Made to a Tea!

So I've heard about the factory tour at Celestial Seasonings, but I finally had the chance to experience it first hand. The most talked about portion of the tour for most people is the mint room... It can be overwhelming for some, but I'm a smell person. If it were up to me, there would be no limit on how much perfume a person could wear... I even looked into putting a smelly thing you can buy at the store to put on your furnace filter to make your house smell good. 

The mint room was pretty awesome... but for me, it was this dress made from tea bags that really blew me away. 

Having made a dress myself out of an unlikely product (swim caps) I was very impressed. 

But this group took it to an entirely different level. It didn't stop at the dress. Heels covered in tea bags, a purse and a hat accompanied this fine piece of art. It made me feel like I had only scratched the surface of what I could do with more swim caps... 

I'm an incessant "googler" so naturally I got online to find out the whole story. Turns out, it wasn't just to see if they could make a dress out of tea bags, it was to help raise awareness for heart disease too... 

Maybe I should make another swim cap dress to raise awareness for swimmers ear? ha 

Either way... here's the whole story. Pretty impressive and inspirational. Stay tuned... :)

Tea Dress to Impress

dark chocolate + carmel + sea salt = more please

Since food is one of the few splurges I have this year, let me tell you... I sure am enjoying them more than ever :)

A few weeks ago while I was in Seattle for the Rock N Roll Marathon, my friends came in from Whidbey Island and took me to one of the most amazing restaurants I'd ever been to - Purple. The lobster mac and cheese couldn't be passed up and was amazing,

 but it was dessert that almost created a scene right there in the middle of a perfectly sophisticated restaurant.

Upon arrival of the dessert menu (something I almost always torture myself with - I shouldn't even look but don't you just wonder???) Well I didn't even get a chance to read through the list before the menu was snatched out of my hands as my friend mary addresses the server with our orders.

Mary: "We'll have 3 of your dark chocolate sea salted carmels"

Server: "They come 3 on a plate, so one plate right?

Mary: "No. Like, she needs 3, she needs 3, and I need 3"

Really? I thought...

Mary: "Trust us"

Soon after three plates with three chocolates on each were handed out. No words were spoken from the other two, so I followed their lead and bit into the first piece.

You know that feeling you have when you taste something so ridiculously good that you almost put it back on the plate as if it's poison? I mean there's food for sure that you take a bite and then ravenously go in for another because it's so good. But then there's the kind that is so darn good, it's almost hard to comprehend, and so your fork just puts it back almost in denial?? These carmels, are deadly.

They were so good, that the next night we ate at a different restaurant just to mix it up (not sure why we always feel the need to do that too, but whatever) but as we walked home that night we instinctively ended up back at the dark chocolate sea salted carmel restaurant and ordered 3 sets of 3 to go... All of us shaking our heads in disapproval and yet anxiously standing at the hostess stand like rabid dogs.

Good news for me, I was back in Seattle just a few weeks later for TriRock Seattle. This time I wasn't in the city... but as you know now, I tend to obsess when I love things. I had visited the website for the restaurant as we waited that second night and knew they had a few locations...

As I sat explaining these delightful little squares of perfection to my co-workers it dawned on me, there might be a suburban location... right?

When I google mapped it in my phone - to my astonishment, the original location was just .5 mile away. Frantically I called the restaurant and ordered a dozen, sure to impress my new friends I even offered to go inside and get the beautifully tied up boxes in my ridiculous swim cap dress.

It really makes yout think twice about wasting calories on sweets that aren't that good. I love sweets... like more than the average person, and it's a problem. So... to try and remind myself that I should hold out and just splurge for sweets that are truly outstanding, I took that ribbon and tied it around my wrist...If I eat too many sweets with this bracelet on, my wrists will turn Purple and I won't be able to go to Purple anymore...

                                                            

Swim Cap Dress

So my official start date for this project is June 1, but I was thinking about it back in May when I made this dress... Thought i'd share anyway

I like to make things from nothing. Well not, "nothing", but you know what I mean... As I was working at the TriRock triathlon in San Diego last fall I saw a box of "extra" swim caps. They looked so colorful and exciting as they sat under the box beneath my table. I wondered what happened to those extra swim caps, and so I inquired. They were in case people forgot theirs, or had the wrong color, one broke, etc. After the triathlon was over and everyone successfully finished and the swim caps weren't needed anymore - I asked if I could have some of them. My co-workers have learned better than to ask why, they just figure I'm crazy and it's better to just smile and nod. Taking the box of swim caps home that night I immediately sat down and started planning. In my "craft"/junk drawer I found some ribbon. Leftover from a present presumably, it was neon green. Perfect. I started laying out the swim caps to figure out how they could fit together and a few hours later... i had a skirt! I ran into the other room to hold up as I looked in the mirror, and was disappointed. It didn't look right. It needed more oomph. A few days later I headed into AMVETS and bought a poofy underlayer for a wedding dress. Cutting it up and making a tutu out of it would surely make it pop... nope. now you could only see the tutu and the swim caps were lost in the ruffles. I eventually settled on a very simple skirt, not gathered, no tutu. I packed it up and headed to TriRock Annapolis where it would have it's debut. I wore a TYR swimsuit underneath (official sponsor of the race), and running tights (it was cold and rainy) and my signature crazy socks. Luckily I had found this awesome old school bathing cap that really made the outfit come together.

To everyone else, it was a hit. But it wasn't what I had originally envisioned... A few days after the race I ran into the CEO of our company. Someone asked him what he thought of the swim cap outfit... he looked at me and gave me his honest opinion... he thought it was going to be "more". He was disappointed, and so was I. I went home that night determined to turn that frown upside down. 

It's a little heavy, and smells a lot like rubber, but it finally became the swim cap dress I had wanted...

The smell of latex and the disbelief in everyones eyes... proof that "disappointment" was dead.