Goodwill Skirt Remake

If you took a plain boring skirt and a plain boring tie and put them together what would you get?  Well, let's do some math. 

Here's the equation:

While wandering around my local Goodwill the other day I found both of these items and thought, "Hmmm, I bet these could look really cool together."  And so I was inspired to sew a few "extras" onto this otherwise boring skirt.  First off I trimmed the hemline up to just below my knees.  Then with that scrap of fabric I was able to insert a couple of pleats. 

After the pleats were done I then prepared the tie by cutting two appropriate lengths (one for the front and one for the back).  Then I removed just enough of the backing of the tie to eliminate adding bulk to the skirt. 

Once I had that done I simply pinned each tie piece to the skirt and topstitched them down. 

Here is the finished skirt front:

And here is the finished skirt back:

The result is pretty much what I had envisioned while wandering the aisles of Goodwill.  I was hoping it would have a somewhat "vintage" feel, almost 40s or 50s, and I think it does. 

 

 

What do you think?

To purchase this one of a kind skirt click here.

Exploring My Artistic Talents in Baking

Yesterday I baked a pineapple upside-down cake, actually two of them.  I cannot remember the last time I made one of these cakes, if ever.  The whole process was actually a lot simpler than I had imagined.  Because, well let's be honest, who really bakes a cake from scratch anymore?  So I thought I was in for a ton of work.  Boy, was I pleasantly surprised!   

I used this recipe from my Betty Crocker cookbook and only noticed the suggestions after I was done.  I thought it was quite appropriate given that I had already taken that liberty.  So, maybe I am a true "artist".

So I started by melting the butter in the baking dish.  Oh, the aroma of melted butter, mmm, need I say more?

Then I practiced my pineapple arranging skills before placing them in the dish just to make sure the picture I had in my head would actually work.  And mostly because I was intending the finished designed to come out legible so I had to create it backwards so that after the "flip" it would read "30" and NOT "0E". 

After sprinkling in the brown sugar over the melted butter, in goes the pineapple.   Then mix up the batter and,...

Pour it over the pineapple and bake it.  After it's done, immediately flip it onto a plate. I did learn a few lessons while creating this: 

1) always, ALWAYS check to make sure you have ALL of the ingredients on hand (even if you did the day before).  I ran out of sugar and ended up using about 1/4 cup of powered sugar to have enough. 

2) I should have used a larger platter when flipping it over.  It gets very syrup-ey (let's just say my sister was not too happy because she had just mopped, but my dog enjoyed it!) 

Here's what the finished cake looked like.

And 3) the pineapple doesn't stand out against the cake as much as I envisioned and I should have used more pieces of it.  But, mmm does it taste good!  It's caramelly and gooey and sweet and yummy.  I enjoyed it!