mango salsa

A twist on summertime salsa… add some mangos! This recipe is courtesy of my sister [thanks Caro!]. I made this the other night to go with some spicy coconut chicken; it’s sweet but it has a little kick to it too. Also tastes really good with fish!

ingredients -

• 1 large mango, diced
• 1 large tomato, diced
• 1 small red onion, chopped
• 1 jalapeno, seeded and diced
• 1 clove garlic, minced
• 1/4-1/2 cup cilantro, chopped [to taste]
• salt & pepper to taste

Chop up all your veggies, then combine all ingredients and admire all the pretty colors before digging in!



I like eating it on chips, and it’s also strangely good mixed with plain yogurt! Got a little bit of sweet and spicy going on at the same time, but the heat is significantly cut by the dairy. It makes a great after work snack :D

 

wardrobe redux: red & white striped sailor dress

Here's my next Goodwill rescue! I was hoping to have it fixed up by July 4th, but that didn't quite happen. I'm not tooo sad about that since it rained most of the day, so it wasn't exactly sundress weather anyway. This would make a good beach dress :)


One great thing about living where I do, there is quite a bit of vintage clothing to be had at Goodwill for super cheap. Not all of it's good [hello scary 80s dresses!], but usually you can find one or two decent pieces per visit. This one had a tiiiiiny waistline [notice the two buttons at the bottom in the first picture - ain't no way they're buttoning] but a voluminous pleated skirt so I figured it was a good candidate to be redone.


Time to add some darts!




Since the skirt was big enough, I was able to cut enough fabric to make the waistband big enough to fit comfortably, hooray! Here it is pinned to the bodice.


Bodice pinned to the re-cut skirt...


Hemming the skirt....


And finally, since I like extra work/apparently don't want this project to end, resewing the buttons with red thread for a little extra pizzazz :)


In action! Bonus points for matching heels :D


The only thing I'm not super happy with is the skirt. The front piece is a little wonky and one side seam is about 2" further towards the back than it needs to be due to the little snap opening in the front [not crazy about that either... I should have come up with another solution]. I thought I accounted for that when I measured it out, but I guess I was wrong, haha. The stripes make it a lot more noticeable too. Not much to be done about that though, unless I want to turn it into a pencil skirt, or totally scrap it as a dress and turn it into a top [another peplum top could be cute?!]. Maybe if it still bothers me after I wear it a while/when I have more motivation I'll play with it some more, we shall see. Live and learn!