Refurbishing

Recently I got two new books, thanks to a 2007 Amazon gift card from my brother. The card fell behind the drawer and I just discovered it. I knew instantly what I would buy with it. I had been eyeing these books for a while now. I follow a blog of a woman who wrote two books. One on fostering creativity in your family and the other on using old items to make fun new things.

Her blog is http://www.soulemama.com/ and you can get a link to it here or on my list of favorite places.

Here are her two books

So in the spirit of refurbishing I've recently taken up arms against stained clothes. I can't stand to throw away cute clothes and Jordan is CONSTANTLY staining her clothes. We jokingly call her Pig Pen (Peanuts cartoon) as she is constantly dirty and dragging her even dirtier blanket around with her.

I've taken a few pictures of what I've done to cover her stains and salvage her shirts.

Regarding stains...
Bleaching seems to be the quickest and easiest but on patterned shirts a quick sewing on of a picture or shape works well. You can always look through other stained clothes to find cute pictures or designs and save yourself money on fabric too. Save old shirts that aren't salvageable and sew buttons on various stained spots, sew shapes or patches onto shirts too. Patches seem like they'd be too heavy for lightweight fabric but making your own from any cotton material works well too.

Another clothing issue that is particular to our family is clothing missing sleeves and legs.
In this picture Jordan has on my all-time favorite shirt. Like many others during one of her months in a cast we cut one arm short so it could fit. Sadly over the past couple of years I've thrown away so many great pants and shirts because they've had a leg or sleeve cut off. Tonight I figured out how to sew a stretch seam with my machine. I just cut the other arm short then sewed matching stretch seams and voila! a new shirt.
Stay tuned for a really fun, exciting post on shoes! I met with Jordan's foot surgeon and we have good news...and of course great pictures.