Challenge Update: Week 17

After the confessional that was last week’s update, I am proud to report that this week should be rather painless!

Challenge Rule 1: Buy No Clothes/Don’t Covet

Although the internet advertising algorithms tried to cockroach me all week, I put my blinders on. (It would be funny to count how many different places that rainbow dress has appeared, though…)

I have steeled myself against its wily ways. I’m back on track. I barely coveted anything and I most certainly did not buy anything.

Challenge Rule 2: The Inventory

I did the long-awaited seasonal changeover. Life-changing? Maybe not, but definitely eye-opening. I will do a little review of it during this week’s Ode to Mise en Place. Suffice it to say that there is benefit in doing a regular closet sort and that I even found a few things that can be rehomed. So this was not a waste of time.

Challenge Rule 3: Go-To Catalogue:

My seasonal obsession with wearing dresses was pre-empted by a rainy coldish spell. The good news is, I wrote down my Go-To items for the last rainy season and was able to improvise! Yay for not feeling creative and being able to take advantage of past creativity!!

Challenge Rule 4: Mise en Place/Plan Ahead:

No problems here. I have been taking extra care to practice what I preach, even down to making my children do Mise en Place as well.

An Instagram friend calls it “making a clothesman,” and honestly, I just love that expression. But when I hear my littlest one, in his perfect French accent say, “Mama, we forgot to do my Mise en Place,” my heart melts just a tiny bit.

Challenge Rule 5: Repair and Mend, Alter when Necessary:

Well, the bathrobe dress is going to have to become a bathrobe blouse. In order to do the fun bias stripe thing I wanted to do, I couldn’t get the length from the bathrobe. However, I modeled the peplum after a favorite wrap blouse my friend Genevieve gave me about a million years ago, and find that the whole thing is coming together nicely:

To be continued…

Round up

With lockdown finally lifted, I have gotten back into the swing of my creative endeavors at full-throttle. Hopefully this hard work will translate into a pay-off in increased usable output!!

In Other News:

Although I have not heard back yet from the publisher to whom I sent my manuscript, I did have an information interview with the friend of a friend who works in publishing here in France. She gave me a some precious advice, and now I have a few angles from which to tackle the beast of getting this book published!