Ironing Board Revamp

I haven't sewn in ages so today I decided that while Corey was at work, and after I had finished cleaning, I would do some sewing. Firstly I tackled my giant pile of mending/altering. I fixed 1 jacket, 3 skirts, 3 dresses and 1 tie for a friend. The 3 dresses and 1 of the skirts are vintage items that needed to be taken in to fit me so now I have 4 new things to wear. Yay! Anyway after all the mending I decided to make something I have wanted to do for ages. A new ironing board cover!!! Here is the before of my ironing board so you can see how boring it looked.....

And now it looks like this....

How cool is that fabric! I bought it ages ago from Spotlight with no idea what I was going to use it for. It sat in my cupboard for ages until about 6 months ago when I realised it would make a really cool ironing board cover for my sewing room. Fast forward 6 months and I finally made it.

It was really super easy to make. I didn't take any photos of the process though but its pretty easy to explain. All I did was lay my fabric out and then lay my ironing board on top. I traced around the ironing board and then added 2 inches around the traced line for my cutting line. Once I cut out the fabric I did a very small hem around the entire piece. Then I sewed my elastic straight onto the fabric making sure to stretch it out as much as I could as I sewed. Then pop it on your ironing board and easy as that you have a brand new ironing board cover. Now everyone go make one for yourself cause they are just too easy not to!

No. 98 - Try Stamp Carving

Another item has been crossed off the 101 in 1001 list. This time I had a go at stamp carving! I have been wanting to do this for a while and eventually got around to buying the materials about 2 months ago. Then finally the other night I decided to give it a go.

I started out strong with some simple designs and then I got a little cocky and decided to try something a bit fancier. Silly me forgot that if I wanted a word to stamp out correctly I would have to carve it so the word was backwards. Woops! Oh well, we live and we learn. These were fun to make but I am wanting to try and find some bigger lots of carving blocks. Using erasers limits the size of your stamp and I actually thing a bigger stamp might be easier to make. If anyone knows where I can get some big blocks of stamp to carve let me know!

Wedding Crafts

So with only 3 months left till the wedding I decided it was probably about time I started gettting some of my crafty things finished. Last night one of my bridesmaids Mahnee came around for dinner and afterwards we had a mini production line happening to get all our noodleboxes made for the lolly buffet.

(our materials all ready to go)

I had already holepunched all our shapes out but we still had to cut all the ribbon and assemble all the boxes. With the two of us and Corey periodically lending a hand it took 2.5 hours. It was a mission but we did it!

(it looks like a lot but this is only actually half of the noodleboxes!)

I am so happy with how they turned out. Now I have most of them all packed up into a nice big container waiting to go out to the venue. Unfortunately I don't have a big enough container to fit them all so there are still about 30 sitting on the dining room table. Now all the lolly buffet needs is the lollies and it will be all organised. Yay! 1 more thing to cross off the list. I also picked up my invitations that I ordered last weekend so I will get some photos of those to show you soon.

White Chocolate Mudcake Cupcakes

Over the weekend we had a birthday celebration for our friend Lex. We went bowling and then went back to Lex's house for a few drinks. Of course I couldn't go to a birthday party with out baking some form of cake so I made some cupcakes.

These are the white chocolate mudcakes from the Crabapple Bakery Cookbook. They were delicious! They are really dense and just the right amount of sweetness. I iced them with a blue buttercream and topped with fondant letters. Because I am feeling lazy here is a link to a blog that has already written out the recipe for you. And just a tip, I halved this recipe and still got 24 cupcakes. The book says that the full recipe gives 24 but they would have to be gigantic cupcakes to do that.

These cupcakes were so good that I am thinking that we should now use these in our cupcake tree for the wedding. I am thinking possible white chocolate mud, dark chocolate mud and caramel. The only problem we are having with the wedding cupcakes is what to put them in. I just wanted plain coloured cases but with the mudcakes the cases always seem to go see through. So I am not sure whether to double up the cases or maybe just bake them in white cases then get some nice cupcake wrappers for them. What do you think? Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Greazefest 2011

So Greazefest as I mentioned is this big rockabilly festival that is held every year in Brisbane. This is only my second year going but I love it! Usually we head up early with a picnic lunch, find a spot in front of the main stage and dump our picnic blanket and spend the day relaxing and listening to music. This year when we got there the area in front of the main stage was packed so we sat in the grandstands instead. We listened to some music, wandered around the markets, checked out the cars and relaxed on the grandstand. Here are a few pics from the day.....

Corey hanging out on the grandstand and checking the footy scores.

Root beer snow cone and reading!

Just a few of the markets stalls. There were so many more this year than last. I was very well behaved and only bought 1 vintage pattern for $2.

How cute is the scalloped neckline on this girls dress! Corey told me I was a stalker for taking a picture of it.

Now this caravan car below is just too cute! It is a 1946 replica and it was for sale. Lot's of people were checking it out but I dunno if they actually wanted to buy or it was just because it was so darn cute! Of course I loved the back part with the kitchen the most.

How cute is that tea cosy! Greazefest is so much fun and I could have taken a million more photos but I was too busy enjoying myself. I hope you all had a lovely weekend too.

Daily Style - Scouts Honour

Today we went to Greazefest which is a rockabilly festival in Brisbane. It was a really fun day out and I have some photos to share but first I wanted to share my dress that I wore. I bought this dress as a present to myself for getting a new job. I actually bought two dresses but I wanted to share this one first because it is awesome.

It's an authentic vintage Girl Scouts uniform made in the USA. According to my research it was made between the mid 1950's to 1968.

This patch below the numbers was only issued between 1955 and 1960 which narrows the timeline down a little more.

This patch is the Juliette Low Centennial Patch which was issued to celebrate the 100th birthday of the found of the Girl Scouts in the USA.

I believe that these gold stars are issued to Senior Girl Scouts for their leadership work.

I would love to learn more about this uniform and I would really love to know where troop 137 was based. When I google troop 137 it comes up with both Nassau County and Brownsberg, Indiana so I am not too sure which it would be. Or it could have been somewhere else entirely!

Read More - July

I really should start calling these posts read less because as the year goes on I seem to be reading less and less. It's not good! I am hoping to kick it back up this month but who knows if that will happen now I am back to full time work. Anyway, here are the books I read last month....

Diary of a Wimpy Kid was given to my by my nephew. I lent him my first Harry Potter book which he has been reading at school so he lent me this one. It was quite a good book for a kids book. I wouldn't mind seeing the movies now. Below the Styx is a book I picked up at the Borders Sale for like $5. The back interested me but the book was really slow and boring. It took me forever to read but I really wanted to finish it because I thought the ending might make up for the rest of the book. It didn't! I borrowed a few books of my friend Maria and I have a few lying around I want to read so hopefully this month I will do a little better. Let's hope so!