Santa Dress

A year ago I had the idea of making a santa dress myself. This year will be the 19th Santa Pub Crawl in Atlanta and I can't wait till next Saturday. I've been there already four times. The first year was in 2005 and I was a little scared that I will be the only person dressed up. I dressed up as the Star Taler, a Grimm fairytale. Bj, my american mom helped me put on the stars. Next to me is my friend Tanja who I met while interning that year in Atlanta.

Look at that crowd. I was so relieved! :)

So much fun with hundreds of Santa's.

That was also the night were I had to say good by to my huge crush Ross Geller, who was the DJ at Q100. I have to admit, I stalked him for about 6 months - so in love - I was young and didnt know better!

ANYWAYS... back to my original plan...

This saturday I looked for some fabric and found the perfect red velvet and a white fluffy border. Back home I took out my last years outfit:

Snowhite

I laid out the white dress on top of the red fabric and marked the outlines with a fabric marker.

I included a little extra just in case and cut.

 

Put right sides together and pinned the outline of the dress.

After sewing the sides and shoulders (dont sew the arms, neck or bottom together!) I pinned the white border around the dress.

Sewed it on.

and put it on my dress form to see the progress

I love that white fabric, it looks like tiny rose buds.

after that was done, I pinned the arms.

formed and pinned the arm holes of the dress

and laid everything out again

The arm has to be right side out! I put the arm inside the dress

and pinned it together.

Sewing it onto the dress, laid it out to admire it :)

I put it on, to see if it fits at all..

 The arm was a bit to wide, so I tightend it some.

Doubled the arm for the other side,

laid it out again

tried it another time, made some tiny changes to it

and hung it on the dress form to work on the details

Pinned white border to the chest/neck and the arms

sewed it on as best as I could

For the arms I had to hand sew some parts, since it was to tight to get it in the machine

  

 

AND TADA...

My very first Santa Dress.

Happy Anniversary

We have our one year anniversary in our house this week. When we saw it the first time I fell in love at first sight. The brick on the outside, the white doors throughout the house all really high, the french doors to the formal dining... 

A little weird is that we have SIX windows in the bedroom (which are by now all covered with curtains)

 The master bathroom has a huge window as well.

 

At first I loved it, until we moved in and there was no way to walk around, take a shower, brush your teeth, in private. We tried to come up with a cool idea on how to cover that window. It is too narrow to attach shutters, curtains look weird and might mold. The only idea we came up with were to attach a tinted window film. Of course we messed up. There were scratches and bubbles all over the window and it looked really bad.

When my mom came in town couple weeks ago, I wanted everything to look perfect and tried to take the film off. Not as easy as I thought it would be. The removal spray which you can buy at your local home improvement store, didnt work at all. I was so disappointed. I tried soap water but that didnt work, the hair dryer didnt work either. When my mom finally arrived the film was 1/4 removed and everything else was still attached to the window.

 My mom and I spent several hours in the tub with raiser blades getting rid of the film inch by inch. Finally the film was all gone. I bought a new one, Brian and I put it on and it looked even worse. We tried so hard, but messed up again. You think how hard can it be?? Thats what I thought, I was so mad at myself, and threw everything away. We put towels over the shower, showered in the dark and tried to hide more or less from our neighbors for a couple of weeks. Awesome!! Finally I got tired of it and bought another box of tinted window film and cut it to the right size. 

 We tried really hard to not mess it up this time. It took forever, but finally the result is good and will stay as long as we live in that house (or even longer!)

I can't wait to take my first bubble bath! :)

Finally Thanksgiving is here!

Our table setting for Thanksgiving

The kids table

 The Food

Turkey

Brian getting instructions on how to cut his first turkey

Sweet Potato Casserole

Green Bean Casserole

Potato Salad

 

Cranberry Sauce

Stuffing

Jello

Dinner Rolls

The full entree assortment

 Dessert

Mystery Pecan Pie

Pumpkin Spice Cake

Cake Pops

 

Pumpkin Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Frosting

...and the full assortment of sweets

 The Snacks

Hope you are enjoying some nice days with your loved ones!