While I've been in dreamland thinking, er wishing, about a European excursion, Ashley is actually taking Europe by storm. It's her 30th, so she's ringing in the new decade in Sweden. The closest I'm going to get to Sweden is heading to IKEA this weekend to score some new shelving. Le sigh...I will have to live vicariously through her in the interim.

As you read this, I am stomping around the streets of Stockholm, celebrating my 30th birthday with my BFF. She just so happens to be a talented Swedish fashion designer, so I can only hope that I am in the midst of wearing something fabulous and picking out a few choice items to bring home to my stateside wardrobe. But I digress!

In preparation for this trip, I decided to dig out a piece of my mother's that she purchased and wore during her years living and studying in Paris. She lived in France during the late 70s, where she received her Master's degree in French from the Sorbonne. (To this day, she's a high school French teacher!).

During that time, she developed quite a stylish European wardrobe and held on to many of the items that she then passed on to me and my sister. I've always found this particular dress intriguing, but the elastic in the shoulders was completely bagged out, and it always looked like an awkward, loose fitting, sack of blue potatoes whenever I tried it on.

In the hopes of reviving it to its former glory and returning it to its European stomping grounds for a good show, I decided to finally tackle the much-needed facelift it required.

I started by pulling out the wrinkled, limp drawstring and replacing it with this funky, twisted fabric rope that I had leftover from this DIY project.

I then ripped out the old elastic...

...and replaced it with brand new, fresh, stretchy elastic.

I then sewed the seams I'd ripped in the process and added a button to the lower part of the skirt so it didn't open up quite so high up the leg.

And boom! Dress restored!

I realize that this is much more of a facelift than a makeover, but I loved the original design and wanted to truly bring it back to it's former state...