First make of 2014: The Alicia Dress!

This dress is inspired by one of my dearest friends, Alicia! (its too bad she lives on the other side of the world).

The Alicia dress - its full of things Alicia loves! Cupcakes, pink and general adorableness. 

I made the pattern from a book called Sew Serendipity - the book has three basic patterns then a whole lot of different ways to alter each. The patterns are a skirt, dress and coat. I made the basic dress pattern and I'm keen to make it again but use some of the alternations in the book. I particularly like the idea of adding a frill at the bottom and a tie around the waist. 

I bought Sew Serendipity whilst I was staying at Alicia's house and she took me to a whole bunch of HUGE shops in the USA. Seriously, shops were just so much bigger than here. We went to the local Barnes and Noble so I could check out the craft/sewing books and I bought Sew Serendipity. That was last April and I've only made something from it now - better late than never.

Here's a close up of the fabric the dress is made of - my friend Conor said it's like a picnic blanket covered in cupcakes.

I decided to wear the dress to my first day of work on Monday - seems like my new tradition is to wear a new made by me garment to the first day of work for the year.

I hope you're all having a good week - its been pretty hard going back to work after nearly two weeks off, but I'm getting back into the swing of things (I think).

The Meg Dress!

As I've mentioned before, when I was in the USA staying with Alicia and Bear in Pennsylvania, Alicia took me to Jo-Anns and I bought a whole lot of fabric. This is the second dress I've made from the fabric I bought and its a really fun sugar skull print.

I would have loved to have said I wore this dress on Dia de Los Muertos - but I actually made it the day after and wore it to work today. Better late than never right? Also I'm totally including this as dress number three of my four Halloween dresses.

I've decided this dress shall be known as the "Meg Dress" - sure it could be my "Sugar Skull Dress" but the reason I got off my butt and actually made something with it was because of this dress my friend Meg in Philly made. We are fabric twins!

Also I could imagine Meg making a dress from this pattern - its the "Back-to-school shift dress" from Simple and Chic sewing by Christine Haynes. I have made this dress so many times before - see here, here, here, here and also used it as a pattern for this costume. I wanted to make a simple dress from this fabric and I also wanted to use a tried and true pattern as I didn't want to mess up my precious sugar skull fabric!

These inside photos aren't the best - especially taken in the hallway of our apartment building. You can see the weird painting outside our apartment, its kind of grey and dull. I wish the body corp would put something more fun and bright up!

I hope you all have a great week - I've decided to take annual leave this Friday, so I only have three days of the week left. Hurrah!

Colour Co-ordinated Candy

First up in New Zealand we call candy lollies - but as this candy is all from the USA I guess its candy and not lollies. Plus "Colour Co-ordinated Lollies" wouldn't sounds as good. Now back to the lollies/candy.

A while back my dear friend Alicia did a blog post about Emily Blincoe's Sugar series which you should check out because its amazing. In the post Alicia said she wanted to send out colour co-ordinated packages of candy to her friends and guess what turned up in the mail for me? A whole bunch of purple candy as requested. I decided to take a photo of the candy to honor the sugar series.

So I SHOULD have ironed that fabric - but I'm just lazy....I still think it looks pretty rad though! Now I need to put together a package of pink candy/lollies for Alicia.

Also because its ALMOST Halloween Alicia sent me some Halloween themed goodies - but she was able to combine my two favourite themes. Creepy & Cute!

Thanks so much for the awesome Halloween presents Alicia - penfriends forever!!

Instagram - Week Six & Travel Questions Answered!

It's a time for another snapshot of my week - via the wonderful world of instagram!

So I won't be picking up my tickets for my flights to the USA until about two weeks before I leave - but I do get an electronic ticket and that's pretty exciting.

I thought I'd see if I could pull off wearing a headscarf - I'm still undecided.

A pair of glasses I ordered online from Clearly Contacts arrived this week - but I need to take them into the optometrist as they don't fit quite right. Also - there are HEARTS on the frames!

I bought this cute little sweater clip from Sucre Noir - so creepy cute!

It was Rich's Birthday last Tuesday - so I bought him this wee cupcake on the way home.

My Mum and Dad bought Rich some art supplies for his birthday - including this cool sketchbook.

So the previous tenant put butterfly stickers on the bathroom mirror - also I look really intense.

I FINALLY go my boots fixed - so I can wear them again - yah!

The next few pictures are all of the BEST Halloween package EVER from Alicia - creepy cute sewing themed doll, pop rocks, Hello Kitty Halloween stickers and cute card!

I had a girls night in with my friend Jaimee on Saturday night, another old friend Emily that I haven't seen in AGES came along too. It was so rad - I want to hang out and have girls nights all the time now. This is the view from Jaimee's apartment.

Jaimee made vegetarian lasagne and it was awesome.

This is Jaimee's cat Luca - she's pretty darn cute. I hate that I'm allergic to cats!

I saw this t-shirt in a shop window in left bank arcade - I don't really need to say any more - do I?

Rich and I went to a Mexican Restaurant at the weekend - I had mandarin soda to drink and a Mexican Jandal to eat. I also thought the big sugar skull was SO awesome.

On Saturday night we went to see Billy Bragg with friends and it was super awesome! We started off with a few drinks at the Little Beer Quarter and then went to see Mr Bragg at the opera house. Such a good night out.

Rich and I went to feed Luca on Sunday as Jaimee was away - she did her best to make us feel super bad for not spending the day hanging out with her.

I had to do more study on Sunday - eventually I will finish up this course.

We went to the Indonesian festival and got free noodles.

I got a late birthday present from my dear friend Alaina in Melbourne. It included basically the best tea towel in the history of the world and boxing kangaroo gummies.

Walking home tonight - blue skies! The days are getting so much longer - summer is almost here.

Thanks for all your lovely comments on my travel post - a few of you asked me where this photo was taken and was it in the sleeper car of a train.

 It's not in a train at all - its a Japanese Capsule Hotel - that's right, this little space was our room for about three nights. Accommodation in Tokyo is VERY expensive! So we decided to spend a few nights in a capsule hotel to cut costs - it was also a very unique Japanese experience. Here's a few more photos.

The nights we stayed the capsule hotel was pretty quiet - which I was actually pretty thankful for. You had to keep your belongings in a locker because there just wasn't any room. We also had traditional Japanese bathrooms - which are communal (men and women are separate of course) and a wee TV in our room. Fun but also crazy times.

Meg asked if I could do a post about "looking adorable" whilst traveling - I think I will do that closer to the time I leave for my trip. I've actually already started to think about some dresses I want to sew for the trip - what a geek!

I hope you all had a super Monday xoxox

Another "So Pauve" package of awesome!

I love getting packages in the mail - that's why its so great to have a pen pal like So Pauve that sends me all kinds of exciting goodies like this cocktail hat, isn't it just perfect? I feel like such a fancy lady in it!

She also sends me pretty things with unicorns on them and of course lots of pop rocks!

I have also in the last week received an awesome package from Vany the craft ninja and Olivia at Wait Until Sunset, but I'll share those with you all in another post soon.

So Pauve package of awesome

Today was pretty rad as it was the last day of work before Easter and we get four fabulous days off!! But it was also pretty rad as I got another package from Alicia at So Pauve. Hurrah!

Here's all of the goodies together - doesn't Alicia wrap things so beautifully! I love all the pretty ribbons.

First up is this "Pretty in Pink" bracelet which I bought from So Pauve's blog sale - seriously, how rad is this?  It's also wrapped in so very rad fabric!

Next up is more Hello Kitty goodies - I can never get enough of Kitty - I really love the wee notecards.

More pop rocks - this time cotton candy flavour! Seriously, how many flavours of pop rocks are there? It's pretty impressive.

I also got some cupcake ribbon - a crafty gal can never have enough ribbon!

Finally, the wee card that she sent with the package. I really love this card, it's going in my art journal for sure

Well that's all from me for now - I hope you all have a lovely Easter, Rich and I are just hanging around Wellington this Easter. I'm crossing fingers that we have lots of sunshine and fun Easter times.