Progress at last!

Well here's some of the explanation for shirking my blogging obligations. Some more lame than others but I'm hoping they at least fill you in on the black hole that was last week. I do have a 'real' job as some of you may have deduced from past posts and comments. I am very grateful, given the current economy, that my hours are increasing since several of my friends are in the opposite position. Piled on top of the away from the house work with my housework and my homework was a variety of social commitments that left me with an imbalanced and off schedule sleep cycle. Net result is when I could be in bed I was in an insomniac manic mode and when I needed to be Mom-in-Chief I was more like Oscar the Grouch. During this period I did make contact with a web designer who is going to help make this a more reader friendly and personalized place to visit. Since Rhonda was such a dear to feature her two cuties in the Valentine's outfits I made I feel I need to mention that he is also helping me get another blog up and running to showcase the sewing room output. I will be sure to put a link as soon as it is ready for public traffic! I had wished to keep expenses to a minimum so there would be more to go to Guatemala but as the old adage goes, "got to spend money to make money". Thanks to some advice in a previous post I did start to conquer the camera. The only problem is that we only had one day of sunshine in the past 5 days and of course I had to work that day. By the time I got home and outside the sun was already nearing the horizon which left lots of shadows but it was a good learning curve and I worked out some strategies. Here are the Cute as a Cupcake dress taken outside. Need to keep an eye out for a smaller dress form! The puckering is because it is stretched too tight over this form.

Oops, forgot to turn this one but as you can see the daylight is superior but I need to shoot closer to noon to minimize those shadows! This is going on eBay by tomorrow no matter what because I need room for some new cute summer prints I found.

These are two I have on eBay right now. I love rescuing old denim and giving it a new life!

This is half of today's project. I'm going back into the salt mine to applique a tee to co-ordinate and maybe a matching belt. It will be going on eBay before the weekend...unless one of my blog friends want to make an offer. The skirt is a Children's Place size 6x/7 stretch denim skirt to which I added the St. Pat's day appliques and ruffles. I can do any holiday or theme so feel free to ask about custom work.