A Little Something To Wear......

Inspired by Isabelle, I made this new little top. Vogue pattern #2980. It looks so much better on Isabelle who is blessed with a lovely figure. It took me all afternoon of sewing, ripping out, re-sewing, to get it right, since I haven't made a human-size garment in years! Speaking of size, I am not too sure this fits me properly. I am not used to wearing form-fitting stuff. I was smart enough to use the size 16 version of the pattern, although it absolutely made me wretch to do so. OK, I need to get over the fact that I never was and NEVER WILL BE the size and shape of a super-model. I am a 10 or 12 in clothing (you know how it is...10 on the top, 12 on the bottom.) so a 16 was a real jump for me. Luckily I made that ego-busting choice because the fit is exact, to say the least. I certainly won't be running around playing volleyball in this top, but with some minor adjustments it fits pretty well. I chose the least expensive piece of fabric of the three I bought yesterday. The other two will be the long-sleeve version of this top.

The other project of the day, which accounts for the rather frazzled look to my hair, is this.......

The "recycled" vinyl siding is complete on the large side of the house. The beautiful, "gently used" siding came off a neighbors house when they got new siding. The neighbor hired Joe to remove the old siding and instead of cash Joe asked if we could keep the old stuff. The front is going to be done next weekend. You can see from this view that the upper back section near our bedroom window is not done. That will have to wait for a new roof first, since we can not do the siding first without new roof flashing. When a huge stack of money falls from the sky then we will get a new roof and the remaining siding will go up also. The single story side (our kitchen, bathroom and utility room area) was already done on one side. Hard to explain why just that one side was done, but it was like that when we moved in in 1991. There are a lot of odd things about this house. I am assuming that side was chosen first because all of the major storms approach from the West side. Joe sided the back lower section two years ago, so it is the front and the East facing lower section that need to be done. Maybe by the end of the Summer...if our free supplies hold out...it will be completed. I am interested to see if this makes any improvement in heat retention in the Winter.

It was supposed to rain today, but it ended up being gorgeous. Warm, but with low humidity and a nice breeze all day. I still have about 2 hours of "outside time" to work on cross-stitch. I've frogged my way through the mistakes on the gymnasts cross-stitch, Alina Kozich of Ukraine. It's still a bit of a mess, so no photo yet.

Yesterday was my brother Jeff's Birthday.

Here we are last Summer at my mom and dad's house

We both love our Summer birthday. As kids it was such a joy to have a birthday so evenly spaced from Christmas. Our cousin Barbara's birthday is December 27th and we always felt bad for her because certain relatives gave her the Birthday/Christmas combination gift. What a rip off for a kid. There were only two bad points about a Summer birthday. #1 No party in your classroom at school and #2 When we were young we always had to have a "shared party" since our birthdays were less then a week apart. He had to tolerate a bunch of shrieking little girls and I had to put up with a pile of messy, sloppy little boys. Luckily for my mother these parties were usually outside on the picnic table in the backyard.