all I want for Christmas...

I hope everyone had a great Christmas. I certainly did!! Hubby and I took the baby to the lake cabin to spend the week with his family. We arrived Christmas Eve after I got off work and are staying through New Years weekend. It's nice to have something that resembles a vacation!

So Ann tagged everyone to list what they got for Christmas. This year was great despite the economy. What I got:

*A remote car starter for my Xterra (a gift from my husband - it's wonderful considering how much snow we've gotten)
*A pair of chocolate-brown Uggs (I've wanted these for a long time)
*A Swarovski crystal tennis bracelet and matching earrings
*$50 Barnes & Noble gift card
*$200 Walmart gift card
*8" Viewsonic digital photo frame
*$100 check from my grandparents
*An awesome white and silver snowman cookie jar
*Movie tickets and babysitting from a good friend
*Some really great hand-crafted Christmas decorations
*Stuff from my mom that I haven't even received yet since I won't see her for a couple more weeks

What's funny is that this Christmas the hubby and I expected far fewer gifts because everyone was making a big deal about this being Drew's first Christmas (which is what we expected). Then, to our surprise, we actually got quite a few wonderful gifts! Drew definitely got the most gifts - of the 6 of us at the cabin, Drew got more than half of the presents under the tree. So much for taking back less than we brought up!! To top everything off, we had a wonderful turkey dinner followed by the best prime rib (my mother-in-law makes the best prime rib ever) the next evening. This is definitely one of the best vacations I've had in a long time!

the dress is done!!

I don't have a picture of the finished dress yet, but I finished it in time to wear it Friday night.

After the previous post, I took off the sleeves and cut 1" off of the cap. I also attached the lining to the zipper, hand-stitched the flanges to the bodice front and finished the hem of the dress and lining. Right now, the lining hangs free and I put a thread chain on the vent to hold the lining in place. I will either add two more thread chains at the side seams or permanently attach the lining to the hem - I haven't decided yet.

The dress was a hit and the party was a lot of fun. There are several pictures of me in the dress and as soon as I get them from my coworkers I'll post one. I'll also post a photo of the custom-made jewelry that a coworker made for me.

progress!!!!!

I've made significant progress on the dress. Here is what I have so far:



I am really struggling with the sleeves - the sleeve cap it came with just doesn't cut it so I really need to figure out a better way to make it work. I am using the stiffest netting I can find, but I have a few ideas I'm going to try to see if I can get a poofier sleeve cap.

I also found shoes!!! I have spent every day this week working long hours at a property 30 minutes from home and haven't had time to really work on the dress or even look for shoes. Tonight was my last night of the off-site work and to celebrate I stopped at Dillards on my way home and found these:



Because the dress is a plain wool crepe, I wanted something with more pizzazz for the jewelry and shoes. These shoes are just the ticket.

I had 30 minutes yesterday...

and I was able to accomplish quite a bit! I got home around 10pm from my class and couldn't sleep so I went into the newly re-organized sewing room (more on that later) and began work on my Glaxy-inspired dress. I don't have pictures of my progress, but so far all I did were baste the darts. Because I made a few modifications, I wanted to make sure the darts were in the correct spot. They turned out pretty good.

I still need to press and cut out the lining (I'll do that tonight) and decide if I want to underline or interface (or neither) the bodice. I am going to play around with a couple of options tonight before I do anything more with the bodice.

I also still need to finish up some Christmas gifts - I have some machine embroidery work, some quilting work and a shirt that need to be made. So much to do and so little time. I've decided I'm going to devote as many evenings as I can to getting all of this finished.