Shabby Apple Winner Announcement

The lucky winner of the Shabby Apple $35 certificate giveaway is:


Lisa Clark Summerhays

Thank you everyone for playing. See you at the next post. :)

We are Moving

At the beginning of February, I mentioned that we put our house up for sale. I am so happy to say that, near the end of the same month, we got an offer on our house! I was hoping to stay in our current house while our new house is being built, but that is not an option... we are supposed to be out of the house by the 28th this month.

When Mr. TRH called me to tell me that we need to be out by the 28th, I asked, "In what month?"

He said "this month."

Then after a pause, I replied "What? You mean in March?"

...Bahhhh!! I was a little panicky at first, because it seems like it`s coming up so soon and we have so much to do. After I took a few deep breaths, I just decided to do whatever I need to do every day.

Right now my house looks like it was hit by a tornado or that someone broken in. I have been working on packing every single day, but I feel like I’ve made little to no progress. Though, when I take a break and look around, the walls no longer have our family photos, there are boxes everywhere. It is starting to look like it’s not our home anymore...

For instance here is our family room,

A view from the front room,

Shoot... the boys were supposed to start packing the books last night... they bailed out. Gah, they are at school.

We are all excited about the move, but when I was helping my 7 year old daughter she wanted me to stop for the day. Also, she put some of the decoration back on the shelves. I was a bit annoyed by her attitude, because I thought she didn’t want to help pack anymore or that she was teasing me.

Then I noticed that she had tears in her eyes and curled up on her bed with her favorite blanky.

What?... Oh...OH! I sat on her bed and asked her quietly, "Are you a little sad, because your room doesn't look like your room anymore?"

She nodded her head and didn't say anything. I told her that we will pack her room little by little and she seemed to like that idea. Right, this is the house she grew up in, the only place she has known as her home. Of course she will be a bit sad or take some time to adjust to the idea.

The items that are removed from the walls, they are still visible, but not packed. :)
I am avoiding my closet and sewing area, because it is so hard to decide on what to pack and put in to storage and what to keep with us. How would I know what I want to wear a few months in advance? How can I make up my mind of which fabrics to keep for projects? Sigh... my packing days will continue on.

Although, I am having so much fun looking around and coming up with ideas for the next house; I don't think we will go overboard with new furniture or anything. I do want to refinish my old coffee table that I bought over 13 years ago at a thrift store, another thing I want to do is to install my kids artwork with picture hangers and come up with exciting ways to organize my dedicated sewing space.

I will keep you all posted, but I better get back to the boxes, tapes and markers for now. I will talk to you later. :)

Refashion Challenge ~ Result~

A couple posts ago, I shared a dress I found on the sales rack for a seriously killer deal (about $13!). Though there was one problem...I thought it was a dress, but it was actually a jumpsuit.

I decided to change it to a dress, and so I tried. Here are the steps I took.

1. I cut along the seams of the inner legs to open them up.

2. I laid the dress flat on the table to see how I could sew the left and right seams together in the middle to make this jumpsuit into a dress.

3. I cut off some excess parts then sewed the seams together in the front and back.

4. Because there are broken parts where the cotton lace was connected to the other cotton lace, I completely took off the thread which was attaching the two and directly sewed them together.

5. I sewed a liner and added that to the waist down.

6. It was ready for testing!

Today was a much warmer day than normal and I felt like spring was finally here! It was such a perfect day to try the new dress. :)

I am so happy that it is no longer a jumpsuit. It is the dress!


Very flowy and comfortable too...


The place we took pictures had nice features, but was a little bit challenging. Lots of narrow mismatched walls with graffiti in some areas. We had a hard time picking the background, but it was still fun... can you tell by my smiley face?

There is something I haven't told you all, and I have been crazy busy right now because of that. Hopefully, once that settles, I can start creating the things buzzing around in my head and share with you. I will check in when I can, Have a great weekend!

Review~ Dressing Your Truth

Do you ever feel like you are not beautiful or have no clue what kind of clothing to buy or how to dress yourself? If so, this review post might be perfect for you!

Have you ever heard about Dressing Your Truth?

Dressing your truth was created by Carol Tuttle who is a teacher, speaker, healer, and best-selling author of five books. Carol is helping women worldwide to discover our natural beauty by learning our type of beauty. It doesn't matter our age, weight, or dress size; we are all beautiful in different ways.

What I thought was so unique about this program is that unlike other makeover shows or fashion advice the expert tells you, this program help us to learn ourselves from inside, and lead us to discover our own beauty. There are 4 types of beauty, and we express one of them through our body language, facial features, thoughts, and personality.

The first time when I heard about the Dressing your truth was actually a couple years ago. My neighbor let me borrow one of Carol's books It's Just My Nature. The book talks about 4 different types of personalities. The book was very interesting and eye opening. While I was reading it I wondered which of the 4 types of personality I am, or my loved ones. I read the whole thing right away. Some of my neighbors and friends were also attending the dressing your truth meetings and they asked me if I was interested. Although I loved the book, I thought "no, I really love what I wear, or what I have in my closet, I don't need help with that aspect.", so I didn't go.

Over the past couple of years, I have been noticing the change in people around me who I knew are doing dressing your truth. They started dressing in different colors, textures, adding some jewelry and they seemed happier and more confident. Once, my friend said that she feels like what she wears and how that represents her matches who she is on the inside. Hmm... Doesn't that sound so great?

Also, every time when I get together with my friends, the subject of dressing your truth pops up in different ways. Some of them have been guessing my type and that really triggered my curiosity.

I was so excited when I was given the opportunity to review their online course recently. It was just such perfect timing!

By reading Discover Your Personal Beauty Profile and learning about it, it has given me a really good guess of which type I am but I wasn't sure. After taking the Dressing your Truth course online, it made it even more clear to me which personality/beauty type I am. The online course is very well constructed and user friendly. They also have an online (on site too, if you live in UT) store that are customized for each beauty type, how awesome is that?! After taking the course, I am pretty happy to say that I have been dressing my truth. Most of the colors I choose, the styles that I love match with my personality type.

It's impossible to talk about all the different types and details about them, but you can visit their website or Carol's blog and learn more about them. I would recommend their online course as a very eye-opening and helpful guide to discover yourself and move forward with confidence.

Wouldn't it be so fun to find out about your true beauty type?

New Refashion Challenge

There are lots of things going on around here and I think I will be ready to share that with you soon...

Meanwhile, let me share a picture of this clothing I found the other day for a major KILLER deal.

At Down East, they sell some name brand clothing for a great price. I was checking the sales rack the other day, and found this beauty. I fell in love with it, and lucky me! It was my size. I think I have seen this at Anthropology before...and I know that some of the dresses from Anthro can be 200 to 300 dollars. With all the laces, and detailed work, I am pretty sure that this was not an exception. Wow, why is this dress hanging around here and not in someone else's closet??

Then, I noticed that this isn't a dress... actually, it is a jumpsuit...oh, shoot.

Don't get me wrong, I have nothing going against jumpsuits. It just that, when I tried it on, it was too long, and I looked funny (I almost heard the circus theme some...ta, ta, tara rara...) Even if I try to make the vogue face or the pose that models do (by the way, they are like 6'or taller and I am a self-claimed 5'4"), the mirror in the fitting room wasn't buying it. I thought about giving up on it, then... I saw the price tag.

Most of the dresses are 130.00 and up originally, then, at Down East, they are sold for $45. I guess it was on the sales rack for a while, and reduced to $19.99.

Then, get this; they were having an additional 30% off all the clearance items that day! I was deep in my thoughts in the fitting room, and thought, oh, gosh just get it.

I am not one of those people who can pull of the jumpsuit look, but I was thinking that I can cut into the middle and refashion this to a dress. Yeah, I can do a dress! (grin)

Even if that doesn't work out, the laces used for this dress alone is totally worth it.

I paid a little over $13, and left the store thinking that I got such an amazing deal. Well, we shall see what happens with the refashioning... (to be continued :) ).

Copyright Infringement conclusion

First of all, let me tell you how grateful and surprised I am by your overwhelming support on this issue. When I wrote the post, I didn't think you (yes, YOU, lovely ladies) would leave me such supportive comments, do some digging, or contact Listia for me. I am such a blessed blogger to have so many awesome readers! So, thank you everyone!!

As many of you know, her auction was taken down. We filed a notice copyright infringement claim and sent it to Listia late last night, and they immediately removed it. We were having some technical issues and couldn't send it sooner.

There are few things I learned from this experience...

One of my lovely readers who is an attorney sent me an email with advice which I deeply appreciated:

"...There is no such thing as a copyright in a fashion design. Fashion, clothing, home goods (such as towels or bedding) are not protected by copyright law because they are considered functional goods. There is little to no protection for fashion designers under US copyright, trademark or patent law."

Ok, I didn't know that about the law. Although she also told me this;

"As long as the woman who is selling her own tutorial for a shirt similar to the one you created has not directly copied any pictures or substantially similar text or instructions from your blog tutorial, then she is perfectly within her rights to sell her tutorial."

Right, I don't think I didn't get offended if she was just making the shirt or selling it on the side or something. You see ruffle shirts at so many different boutiques, and shops. But she was using my picture and even after I nicely asked her to not to use my image, she switched the photo to a different ruffle shirt image of mine. If she was selling her own tutorial like she was saying, why is it so hard for her to take her own picture and use that instead of mine?

I also learned that everyone has different ideas about things like this. There are the people who don't care and steal peoples’ ideas, there are people who think it is wrong and take action, and there are people who think, “Why bother? “

I feel like there are so many gray areas in this society, and we are getting too afraid to say when something is wrong. Also, coming up with ideas and designs of my own, taking pictures while I am making something, and writing a post about it is very time consuming. I do it because I enjoy it, though when you find out that someone stole the content and is claiming it as theirs at the click of a button, gives me a really bad taste in my mouth. I think people who have creativeness in their blood would understand what I am trying to say. It's not just about getting credit or money.

Once things are on internet, it is hard to know what will happen to the content and this may not be the last time that I have to deal with something like this. Although, I am so grateful to the person who told me about this and my readers who supported me through this, I will keep creating and blog on. :)

Big thanks from me to you everyone!! (((big hug)))

Sachiko

Alert: Copyright Law Infringement!

Hmm... I really don't like to create a drama here, and I am usually not the type to get upset easily.
Though, there is a problem that has been bugging me the last few days, and I wanted to share this with you and I really need your support and advice.

Last Tuesday, someone (I am not sure if she is a reader or not) sent me an email with a link and told me that "an individual is using your content for her personal gain".
My first reaction was "oh, ok, I better go and check it out."

When I went to the link, I saw my most well-known ruffle shirt picture and she is selling the tutorial!

What?!?!?

How come she can steal my content and sell it… something I am providing free for my readers to enjoy on my blog? Then I thought "oh, maybe she doesn't know the copyright law." Yeah, you can laugh at me for being so naive... I decided not to rush into conclusions and sent her an email to say, it is my material she is using, and it is against the copyright law. I simply asked her to take it down.

I received a comment from her which was...

"ok :)"

So, I decided to go back and see if she really removed it, then guess what I saw (You probably wouldn’t believe it too)...

She switched the picture to a different ruffle shirt which I did back in 2010 and she is still selling it. Who does that!? My initial "Oh maybe she doesn't know..." bit quickly goes out the window there.

Here is the link to it;

http://www.listia.com/auction/8389910-diy-ruffle-shirt-beautiful-elagance

Before I commented on there, someone else also asked her the question saying that "how come you can sell someone else's content, which is free" and she left the link to my tutorial (thank you whoever you are!). When I went back again to see if she has any intention to take it down, she actually hid comments telling her what she is doing is copyright infringement including mine. Also she blocked me so I can't leave any more comments.

I contacted Listia, and am right now filling out the paperwork to have the auction removed. Ugh... I wish we lived in a perfect world, where everyone is nice and honest.

So, my beloved readers... have you ever dealt with stuff like this? Do you have lots of knowledge of what to do? I would LOVE to hear your stories and advice on this matter.

Thank you so much for putting up with my not so happy post, I really appreciate it.

I will keep you posted. :(