In which I make my pants longer because I didn't buy talls

(and yes, my spellcheck still isn't working. Sorry.)

This last year I've developed an interest in Pinterest. For those who don't know, Pinterest is a website where you can publicly bookmark things you find interesting. These "pins" are organized into boards for easy retrieval, and they are visible to those who "follow" you, as well as others who may be searching for similar items. So it's kind of social, like Facebook, except you can't control who can see things, and it's all visual.
Yeah, I know, when I first heard of it I didn't think I'd be interested either.
You are automatically given the option of following people who are already your friends on facebook, then you can find other people to follow who may have similar interests to you. I've found that of those people I follow whom I actually know, most of them pin craft projects, recipes, home design, and tips on cleaning or child rearing.
I these were okay, but I found it a little boring until I realized I could also enjoy following a bunch of art boards, photography boards, "geek" (since when did this become so cool?), and a few other random interests from people whom I don't know in real life, but who have similar tastes to mine.
Yes, it's a great time waster, but I also find that I actually use the recipes I pin, I feel motivated to make more art, and I even feel popular sometimes when sixty people repin something I posted. I haven't figured out the method behind it, but I think the website randomly picks pins to show on its main pages, so everyone on the site will see it briefly.
Aannyway, this was leading up to clothes. I have a clothing board too. I mostly started it because I realized I disliked most of the clothes other people were pinning, at least other people I knew. I don't mean they were ugly clothes, they were cute, but just so not me. More...preppy Utah housewife, which bill I have never quite fit. As a result, I felt a need to explore that category, mostly to figure out what I did really like, as clothing isn't something I've spent a ton of time contemplating in the past. As I've looked through my clothing board, I've noticed that of all the varieties of clothes I admire or would like to own, the clothes I DO actually have, don't resemble those images at all!
Mostly, this is because I'm a cheapskate, and I care more about saving money than avoiding the fashion faux pas of buying all my clothes at Wal-mart. When I was single, I admit I ocassionally did splurge, buying some jeans at the "Tall Girl" store in Seattle, or ordering an occasional item from a catalog. But with a family to think of, I just can't justify that kind of luxury. Also, sometimes (but not always) the clothes I like are a little bit eccentric, which works in a big city, but I'm aware it may attract the wrong kind of attention in a very small conservative town in South Dakota. Especially now that I'm (gulp) over thirty. For instance, something like this probably wouldn't go over well here, but I think it's cute:

Well, on vacation this summer, we had lunch in a few malls. And I saw lots of pretty clothes that I liked. And one store had a sale, and while I didn't buy anything there, the mall in the next town had the same store, which was also having a sale. And Joseph encouraged me to get something, so why not?
So I bought three pairs of nice jeans, at least nicer than the Walmart ones I usually get. And I wear jeans all the time, unlike some of the other random outfits I could have purchased, so I felt good about it.
The problem is, only one pair was on sale, and my size. The other two I loved ,but they were just a tad too small. As in waist size and length too small.Yeah, this was one of those stores where after a certain size, they inexplicably changed the pocket pattern, because apparently bigger people wouldn't want the same design?
But because Joseph was waiting with the kids and I felt rushed, I decided to get them anyway, figuring it would be motivation for me to get in shape. But. But they were regular size, not talls, which I usually buy. And they looked okay while I was standing in the mirror of the dressing room, but I didn't realize until weeks later that I looked silly walking in these pants that didn't quite touch the tops of my shoes when I walked. (Oh the mortification in when I walked toward the full-length mirror in the Wal-mart bathroom! I was looking like one of those people.)
After that realization, my cute jeans were sadly abandoned, until just recently. I was really sad about it too, mostly because of the waste of money. Then I realized, I actually could make my pants even more awesome, as well as longer! Well, some people might think I ruined them...but I don't know about that.

This first pair of the two jeans had several interesting features that convinced me to buy them. First was the unique pattern to the fading on the front. The way it looked as if it had been scrunched during the fading process was reminiscent of tie-dye designs. I don't wear tie-dye much these days, but this felt like a nice classy tribute to my younger years ;)

don't you hate it when people take pictures of themselves in their bathroom mirror and post them? Me too.

The second thing I loved was the pockets, oh the pockets. I don't know what the big style is where you live, and am often surprised to see things that are popular other places (like what was up with all the women wearing giant flowers on their jackets when they spoke at General Conference? Seriously, I'd never seen that before.) Anyway, out here in the midwest, it's very popular for ones back pockets to sport lots of bling, as in shiny metal and rhinestones. I don't hate it, but it's definitely NOT for me. In the context of where we live, it makes me think of rodeo queens and cowgirls.

No.

I do, however, like the idea of decorated pockets to distinguish one pair of jeans from another (though I could see some might argue this draws too much attention to a womans posterior...I do hate those sweatpants with words across the bum. So distasteful. But these don't seem the same to me at all, so to each their own.)

So, I don't like the bling pockets, but I was delighted with these, which involved thick contrast white and cream stitching in various stitch patterns, combined with the frayed edges of jean material. Again, a slight lean toward a hippy-like style with a refined twist to it. Or not. I just liked it. They also have an off-center flap pocket (you can't tell that in this picture, but trust me.)

As you may have guessed by the title of this post, what I needed to fix on these pants was the length. After the first few times of wearing them, the waist fits fine, but the lenth wasn't something that would fix itself over time. So I decided to take out the bottom hem to add some legth, and hopefully it wouldn't ruin them too much! I was hoping for a little more, but taking out the hem did give me a good inch or so. I put a stitch around so that it wouldn't fray too much, but a little fraying was okay.

The darker color where the fabric was folded over, and the resulting stripes where the original hem was, actually works well with the fading across the top of the jeans, making it look like they were deliberately designed that way!



Now I can love my pants again. Yay!

So now for the other pair of jeans. These too had thick stitching in fun patterns, with lots of detailing around the pockets. These have three colors of thread: cream, light blue, and a light brown...though it's hard to see the different shades in the photo.

The stitch patterns and colors remind me of those light and airy peasant blouses with poofy three-quarters sleeves. I love those kind of shirts. In high school I had this favorite pair of pants that used to be my mom's, which had white stitching down the sides and fading on the front. Both pairs of pants definitely remind me of those favorites too.





the middle row on this coin pocket is the light blue, though you can't tell.

These back pockets aren't quite as fancy as the first with the different textures and shapes, but they are still pretty fun, with creme and white all over.

As with the first, these jeans are also a mite too short. But I am hesitating on giving them the same treatment as the first, for various reasons. For one, these don't have all the linear fading as the first ones do, so I'm not sure the lines that will result from removing the stitches will really go with the rest of the pants.These are also straight legged instead of bootcut, so the frayed edge might look weird. Or it might not, I don't know.
Also, I love the thick stitch around the bottom, and I don't want to ruin it; that was the one thing I was sad about when I changed the first ones as well.

So what do you think? Go for it, and possibly enjoy another cute pair of pants, (or be sad that I ruined them). Or just give them away to someone and just be sad for the wasted money. Not that I know anyone whom these would fit...

UPDATE: This is silly. I got these second jeans out and was considering how to take care of them. They actually still had the tags on, because when I had discovered how silly the other pair looked, I never went out of the house with these. So I had this suddent thought to get out the pair I had unhemmed, and to compare the two lengths...and it looked like these were longer, even though they're the same size and the same brand. So I tried on the second pair, and it was true! These are over an inch longer on me, and they look fine without modification. Yay! (And I bought these in July, so it's even funnier that I didn't know this before then.)

The state capital, fires, and some rivers

Pierre (pronounced Peer) is not really our favorite place to go. It's the oposite direction from where our dentists, doctors, and other things are, and it's not that pretty of a town, at least not compared to Spearfish. But for various reasons, we had to go there a few times this summer, and it wasn't too bad. Early in the summer we went there for our District Conference. After the meeting, we walked around the state capital building where they had some war memorials and a pretty pond with ducks and fish.

Another time, after our summer vacation, we went there to get our windshield repaired.




you can see most of the crack in this picture.



While the car was being fixed, we took the kids all to a riverside park, along the Missouri River. We hadn't planned on the heat that day though...108F! So after we ate our lunch, we relocated down by the water in hopes of keeping everyone cool. We didn't bring swimming suits, and I told the kids they could wade in up to their knees, but no farther. Yeah, that didn't last long.

we won't get wet, Mom!



Is it okay for me to sit in here? (This is when Eli had a broken collar bone, from Elora and Josh falling on him)




bridge between Fort Pierre and Pierre SD




How do I get out of here?


Everyone had a lot of fun, but Eli was getting tired and definitely ready to leave by the time we could go pick up our car. It was a long day for sure.
On the way home, we saw the smoke from a big crop fire not too far away! So that was exciting.

There were a lot of fires this summer with the heat and dryness, so we were lucky none were too close to us.  Well, a few were, but they were resolved quickly. These two photos were taken the same day, in different directions, both from our home.




Laborday weekend, we decided to go visit another river that isn't too far from us: the Cheyenne. This isn't nearly as big as the Missouri, at least not where we went to view it. The water was dirty and the ground was too rocky to make wading very comfortable.

there were old bird nests all over under the bridge

We probably would have left sooner than we did, except for all the cool rocks littering the ground around the river.



we found this baby there too.



Right away Elora found a really neat fossil, (what do you think it is?)



and we found several more rocks with embedded seashells and the like. It was pretty fun! But I still haven't found my own trilobite, one of my life's dreams. Ah well, maybe someday.

cheating a little: one year photos

   So I've been meaning to get out and take some cute one-year-old pictures of Eli. But the time of day never seems right, or he doesn't feel good, or I can't think of a really unique place to go (because really,. I think we've about exhausted our scenery possibilites here).

   So I thought about using one of the handful of outside photos I took on his birthday. He didn't have a super huge smile in either of them, and there wasn't any beautiful lighting or breathtaking scenery. But the colors were nice, he was looking at the camera, and dang was it hard to get him to sit stll just for that few seconds! Plus, it was actually taken on his birthday so it was a true snapshot of him at age one.
   I remembered this cool idea I saw on pinterest that would work perfectly for this photo too. Basically, you pose the kid against a wall or another blank space, then you write a bunch of facts about their personality or things they've done that year. I don't want to do this idea every year, but I think I might do it at least once for each of my kids. I figure I'll take some more, nicer pictures of Eli for his smaller wall photos in a few months, when he can stand better and I have a better idea of where to take them. Meanwhile, this will be his lovely 8x10. I've already thought of a few more words I might want to include (I might need to mention that he gives big hugs) but this is basically how it will look.
I did like his facial expression a little better in the other picture I took, but the way he was sitting in the frame just didn't work for this idea.
In these three versions, I've only changed the texture of the background. Which one do you like best: lighter, darker, or more vivid blue? Is it hard to read the orange?













Milestone

(note: for some reason my spell check hasn't been coming on recently, so sorry if there is any atrocious spelling in this post.)

There are a few birthdays that are usually recorded as milestones in our culture: 16 in America is a coming of age party; in Hispanic countries it's your Qinceanera at age 15. When you turn 21 you are finally an adult in everyone's eyes, even though you graduate from high school and can vote several years before that.
 Of course one of the most celebrated birthdays is the very first one. This probably goes back to times when a great many children didn't live to see their first year; taking a stroll in any older cemetery will attest to this sad tale. Today there are still many children in the world who don't make it this far, and I am very grateful that all of mine have.

For Elora, this historic day happened in 2006,



For me?



for Josh it was 2008. (look, his picture in the side bar is doing the same thing!)



Jonah reached this big day in 2010, shortly before we moved here.



 And now little Elijah has joined the ranks, reaching his big day at the very end of August, despite having no teeth yet! (But hey, at least he's walked a few times!)




And he had a great day! Well, okay, most of the day was pretty regular. Mommy tried to take a few pictures,


just sit here you say?





yeah right!



which he would have none of.



I'm outa here



But in the morning he got a muffin that wasn't broken into small pieces first, so that was cool.



What the heck is on that muffin?




Oh, I get to eat this whole thing?




Cool.



Then he got to pick at a big cake before everyone else,

and even got his own big piece...on a plate which he'd never had before.

The plate was almost more exciting than the cake! Almost, but not quite.

You don't need teeth for this cake!

And not quite as cool as the cake, but he got some of his very own presents as well, from Grandma and mom and dad.



woah, I could put this to good use!





Oh my gosh do I get to keep this! It giggles by itself, that's so freaking funny!





Wait, Jonah, what do you mean you want me to give this kitty to you?



All in all, it was a pretty good day.