A new little dress for me

With all the hot August days, I found myself not wanting to wear my usual uniform of jeans. So we set out to find me a new sun dress and couldn't find anything cute and reasonably priced. I didn't feel like spending over 30 bucks for a dress I was just going to lounge around in.

I've had this dress pattern hiding in my stash for sometime now and it seemed like the perfect time to pull it out.

I've read a lot about the Built by Wendy patterns from Simplicity but hadn't yet tried one. I found this one and I thought it was cute, it would keep my cool, and would look good on me! A most important point.

I cut out the pattern the other night, not too many pieces. Then on Tuesday I wrote some wedding thank you notes, then did a step on the dress, then wrote more notes and so on went my day. And night.

The pattern wasn't hard, but it wasn't the easiest garment I've worked on either. I made the dress, but I cut it to the length of the tunic on the right side of the pattern. So with this fabric at that length I have a cute little '60s dress.

Backyard astronomer

Not only is Google taking over the world, but now outer space too! Google has made an add-on program that runs with Google Earth called Google Sky.

"[Google] Sky will allow astronomers a chance to glide through images of more than one million stars and 200 million galaxies.

Optional layers allow users to explore images from the Hubble Space Telescope as well as animations of lunar cycles."

The images are compiled from many sources including the local Palomar Observatory in Escondido.

You can also layer on the constellation, small objects that can be seen with the naked eye, planet positions and moon phases.

Click here to read the entire article.

Mac users can download this Starry Night widget for Dashboard. You can set your location by zip code and see what will be overhead that evening.

Party foul

A reward

It's not fun to get up early, especially when you know you're going to spend the first hour ironing and packing clothes not lounging outside drinking coffee until you have the shakes.

Well this morning I found a nifty surprise as I walked in to the living room on my way to the kettle to facilitate even one cup of morning coffee. Hanging flower baskets casting a fanciful silhouette on my curtains.

A Project for Sunday

Because of the fact that we worked so hard before our wedding, we have not been doing any projects around the house. Well, until today. We were given three Bansky photographs from Thomas' Aunt Penni and Uncle Simon.

They arrived from England matted in white but unframed. We went out and bought frames, put the photos in the frames, but oops! The standard metric matte size is about 1/2 smaller all around than our 20x24 inch American frames.

Luckily, Thomas gave me a matte cutter last Christmas. We thought we could get off easy and not have to cut mattes, but it turned out not to be that simple. I went back to the framing store, found a red matte that matches the red wall in our living room, ordered it, waited a week, went back to the framing store and collected our matte.

So today, framing. We measured and measured, stood back to think, measured some more and finally settled on a 3.5 inch boarder around each picture.

Then we put the the border in the frame, followed by the matted photograph and then the backer board.

And here's what we have! We're thrilled with the result! Graphic, bold, anti-authority prints. Perfect.