give and get: clothing swap how-to {reuse, recycle, refashion}

About twice a year I host a clothing swap. It’s one of the most fun events we do all season.

Why partake in a clothing swap?

• It’s free
• You purge the things from your closet that you never wear
• You come home with new, fresh pieces to liven up your wardrobe
• Always wanted a blazer/(insert some piece of clothing here) but never wanted to buy one because you didn’t know if you’d love it? You can now grab one for free, and see if you like it.
• Take something you know you’ll only use for a season, or a pair of pants that will fit you for the interview you have next week, but you’ll only wear once.
• Free. Free. Free.

The truth is, we  talk often about being good stewards of what we have. Here’s a practical step: simplify your closet and get a few new things for the season without spending a dime. in short: friends + friends’ friends + old clothes = new friends + new-to-you clothes

Sometimes you have this:

But you need this:

or This:

or this:

What’s a girl to do? Skip that trip to the stores to overhaul your wardrobe and clean out your closet instead. There are perfectly good clothes in there. I promise. You just don’t wear them because they don’t fit your body, your lifestyle, or your job right now. Bring them to a house with 30 other women and they’re bound to be the perfect piece for someone else.

So here’s what we do:

1. Plan a date and send an invitation that tells everyone to:

• Clean out your closet* and bring your old/don’t fit/i-never-wear-this clothes/shoes/jewelry/purses.
• Bring a bag or two so that you can haul away your new goodies.
• Bring your friends. The more the merrier.

2. Host the event

• First 30-40 minutes: Everyone can show up and grab a drink and a snack. Have designated ares in your home for tops/pants/dresses/accessories/shoes, etc. and have people lay their clothes out accordingly. We don’t categorize by size. Once everyone starts going through the clothes, it’s a mess and sizing gets rearranged, anyway.
• Next 30-45 minutes: Go time! Everyone can dig through piles, start bagging what they want, and try things on. Have some mirrors around the house.
• End: Have another snack, laugh, and go through piles one last time. As people try things on, items that didn’t work for them get thrown back in the mix and pay be perfect for someone else.
• Later: Attendees get to go home and brag to husband/fiancee/roommate how they just got bags of fantastic clothing and accessories for free, AND got rid of the crap in their closets. Everyone is happy.

3. Donate what’s left. No clothes are lost or wasted, everything is reused and recycled. Everything finds a new home.

*And, attendees:

• Have a ton of stuff and some of it is old tees? Bring all of it. We’ll have an embarrassing stuff/old t-shirts pile. Everything’s going to get donated anyway, so this saves you a trip to donate them (or if you’re like me, this saves you from carrying three bags of junk in your trunk for months before you finally take them to be donated).
• Have nothing? Come anyway. Take freely. There will be plenty of things.

one year

i could tell you how fast one year goes and how so much changes and how much they grow.

i could tell you how weird it is when you think…no, it can’t have been a whole year. but then it has.

or i could just show you this:

what i miss about niweek. like roommates and bikini-tinis.

it’s ok, you know, for me to say that i quit my full-time job but also that i miss it sometimes. that doesn’t mean i want it back and leave where i am now, it just means i miss it. when you’re working in an office, daily waking hours filled with adult interaction > daily waking hours that aren’t filled with adult interaction. simple math. that is sometimes worthy of missing.

so hilary emailed me today and asked me if i missed NIWeek. this week is the single most giant week for the company I used to work for. we hosted NIWeek, this global conference in Austin the first week in august each year that brought thousands of customers. execs gave flashy, witty, technical keynotes each morning and many (which i say because i was specifically trained never, ever to disclose how many – and a lady sticks to her word) editors and journalists from around the world would come check it out. we planned and prepped for months and there was little sleep the last weeks of July (or June if you were a writer on a launching project or a PR professional on messaging). when NIWeek was over, it never failed that you realized a lot of accomplishments, but also that you’d lost your summer to late nights and early mornings and launch preparations.

what was funny about hilary’s email was that i had gotten a text a few minutes before i read it from someone on the team. a question about finding something at the convention center. a question meant for the other morgan on the team. regardless, it made me remember that it was 1pm and everyone was probably due in the pressroom about now, shuffling bags and showing newbies where to put their things. it made me feel kind of bittersweet.

20% buttersweet, i wrote to hilary. which didn’t do it justice. so i broke it down:

What I miss about NIWeek:

• 51%: thursday afternoon bikini-tini. have you been to the Austin Hilton bar? i don’t know what the bar is called but they have a drink called the bikini-tini. i don’t know what is in it, but it is delicious. four four years, deirdre, hilary, and i met there on thursday afternoon when the conference was over and the pressroom was packed up to get one. after the first year, andria joined, and then emilie, and blake. i don’t know why i was even invited the first year – i was new and awkward and barely able to order for myself. but there were girls who i wanted to learn from and they brought me along with them, kindly. and i loved them. i still do. and thursday afternoon bikini-tinis mean you have finished a job well done. i haven’t had one since and i wouldn’t want to without them. some things just aren’t the same.
• 29%: Rooming with Hilary. “Living” downtown for the better part of a week. Feeling like college. All my clothes are on dumped on the floor and I ask, Does this scarf look weird? i forgot my mascara but that’s ok. i am living with a lady this week and she shares.
• 13%: Solving people’s problems. There’s something about running the pressroom as a tight ship and figuring out how to squeeze in a meeting reschedule that needs to take place in 5 minutes with a PMM who is .75 miles away yet still in the conference center and cannot be contacted via phone because, oh, phones don’t work in the conference center. where businesspeople are. 3000 businesspeople who rely on phones.
• 6%: wondering if we will get Whataburger. or, just generally reliving the Whataburger incident of 2006 when a ketchup container got smashed in the drive-through window and splattered all over our taxi. at 2am.
• 1%: seeing excitement. happy engineers making business deals with happy customers. hard work paying off. news coverage coming in. I should have given this one more than 1%. It is a happy place down there.

What I do not miss about NIWeek

• 84%: Being an unnamed executive’s personal assistant. I do love that a once-nervous-engineer-turned-cocky-executive can enter a room with so many demands. Here. I need you to put those clothes on some hangers. I also need you to find me some toothpaste. And I am hungry. And I lost my cell phone. i look around frantically for our dept manager, with a few swift but tactful words, she reminds anyone who needs reminding that PR professionals aren’t just your hired help for the week. she is not in eyesight and must be putting out more important fires, so i suck it up and begin helping. i grab my bag from the back cubby of the pressroom, dig out my toiletries, and hand over my toothpaste. i also hand over my last protein bar and cell phone and begin to let everyone who has meetings with this man to…call me, i guess. not to worry, i will just eat these complementary mints for lunch. and why are you carrying around random clothing and hangers? you should have someone like hilary as your roommate. she would help you decide what to wear so that you don’t have to bring all of your clothes into the conference. sheesh.
• 12%: OMG so cold at the ACC. it is 107 outside today and i bet you’re pulling out your scarf and jacket from your bag when you enter that conference center each morning. icebox.
• 4%: solving seemingly unsolvable problems. We lost some hardware from the pressroom. Please find it in the 200-acre ACC. Where’s Waldo-style.

that being said, good luck, ladies. i am excited for you. julia, leanne, jenna, jess, and trisha, i am sure you have worked hard and been led well. i wish you all the success you hope for!

hilary, deirdre, emilie, andria, johanna, and blake…i miss you. it’s good now but it’s different. see you soon!

its a…

boy!

Erika and Micah’s baby is a boy.

You can see Erika’s full party post here and more about her baby here.

 

Rachel, sorry I held out the information and left you in suspense. That was so rude of me!

guessing game

do you remember my practice cake?

i am making the real thing tomorrow.

i will show you pictures.

for a few hours, only i will know if babyknox is a boy or a girl.

do you feel like you know erika? because i talk about her a lot?

then you should go vote. is babyknox a boy? or a girl?

DIY ruffle cake

The prettiest cake. Like anthropologie in cake form.

This cake actually was a test run for a cake I will make next month. When we find out about this little baby. That cake will have graduated pink or blue layers Good thing I did a test run though, because I used a yellow cake recipe, and when you add  pink food coloring to yellow, it turns mauve/brown. whoops!

The recipe I am including below is a white cake recipe. Use white cake, if you’re going to make the ombre-style graduated color layers like this one, it will let your cake be the color of the food coloring you use, and not some weird, mixed-with-yellow color.

The frosting is light (in texture…not calories) and creamy, and using a #103 tip, the instructions below are easy to follow to get the ruffle effect.

This cake makes me think of all the great things we have to celebrate.

If you want a shortcut, use a box cake mix!

White Cake

• 4 cups cake flour, (not self-rising)
• 1 tablespoon baking powder
• 1/2 tablespoon salt
• 2 cups (4 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature
• 3 cups sugar
• 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
• 1 1/3 cups milk
• 11 large egg whites
• gel or paste food coloring

Layer Cake Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Butter four 6-by-2-inch round cake pans; line bottoms with parchment paper rounds. Butter parchment, and dust with flour, tapping out excess; set aside.
2. Into a medium bowl, sift together flour, baking powder, and salt; set aside.
3. In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat butter and 2 cups sugar until light and fluffy, 3 to 4 minutes, scraping down sides of bowl as needed. Beat in vanilla. With mixer on low speed, add flour mixture in three parts, alternating with milk and beginning and ending with flour; beat until just combined. Transfer mixture to a large bowl; set aside.
4. In the clean bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the whisk attachment, beat egg whites on low speed until foamy. With mixer running, gradually add remaining 1/4 cup sugar; beat on high speed until stiff, glossy peaks form, about 4 minutes. Do not overbeat. Gently fold a third of the egg-white mixture into the butter-flour mixture until combined. Gently fold in remaining whites.
5. Divide batter evenly between four bowls. Mix food coloring into bowls, putting more food coloring in each subsequent bowl of batter, making darker layers as you go.
6. Pour batter into prepared pans, smoothing with an offset spatula.
7. Bake, rotating pans halfway through, until cakes are golden brown and a cake tester inserted in centers comes out clean, 30 to 35 minutes. Transfer pans to a wire rack to cool 20 minutes. Invert cakes onto rack; peel off parchment. Reinvert cakes, and let them cool completely, top sides up.

Swiss Merengue Buttercream Frosting

• 1 pound (4 sticks) salted butter, room temperature
• 1 1/2 cups sugar
• 6 egg whites
• 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

Frosting Instructions

1. Beat butter with electric mixer until fluffy and pale. Transfer to small bowl. Place butter in fridge so that it doesn’t get too warm sitting out while you work the egg whites.
2. In double boiler over simmering water, whisk sugar and egg whites until warm and sugar is dissolved, 2 to 3 minutes. Transfer to clean bowl of electric mixer; beat on high with whisk attachment until fluffy and cooled, about 10 minutes. Let sit an additional 5 minutes to cool.
3. Reduce mixer to medium-low; add butter a scant 1/4 cup at a time, beating well after each addition. Mix in vanilla.
4. Switch to paddle attachment; beat on lowest speed 3 to 5 minutes. Leave at room temperature if using same day. Or store airtight in refrigerator up to 3 days. Bring to room temperature; beat until smooth.

Decorating the Cake

1. Place cake on rotating stand. Lay flat a 12-inch pastry bag with #103 tip. Fill half of bag from tip to top with pink buttercream, other half with white. Hold bag vertically, slot of tip perpendicular to cake and wider portion of tip closest to the cake; use swift back-and-forth motion 1 inch wide to make ruffle, pulling tip up side.
2. Turn cake stand slowly, piping circular ruffle over top.
3. Trim bottom layers; stack on cake round, with 3/4 cup buttercream spread over top of each. Add top layer; spread 1 cup buttercream over entire cake. Refrigerate 40 minutes until firm.

Whipped butter for the frosting looks like this:

Whipped egg whites for the frosting look like this:

Separating dozens of eggs looks like this:

shilah + shepard

Usually once a week Erika and I swap our kids. This means that one morning for 2-4 hours, I have two kids, and one morning for 2-4 hours, I have no kids.

When I have no kids I work or run errands or lately, go get an old porcelain crown replaced on a molar. When the kids are at Erika’s, she takes cute pictures of them. Go check them out.

When I have two kids we play inside and play outside and read stories and have snacks. When the kids are here I don’t take any pictures.

But this time I did.

Shilah loves Shepard. She loves to watch him and do what he does and laugh when he does and gaze longingly at him when he is across the room. He loves to throw things at her head. She doesn’t care…she laughs. She likes the attention.

Now I will commentate Shilah’s thoughts in these photos for your viewing pleasure.

Oh Shepard, where are you?

Found you! I love this book. Glad you picked it out for me.

What is funny over there? I can’t tell, but I will smile  because you smile.

Same thing? Oh, ok.

Take me with you while you scoot out the door! I love outside. I say it how you taught me, “OOOWW-syyyy-EE?”

Shepard, I bet you are lonely in that swing because I am not right next to you like I always try to be.

I miss you, Shepard. Come back?

good friends

I have a solid group of wonderful lady friends from my old job.

The most fun part is that less than half of us work there now, and we get to talk about fun other stuff like life. And Blake’s dog. And what LOLcat jumped through her outdoor canopy. And Andria’s shoes that I love. And Johanna’s childhood horse-dog.

Last night we got together for a happy hour at Blake’s new, ahem, swanky place.

We ate appetizers on sticks and enjoyed the most delicious cake that the city of Austin produces – Chez Zee’s lemon rosemary cake.

I love these friends!

 

the bug’s first birthday

We have been to our fair share of first birthday parties. Some were over-the-top and stressful. Some were relaxed. Many were in between.

I love to throw a good party, especially baby showers and wedding showers. I like these parties particularly because you get to plan dozens of little details and then everyone shows up and the party is about someone else.

I think my dream job would be to plan parties for people and then leave five minutes before the guests arrive. I would even give the host an apron and tousle her hair a little so it looked like she planned the whole party. I have even saved links to awesome kids party stuff that I imagined here, here, here, here, and here. And look! invitations here and here.

I appreciate the details and the sentiments but the thought of talking to thirty people at your own house while you’re keeping an eye on your perfect cookie tray to make sure you shouldn’t replenish with round two of snacks yet, and trying to make sure a toddler doesn’t try to scale a floorlamp or trip over the back door threshold, and where is the birthday girl, anyway? all that…sounds exhausting.

So, we set out for a birthday bash outside at a third-party location. My only decor was a half dozen helium balloons that I purchased on a whim the day before. They had lost all helium by party time.

Our goals were:

1. To be able to invite a lot of people
2. To have a low-stress celebration
3. To keep our costs reasonable

Check, check, and check! We headed to Central Market, an upscale grocery store with a park, playground and tons of outdoor seating. Jon and I arrived about 15 minutes early, bought equal parts beer, bottled water, and cupcakes, and pushed some tables together outside while all four grandparents dressed and transported the birthday girl to the fiesta.

The invitation (emailed):

The birthday girl:

The venue:

The food (Erika’s photo):

The obligatory cake-eating (first is Erika’s photo):

The friends (last two are Erika’s photos):

The thank yous (mailed):

This event was made possible by Texas weather, where you can have an outdoor party in January and it’s 70 degrees.

we always knew she would be an artist

I love watching shows like American Idol when they interview a contestant’s parents and they say something like, “We always knew she would be a singer!” And they show a video clip of the girl screaming into a hairbrush at age two. Like every other girl at age two.

Well the bug had her first painting experience, arranged by Erika. So if she is an artist, we can show these photos and brag how we always knew this would happen. Because if our daughter is about to make it big, we should definitely make it all be about us and how we are right.

Here are the photos. Good thing we took their clothes off.

Getting ready. Erika asks, “Does she always pat her belly like a sumo wrestler?” Yes, yes she does.

Body paint or finger paint. You choose.

Shepard paints neatly.

I wonder what this tastes like. I will just slip my finger up to my mouth…

Hmmm no one notices I am eating it.

OMG do NOT eat it. Do NOT eat it.

Back to painting. I warned him not to eat it.

A new sheet of paper looks like it is coming with some instruction.

Cutest painting picture.