I Would Like to use my Lifeline

Not as funny as the first one, but still funny.

Walking Through Millenium Park

I love the Bean.

Mr. Sabbe likes the big Fountain Face.

Whose face is that anyway?

More of my Favorite City to follow...

Greetings from Chicago!

My husband is checking his email at the school he is rotating with to see if he got any new interviews. Can I brag for a minute? Mr. Sabbe just confirmed an interview at Yale! As you know we are from TN, both went to public high school, state college (go Vols, wouldn't trade it for the world) But I just think it's amazing that we'll even get to step foot in a building on Yale's campus. I've already invited myself to attend this interview with him. He has a total of 6 interview so far, including Columbia, NYU, Vanderbilt, and a couple more [Update: and Harvard]. I've always been quite average in the school department, mainly math and science. I was good at art. So I take great pride in the smarty pants that I married.

Yesterday we had lots of fun. It was Mr. Sabbe's birthday! He's two years older than me for the next four days. You would have thought it was mine because it was the most perfect day. I'll post pictures when I get back. After drinking our coffee and eating our bagels we visited this shop in the Wicker Park/ Bucktown area...one of my favorite parts of Chicago.

I had received an email about this shop a couple of weeks ago from the Daily Candy Chicago. Bryan's roomie (he is currently living with a sweet married couple near the school he is visiting) had this postcard on the fridge. She is a fellow crafter and right up my ally. She owns both the Amy Butler in Stitches book and Lotta Jansdotter's Simply Sew book, I covet them both. So my sweet husband Hop Stopped the store's location and there we were, surrounded by all my favorite fabrics. The prices were not bad at all. I would be in big trouble if I lived in this area. We loved many but could only afford to pick one. So I let Mr. Sabbe pick, being his birthday and all. And this is what I got...

I'm thinking it's Joel Dewberry again, but I cannot remember off the top of my head. Isn't it cool! Looks like wood...feels like fabric. Mr. Sabbe is quite the trendy man. I was already aware of the Veneer Trend going on right now, but he's all cooped up in a hospital 95% of the time and still knew what was cool. I had secretly been coveting this one for a while so I was glad when he picked it.

What do you think I should make? I was thinking maybe a high waisted skirt? Or maybe a clutch? Or maybe I could use it to make my Kate Bag Tutorial? I have 1/2 a yard.

See you next week!

Sabbe Chic

So I'm leaving for Chicago in the morning! I'm very excited to go to my favorite city and see my favorite man. We'll both become a year older while I am gone.

Last week I discovered that there is a store here locally that sells Amy Butler fabric. And we all know of my love affair with Amy Butler. So I went and I found a new love... Joel Dewberry.

The best words I can use to describe his stuff is yummy. You know when you love a fabric so much you just want to rip it off the spool and speed home to make something out of it (I know that's not just me) Well his stuff definitely had me constantly reminding myself to calm down...I was still in public...don't scare the fabric cutter ladies. So after too long of going around seeing what went with what I decided on this nice Fall pallet.

And I made this.

I've been wanting a big hobo bag for a while now and this one is big. I would take a self portrait, but I'm in my pajamas and southern ladies do not post pictures of themselves in their pajamas on the internet. I should write that in to Emily Post. Oh! one exception, if you made yourself and your child some sort of matching pajama outfits and you need to share with other crafters that would be ok....and maybe Christmas morning, but let's draw the line there.

Lost track, here is a close up of the back.

And drum roll please....I'm a name brand!

I made all kinds of pockets that close with velcro on the inside because if I loose my keys or my lipgloss in my own purse one more time I'm going to go crazy. The tags I ordered from Namemaker. Aren't they fun?! Artist sign their paintings, I sew made up business names into my crafts. If I ever open a shop, which I doubt I ever will because I never want to work on Saturdays, it will be called Sabbe Chic.

Zoe liked this one too. What can I say, the cat has an eye for fashion.

I started to try and make a tutorial out of this one but it got way too confusing. I'll take it a step back and do one for the Kate Bag very soon, promise.

I think it would make an excellent diaper bag! Hmmm, any preggos out there want to learn how to make one? It really wasn't hard, just hard to explain on the internet.

See you next week! I'll be much closer to 30 so be prepared for this blog to become much more wise.

Baby Day Gown Part II

I hear noise coming from the office. I think "what's going on in there". I get up to go check it out and this is what I find.

Zoe is the narrator:

Look at this pretty new dress my mama made for me.

Let's see how it fits.

Must cry more at 4:30 am to wake my mama, to get more food, and grow into my new dress.

Baby Day Gown

At the beginning of the summer I started going to a Smocking Class every Tuesday. I had been wanting to learn to smock for a while and one of the ladies in my bible study volunteered to give us all lessons. From the beginning I realized smocking is not easy, involves tiny needles and very little stitches, and when you mess up a row you have to start all over. Long story short, smocking is not going to be a lifetime craft of choice for me...although I think smocked dresses are the cutest. Here is Bryan's attempt to document my dislike of smoking. After yelling out five times "I hate smocking" he took a picture so I would remember. I tend to get craft amnesia once I'm finished with something.


Three month later I am almost done with the smocking and now I need to piece the dress together. I wanted to take preventative measure to make sure I don't mess the dress up and absolutely lose my mind so I came up with this easy baby day gown to get a little practice for the real thing. I think it turned out very cute so I wanted to share and maybe if you are attempting to piece together a smocked dress in the near future you can have a little practice too.

Materials: Ignore half of the things in this picture. All you need is one yard of material and matching bias tape, double folded, and a couple eye hooks.

Cut out:
Two 9" x 7" pieces (sleeves)
Two 12" x 22" pieces (back panels)
One 24" x 22" (front of dress)

You pin the sleeves on the front and back panels and sew down about 6", leave the rest of the sleeve loose.

So you have your sleeves sewn to your front and back pieces.

Now to connect the body of the dress they key is the French Seam. My friend's mom showed me how to do this at the baby shower I threw a couple weekends ago and it is the best sewing thing I have ever learned and so easy, I can't believe I'm just now learning this one.

What you do is sew the dress together (raw side out) See below.

Then you flip the dress to the inside, iron that seam down and then sew in again from the inside. This neatly captures that raw edge and you have nice, clean seams.

Now that you have your body pieces put together start pleating and pinning around the neck line. Sew with a straight stitch around the neck and remove the pins.


Take a piece of bias tape, measure 1.5" longer than the diameter of your neckline. Iron the raw edges inside.

Pin around your neckline and sew.

Same for the bottom hem and the sleeves.

Sew in two eye hooks sets on the back .5" extra bias tape that you left to close the neckline. You could sew in more if you wanted to allow for different neck sizes.

Ta-da...A Baby Day Gown! I ended up doing a zig-zag stitch around my neck, bottom and sleeves to finish it off. But you can leave this step off. Another thing I was going to do, but didn't, was sew in elastic in the bottom hem so it would be tapered at the bottom to cover the little legs. I'll try that on my next one. If these directions are vague at all feel free to email me. Happy Day Gown making!

Crafts and 4" Heels

It has been the busiest week! I've been working alot. But I love it so it's not bad and my sweet husband is still out of town so I don't feel like a bad wife.

This past Saturday was the Cooper Young Festival! And despite all my ambition to make crafts and have a booth this year...it didn't work out. But that was o.k. with me because I got to stroll around and look at all the other cute booths. It was a wonderful day. I had coffee with my friend Melissa and then in my efforts to be more urban I rode my bike (basket and all) down to the festival. Note that I wore my orange, probably why they won.

Here is a street scene. It made me very excited, although it was very hot that day.


Here are the fun things I came home with. How cute are the UT jumpers! So cute I had to buy two. I know I have several pregnant friends who will put them to good use. And the dish towel was so sweet, almost as sweet as the girls who set up the booth. You should check out their Etsy shop.



But the day didn't end there. I have a friend at work named Lindsey. Her father is the Athletic Ticket Director for Ole' Miss and earlier in the week she sent out an email offering tickets to Saturdays game to anyone who was interested. Well I have always wanted to go to Oxford, see the Grove, and experience all things Ole Miss. So I called my friend Tiffany and we made an afternoon road trip out of it.


The experience started well before we made it to Oxford. You can barely see it, but this car has a monogram on the back of it (bottom right)

And I have always heard about how decked out the students get to go to the games, but I didn't believe it until I saw it. On the way to the stadium these were my top three findings.

Exhibit A

Exhibit B

Exhibit C

Once we're in the stadium we start asking people if they can help us find our seats. We ask 4 different people and get four completely different directions. So finally we ask this cute old man back at the front gate and he points us right here.

That's right, our tickets were basically on the field. They set up folding chairs in these small boxes that are on the field and that's were we were. I must say I could not have done better for my first trip to Oxford. Thanks Lindsey!

Note that I do not typically wear dresses to football games either...but when in Rome, do as the Romans do.

So it was a Saturday consisting of crafts and 4" heels and I definitely went home happy!

I Love Tina Fey

Love Shack Baby

Still with me? I'm no videographer that's for sure! But you need to hear it to believe it.

Did you know the B52s still had concerts? Or had a new CD out? Me neither. But Friday I had the huge pleasure of being invited attending a concert at the Memphis Botanic Gardens. It was so neat. We had dinner and wine out under lights strung from trees...and of course sang a little Love Shack! Luckily our friend Richard was up to speed on this band I associate with my 4th grade year of school. Their new album is called Black and White. He bought Black and White Damask plates and made an awesome dinner for our table. Here Kendi and I are before we ran down to the front row to be groupies. You know it's been a good evening when you go from not knowing a band still plays to being a front row groupie..


We had another celebrity sighting. Check this guy out. Remember Night at the Roxburies? I think he's telling Kendi (or maybe the B52s) to call me.


I had a really fun weekend! This was just Friday night. I'll be posting my Saturdays events later this week. I'll give you a hint...it included crafts and 4" heels...hmmm, what could it be?

Oreo Cupcakes

Three of my favorite friends at work celebrated their birthdays this week. So to celebrate the occasion I made my first attempt at homemade cupcakes. I would like to start by saying that my crafts have about a 65% success rate. I make a lot of things that do not make the blog. A while back I attempted one of those vintage bunny dolls and it turned out very scary looking. I have not had the heart to offer it to any of the children I know. I'm guessing it will not be that popular.

I made a version of a Black Bottom Cupcake with a cream cheese and chocolate filling. And they turned out insanely good. If you are going to a party any time soon this will be a definite hit.

How To:

Preheat oven for 350

3 cups all-purpose flour
2 cups white sugar
1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons baking soda
2/3 cup vegetable oil
2 cups water
2 tablespoons white vinegar
2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Mix all together with a whisker or fork

Filling
1 (8 ounce) package cream cheese, softened
1 egg
1/2 cup white sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup semisweet chocolate chips

After making filling fill cupcake cups 2/3 with cupcake batter and then put a dollop of the filling in the cup and the cover with more cupcake batter.

Bake for 20-25 min

Icing
10 ozButter (softened)
2 cup Confectioners sugar
2 tsp. Vanilla
6 tsp. Hot Water

beat sugar and butter with a mixer
add vanilla and water

On a side note: I have not baked a great deal from scratch...Buttercream icing is bad for you! Yikes! I clogged everyone's arteries at my wedding...but it's ok for special occasions right!?

Ta-da!


Oh and I added an Oreo on top for fun (I love Oreos!) and I sprinkled some cocoa powder on top. So I've named my version of this cupcake the Oreo Cupcake.

12 Things That Make Me Happy

Food for Thought

So I am currently going through this really awesome program right now called Downline. It is so exciting! So exciting that thus far I have not minded waking up at 5 am to make it to our meetings. Last week one of the teachers asked us a question and I thought it would be a really good question to ask a whole lot of people just to get you thinking. It made me think for sure.

If tomorrow God answered everything you've been praying about for the past week would the world be a better place?

Baby Shower!

This weekend we celebrated the soon to be Little Miss Kopriva...nicknamed for life by Mrs. Anna Nathan who it had monogrammed on her laundry basket. How cute is this preggo!

Mrs. Kelly Thorne showed her hidden crafty skills with this adorable clothes line gift. It all came in a wicker laundry basket with a bottle of baby clothes washing detergent. So cute! I told her it was a must post for my blog.

Here were the real party animals. Don't they look excited to be there?!

And the hostesses... my college roommates. Court is the first one to reproduce. We look like a Verison add (more bars in more places). We didn't plan that.

Ta-da, some of the decor. Note my attempt at an Edible Arrangement. I need a lot more practice in that department.

And...drum roll please....I FINALLY got the onesie cookies right! It only took me 5 tries. When I have more time I am going to write a blog on exactly everything I did wrong, what recipes I used, and how you can get it right the first time. No one needs to cry over crafts!

And my gift (part of it). The quilt on the previous post was a part of this gift, along with these bibs.

And these burp clothes.

I made some booties as well which I tried to make a tutorial out of. We'll see how easy it is to explain. They were similar to my Caroline Booties. I am going to try and draw up the patterns this week, I'll cross my fingers that it happens.

The Birth of Venus

This was good. This was really, really good. There was never a dull moment in this addictive tale of Florence during the working days of great artist like Michelangelo and Botticelli. I realized I have never perceived these artists as real people and have never thought their works to be far from divinely inspired. This book depicts quite the contrary. It tells of a very dark time in Florence, who once stood as the Babylon of her day. The author forces you to feel the loneliness, fear, hatred, lust,corruption, and sin of a city on her way to destruction.

Keeping the above in mind I will note that this book is probably rated R. But I'm not sure you would experience all of the above without the full content of the book. I think it would make for a fabulous book club discussion. Although I might be embarrassed to be the one to suggest it.

If you have had any Art History classes in school or have traveled to Italy, this book is a must read.

Here is Mr. Sabbe and I in Florence back in '04, before I was Mrs. Sabbe. I can assure you our story was G rated.

Whew...look at that hair and those white legs! It was definitely not one of my most quaffed months.


We're no Michelangelo, but we left our mark on Florence as well (don't worry, you were supposed to write on the wall)

Anyway, read the book- it's good.