Deck the clothes!

I'M BACK! My dwindling number of readers I'm sure are thrilled. I'm a little excited about this post though. In the past year, someone let me know about New Dress a Day, which has been my new favorite blog to read. Marisa goes to thrift stores and yard sales and finds cheap and mostly ugly pieces of clothing, which she then alters and wears.

I'm a fairly decent sewer (hooray, I have a feminine quality!), and an excellent cheap spender. Unfortunately I have no time. Enter Christmas Break to my rescue! Let's back up. For some reason my mother decided to offer me a heinously colored "dress" (sack) from the 80s:

(FYI, I'm wearing pants under it...I'm not pregnant as it appears.) So this pale pink stretchy knit fabric apparently passed as socially acceptable wear back in the day. Ew. I was going to pitch it, or sleep in it, when my inner creativity starting working.
New Dress a Day made me think that perhaps I could
venture into the land of fabric dying, which I've never done. With my sister's support I headed out to Michael's, and bought some Cherry Red RIT dye.(If you try this, use stainless steel...trust me on this one.)

I did some snipping and hacking and sewing...and Voile! I created my Christmas Eve dress:

(I am, obviously, on the right.) Again not pregnant...maybe it's just the fabric. Remind me to suck in my stomach for pictures.

Tre cute, no? I had a good time, and I feel very resourceful!

Hope ya'll (who am I kidding, "all"?) had a fantastic Christmas! Here's to a happy 2011!!

PS on 1/20/11: I got a better picture of the dress:

Feliz Navidad...

If another one of my students asks me if we can sing "Feliz Navidad" I'm going to scream. There ARE other Christmas songs in Spanish! I would like to present one of my favorites, introduced to me by Brewer, entitled "Mi burrito sabanero". This doesn't actually mean "my tasty burrito" as you might be inclined to think it does. It means "My little grasslands donkey." Enjoy! And Merry Christmas!



Lyrics (and hence why this is a Christmas song) can be found here.

Embarrassed...

I'm aware that I'm heinously overdue for an update, but I'm up to my overly-mascara'ed eyelashes in Christmas shopping stress. I seriously don't remember being this overwhelmed last year. It was like a couple orders online, bam, done. All the presents were at my house waiting for me when I finally got home after my 24-hour adventure from Santiago to Miami to Charlotte to BWI due to Snowmageddon Part Uno. Just remembering that little venture makes me want to change my clothes and take a shower. Yuck.

Anyway, maybe once I have a better handle on Christmas shopping I can add something interesting on here? Perhaps?

Couple random thoughts:
1) I seriously need to start my Christmas shopping in early November next year.
2) The commercialization and amount of people in the stores overwhelms me.
3) I do not want to even think about looking at my credit card bill.
4) Avatar: The Last Airbender was way better than Avatar. I don't care what the critics say.
5) Tonight I opted for movie by myself in my house instead of going out. Am I 40??
6) I am ridiculously excited for Ravens vs. Pit-of-hell's burgh tomorrow. And Jets vs Patriots Monday! Big weekend for football!