On the one hand cashmere is soft, warm, and looks great! On the other hand, who am I kidding? Cashmere is itchy, even when it’s decent quality, especially in a warm room. (At least in my experience.)   

My solution is wearing a long-sleeve undershirt with my sweater. But there is another problem. I own a few v-neck sweaters, and it is hard to find a t-shirt with a v-neck deep enough that it doesn’t peek out from under my sweater.   

Here’s what I want out of an undershirt:   

• A deep v-neck. Why? I don’t want it peeking out from underneath my sweater.   

• Thin, light-weight fabric. Why? I don’t want it to add additional warmth. I don’t want it to make my sweater look bunched up or bulky. I want it to be flexible, because I don’t want it to feel binding, especially in the underarm area.   

• Cotton fabric. Why? I want it to wick away sweat to protect my sweater, but I also want it to breath so I don’t get overly warm.

I’m petite. To give you a sense of how the sizes fit, my dimensions are: 5’ 0”, 100 lbs., chest 34A.

Vintage Cotton Long-Sleeve V-Neck Tee by J. Crew

Find it here. I own two of these shirts in XXS in the blue and pink. I bought mine a while back, some time in 2012 or 2013. They no longer have the blue color in stock online, but they do currently have the pink in stock. The color is Heather Blush. Don’t confuse this shirt with the Tissue Long-Sleeve V-Neck Tee by J. Crew. I tried that shirt on in the store. I thought it might be more light-weight than the vintage tee, because tissues are pretty thin, right. But, the tissue tee was much thicker than the vintage tee and felt a little binding.

Women Cashmere V-Neck Sweater by Uniqlo

Find it here. I bought mine in October 2012. I own two of these sweaters in XS in the orange and magenta. They no longer have the orange or magenta in stock online, but they have a ton of other colors. One great thing about Uniqlo is that they always have a ton of colors to choose from.

V-Neck Tee

I love this tee, and I want it to last a long time. Reviews have warned that it can get warped in the washer and dryer, so I wash mine along with my delicates.

1. Use a delicates bag. I use the bags made by Real Simple.
2. Machine wash cold.
3. Air dry. I use the Room Essentials Heavy-Duty Metal Drying Rack by Target.
   

Cashmere Sweater

Lately I've been machine washing a lot of my "hand wash only" garments on the delicate cycle, but I still adhere to hand washing my cashmere. 

1. Hand wash cold. I wash my cashmere sweaters in the kitchen sink using the Progressive Collapsible Dish Tub. And I use a gentle laundry soap, Soapberry, which can be found on the Kleinert’s website.
2. Air dry. I gently squeeze my sweaters over the sink so they are not sopping wet. I do not wring my sweaters! Then I gently roll my sweaters in a towel to remove a lot of the moisture. Finally, I use OXO Good Grips Folding Sweater Dryer to air dry my sweaters.
   

You should totally pick up one of these shirts the next time J. Crew has a sale. Have you found the perfect undershirt somewhere else? Share your find in the comments below!

Warm wishes,

Alex

This post is about using Goo Gone to clean grease splatter off kitchen counter appliances. I used it to clean off our kettle. 

When we moved to DC a year ago, I noticed that our kettle was caked with grease splatter. At our previous apartment, we kept the kettle by the stove, so it got really dirty!

I tried using dish soap to clean it off, but the grease was thick and sticky and wouldn’t come off easily. I didn’t want to soak it, because I wasn’t sure whether it was okay to soak the heating element on the bottom of the kettle. Then I tried multipurpose cleaner, but it hardly made a dent.

Here’s what worked. I put some Goo Gone on a paper towel and wiped off most of the grease, reapplying Goo Gone to the paper towel occasionally. Then I put a little dish soap on a paper towel with a little water and wiped the kettle down to remove the oily Goo Gone. Finally, I took a damp paper towel and cleaned off the last of the residue from the Goo Gone and the soap. Not the greenest method, I know, but it worked! I was very careful near the mouth of the kettle not to get any Goo Gone inside.

I've only cleaned the kettle this thoroughly once. Since we don't keep it near the stove anymore, it just needs to be wiped down occasionally.

This post is about some awesome window silhouettes my partner and I made for Halloween in 2013! They are really eye-catching outside! 

First, here is what the finished product looks like.

Black poster board  (I got mine at Staples.)   
Green tissue paper  (I used bright lime green tissue paper 20” x 30”, which I got here.)
Paper
Pencil
Eraser
Ruler
Scissors
Scotch tape

For the poster board, I believe I got size 20” x 28”. I used the poster board that is similar to very thick cardstock, not the poster board that is super-duper thick and made of foam. 

Note that a lot of poster board at Staples is one color on the front and a different color on the back. Be sure to get poster board that is black on both sides so you can enjoy the silhouette effect both inside and outside your home.

1. First, you should figure out what characters you want to make. I thought of cute characters and how I wanted them to interact. I loosely sketched out the features I wanted them to have. My partner has a knack for sketching, so he redrew the characters and cleaned them up. 

2. We looked at our poster board and our windows to figure out how big we wanted to make our silhouettes.

3. We drew grids on the sketches and our poster board, and then we drew the characters onto the poster board. If you aren’t familiar with scale drawing using a grid, you can find a how-to article here and an example here.

Scale drawing is a process that can take a couple of minutes. When I was working on this project, I ended up using a different scale for each character. 

I didn't know I would be writing a post when I did this project, so I am trying to remember some details. I am going to give you an example, but my numbers are only approximations. For example, I looked at my window (about 58 inches tall) and decided I wanted my skeleton to be about 38 inches tall (about 25 inches from the top of the head to the bottom of the spine). I decided that based on the size of my sketch (a little more than 7 inches tall) and the size I wanted the silhouette to be, that 1:4 would be a good ratio. So, I drew a 1-inch grid on my sketch, and a 4-inch grid on my poster board. Then I copied what was in each square of the sketch into each square on the poster board.

Don't worry about getting gridlines on your silhouettes. They don't stand out on the black poster board.

If you compare the sketch of the skeleton to the silhouette of the skeleton, you can probably tell that we made additional edits. My talented partner made some adjustments as he was transferring the sketches to the poster board, and he made some edits to my poster board drawings as well. I will add that my partner is not a trained artist, he just has a little bit more practice than I do, because he used to sketch for fun back in the day. This is totally a project you could do well with no real artistic experience!

4. We cut out our silhouettes.

5. We used scotch tape to affix the pieces to the inside of the window. (It all came off pretty easily after Halloween, even though the sun often heated the tape. I did go over the windows with Method glass cleaner and a rag to get some of the sticky off.)

6. We neatly taped a layer of green tissue paper over the silhouettes, trying not to overlap too much.

7. On Halloween, we put an extra lamp behind the window to get the silhouettes to stand out. 

That’s it! The tissue paper over the window gave the whole room a creepy green hue leading up to Halloween. It's the kind of thing a kid would probably love to have in their room!

This is a decoration I want to use for years to come! I stored some of the pieces in a manilla file folder, but some of the pieces are too large for that. I made a makeshift portfolio using three manilla file folders, two thick foam poster boards, and tape.  

Martha Stewart has made some great silhouettes. It's out of stock now, but you can see her headless woman silhouette here and spooky bird silhouettes here.
You can find my Pinterest board, Halloween Silhouettes, here.
If you aren’t familiar with scale drawing using a grid, you can find a how-to article here and an example here.

You can download some of my partner's sketches for free below.

Try making Halloween window silhouettes of your own and share your results in the comments below!

Warm wishes,

Alex