The swag and buckle.

On Christmas day my extended family was all together and my lovely aunt Jean (check out her incredible French skin care company, by the way: http://www.votrevu.com/corporate/public?page=/jsp/home.jsp) was wearing this really great “wrap” for lack of a better word. She said it resembled a turtle shell, but it was much too smashing for that. Being that it was pretty much a round piece of fabric with two arm holes in it she claimed you could wear it in all different miraculous ways while still feeling like you are in a bathrobe. And what, might I ask, inspires a girl more than a multi-functional, bathrobe-feeling, turtle shell? Nothing, is my obvious answer, and I thus set my mind that I, too, could create one. “It’s so easy to wear!” She said. “I look at some people and their outfits and I think, ‘What? Is it too hard to swag and buckle?! Put a frock over those yoga pants!”

Ok, maybe she didn’t say that last part about the yoga pants, but I know she was thinking it; because we all know that I was thinking it.

Seriously, girls. Swag and buckle a frock over those yoga pants. Or a turtle shell over those yoga pants. Or, for the love of donuts and all things good in the world, just swag and buckle something over those yoga pants!

Later in the week I had the joy of being with some of my very bests. You know the kindred spirit type? In the words of Anne of Green Gables, “Bosom friends”? Yeah, well that’s what I would classify these chicks.

And let me just say this: If you are blessed to have people in your life who “get” you, or who you don’t have to explain yourself to, or who build you up to love Jesus more than you ever have----don’t ever let those people go. Those people are God’s good gifts to you and they will show you a grace of Jesus that you will not receive elsewhere. Cherish your people, whoever your people are.

All that to be said, I spent the evening with some of those “people,” and naturally the topic of the turtle shell came up. One of them said right then and there, “Well how about we make a demo?! I bet I have an old bed sheet lying around,” and wouldn’t you know it, before I could say Tea-for-two-in-Timbuktu there was a bed sheet on the floor, waiting to be “turtled.”

(Is that a word? My autospell didn’t touch that one at all!)

Like all good items, though, we needed a design first. And this is what I could draw from memory of my aunt’s turtle shell.

And then of course you need something to measure the whole process with.

I remember that it was about as wide as my aunt’s arms were, but I had no idea it would come to this to figure out how wide my arms were. It was a very water-hitting-the-middle-of-your-head-torture kind of moment.

There was tracing to make a circle.

There was annoyed cutting.

The fabric was somehow still just a cut, wrinkled bed sheet.

But it was looking like we were on the right track.

How wide apart should the arms holes be?

“That looks a little more like angel wings than I remember.”

But somehow or another, we got pretty close.

Now this is a PROTOTYPE, kids. All the bugs aren’t worked out.

You can see, though, that the possibilities are….well…. we know there are at least three possibilities.

I think I might go buy some yoga pants just so I have a good reason to turtle myself.

Swag and buckle, chickas. Swag and buckle.