Valentine's Day...

...because it's better late than never, right?!

So I haven't shared a lot of personal information on here, but I have had some big changes I wanted to tell you about. This past summer, my husband and I got divorced. I don't need to go into details here, but suffice it to say that we are both better off this way, and I am much, much happier. It's sad when something like that happens and a chapter in your life is over, but at the same time it means a new chapter is starting. 

And so, on to the bulk of this post: for Valentine's Day I bought my boyfriend this tie on Etsy, from a super cool store called Sugar Lust. I love the idea of taking old ties and creating something new with them, and I thought that would be fun to try.

I got my chance sooner than I thought I would. Just after the sweet robot tie appeared in the mail (but before I had given it as a gift), my boyfriend picked up several ties at a thrift store, including this one:

It wasn't until he was showing them to me later that we discovered this on the inside:

Super-funny that he hadn't realized it was there, but that didn't mean he wanted to wear it. He threw it away, but later I thought to pull it out and repurpose it.

First, I dug through my fabric stash, and found just what I needed with some lovely things that I won in a giveaway that Amy had awhile back. I'm so sorry I didn't get a chance to put it on the blog before now, Amy! She sent me this sweet pack of fabric, among other things:

In addition to the fabric, Amy sent me some beautiful ribbons, buttons, paper cut-outs, and lace. I will have to get some pictures of it all when we start having some sunny days around here. :) I pulled this bird from Amy's goodies, and hand stitched it over the logo on the tie:

From the fabric, I chose a floral one and hand stitched it inside the tie, then I took off the label that was on the tie:

And added my own:

So that the whole thing looked like this:

Much better, don't you think?

I took the robot tie from Sugar Lust and the tie that I had fixed up, and wrapped each of them up in their own boxes. I wrapped the boxes in white paper, and then fashioned some pipe cleaner hearts as decorations: