I have found a series of new blogging loves over the past few weeks, and one of my favourites is One Pearl Button, which is written by Alli, otherwise known to me as inspiring-creative-genius-lady.  I was particularly drawn to her ’20 Minute Skirt’ tutorial (link here), and decided to try it out last night using an old dress, the fabric of which I love but the shape of which I’ve never been a fan of.  Here’s how I got on!

I don’t have a proper ‘before’ picture because I actually unpicked the top half of the dress last week, when I decided to do this, and neglected to take a photo of it.  So here’s the bottom half of the dress, cut to the length I wanted (v jagged like – I’m not great with those huge sewing scissors) and ready for a new lease of life…

…and here’s a snap of the project halfway through.  Alli explains it much better than I can, but you really just make a waistband from a thick strip of elastic, sew two lines of loose-ish stitches around the top of what will be your skirt and gather it together until it’s roughly the same size as your waistband.  You then sew the waistband to the skirt, using a zig-zag stitch all the way round.  My finished stitches are atrocious – I don’t think my machine appreciated being worked so hard!  Nevertheless, I got there in the end and…

…ta da!  One new skirt, all ready for an evening out!  As I said, the stitching around the top of mine is terrible, so I’ll probably wear a thick belt or a scarf around my waist to hide them.  Overall, I’m pleased as punch with the effect.  I’ve always been in two minds as to whether to give this dress away, given that I really love the pattern and the feel of the material (very sheer, with a silky lining on the inside).  Perhaps somewhere in the ether of my subconscious I knew that it was destined for a new beginning.  Thanks to Alli and her fantastic tutorial, here it is!

I’m currently engaged in a project to tackle the enigma that has been my living room for the past six months in a bid to make it feel more like ‘me’.  The only problem is, I point blank refuse to spend much money on it.  I mean, it’s pointless to go all out on the decorating front if I’m going to end up moving again in a few months’ time isn’t it?  I also don’t care much for trips to DIY stores.  I find these places to be full of grumpy middle-aged men and their prissy wives who do nothing but argue over light fittings.  Thanks, but I’d much rather spend my Sunday afternoon reading a book if it’s all the same.  I have therefore limited my home embellishments to a) things I already own; b) things I can buy on the cheap and c) things I can snaffle for free.  This has proved to be somewhat challenging thus far but I’m actually having lots of fun watching my vision gradually (very gradually) take shape.  Where would the satisfaction be if I could have it all done in the course of one day/week/month anyway?!

The room in question is enormous, and it’s also a really odd shape.  It comprises living room and dining area, with doors to the kitchen, utility room, bedrooms and store cupboards.  It actually has a rather disproportionate number of doors, which is good for hanging bed linen up to dry, but bad from the point of view of making the room interesting!  Living in rented accommodation, and having an extra-fussy management company watching us like hawks, means that we are also quite tightly restricted as to what we can and can’t do with the place.  There’s absolutely no scope for painting, papering or changing carpets.  Adding things like shelves is also impossible, given that holes in the walls must be kept to a minimum save we lose our precious deposit.

But against these odds, and with much thrifty perseverance, the room is gradually coming together.  Here are some of the more exciting ideas I’ve put into practice:

• Converted an old home-made curtain into a wall hanging to bring some colour to otherwise bare white walls.  Cost: nil
• Wound my own white fairy lights around a metal shopping basket I found in the street to make a kitsch and brightly-lit magazine rack.  Cost: nil
• Replaced a burnt and mouldy lampshade with a funky green Ikea number.  Cost: £7
• Added a blue and green checked rug found in a charity shop.  Cost: £3
• Gave life to the dining table with a vintage tea tray which holds fruit bowl and placemats.  Cost: £3
• Covered a scabby side table with some flowery material I had in my own collection.  Cost: nil
• Hung up a slightly tacky yet totally retro disco ball to reflect sunlight.  This was a present from a friend.  Cost: nil

I’m perpetually on the hunt for a bargain pair of curtains which I’m hoping will lift the room completely to life once and for all.  The current pair are threadbare and a dingy shade of off-yellow.  A part of me dies inside everytime I have to look at them, which unfortunately happens at least twice a day – I need to replace them for my own sanity.  I’m also planning to finish off a patchwork quilt I started *ages* ago which I can drape over the couch which is black (who buys a black couch!?) and desperately in need of some warmth.  Finally, I have a bright red easy chair waiting for me at my parents’ house which I am going to try and recover some time for extra seating and a good splash of colour.

Tiny baby steps I’m sure you’ll agree, but I’m moving in the right direction.  I also haven’t had to make a trip to B&Q yet.  Happy days!

Image above from Flickr – bekkchen.

OK, so saying this might be viewed by some as an attempt by me to try and put the whole power-suit dressing ‘career woman’ movement back by fifty years or more.  But so what.  I’m going to say it anyway…

*Sometimes I love housework*

There.  Now throw your burning bras at me all you will.

Seriously though, I often find housework to be incredibly therapeutic.  Or some aspects of housework, I should say.  Doing the laundry, washing the dishes, hoovering, sorting out the recycling – all of these things I’m more than content to get on with.  I’m not such a fan of dusting, ironing or cleaning the bathroom but I can quite amiably bring myself round even to these on a good day.  There’s something inherently relaxing about a couple of hours’ worth of good old-fashioned domesticity.  I’m not a crazy ‘neat freak’ (what a horrible phrase!) by any means but few things induce stress in me more than having a groaning laundry bag that refuses to accommodate even one more sock, or so many dirty plates piled by the sink that there are no clean ones left in the cupboard.  No, an orderly home leads to, for me at least, an orderly mind.

It’s true that I only really have myself to look after at the moment.  Thankfully I have nobody else’s underwear to put through the washing machine (*winces at the thought*) and no children hanging around, poised to make a mess at any given opportunity.  I can fully appreciate that housework could quite quickly lose its charm if it became not something I willingly do to create order in my head as well as my living space, but something I am required to do on a mammoth scale so my offspring doesn’t go to school in yoghurt-stained jumpers and odd socks.

But for now at least, housework is something I enjoy.  It satisfies me (who’d have thought it, Mum?).  And perhaps it’s not so strange a thing to enjoy after all.  We seem to accommodate a society where you’d be forgiven for thinking the mainstream view to be that happiness only comes in the form of the extraordinary – those once-in-a-lifetime occasions that we think will sweep away all negative emotions or feelings and place us firmly on the path to lasting peace and contentment.  The whole ‘once I achieve career goal X I’ll be happy’ or the ‘when I meet Mr or Mrs Right, then I’ll be happy’ idea appears, in my experience at least, to be a pretty darned prevalent one, especially, I’ve found, among young people.

But isn’t this an inherently flawed way to look at the world?  How often do these extraordinary things happen to us?  That’s right, extraordinarily.  If we define our perception of happiness by reference to things we only experience a handful of times, or perhaps never at all, we effectively sentence ourselves to lifetimes of enduring dissatisfaction, punctuated only very sporadically by fleeting feelings of joy or pleasure which arise when that magnificent career opportunity presents itself, or we meet a special person for the first time, but which disappear soon after when we realise that that promotion or person isn’t having the magical ‘cure-all’ effect we thought it or they would.

A much less risky way to proceed, I would suggest, is to look for contentment, satisfaction and joy in life’s common (and perhaps even mundane) occurrences. The smell of freshly laundered clothing; a well-timed and welcome cup of tea; a particularly eye-catching sunset.  We should all forget about the future for a while.  It doesn’t exist yet.  And we shouldn’t frame our hopes for happiness on one single event, or one single person.  Nothing and no one has the ability to make us content within ourselves, and nor should they.  We should indulge ourselves in the sights, sounds and smells of the present moment, and find ourselves even one tiny reason to be happy about it.  If that means experiencing near-elation at the sight of a newly-emptied recycling box or a stack of clean dishes then so be it.  Happiness should be our default setting, and not an exceptional and fleeting experience.

Flickr image – jawcey.

Does anyone else suffer from RCO (recycled container obsession)?  The other night I actually made my boyfriend eat the remains of a tub of Waitrose neapolitan ice cream just so that I could wash the empty box out and start using it to store home-made soup in.  He wasn’t complaining, but I nevertheless feel slightly ashamed of myself.  The tub (which is admittedly pretty cool, having pink, cream and brown stripes on the lid along with a picture of a cow) is just perfect, and it does the job as well as anything I could pay £5 for in a shop.  All this may be so but it still seemed a bit wrong of me to want the ice cream – the main attraction – to be gone so I could get down to some serious soup storage.  Is thrift beginning to take me over?!

While we’re on the subject, I’m also mad about collecting Bonne Maman jam jars which I re-use for storing granules, stock cubes, yeast and other bits and pieces.  These too are a great size and their gingham lids look so cheery lined up in the cupboard together.  Much more appealing and accessible than fiddly little cardboard boxes ever will be and more resistant to water and air damage as well.  It does mean, however, that I can be fairly liberal with the old jam while it’s still in the jar, offering it to visitors by the spoonful and leaving it lying around next to home-made bread in the hope that someone will take the hint and bash on with it.  I don’t think I’ve yet stooped to the level of buying jam just so I can get the jar when it’s finished, but as Monica Geller once said, a bite of the icing is but one step from being wedged in going down the tunnel slide.

Must keep an eye on this!

Image above courtesy of Flickr: mortimer?.

I felt slightly restless last night, and was in desperate need of something productive to do.  I’ve taken the whole of next week as a holiday (yipee!) so I have a chance to catch up on some of the geeky things I’ve been meaning to do for ages but just haven’t yet found the time for.  Top of the pile is (another) thorough combing through of my wardrobe, followed by the swift departure of all of unwanted items to the charity shop.  Seriously, I do this all the time but I’m constantly finding more things that I want to donate.  It just shows the disgusting amount of stuff I’ve accumulated!  Incidentally, I’ve decided that the Shelter branch at the top of Morningside Road is my favourite charity shop in Edinburgh (of those I’ve investigated so far).  Every week my eyes feast excitedly upon something else that I can’t ever imagine anyone else wanting to throw away.  On Saturday just passed, I bought two tartan mugs for £1 each which are nothing less than absolutely delightful to look at.  They actually make me want to drink more tea – as if I needed any help on that front.  The week before that, I found an orange tulip-style mini skirt, originally from ASOS, for £3 and a bolero-type floral top from Laura Ashley for £3.50, both of which have already been worn several times and are settling down in my wardrobe with remarkable ease.

So in last night’s wallow of restlessness I decided a) to make a nice, big, comforting pot of pea and ham soup (which has turned out to be a deliciously moreish triumph, if I do say so myself) and b) to commence early the aforementioned wardrobe raid by digging out my accessories.

It turns out I’ve had more of a penchant for costume jewellery over the years than I had thought.  Ten minutes into the task and piles of bangles, rings, headscarves and assorted bits and pieces of bejewelled detritus were swarming all over the floor, much like an insect circus, or something equally garish and creepy.  And necklaces!  I don’t even usually wear necklaces (I’m much more of a big earrings girl) but that hasn’t stopped me buying them in by the armful like I was stockpiling potatoes in a famine.  It all made me feel somewhat ashamed.  And stupid, given that I’ve heaved this stuff from flat to flat to flat, complaining loudly to myself each time about how much it all weighs.

I decided, therefore, to be ruthless and a carrier bag of accessories is now sitting in the flat, waiting expectantly to be delivered to a new home.  A better home, where each oversized plastic ring and every single metallic bead will be cherished and worn with love, as opposed to my home, where they fester in unopened boxes for months and years on end, never seeing the light of day.

Unsurprisingly, minus one bag, I still have much more than most people would consider ‘enough’ accessories.  I’ve made a big effort to put as much of what I’ve kept on display, so that old ‘out of sight, out of mind’ trick can’t rear its ugly head at me again.  I now feel considerably lighter, and also more like myself, given that everything I’ve kept I’m actually still really keen on and will definitely wear at some point.  The cleansing feeling is quite addictive actually.  Bring on the rest of the wardrobe!

Image above from Flickr: Stephend9.