Circle Skirt

The easy peasy steps:

1. Make your pattern. Measure your waist radius and the length of your skirt. For the radius, a little geometry is required but it's a simple formula.

Radius = Waist length + 2 inches ÷ 6.28

I added 2 inches to the waist length just to be on the safe side. In that way I am 100% sure the skirt fits me. For this tutorial let's say your radius is 5 inches.

To make 1/4 of the circle pattern, get a piece of tracing paper, manila paper, newspapers, whatever you have. On the bottom right corner of the paper, measure 5 inches towards the top. Draw the same 5 inch line towards the left side of the paper or until you can draw 1/4 of a circle like this:

Next, cut the blue portion like in the drawing above.
Decide how long your skirt should be. Add an additional inch for the hemming. At the edge of the circle you just made, measure and draw another line for the length of the skirt. Draw the same lines towards the other end of the paper so you have something like this:

And now you have your pattern!

I made two of these so that I have a half circle.

2. Lay your pattern over your fabric. Mark and cut. My fabric was not wide enough so I had to cut my circle in half. You can make a full circle if you have a wide fabric ;)

3. Sew the sides together.

4. Finish the top of the skirt. Zigzag the edges so the fabric doesn't fray after washing.

5. Pin the elastic band, or "garter" as we fondly call it in the Phils., to the skirt. I like pinning mine to the middle of the back of the skirt first. Flip the skirt and pin to the middle front, the two sides and the gaps in between so now I have eight pins in all. You can pin as much or as little as you like I just prefer it this way.

6. Sew the elastic band. Use both hands in pulling the front and back of the elastic band as you sew.

7. When you're done, it should look like this on the inside.

8. Hem the skirt by trimming it to make it even. You can simply roll it (very small hem so it bounces) and sew so it doesn't fray. OR you can add bias to prettify it like I did. I know I did not sew the bias properly. I did the cheat way. Anyho no one's going to notice it, unless they're reading this.

9. The bottom of the skirt should look like this:

10. There you go! Your very own circle skirt! 

Happy sewing!

Barefoot Baby Sandals

It was nearing Marley's baptism and everything was complete and ready except for her footwear. I wanted something pretty for her feet other than just ordinary socks. She was just 3 months old at that time so putting something on her tiny feet was a bit tricky. At a mall, I passed by a baby stall and saw this ultra cute sandals called Baby Barefoot Sandals. IT.WAS.PERFECT! But alas, the price was not.hehe I poked and prodded the sandals (to the point that J was already eyeing me nervously as it was ready to fall apart) and noticed it was just a bit of sewing and I definitely can make it! AJA!

Over the net I found the perfect tutorial for this lovely baby sandals at thecreativemuster. Just follow her instructions (super simple) and you'll have the cutest sandals for your little fairy. Marley's baptism was over a year ago so this post is waaaay late.

Happy sewing!

My Little Marley's Big One

Last month my precious baby girl turned one! Time flies fast when you're having fun. So here are the photos from her Minnie Mouse birthday.

The birthday girl is awake!

Goofing around with her Aunt.

Thank you to Marley's Uncle Justin for her pretty birthday dress. 

The candy bar was ❤. Thank you to one of my aunts! 

The Guests:

Friends..

Family..

and the kids and kids at heart.

The Daddy's Girl

Happy Birthday my baby!

Marley may not remember her first party but hey, those are what the pictures are for. Someday she'll be able to see how her special day went. A day filled with love from her family. Thank you to everyone who came.

What A Chore

When I was younger I was fortunate to live in a household with househelp (parang may redundant dito.hehe). My mother was the queen of cleanliness, the OC kind. Weekdays were money-generating days. Sundays were for Church and family lunches. While the dreaded Saturdays was for her general house cleaning. Our help would wipe the whole house ceiling to floor, under her supervision of course, then minutes after everything is done she'll do it all over. My siblings and I would always tell her "Mom bakit pa tayo may katulong uulitin mo lang din ginagawa nya??" So basically I grew up not knowing what "chores" really mean (the perks of having a supermom). On weekends I was a free-spirited girl waking up an hour or two before lunch time, sitting in front of the tv watching cartoons, crosstitching and reading Archie's and Sweet Valley Kids.

During high school, my parents stopped hiring househelp as we (my sister and  brothers) were already old enough to be left in the house. Or as my mom sees it, we were already old enough to do the chores ourselves. So my Saturdays began earlier, with my mom screaming to get my a** downstairs to help clean the house. It was not something big or heavy. It was just washing the dishes and sweeping the floors.  My mom sweeps the floor of the entire house 10x a day so "sweeping the floors" is not an ordinary task. Months  later, I was forced to help prepare meals in the kitchen. Take note: forced. With a lot of moaning and complaining, I became the master of cooking instant noodles, frying fish, hotdogs, longganisa, etc. You name it I can fry it!

Buttercup says it best. Lol

After I bravely left our family home and went to live solo in the Metro, I managed on fastfood take-outs, resto's and my all-time-favorite tinapay. And yes I learned to eat comfortably in restaurants by myself. :) I stayed in a dormitory so cleaning (toilet and bath.. ewwww!) wasn't my responsibility.

Marrying J brought doing chores to a whole new level. During our first year we lived comfortably because we had yaya at home. But after we celebrated our first wedding anniversary our yaya bid farewell and J and I were left to fend for ourselves. Tsk. There was this one night I came home exhausted from the office. After dinner I started doing the laundry. While waiting for the machine to finish washing, I sat on the sofa and dozed off. I woke up two hours later alarmed that I fell asleep. Seeing me in a panic J chuckled and told me that he had already finished the laundry for me. He tucked me into bed and calmly said not to worry for Marley's clothes were already hanging in the clothespin. I am so so blessed J has stepped up to it. He is totally great with Marley so he spends most of the time playing with her while I do all the chores. Yes, you heard me right. Me. Chores. Just last week I found myself teaching J how to properly mop the floor. You know the sweep-mop-sweep drill. Strange that I can remember this specially that I was only half listening to my mom while she was telling me this back in the day. Even stranger, I realized I was becoming as OC as my mom when it came to cleaning the house. I'd see a fleck of dirt in the kitchen floor and I'll sweep the whole house. I'd squint and brush my finger on the tv stand to see if dirt is already accumulating. Haaaay..

The circle of life. I give thanks to my mom. Happy Mother's Day!

DIY Framed Picture Collage

My own Instapicframe :)

I have searched high and low for the perfect frame to showcase Marley's pictures kaya lang I haven't found "the one". I was getting tired of looking around so I took matters into my own hands and improvised a large frame.

From left: Styrofoam, old skirt, hot glue, garden wire, and sticky hooks

I used materials found lying around the house.

• Styrofoam. This came with the aircon we bought.
• Old Skirt
• Hot Glue
• Garden Wire
• Sewing Pins
• Sticky Wall Hooks
• Scissors

What I did:

1) Line up the pictures so you can see how many would fit. I had a hard time picking which pictures. Marley had so many cutesy ones I want to add them all.

2) Measure and cut the fabric according to the styro's size.

 3) Cover the entire styro with it.

Accident waiting to happen. At first I tacked the edges at the back but then the thumbtacks kept popping out. Most of the time J walks barefoot around the house and didn't want to risk tacks accidentally falling onto the floors without us seeing it so I removed the thumbtacks. Mind you, that was after I was finish tacking all the edges. Tsk.

4) Hot glue it instead of using thumbtacks. I didn't had glue gun so I used candle to melt the glue.

5) This was how my canvass looked after.
6) Hot glue the pictures.

7) Attach the garden wire at the back with a sewing pin and hot glue it.

After all the trouble I realized I didn't have to do this since the styro had wide edges and I could have just mounted it on the wall hooks directly. Tssss.















Oh well.. moving on. Here it is on our wall:

O deeeva. I love et! Marley loves it too!