Hi friends! Welcome to the first day of year two!! For those of you who may have missed what's going on for this round , I'm using your donations this year and having my way with them, so continue sending your pieces my way!! (Address Here!)

Today's piece comes from my gal Nora in Georgia. Ooh, that rhymes :) I got some lovely (in their day) pieces from her and I couldn't wait to get my hands on this one first!

Hello nautical :) This definitely had some issues going on, but I had ideas of where I was going to take this as soon as I saw it. Gonna go from Popeye to Olive Oyl...

...in just a few steps!

One of the first things to go however, that red bow!! (We'll still use it...it just won't be on the front of the ensemble).

I took my seam rippers and got out those pads first.

Shoulder pad week is over, so these will have to go towards next year's bin!! I had to get rid of the navy skirt of the dress - not only was it faded but it was just not cute. I wasn't digging the houndstooth ruffle bit either, so I began to go to seam ripping town to remove both pieces!

Now that mama skirt and baby skirt was removed...

...I had a new top to get ready to wear!

I took the red bow and the navy insert out...

the buttons off...

and then pinned the new collar down sans the navy...

I had my shirt pretty much ready to go!!

I took that bow, added it onto a clip, and put it in my hair!

I took my billowy top, paired it with jeans and boots and went to hang at NK's with the rest of the crew to celebrate CB's last night in LA.

We played intense games of Catch Phrase - I was thrilled that I gave a decent description of 'Planter's Wart' by pretending to dig in a garden and point to my face and said something about gross things witches have on their face. Oy, we got animated...animated enough for the neightbors to come over and say we were having too much fun!

We saw RM's commercial and I made him recreate his best 'driving a Honda' pose.