And here is what an $1800 pipe looks like

Yep, here is what an $1800 pipe looks like. Not much huh? See that tiny little hole? That is apparently a HUGE hole. That little sucker caused some major problems for us.

I've been meaning to post this, but my computer with the card slots for my digital camera is sitting at Fry's Electronics waiting for a new motherboard (for free! thank goodness for warranties).

Anyway, we came home from a little trip to Meme's house and hear this noise in the wall of the bathroom that sounds like water is spraying everywhere. My husband goes to the closet behind the bathroom to see if he can find the leak by cutting a chunk of drywall out and nothing is there, but an entire fire ANT COLONY!!! OMG!! They came pouring out. It took 2 days to get them all out.

Anyway, we had a slab leak - $400 to find it, then $1400 for them to jack hammer a 2 x 2 ft section of our slab in my son's bedroom to repair it. The fun adventures in homeowner land. They think it's been leaking for a long time and it finally just got huge. And that noise we heard? It was just the sound of air bubbles in the pipe from the leak. That was relief, I was picturing the wall filling up with water.

I somehow psychically new this was going to happen and cleaned out the closet where I had kept all my sewing stuff and a few days later this happened and the carpet was soaked in that closet from the leak.

Baton Twirling Costume - so far...

So I had to put my littel garage sale on the back burner as in about 10 days Em is performing her twirling solo for the first time. So I've been trying to design it. Last year, I bought several different fabrics and ended up with a tropical fabric for her Tiki Tiki Room routine so I had this fabric left over. I've been trying to come up with something. This is my current design. See the beaded fabric in the middle? - $70/yd Yep, your read that correctly $70 a yd. Yikes! I've had it carefully wrapped in tissue in a plastic bag since last year.

It doesn't have any elastic in yet and the crotch is still open. But just wanted to post it because I have never seen any kind of sew and show with these types of costumes and thought it might help someone else.

I've delicately cut out some more of the beading designs from the expensive fabric and will attach them to fill out the beading fabric more. The seams will all be covered with stretch sequin trims and around the entire bottom seam at the hip will be icicle fringe all the way around. I had white/clear, but I'm going to order gold icicle fringe as these beads have a lot more gold-y colors. The nude and upper bodice are also going to be covered in hot fix rhinestones.

I basically took a skating dress pattern and the panty and bodice were already 2 pieces - I just left off the skirt, and then I cut the top and middle in half and added back a 1/2 inch seam allowance. I'm using glissinette (I think that's what it's called, its nude with a little sparkly too it) as the top nude, and it's also behind the beaded fabric because I felt it needed more coverage. But this one is a little snug on her and hard to get on and off, so I'm going to cut a new one slightly larger.

Got my Luxe ribbon!!

I won yards of ribbon over at TrendWatcher from their ribbon line. Oh my gosh, this stuff is yummy wondeful!! Very nice, high quality ribbon. I have the package sitting on my desk right now calling my name to make some with it.

Oh and I saw the coolest thing on that Sandi Genovese(sp?) show on HGTV or DIY? I can't remember which one she's on. It was like 4 in the morning I saw it, thanks to my 4 yr old. Anyway, this lady made molds of just regular things using stuff like that Crayola Magic clay stuff. I'm not sure what brand she used, but it looked just like that magic clay from Crayola. It's really lightweight clay that dries super fast. First she used it to make a mold of something like a cute metal girly girl dress thing that hung on a wall, then once it dried, she put in more magic clay into the mold and created the actual thing, so she could paint it and then stick in a scrapbook page. She used pencils to do it too for a school scrapbook page. But I thought that was very neat to make in a mixed media collage for a shadow box. I got this neat idea to do something like that with a miniature dressform, then create a little "sewing/designing" shadow box with fabric samples. Oh my -- just writing this is making me create the whole thing in my head, like a miniature shadow box of Project Runway. I'm going to have to do this really soon before I forget, lol. It would go absolutely perfect in my mini-sewing room. And some of my new Luxe ribbon would be perfect to finish it off. You have to get some of this ribbon, I love the floral ones.

Wow, it took me forever to find the link to the episode, but she's on Scrapbooking on DIY and this is the link to what I was talking about.

Ok back to work, I'm screwing off again, lol.

Well...I'm not sure what to do

So it's 4 AM here, and I'm awake because of my neighbors. Why you ask? Because apparently they decided to have a party until 4 AM and one of their "guests" thought it would be great fun to run up and down our street peeling his tires over and over. I'm sure he had great thrills with me standing on my porch with all the lights on staring them down. I just needed a mud mask and one of my husband's rifles to complete the look.

Up until a year or so ago, this was a quiet neighborhood, then I started to notice that it seemed only a young girl lived diagonal to us. They had a fire a couple years ago and I'm not sure what happened because we were out of town at the time. But it took almost a year to rebuild it and then I never saw anyone but her and stupid teenagers around - ever after that. The yard was rarely mowed lately, and now there are literally trash bags of clothing sitting on the porch (and we're not talking Salvation Army pick up). This stuff has been there for at least a month now. And this girl now has parties all week long. They now have a band that practices all hours of the day and night. My husband has had to bang on the door at 1 AM to shut them up.

I've begun to keep a record of each instance of this crap.

So tonight I got pissed and decided to "investigate". And according to the tax records apparently this home belongs to a 75 year old woman. Now there is no record of her death, so maybe they killed her and moved in ala Charles Manson and his family or maybe she's been shipped off to the nursing home and the granddaughter has moved in. I don't know. So I've decided from now on I'm going to call the cops any time they have a party.

Weird thing was, when my husband went over in the middle of the night, there was no furniture anywhere he could see in the house. I'm starting to suspect drugs or something.

But I've also noticed that if the old lady no longer lives there, she is illegaling claiming homestead and senior citizen exemptions on her property taxes.

Anyway, I'm pissed because now my 4 yr old is wide awake too.

Geez, lady is this a Sewing Blog or a Book Club?

Ok so I admit it...I am diehard bookworm. I breathe in books. I feel panicked if I don't have a stack of books to read. I love books. I love libraries and I love to get lost in a bookstore, especially used book stores. Half Price Books is my favorite -- and not the little ones around the Dallas area, but the big mama one near North Park mall that's in an old super sporting goods store. It drives my husband crazy but I will spend hours in that store and still find a dozen new books I need to buy.

Ok so back to what I was originally going to do -- post some book reviews...So have you read The Time Traveler's Wife?? I gave my copy to my MIL and I hope I get it back soon. I think that is my favorite book EVER. I can't wait to read it again.

I just finishd this book about a week ago. It's a big book, over 500 pages, but it's a definite page turner. I couldn't put it down and when I had to put it down, I would find ways to go grab it and read a page or 2. It's about Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn, his second wife and her sister, Mary Boleyn. It's historical fiction, and the movie is coming out this year, soon I think. The Boleyn family wants to move up in the world and so they push Mary to become the king's mistress, and she falls in love and has 2 babies with him. Then after baby #2, while she's still recovering from the birth, Anne wiggles her way to become his mistress and eventually the queen. What I liked about it was it is written very contemporary and not with a bunch of "thee's and thou's." But since you know what happens to Anne in the end, you can't quit reading for what happens to lead up to her death.
This is the current book I'm reading, and I am enjoying it as much as The Other Boleyn Girl. This one involves some new players in the court of Henry VIII. This is set much later after Anne's death and after the third queen Jane Seymour dies in childbirth. This one is told by 3 women - the new queen from Germany, Anne of Cleves - who the king doesn't like; a new Boleyn girl named Katherine Howard who has the eye of the king; and Jane Boleyn, the sister-in-law of Anne Boleyn who gave the testimony that lead to her death. In the first book, you do not like Jane Boleyn, she's very lewd with her words and always spying on Anne Boleyn and her brother (Jane's husband), but in this book you see another side and understand her more. I'm about halfway through and it's a page turner just like the first.
This one is by the same author, but I have not read it yet. It's the next one I'm going to read. It is about a 14 yr old Jewish girl who can see the future and flees from the Spanish Inquisition and gets hired as the queen's fool for Queen Mary and later Elizabeth.

I'm on a roll -- I need to go find me a casino

I won another blog contest....for some scrumpitious scrapbooking ribbons...24 yds!! I can't wait to see them IRL. Aren't they gorgeous!?! I'm telling ya', I'm on a roll and I need to go up to my mother in law's and find me a Choctaw casino and win the big jackpot while I'm on my roll.

Miss Em's doing a baton twirling solo to the song during the end credits on Lemony Snickett, it's called Drive Away. It's a very cool song. So I've been looking over movie stills to find costume inspiration -- which seems very gothic, and those ribbons gave me some great gothic ideas with the little scrolies. I'm picturing maybe red velvet with black sequin scrollies like on these ribons. Hmmm, I don't know. I'm not sure what I'm going to do yet, and her first performance is Feb 23 -- yikes!