I Made a Sermon

I'm doing a year-long pastoral internship, and just gave my first sermon this past Sunday morning. It can be heard here.

I Cobble Sometimes

I got some used shoes that I liked the styling of, but were in less than ideal condition. The heals and parts of the soles were very worn and basically needed to be replaced. Since the motto of my life seems to be, "If you want something done right (or for little money) you have to do it yourself," I bought some stuff and got to it.

In these first pictures you can see how worn the leather bits of the heel are. I've already used the claw on a hammer to pry them up and remove the nails. 

Altering Jacket Length

I'm too lazy to fix this picture, but you can see how short the sleeves are. Usually you can't lengthen sleeves unless they are new because there will be a wear line where the old hem was, but since this is 100% cotton Madras and in such a big, bright pattern, its not as visible.

So I took them apart. There was an interlining that I removed, ironed, and reattached. 

Then I added an inch in length and started to redo the out placket with the mitered corner.

 Each fold gets an ironing before hand stitching together. I found it too difficult to do the miter on my machine, so I just did a few hand stitches.










Here its ready for stitching.

The inner placket is easy, and once they were all sown up, I put the buttons back, paying attention to placement on the unaltered sleeve. I used masking tape to keep them straight while sewing. Last of all I re-sewed the lining to the edge by hand.

Sewing Projcets

I've had some free time since the semester ended, and I've been using it to get some work done that has needed doing for a while. I've been altering some pants (tapering and hemming) as well as lengthening the sleeves on a Corbin Madras jacket that I'll finally wear after years of owning.

I've begun to notice some things about proportion between various parts of a pair of pants/shorts. The overall look isn't so much a matter of the actual width at any point, for instance, but more so the relationship between the width at several points.

I Made Layers!

 The little woman hadn't had a haircut in a while, and apparently I'm rubbing off on her, because she decided to try a trim herself. If it turned out poorly, she'd just go in to have it fixed, and be no worse off than she would have in going to the salon in the first place. After giving the overall length the proper correction, she asked me to help add some layers.

Here's what I did. We both liked it:

A Special Birthday Cake

My wife asked for either a yellow cake with chocolate frosting, or an ice cream cake. I hardly do any cooking or baking (I make a mean omelet, but that's the extent of my abilities). I do, however, tend to get a bit carried away with my DIY projects, and this was no different. I decided to make both cakes at once, as a surprise. Erin even asked if I was just making a boxed cake, assuming I might try to go made from scratch, but she guessed wrong!

I went with a box of fudge marble yellow cake mix, chocolate frosting, chocolate peanut butter ice cream (her favorite), with  Reese's (her favorite) and Butterfinger (just to keep the peanut butter theme going).

Since the ice cream was already soft from the hot car-ride, I stuck it right in a cake pan lined with parchment paper then stuck it back in the freezer to harden with a layer of mashed up Reese's on top. This was flipped onto the bottom layer and sandwiched under the top layer to give cake-->Reese's-->ice cream-->cake-->frosting (sprinkled with crushed Butterfinger). Icing the sides with soft ice-cream was hard, but I got it done.

Here are the two cake halves at home before the addition of ice cream.

Here is the finished product. I wish I'd taken a few more pictures in between, but I was a bit busy and doing this all in steps.