily impressed. (This reminds me of Kitschy Coo's pictures of a castle in Edinburgh...yeah, okay, it's not so much like a castle, but an interesting stone structure with pretty grass around it?)



The little museum there has the coolest photos and letters - we spent several hours touring the whole thing.



This moat (I forgot the official term) is the coolest part to me.



Well, no, maybe this view of Mobile Bay and nearby Dauphin Island was really the coolest. There was a traffic jam of boats out here - oil spill business I guess? Alright, finish your glass of wine and go to bed - I'll put away the slide projector and lock up after myself.