Aloe Melon Sorbet

I wrote this post a while ago and never actually posted it, so my apologies for the references to the wrong month... This March heat wave has been AWESOME and has made me excited for summer cuisine like sorbet. 

Black and white polka dots!

My apologies for the blurry picture--my camera is broken,
so this is the best I got... this is the bride with her bridesmaids,
all wearing black and white (by chance)!

This dress has been in the works for nearly a year. I actually finished it in early August, wore it twice and took pictures, and have been too busy to get it on the blog! Anyway, I made this dress for a friend's rehearsal dinner, but I cheated and wore it on vacation in August first. 

All our outfits for the weekend ready to go to the car--you can
see the knotted straps best in this picture, so I included it

Beach thunderstorm dress

I made this wrap dress for vacation, too! The night I wore it, a storm was on its way. We made it out to dinner but had a long wait, so we went miniature golfing. Unfortunately, it started raining just as our table was ready, as we ran across the parking lots to get back to dinner as the big drops started falling. Oh well. the dress was fine despite the hair's frizziness ;)

The Waterspout Dress

I designed the pattern for this dress all by myself! I wore it twice on vacation--once the night we played charades, and once the night we took family pictures on the beach. Earlier that day, we saw a tornado on the ocean (called a waterspout). I love the way I can twirl in this dress like a waterspout, so that's what I named it :)

Waterspout over the ocean!

Cream of asparagus soup

Cream of asparagus soup

I really like asparagus. I really like soup. So cream of asparagus soup seemed like an exciting challenge. The dilemma: I can't eat cream. Greek yogurt is my standard go to substitute, but I have yet to cook with it without curdling it. This creamy cream of asparagus soup was delicious. I split it in two batches--the first I curdled when heating it back up to eat, the second is in the freezer, hopefully waiting on a better fate.

The ingredients

Garden dress

Burda Style Magazine picture for the dress

I made this dress about a month ago. I was waiting to post it until it was warm enough to take pictures outside, but since that's not happening any time in the foreseeable future, I decided to take pictures with my indoor garden, which is doing well now that there is more sun. It's Burda Style Magazine 02/11 dress #101. Click the picture to see the pattern and other people's variations of this dress.

I loved this pattern. It was super simple. The neckline is my favorite part, and the invisible zipper is my best ever. Now I only need a white belt! The black doesn't really match, and I think it looks best with a belt so the gathering doesn't poof at all. This fabric hangs very well. I love it!


The dress is fully lined--the bodice is lined with some leftover batiste from another project, and the skirt is just lined with the rest of the pretty floral fabric from the outside. The instructions said to use stay tape around the armholes and neckline, but I didn't have that, so I ironed on some interfacing to the lining:

Favorite Halter

I have tons of stuff I've made before I started documenting it here, so I figured I would post some of it to make up for my sporadic posting.

This pattern (Simplicity 3823) has been one of my favorites for a long time. I've made a few dresses from it.

The pattern calls for boning in the back, but I skipped it. Instead, I had to take the back in A LOT. I'm not sure if this is normal for skipping boning in patterns or not. The most frustrating part is adding the pleats in the straps and skirt--my favorite part of making dresses is seeing them come together into a dress, and doing all the intricate stuff first makes me impatient!

I took pictures while making the purple dressier one, which I've worn twice--once to a semi-formal thing, and once to a wedding.