From the monthly archives: June 2012
Also known as the “Hawaiian Skirt that Almost Was.”
I saw this fabric a couple months ago at Joann’s and then lovingly carried the bolt of fabric around the store smiling like a dummy. I loved it and needed it and wanted to upholster my house in it. But alas, I live with a boy. And some boys just don’t love all the floral. Ha!
I bought a couple of yards to make some kind of skirt with it. I’m loving maxi skirts right now, so I had visions of a graphic, colorful, floral maxi skirt. And then in one of the best decisions of my life, I asked Timothy’s opinion. I held the fabric up and asked if he thought it would be cute as a long skirt. (And after typing that sentence I now realize that I can never make fun of him for basketball again. He must love his new life of giving me fashion opinions. Ha!)
But he looked at it and said “Umm, that’s a lot going on. Don’t you think it looks Hawaiian? I’d make it shorter.” Good call, good call. Plus I’m 5’1″. Fashion rules say I shouldn’t even wear a maxi since I’m so short. Throw me in a maxi with a busy pattern and flowers larger than my head? Yikes.
So I made it knee length and I’m so happy with how it turned out! I used my go-to skirt pattern, McCall’s 3341. The pattern makes an A-line skirt, so I usually taper the sides for a more pencil shape. This time I left the pattern as is because I really liked how the fabric hung with the A-line shape.
I kind of got out of the habit of sewing, so it was so wonderful to get back into it. Last week I made three skirts, several sunglasses cases, and an iPad case. I wasn’t going to bed until the early morning hours because I was simply having so much fun!
So what about you guys? Have any of you sewn anything recently? Do you have a go-to skirt pattern? I just bought a new pencil skirt pattern that I’d love to try, but I need interfacing. To me, interfacing is to the sewing world as flour was to the cooking world. So I’m just going to have to jump in.
I’d love to hear about your latest sewing projects!
~Whitney
Every Saturday at the Gothra home is Date Day. It’s the only day of the week that we can (usually) do whatever we want together. We never do the same thing twice on a Saturday, we always eat delicious food, and we never spend very much money. The cheaper the better. Oh glorious Date Day, how I love you.
Timothy teases me because every Saturday I wake up and say “do you think we’ll have fun today?” In our relationship, I’m the planner and the worrier. Timothy is the spontaneous one. And fun just seems to follow him around.
Like this past Saturday? We laughed until our bellies ached. And the fun just fell in our laps. Boom.
We slept in and then went to town to get our dry cleaning. While at the cleaners, the weird old lady owner with the painted on eyebrows tried to hurry us out the door so she could go to the car show. Car show? Count Timothy in. And me too, I guess. Ha!
It turned out to be a HUGE vintage car show. People come from far and wide just to see it. I don’t even care about cars and I had a great time.
This was by far my favorite car. I just wanted to put it in my pocket! But do you see the guy in the socks and shorts in the background? He was the owner.
He spent at least seven minutes talking to Timothy about the car and showing him ever nook and cranny. When Timothy asked him how much the car was worth, the guy was all, “Well, the real ones are valued at [insert outrageous price here], but this is a reproduction. It’s worth [insert very normal car price here].”
It was like the fool’s gold car.
And this was just the fool’s car. Who enters a made in the 90s jeep into a vintage car show?
While looking at the cars, we passed a little Mexican market. We went inside on a whim and immediately the owner rattled off this long string of Spanish. Timothy sighed and just said “I don’t speak Spanish.”
See, this happens all the time. Timothy is Indian, but anytime someone from Mexico sees him, he automatically assumes that Timothy is Mexican. One time we were in the mall and this Mexican man started arguing with Timothy because he couldn’t believe that Timothy was from India. Funny stuff.
So Timothy just kept repeating “I don’t speak Spanish” to this market owner and the market owner kept repeating “Como estas?” endlessly. I felt like I was watching a tennis match of words. I finally just stepped in front of Timothy and said “bien!” and the owner sighed, smiled, and said “si! si! You speak Spanish.” Ha!
The owner showed us around and then helped us pick out some Mexican drinks. I had (non-alcoholic) Sangria and Timothy had some kind of apple drink with “gas.” We’re hoping that gas meant carbonation.
As we were leaving the store, the owner launched into this long monologue about how Timothy needed to visit India again. He told us that India was full of knowledge, culture and history. When we asked him if he had ever been to India himself, he replied, “No, but I watch the travel channel.” Nice.
And can we all just take a moment to appreciate this sign? Oh how I’d love to be a fly on the wall in that class.
After the car show and the Mexican encounter, Timothy and I just drove around. We got very lost in the country, we talked about what our dream house would look like, and drove home in the moonlight listening to jazz.
I love Date Day.
~Whitney
Saving money by making stuff yourself is really trendy right now. And I don’t hate it. A lot of my life I have taken pride in myself when I didn’t do something just because it was trendy. (Rainbow flip flops anyone? Or leggings. Yikes.) But now that DIY is trendy, I’m making myself right at home in the bandwagon. I’ll just surround myself with cupcakes, bunting, yarn wreaths, and mason jars and call it a day.
I’ve been wanting to try out handmade laundry detergent for awhile. (Handmade sounds so much better than homemade, right?) But I was overwhelmed by the sheer number of recipes floating around Pinterest. Then a lovely lady from my church who owns a shop in our town gave me some to try. It smelled like heaven and worked great, so I resolved to finally make some myself.
After much searching, I settled on this recipe from How Does She. It is good for regular machines and HE machines. It includes Borax, baking soda, washing soda, Zote/Fels Naptha, and Oxiclean. It also explains how to add those fabric softener crystals, but we chose not to do that. And by we, I mean my mom and I. It was a family effort.
My dad kind of got pulled into helping because he was just so talented at grating all that soap. Seriously. He could do two bars in the time I could do half of one. It must be all the sanding he’s done over the years. Ha! So my mom just reminded him of how much she would be saving and that she would be washing his clothes, and he grated away. Timothy took this nice iPhone pic of us and then resumed telling us about some new surgery he saw on YouTube. Sadly, a true story.
The whole process was really easy. We used that big tub to mix it all in and it worked like a charm. My mom had a ton of jars from canning, and we just divided the mixture into those. This particular recipe filled nine and a half of those giant mason jars.
I’ve already started using the detergent and I’m loving it. It smells great, our clothes feel clean, and it looks so cute! I’m loving how much money we’ll save also. Since marrying a smelly man, I’ve had a LOT more laundry than I thought. I mean seriously. I’m kind of afraid of the amount of laundry I’ll have when we have children.
So this is one DIY that I’m so glad we did. Have any of you made your own detergent? Any different recipes that you use? I’d love to hear!
~Whitney
I love holidays. Any and all holidays. Especially ones where you have an excuse to be extra sappy. I love sap. The emotional kind, not the tree kind.
Yesterday we celebrated Father’s Day. My absolute favorite moment of the day had to do with my husband, though. He presented my dad with his Father’s Day present from the church and he got a bit sappy in his presentation. Immediately after church, I went to Timothy and his eyes were full of tears. ”I just love your Dad,” he said.
Wow. I loved that moment. I loved seeing how much my husband loved and admired my dad.
See, there’s this very interesting thing that happens in a girl’s heart when she gets married. And I know it’s not just something that has happened to me. This weekend people were posting pictures galore on all the social media networks about their dads. And an overwhelming majority of the pictures posted by women were images of the daughter and her father on her wedding day.
When a girl thinks about her dad, her heart often goes right to that moment. That moment where he walked her down the aisle and gave her away to another man.
For 21 years, it was just my Dad. I was (and still am) a supreme Daddy’s girl. I adore my father. He can do no wrong in my book, just ask my mom. Ha!
But now that I’m married to my soulmate, he’s my number one. He’s my spiritual head, the one who prays for me, the one who protects me. Like the Bible said, we left our families and cleaved to each other, starting a whole new family.
What a huge transition, going from a Miss to a Mrs. From a Gill to a Gothra.
The only moment I cried in our wedding was when I was saying good bye to my Dad. I laughed through the rest of the day. And you know what? I think that’s how it’s supposed to be. I was sad to end that chapter of my life, but overjoyed to start a new one. And now when I think about Father’s Day, that moment comes rushing back.
Now I can look back and see all the ways my Dad helped mold me into who I am today. He taught me how to be feminine by showing me what true masculinity was. He showed me the characteristics to look for in a man by the way he treated my Mom. He protected my purity. He led our family, just the way God intended it.
Because of all that, I held out. I kept my standards high. I waited for just the right guy. He would have big shoes to fill.
The day I became a Mrs. my relationship with my Dad changed. Now I esteem him even more, if that’s possible. I’m so thankful for everything he was and is to me. As cliche as it may be, if it hadn’t been for him, I don’t know that I would be where I am today. I may not have stood for purity. I may have questioned my identity and lived life skeptical and untrusting. I may have not waited for the one God had for me.
My Dad taught me so much that I didn’t realize until after I was married. I love you, Dad!
~Whitney
Good things are going on in the Gothra home.
The whole thing started on Saturday when our house just wasn’t cooling down. We turned the thermostat down, prayed it was just tired and would pick up soon, and kind of ignored it. When it got so hot that we had to go hang outside to cool off, we knew something was wrong.
Sunday wasn’t any better. But Timothy said that if his Indian family could survive without air in India, then we could make it. News flash dear husband: I’m not Indian. I’m white. (Well, some kind of blend of Scots-Irish and Cherokee. I clearly didn’t get the tanned non-frizzy Cherokee genes.)
We scheduled two different air guys to come to our house on Monday. Several people told us the unit may just need charged. Whatever that means.
The first guy came an hour and a half late and after quite awhile of me hoping it was “charging” he came inside, sighed, and said, “well, it’s not good news.” Of course.
The air is broken and would be at least $1000 to be fixed. Womp womp womp.
Then the other air guy called and said he was just too busy and wouldn’t be able to look at it for two weeks. Yeah, it’s not like we’re living in a house made of metal in the middle of summer! If the Indians can do it, we can.
So my dad found a window unit from 1962 and installed it in our kitchen until we can move forward with fixing our air.
And then I fell through our front steps and broke a board. I’m pretty sure it was all the stress eating I’ve been doing lately. Ha!
But then last night at church my Dad preached on Paul. You know the guy who makes all the rest of us Christians look like wimps?
… I am more; in labours more abundant, in stripes above measure, in prisons more frequent, in deaths oft. Of the Jews five times received I forty stripes save one. Thrice was I beaten with rods, once was I stoned, thrice I suffered shipwreck, a night and a day I have been in the deep; In journeyings often, in perils of waters, in perils of robbers, in perils by mine own countrymen, in perils by the heathen, in perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness, in perils in the sea, in perils among false brethren; In weariness and painfulness, in watchings often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness. Beside those things that are without, that which cometh upon me daily, the care of all the churches.
2 Corinthians 11:23-28
Sheesh. Thanks a lot Paul. I guess I really don’t have anything to complain about. Ha!
~Whitney
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I'm honored that you took time to stop by my blog! My name is Whitney, and I'm a diy loving, piano playing, sewing obsessed, thrifty, non-house cleaning, crafty newlywed. I love God, my husband, and life as a wife. If you'd like to know more, just check out my About Me page. Much love!
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