Randomness

Just to start off with something to make you smile: Anabelle's super cute 4th of July outfit.

 Now, on to the latest sewing adventure...

 I got this black shirt at target for $2.00 a few weeks ago.  The shirt is a size too big, and I bought it with the intention of turning it into a maternity shirt (although I still don't really need it).  And round of applause please, the project didn't take me months to begin :)  So, since I forgot to take a before pic of the shirt, just imagine a plain old Target or Old Navy shirt.

 So, what did I do?  I rouched the sides, meaning that I gathered the fabric along the side seams of the shirt.  I've seen several maternity shirts like this as well as a tutorial or two on how to do it.  It was really pretty simple.  Ok, so the first thing I did was actually take in the side seams from about the bottom of my chest up through the sleeves.  This was not a necessary step, but I hate when shirts are all bunchy through the armpit area and don't fit properly (and since the shirt was too large, it needed to be done).  Okay, so I ended up taking it in about 1 1/2 to 2 inches on each side and narrowed the sleaves so they would be slimmer.  The result: a bit of a longer sleeve that still hugs my arms.  I like it.


 How did I do the rouching/gathering?  I took a piece of 1/4 in. wide elastic, stretched and pinned it along the side seam of the shirt, and sewed down the middle of the elastic to secure it in place.  Not very difficult at all. I'm sure I will be doing this again.  In fact I bought a $2.00 white shirt just like it.  I will be sure to post pics while I'm wearing it later on to show you all.

Here is a more close-up picture of the rouching.  Now, whenever my belly decides to grow and needs more room, I have a shirt to accommodate it :)

Now, on to the belly photos...

Taken at about 16 weeks

17 1/2 weeks

 and 19 weeks, taken this past Friday.  I'm finally showing just a little bit!!

 In other news, we have our 20-week ultrasound on Thursday the 14th.  Hooray!  And hopefully we find out what we will be having.  We can hardly wait.  I feel the baby moving around several times during the day, and have been feeling movements for about 3 weeks now.  Mike has even felt the baby move a couple of times.  It's so fun and seems so much more real when I can feel our baby moving, and it is definitely one of the most amazing feelings a woman can have (in my opinion).  We are so happy to have another baby joining our family in just under 5 more months!

Mike took me out to celebrate my birthday on Friday.  Actual b-day isn't until this coming Tuesday, but since he's in school and has to get to bed early every night, we celebrated over the weekend.  He took me on a Dinner Cruise.  It was so fun!
Here we are standing on the upper deck of the cruise boat.  And as you can see, we got to dress up a little bit for the evening.

 And here we are sitting at our table.  We were seated at a table with another couple, who were very nice and fun to talk to.  Mike and the other guy, as it turned out, both LOVE to talk about sports, so that kept the conversations pretty lively and constant. The food was delicious, too.  The food began with some very good herbed bread with butter and drinks.  I had lemonade, which btw, was some of the best lemonade I've ever had.  I really should have asked what kind it was ;) We then had she-crab soup, a yummy salad, and our choice of 5 entrees.  I ordered the fresh catch of the night, which was salmon, and oh boy was it tasty! Best salmon I've had in years.  Mike ordered the prime rib.  Both were served with garlic mashed potatoes and seasoned green beans.  Yum Yum Yum.  Everything was delicious and we finished all of our food.  Then we shared a slice of cheesecake.  Needless to say, I was very full by the end of the evening.

The evening finished up with music and dancing.  The dancing was a lot of fun and pretty entertaining as we watched a few groups of older women filling up the dance floor enjoying their girls' night out.  Mike and I danced a few slow songs (as any of you who know my dancing skills understand that I avoid public dancing as much as possible).  Anyway, a huge thanks to my wonderful hubby for the fabulous birthday gift!  I love you.

Fort World

Mike started making forts for Anabelle.  She loves it, of course!  This was the first one, made in our spare room upstairs. 

 She mostly just hid under the crib, but thought the fort was just about the neatest thing ever.

 And it was pretty darn cool.  It took up almost the entire room.  Props to Mike.

 Nice and cozy under there for her :)

 Scaring me!

Little cutie, having a blast

Shirt Re-Design

I bought this shirt a month or two ago on clearance, and I've been planning on shortening the sleeves ever since.  I finally got around to it.  The shirt was cute with long sleeves, but I want to wear it now and it's just too dang hot here in SC.  

What it looked like with one long sleeve S,orry, forgot to take the pic before :)

 Both sleeves off!

 I wanted to add ruffles to the sleeves as a hem to match the ruffles down the front of the shirt.  Here's how I did it.

 Iron the long rectangle flat.

 And then I forgot to take pics of the rest.  Ha ha. Sorry.  Basically, I hemmed one side of the rectangle then sewed a basting stitch along the other long side, pulling the thread to ruffle it.  I attached it to either sleeve, and wallah! (how do you spell that?)

 The ruffled sleeve.  Doesn't look perfect, but I like it much better.  I will definitely wear this shirt now.  I'll even let you in on a little secret about myself and my sewing skills (or lack thereof).  Since I'm still pretty new at this, most projects still take me twice as long (or longer) as they should.  For instance, I unpicked my ruffle and re-cut the sleeves after sewing the first one on because I didn't like the way they were shaped.  I re-sewed that ruffle on and proceeded to the next.  Upon finishing, I finally looked at it and realized that I had sewn it on inside-out, with the seam on the outside.  Ugh!  I had to unpick the whole dang thing again.  I make these silly kinds of mistakes all the time in sewing.  But hey, someday I'll understand and get things done right the first time, won't I?  At least that is my hope.

 My wonderful modeling skills.  I apologize that half of my head is cut off.  The first two attempts cut off my entire head, and I was tired of re-positioning the camera.  So this is as good as it gets.

 What do you think?  Much better with the shorter sleeves?  I think so.

Also, don't mind the mismatched plaid shorts. :) That's just what I was wearing the day I finished the shirt.

Navy Submarine Ball

Mike and I attended our first Ball last Saturday.  It commemorated the 111th birthday of the Navy Submarine force.  It was pretty neat, with a dinner, speaker, recognition of retired subs and even a few WWII Navy Veterans.  We had a great time, and it was a lot of fun (and stress) to prepare for :)  Going dress shopping, since I didn't own a single dress that could be counted as formal, was fun but nearly unfruitful.  There was not a single modest dress to be found.  Upon resolving to alter any dress I found, the search continued and I finally settled on this pretty purple one.

 In greater detail

 So, the work began.  I removed the bottom ruffle of the dress and re-hemmed the bottom.
Then, I cut sections of that ruffle and sewed them in as sleeves to the dress!  The last bit to finish was HAND-sewing the piece of material to go over the low v-neck.  That took a long time.  All in all, through my mistakes and experiments to figure out how to get all of this done, I spent about 4 hours altering this dress, all in one day.  I was pretty sick of looking at it by the time I finished :) But, I am very pleased with the outcome.

 Here we are, all dressed up. Mike in his dress whites and me in my new formal dress.  We had a great time.

 I even got to do my hair all fancy.  Wow, it had been a while since I had tried to do anything like this!  And I had about 1 option that I knew how to do as an up-do, so here it is.

 I liked it.  Dressing up was a lot of fun!  I look forward to the future Balls and events when we will get to do this again.  Look, I even got some jewelry(!!), considering I didn't have ANY to wear.

Boone Hall Plantation

We visited one of the local plantations a few weeks ago.  There were about 8 old slave homes on the property, each set up with historical information about the slaves, such as their daily life, religious practices, pursuits of liberty, etc.  It was all very neat to see.

Below is one of the slave cabins.

The plantation house, NOT the original home built on this lot.

We found this beautiful tree on the property, and had to take pictures.  By the way, this location is where the movie, The Notebook, was filmed (among others).  While we were there, a woman was even getting her bridal pictures taken.  The place is beautiful!

They also had a butterfly garden at the plantation, with a few butterflies and many gorgeous flowers. This purple flower was pretty amazing, unlike any other I had ever seen.

After leaving here, we went over to the plantation part where the family still grows fruits and vegetables.  We picked strawberries and blackberries by the pound.  It was a lot of fun and I made some strawberry freezer jam, blackberry syrup, and blackberry pie out of our pickings. Yum :)

Recipes?!?!

For you lovely ladies who asked for these recipes, here they are :)
Cheesecake Supreme (from my Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook)

Chocolate Box with Berries & Cream
For this one, just scroll down until you find it.  There are a few other recipes on there that look like they would be fun to try, but also some that look not-so-good.

Enjoy!  I hope that some of you try these recipes out and report back to me how delicious they were!

Yummy Eats

I just thought I would post a few of the delicious desserts recently concocted in our home, just to make you all envious :)

 The most delicious cheesecake, made all from scratch.  This was delicious, and even looked beautiful (aside from the major cracks in the top)

 Yum yum yum

 This second dessert I made for a cultural activity we had for Relief Society.  We were supposed to bring a dessert from our favorite country.  I had no idea what to bring and did not know any foreign desserts, so I looked up desserts from Ireland (one of my favorite, hopefully future destinations) and found this beauty.  It is called Chocolate box with berries and cream.  The base is made from semi-sweet chocolate, melted and then cooled to harden in the desired shape.  The filling is chocolate cheesecake-type creamy tastiness.  This is all topped off with whatever berries you like and rosette whipped cream around the edges.  I am very proud of this one.  It was oh so good and went into my recipe collection.

Notice the crisp chocolate base and the chocolate filling oozing out a bit :)