A Lemony Challenge

With a kitchen that looks like this:

And a closet that looks like this:

And a hobby room that looks like this:

What do you do? 

Join a Challenge, of course! 

Toni at A Bowl Full of Lemons started a Weekly Challenge to get her readers organized.  Lord knows I could use the motivation. 

Click on the button on my sidebar to start the challenge.  Or Click on the link in this post to get to Toni's blog.

This week's challenge is to make a home management binder.  I've kind of started one.  Um....a few years ago...so I know what I want it to do, I just need to get it done.  Stay tuned! 

Clogged Sink

Well, it's been building for some time now.  My bathroom sink drain was sloooowly starting to get plugged up. 

Then I came home from working all day and found this:

Yep.It was no longer a clog.  It was a back up. Which is kind of weird.  Because for some reason at work I got to thinking about how my Dad of All Trades helped me gut and remodel my bathroom.  Plumbing is one of THE most expensive home repair things to do.  I was contemplating the fact that I could have picked up all kinds of useful skills by watching him and I would have come out of the project fully equipped to do all kinds of home plumbing jobs.
But did I pay attention?  Nooooo.  His part of the project took over seven months.  Seven months of knowlege I could have soaked up.  But I didn't.

And then...a clog.

I'm not afraid of clogs.  My sisters and I all have long hair.  I've always been the one to pop open the shower drain from time to time to clean out massive hairballs.  It's gross.  But that's the price you pay for long hair. 

Here's my mop, taken down after my sister Carrie's wedding.

I'm careful in my own house with the shower drain and only have to clean it once every six months or so.  But I'm SUPER careful over the bathroom sink.  And yet, a clog.  And I can't call Dad because then I'll get the Dad Lecture (probably something along the lines of "weren't you paying attention?")    ~Sigh~

Some would be tempted to just pour Drain-o down the sink.  But I don't like that idea.  One, you're dumping chemicals.  Two, Drain-o works by pushing the clog out.  I worry it will push the clog to a point in the plumbing that I can't get at...then leave it stuck there forcing me to pay for a repairman.  Either, way, I'd rather go au naturale.

Normally I could just pop out the stopper, clean around it and be done with it.  But the kind of stopper my sink has is fixed with a loop on the bottom.  A metal piece holds it into the rest of the plumbing from underneath. 

See the horizontal pin in between the pipe and the vertical metal piece behind it?

(I guess that's there in case someone were to break in my house and try to steal the sink stopper?)

In short, there's no way to unclog the sink without undoing the plumbing.  At this point, my dad's voice popped in my head (remember my dad?).  His famous advice is, "Ya gotta ask yourself:  'Am I about to do something stupid?' And if the answer is yes...DON'T DO IT!"

But sometimes doing potentially stupid things - like undoing your plumbing when you don't know the first damn thing about plumbing - is how you learn. 

First, I emptied out as much of the backed up water as I could:

Then I put my dishpan under the sink to catch any possible deluge of water.  (I at least remember Dad doing that).  From there, it was just dumb luck pure genius on my part. 

My awesome Dad-of-All-Trades used PVC which is not your grampa's plumbing.  I figured I'd have to hammer away with a wrench and a hammer.  Turns out, all I had to do was unscrew the U-shaped piece:

- with a mere flick of the wrist, no less - and take it off.   Once I did, I saw a few dangly threads from something:

you can see them dangling from the vertical pipe.  And I thought, "you mean to tell me this whole clog is from a few stupid threads?"  So I stuck my finger up inside there.  Uck.  Big mistake.  I don't know what on earth  was decaying inside there but whatever it was, I stuck my whole finger inside it. 

Suffice it to say, I definately  needed to get the stopper out. 

That, too, just took one bit of unscrewing near the horizontal pin to loosen it right up.  I futzed with the pin on top that raises and lowers the stopper until I loosened it up enough to pull the pin out of the loop that held the stopper in place and I was finally able to see the clog:

 Ew!  You can't even see through the pipe at all!  What on earth died in there?

After pushing the dead elephant...or whatever it was through the drain and down to the dishpan below, the sink was clear.

All I had to do then was repeat my steps- that is, flick my wrist a few more times, just in reverse- and the job was done.

Into the trash went this:

I don't even have any explaination for this at all.

I didn't break a single nail.  I didn't get dirty.  I didn't make a mess.  Best part of all, the whole job, from start to finish, took less than 10 MINUTES and I was off to toot my horn. 

Happy New Year

Happy New Year!  I saw an aol "you've got" feature with Richard Simmons where he said the key phrase for the New Year is - "find heaven in twenty eleven".  I don't typically take advice from Richard Simmons, but my New Year's was heavenly.

In my last post I ranted about my lousy experience shopping for a dress and what to do for a wrap.

I ended up choosing this fabric:

It's way to slippery for a wrap, so I actually used a pattern for a poncho, seen here and it worked out quite well:

It's a SUPER easy pattern and I made the whole thing in 15 minutes.  Even on this slippery organza.

The whole purpose of the wrap wasn't so much to keep me warm, as it was to mask my ucky arms.  But I felt so pretty in the dress, with my hair, and the shoes with the necklace that I made to match, and the Conductor, and the bracelet....

Oh! The bracelet!  One of two things that the Conductor gave me for Christmas, it made its debut for New Year's.  (The other was a humongous box of Godiva chocolates because he knows I know better than to squander them). 

It's hard to tell in the pciture but every other link in the chain, and the heart on the clasp, have little diamonds encrusted around them.  For me, the best feature was actually the clasp so when I wore it on New Year's, I swung the clasp on top of my wrist. 

The Conductor took me to the Fireside Dinner Theater in Fort Atkinson, a town of about 11,000.  We had an amazing dinner of steak and lobster.  I especially loved the salad which had a papaya chutney dressing and delicious sesame seed crouton thingies, both of which I want to try and duplicate at home. 

The show was a feature of different show tunes, older songs, etc.  (They cater to a mostly senior crowd). The costumes, especially on the ladies, were spectacular but unfortunately you can't take pictures of live shows...

...which one very young, sexy looking, gal.....who was clearly the (oh....how can I put this nicely....) companion of an older gentleman didn't quite understand.  Suffice it to say, we had some good people watching, too.

We had champagne at midnight.  I am so not used to staying up that late!  But before that, we had to make it out of the theater to the car -- in FREEZING COLD weather.  And, that's the other reason I was so mad at the mall.  I wanted a formal so my legs would be warmer but all they had were goofy cocktail dresses.  In winter.  In Wisconsin.

I was thankful, though, when returning to our seat during intermission, one old lady remarked to her friend as I passed (in that voice that old people have that they think is a whisper but is actually really loud), "That dress really compliments her figure!" 

Thank you ma'am - and Happy New Year to you, too. 

Off the Rack

It's been a while since I blogged.  And I'm afraid my return post will be in the form of a rant.  I just returned from a three hour trip to the mall.

I HATE the mall.  Moreso, I absolutely ABHOR buying clothing off the rack.  It just makes me puke.  But I'm getting a head of myself...Let me back up.

The Conductor and I have plans to go to a dinner and theater show for New Year's Eve.  I believe one is supposed to dress for dinner and the theater.  Neither one of us has cable but we've been catching up on the popular Mad Men cable series on DVD.  I thought it would be fun to make a vintage inspired dress for the occassion so I picked this one:

It's Voge 1043, a reprint of a 1953 pattern.  (Yes, I know Mad Men takes place in the 60's but that's not the point.  Vintage is the point).

Considering that my final fabric selection was a very nice oriental blue satin, I decided to make a muslin before sewing the final dress.  And of course, I got stuck.

This gusset piece is supposed to fit into

this underside of the arm.  But for the life of me I could not figure out how it went.  Onto the pile of Valient Attempts it went.  With New Year's less than a week away, I needed a Plan B.  Off to the mall I went. 

So here's why I hate the mall and why I abhor off the rack clothing.  I tried on 9 dresses all which claimed to be the same size.  They all fit differently.  I almost drowned in some.  And trying to pull others off almost resulted in my arm being pulled from its socket, they were so tight.  But inconsistent sizing is only aggravation number one.

Here's the dress I settled on (and I do mean settled):

Many (who don't sew) might be thinking, "Why Jill that's a perfectly fine dress for a nice night out".  But let's take a closer look, shall we?  We'll start with the sleeves. 

But wait!  There are none.  In fact, NONE of the nine dresses I tried on had sleeves.  Why is this an aggravation? 

Because it's wintertime!  In Wisconsin!! 

We have freezing temperatures, subzero windchills, and SNOW.  Yet this is what the fashion industry deems an appropriate winter evening gown.  (And do you think the stores featured matching shawls or wraps.  Of course not!!).

Aggravation three is up next.  The stipes are actually strips of fabric sewn around the dress.   I couldn't really get the fine details right with my camera, but if I could have, you'd see that the fabric is a knit.  And the stripes...are NOT...hemmed. 

As a seamstress that just aggravates the tar out of me.  I"m sure non-sewists ae thinking, well Jill, what's the prob?  It's a knit that doesn't unravel so who cares about the lack of a hem?   Well, I do. You should .  Every American consumer should!  Why?

Because the price of this dress is $100!!!  ONE HUNDRED DOLLARS for a dress that, without proper hemming, is not finished being made.    It's like driving a car that has wheels that haven't been bolted on.  It looks good.  You might be pursuaded to pay full price for it.  And you could drive it, sure.  But you won't get far without it coming undone and ticking you off.  Still not getting it? 

Aggravtion #4 - the ethics:  The manufacturer buys a cheapy knit fabric like the one on my dress because it doesn't require hemming.  This means less manual labor.  Which means each factory worker in Mexico..Singapore...Bangladesh, etc. can churn out even more dresses per hour.  And at the $1 or so an hour the laborer gets paid, in raw terms, they get more bang for their buck...but the savings are not passed on to us, nor do I suspect they pay the laborer more for churning out more product. 

Aggravation #5 - the consumerism:  We as the consumer have little choice but to buy crap quality like this but we are lead to believe that $100 for a poorly made dress is a reasonable price.  We're too apathetic about quality in this country with our "cheaper is better" mindset that we don't even realize we should be complaining. 

Aggravtion #6 - the math:    Say you make $12 an hour (what the Government considers a wage you can support a family on).  This means, to buy this crap quality dress, you need to work about nine and half hours (factoring taxes in).  That means more than one full day of your life toiling away, for an inferior product. Now imagine if you only make minimum wage.  You'd be giving up a good 15 hours - two whole work days - for a dress that probably won't last more than a year or two, assuming you only wear it on fancy occassions.  INSANITY!

"But Jill," you're no doubt thinking, "You certainly aren't nuts!"

No.  I'm not.  That's why I only paid $35 for this dress which is about all I'm willing to pay for off the rack clothing.  But don't congratulate me.  The bargain I got came with a price:

There it is!  A broken zipper.  That's right.  They marked this $100 dress down because - before anyone even took it home - the zipper broke.  This is what passes for quality products?  Come on! 

Boy am I glad I sew! 

Anyways, as I mentioned, the dresses are sleeveless and the strore didn have any matching wraps.  So I"m going to need to make one.  (Thank goodness that *some* part of my ensemble will be of quality workmanship). 

But what to make it out of?  After dealing with the garbage at the mall, the fabric store was like an oasis in the dessert.  But I was too tired and aggravated to make a decision there so I bought three pieces and figured I'd decide which one later.  The shoes will be silver to match the lovely bracelet that the Concuctor gave me for Christmas, making its debut on New Year's. (Ahh - more quality!)  So these are my choices:

The first is this maroon fabric.  The upside is that it's a nice metallic whcih I think will look fun on New Year's.  The downside is that it's too thin to keep my shoulders warm

 

This one is also maroon, but a nice medium weight knit which will keep my arms warm.  But the dress is also knit and I worry that, although warm, knit on top of knit will take my dress from fancy to dowdy.

Finally, a navy blue organza. The shade isn't an exact match to the navy of the dress and it won't keep my arms warm.  I'm leaning toward this one though.  I'm worried that the maroons will stand out for not being the same color and, while I like to dress up for the theater, I prefer to be more conservative about it. 




 
The organza will stand out but for a good reason.  

It's got teeny sequiny things on it, which will pair nicely with the sequiny things on my shoes and the diamonds on my bracelet.  I'm willing to have cold arms in exchange for a little New Year's bling on my shoulders.

So...thank you for making it through to the end of my Shopping off the Rack Rant.  As a thank you, please feel free to give me your opinion on which wrap fabric I should go with. 

Coffee

I was seduced.  I admit it. For as much as I prefer to eat foods in their natural state, and stay away from fake foods, sometimes I fall for them anyway.  Especially if they’re cheap.  This time it was tins of the red lidded International flavored coffee mixes.  These normally sell for about $3.49 but I found them at my discount store for $1.50.

I read the back where I found I could enjoy “the delicious paring of luscious caramel (yum!) and sweet vanilla (heavenly!) and how it would be “sinfully superb”. What Catholic girl doesn’t want a way to be sinfully superb? I took the tin to work and heated up a mug of full-fat milk. You know, for extra sinfulness. I dumped a spoonful of the “coffee” mix on top.

And for a second I thought I had mistakenly made a bowl of Rice Krispies.  As in snap-crackle-pop. My mug of coffee was crackling as the mix dissolved.

Since when does coffee crackle???  And what the hell is in this stuff?  That’s when I did what I should have done in the store - read the ingredient list.  My $1.50 “coffee” is made with sugar as its first ingredient, partially hydrongenated oil (um, yum??) and other such “foods” as cellulose gum and silicon dioxide. 

I took a sip.  Naturally it tastes nothing like caramel.  Or vanilla.   It just tastes like really sugary milk.  The tin told me it would be “your own coffeehouse indulgence right at home”.  I guess.  If drinking melted plastic is considered an indulgence.
 

Gross.  Turning to my cupboards I found the yellow lidded and the brown lidded hot chocolate mixes.  But a scan of the "ingredient" list proved equally as disgusting.  Did you know if you let the brown lidded stuff sit out and spoil, it turns.....green! 

Then I remembered that I have two mokka pots which are coffee percolators made in Italy designed for steam coffee at home.  The coffee comes out a cross between espresso and Turkish coffee.   I have a 2 oz. and a 9 oz. pot by the original brand, Bialetti.  The two-ouncer goes for $20 and the nine-ouncer (which makes about one mug of coffee) goes for $40.  Thrifty gal that I am, I found both at Goodwill only about a week after I made a mental note to try and find one.  I paid $9 total for them both. 

 

 

The pots separate into three parts - the bottom where you put water, the cup that holds the coffee grounds, and the top.  As the water heats, it's pushed up through the grounds and into the top. 

While the coffee perked on the stovetop, I happened to notice a third container of "coffee" mix that I had left unopened overnight.  It dried out to the point where the entire top looked like a sheet of plastic:

What kind of "coffee" turns to a sheet of plastic just from  exposure to the air??  What IS this stuff?

For fun, I got out my drill:

Now that is just wrong.  Ok...enough fooling around.  I took the coffee off th stove and heated a mug of milk.  I poured in the espresso, added a spoonful of cocoa and a spoonful of powdered sugar.

Whisk to dissolve and nowwww I have a sinfully superb cup of coffee:

Snap, crackle, pop, and silicon dioxide not included. 

Marigolds & Old Tables

Today is my Gramma Helen's birthday.  She died two years ago.  For some reason I've been feeling her spirit for about two weeks.  So has one of my sisters.  Marigolds were her favorite flower.  They're one of the last ones to survive here before winter kicks in. 

It's crazy that marigolds were her favorite.  Every spring she and my grampa would get into the same argument.  He'd start planting his red geraniums around the yard.  My Grampa was a Marine drill sargent.  He plants flowers like he marched soldiers.  Two-by-two those geraniums marched in perfect military precision all around the perimeter. 

Every year my Gramma would pitch a fit because geraniums are annuals which means they die every year.  "Why don't you just plant perennials so they come back every year and then you don't waste time and money."  (Gramma didn't really understand us gardeners).

Yet, marigolds, her favorite flower, are also annuals.  Go figure.

But I didn't want to write about marigolds today.  I wanted to write about my kitchen table. 

I got it from my Gramma. 
It used to be my Great-Gramma's.  The top is crooked.  The leaves don't fit into each other properly.  But Gramma fixed it before she gave it to me.  Well, she slapped a coat of varnish on it anyway.  She insisted. 

Tonite it's doubling as my workbench, as it often does.  I need to shorten some boards to fix my front porch with.  My dad may have taught me *how* to use power tools....but my Gramma was the one that actually made me want to learn. 

When my Grampa would leave for meetings at the American Legion, she went down in the basement and taught herself how to use a power sander and a table saw in secret.  Using only scrap wood, she then built herself two floor-to-ceiling shelving units.

She was 65 at the time. 

I have the money to buy a better table. 

But I rather like my Gramma's crooked, ill fitting old table.  My paint splotches and sawblade scratches only enhance it.

Happy Birthday Gramma.

Bathrobe for Winter

My late Gramma Helen's birthday is only about a week away. Her presensce must be around or something because at the fabric store this weekend, it occurred to me that I have no winter bathrobe and I really need one.  But what to make it out of?  Fleece?  Warm, but sometimes too warm.  Flannel? Hmm.  It wears well, but it wouldn't be warm enough.  A heavy cotton?  No.  Not warm at all and too stiff.

Then I suddenly remembered the comfiest bathrobes I know are the ones my Gramma Helen always wore.  And they were made out of fake fur.  Incredibly warm, but not overpoweringly so.  And fake fur is very durable.  Her first one was a pretty turquoise blue.  She wore that one to shreds and then started wearing an identical one in red. 

By dumb luck (or maybe it was Gramma working with the Forces of the universe) they happened to have cuddle fur on sale at half-off.  And of the 20 or so prints, the only cute one I found happened to have a blue background with some red ladybugs on it - the two colors of my Gramma's bathrobes.  Coincidence?  Hmm....  Maybe not, since it also had green frogs. 

I bought this unnumbered pattern at a thrift store (which my Gramma totally got me into - Whoa!).  I think it was a freebie given out by a fabric store, although it was uncut. 

I love buying used patterns (when all the pieces are included) because you sometimes see the notes of the person that had the pattern before you.  The previous owner of this pattern included a clipping for a bathrobe idea using velour with a lace overlay.

I don't know about the lace.  But the velour is, indeed, regal ooking.

Anyway, the fleece was a dream to sew on but a pain when I had to rip out mistakes.  Nevertheless, I'm pleased with it.  I did it in a day.  So here's my tribute to my Gramma Helen.

By the way, my Gramma Helen was madder than heck when she found out I bought a sewing machine.  "Why would you want the drudgery of sewing your own clothes?" she'd say. 

And then she'd repeat her story about how her mother, my Great Gramma Jennie, who sewed everything, would always stop her when she came home with a storebought dress and inspect it up and down. 

And then she'd toss it back to my Gramma with a loud "pfft!" of disgust, throw up her hands, and walk away.  Which, funny enough, is the reaction I have to a lot of storebought clothes.  Cheap fabric, poor sewing, no durability - and top dollar prices for stuff I could make so much better at home. 

Like my new Gramma Helen bathrobe.