2014 Retrospective: K’s Outfits (Part 2)

We’re back with part 2 of K’s 2014 Handmade Wardrobe! Let’s jump right in:

2014-koutfits-07

JULY
Tennis (or Badminton) Whites
Nautical Knit Halter

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AUGUST
A Little Lace, A Little Boho
Frances Newcombe Fabric (black and white)
A Little on the Wild Side

2014-koutfits-09

SEPTEMBER
Galaxy Maxi (sewn in July, but posted much later)
A Groovy Kind of Dress
Big Joey Dresses (Grey + Red stripes / Animal Print)
The Classic Combo

2014-koutfits-10

OCTOBER
Necessity Sewing (Rain Jacket, Long-Sleeves Tees, Denim Pants)
Franklin Dress + Tunic
E & E Ponderosa Dress + Hemlock Tee
Halloween Ninja

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NOVEMBER
Werebear?
Small Fry Skinny Jeans
We’ll Call It A Muslin (The Alpine Coat fail)

2014-koutfits-12

DECEMBER
Hooded Knit Cardi
Alpine Coat Take 2

See Part 1 here — at some point I might create a collage with all the clothes of 2014 together.

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Grand total for the latter half of 2014 was 30 garments. Compared to last year? 58. Which comes out to 66 (2014) vs 129 (2013) for the grand, grand total. Hmmmm. Even 66 items sound like a ton of clothes, and when you consider that she still fits into the majority of the stuff I’ve made in the last couple of years…well, as you can imagine, her closet and dresser are packed to the gills.

What was awesome this year #1: I really focused on clothes that I knew K would like and as a result, she’s worn almost everything I’ve made regularly. Major win.

What was not awesome this year #1: Because I focused on clothes that I knew K would like, I often felt more like a custom tailor and less like the fashion designer I’d fancied myself in the past. Although I tried to inject my own taste into the clothes as much as possible, most of the items I sewed were dictated by K’s preferences, which meant a lot of animal print. Y’all know how I feel about animal print.

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What was awesome this year #2: I’m a knits-sewing samurai at this point, and have zero fear of the stretchy substrate. I would love to own a coverstitch machine one day for that extra professional look since I dislike twin needles, but I can live with my zig zag stitches.

What was not awesome this year #2: I felt like I didn’t challenge myself much. Sure, there were some fake fur projects thrown in there, and that rain jacket material was no walk in the park, and okay, the skinny jeans pushed my sewing skills. Still, I want to up my game and try more advanced methods and professional-grade finishes. I want to try silk and chiffon and leather and crazy complicated plackets. Architectural details. Hong Kong seams. This makes me think of a lovely woman I met recently, who owns a great shop here in Seattle. She creates her own line of children’s clothes and her skills are impeccable. Her background is in bridal wear, but when she told me, “I can sew…well, anything,” (in a totally non-braggy way), I knew I wanted to be able to say the same. Still not quite there.

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What was awesome this year #3: Even after almost two-and-a-half years of sewing pretty much every week for K, I still love it love it love it. Despite my grumbles about embarking on yet another leopard print outfit, I find myself slipping into that comforting meditative state when I cut the fabric, pin them together and position the pieces under the presser foot. And then the hum of the sewing machine starts (interspersed with the jarring roar of the serger which is less Zen), all the while I listen to an audiobook or whatever podcast I’m enthralled with at the moment…there’s nothing like it.

What was not awesome this year #3: As I mentioned, I’m still struggling with the best way to practice my sewing without creating this extravaganza of a wardrobe that only a former shopaholic could produce. The obvious answer would be to sew for other people or focus on home decor/accessories or open a shop of some sort. Through trial and error, though, what I’ve discovered is that the particular combination of sewing clothes for K is what makes my heart go pitter patter. To get even more specific, it’s creating the clothes that suit my taste in K’s size that I find completely inspiring. This poses an added layer of challenge as K’s opinions and tastes become stronger and more distinct from mine. And though I love making clothes for myself and I’m also leaps and bounds more comfortable stitching up things for other people, it’s oddly not as satisfying. Making clothes for K will always remain my favorite type of sewing.

Oh, and the shop idea could easily devolve into a sweatshop situation which I’m not sure I can handle.

So to make this utterly first world dilemma a non-issue and more awesome next year, I’ve decided that I’m going to stop feeling guilty and just make what I want, when I want because I am still solidly in the skills-development phase. My ultimate goal is to be able to sew anything at the highest quality level, but the joy is in the practice of sewing for me, and I have a seedling of an idea for a giving project in the works for any excess/unloved clothes that result. I’ll share more as my idea takes shape.

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Overall, though, 2014 was wonderful and that’s a wrap for K’s 2014 handmade outfits! You can see 2013 here and 2012 here. Whew. Did someone say cray cray?

And tomorrow is the first day of 2015 — Happy New Year, my friends!!!!!

2014 Retrospective: K’s Outfits (Part 1)

Good morning! Before I get all misty-eyed about K’s outfits from this year, I wanted to let all the folks who entered the giveaway last week that rather than selecting just 10 winners, I’ve decided to paint a free custom illustration to everyone that answered the question. I started to do the random number generator thing and it just didn’t feel quite right for some reason. You should be receiving an email from me shortly if you haven’t already!

Okay, let’s move on to the smaller-sized sewing I did from January to June. I broke it up into two parts since it’s already too long, and what I noticed was that I’ve really cut down on sewing for K. As I’ve mentioned time and time again, she truly has too many outfits, and I’ve been trying to find a way to reconcile my need to practice sewing with the guilt I feel from the resulting glut of clothes — I’m not having a lot of success. I have some thinking to do for 2015 and I’ll do more of a recap with part 2, but for now, here are the projects I pumped out from the first six months of 2014:

2014-koutfits-01

JANUARY
Koi Top + Grey Stretch Pants
Undies
Origami-Inspired Dress
Imagine Gnats Meridian Cardi and Coat + French Sleeve Tunic

2014-koutfits-02

FEBRUARY
Fanfare Jammies
Bicycle Dress
Un-fur Trimmed Coat Dress
Pink Cityscape A-Line Tunic

2014-koutfits-03

MARCH
Geometric Knit Cardi + Improved Khaki Pants
Bleu et Bleu
Oliver + S Hide-and-Seek Dress + underskirt
Oliver + S Garden Party Dress + slip
More undies

2014-koutfits-04

APRIL
“Artist” Blouse + Cargo Half-Pants
Frozen Dress Take 1
Sew Chic Kids Pintuck Dress + Tunic

2014-koutfits-05

MAY
E & E Spring Showers Jacket
Rosy Knits
STYLO Mint Cadette Coat + Pintuck Dress
STYLO Metallic Perri Pullover
Vintage May Dress + Rompers
Robinhood Dress
Willow + Co Aster Cardigan

2014-koutfits-06

JUNE
Frozen Dress Take 2
Refashioned Top + Shorts
Scraps Tank + Matcha Shorts

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I’m not sure whether to count each pair of undies as a single garment, so leaving those out along with the super easy upcycling, I made 36 garments from scratch the first six months of 2014. That’s almost half compared to last year (71 garments) for the same duration. Wow. I didn’t realize I’d sewn so much less! Or maybe I was just out of control last year.

Now I’m curious to see how the second half of 2014 compares to last year…be back Wednesday!

Happy Friday + Randomness

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Happy Friday! I hope you all had a spectacular Christmas overflowing with lovely moments. Mine was almost perfect. A few days ago, I happened to be crowing to my mom and M that I hadn’t been sick much this year (well, I had my annual autumnal cough, but it was very minor), and boom, I caught a monster cold right after my proclamation, two days before Christmas. I wrapped presents in a feverish haze and though I’m feeling much better now, I will be careful about boasting about my health going forward.

K got everything she wanted: a karaoke machine, a remote control truck, art supplies and a pet frog. Actually, she got a promise note for a pet frog and we’ll be at the nearest Petco this weekend. She was also in seventh heaven since she got to spend the vast majority of Christmas with her beloved neighbor friends (we get together for brunch on Xmas day every year).

Despite our agreement not to get anything for each other, M and I of course didn’t keep our words. He presented me a generous gift card for one of my favorite stores, and I got him a bunch of bike accessories, the avid cyclist that he is.

And every year, I make a calendar for Ba-chan, and she particularly loved this year’s. I ordered this product from Artifact Uprising, and the quality is excellent. The little wooden clipboard is functional and stylish.

2014-holiday-wrapup

In the image above, I love the holiday card on the left from our friend Ann, and on the right is packaging for Anthro’s gift card. What’s interesting (only to me) is that a few years ago, I made cards that looked strikingly similar. Pie-in-the-sky goal for 2015: collaboration with Anthropologie.

So. Even though I was looking a little bleary and though I interspersed my sentences with sniffles and sneezes, it was one of the best Christmases ever. Family. Friends. Karaoke. What more can you ask for?

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Thank you for all the wonderful comments and emails for the Debt-Free Life series! I was blown away and re-read them all multiple times! I was incredibly inspired by the number of people who took action to harness their own financial situation, and also loved loved loved that women just starting out with their first credit cards found it to be a helpful cautionary tale. Being a living, breathing cautionary tale is sort of my specialty. It was just the ticket to shake me out of my blogging doldrums and I’m excited to try more new things in the coming months. I’ll be selecting winners and will email the recipients of the custom illustration this weekend – I’m still in holiday break mode and am trying to take things slowly.

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Just wanted to jot a quick note today to wish you all a merry post-Christmas weekend! I have some end-of-the-year posts in the works and will be back Monday.

I’m sorry, she said
I doubted your existence
Santa, please confirm*

*K left Santa the sweetest little letter thanking him for all he does for the kids in the world. The part that killed me went, “I’m sorry that I doubted your existence, but I want to know for sure…are you really real?” Santa dropped off a remote control yellow truck with this tag attached, and that, along with some youtube video a friend showed her validating his authenticity, sealed the deal.

 

A Debt-Free Life Finale + Custom Illustration Giveaway! [CLOSED]

moneystory-elephantEvicting the roommates was a swift affair once I called in the big guns. You’ll remember from last time that they had stopped paying rent and the situation was dire. M flew in from Seattle to “negotiate” (a punched hole in the wall was involved as I recall – the Czech girl’s boyfriend was the temperamental sort). I was cowering somewhere out of sight and didn’t witness the event. The couple left with a string of muttered Czech words trailing behind, cursing my name, I’m sure. Freed from thongs and mountainous cigarette ashes, I advertised for a new roommate, and a lovely woman who loved to clean moved in. Though we became friends and our apartment looked less destitute, by now, my whole experience in my beloved city seemed…wrong.

Yes, I loved my job working on the Pottery Barn catalog, and happily arranged photos of sofas and sconces into layouts. I sighed with contentment every morning as I entered the beautifully designed office space, and I delighted in pow-wowing about various shades of the hue du jour with the Color Manager (it’s true, there was actually someone with that job title and her main responsibility was to make sure the colors looked right in the catalog). But the pay left a lot to be desired, and the truth was that I really wasn’t the type to climb the corporate ladder.

As for my second job, I convinced myself that my moonlighting gig as a dispatcher for a community safety program was a good use of my time — it entailed recording activities in the downtown area while rovers/safety officers roamed the streets or “beats” to make sure that all was kosher. “Beat 1, report condition, over,” I would say authoritatively into a walkie talkie while sitting in a small office in downtown, and the walkie talkie would crackle, “All clear, over” or “Code 235, over” (translation: drunken homeless activity resulting in injury, call an ambulance asap). Etcetera. Food stamp dissemination days were raucous and dangerous. The pay, as you can imagine, was laughable.

All I seemed to do was work. And still, I was broke.

**

When faced with debt, there are only three rational steps to take:

1. Reduce spending

2. Increase incoming funds

3. Both of the above

But if humans were rational creatures, none of us would be in debt or overweight or anorexic or in unhealthy relationships. We would all live in clutter-free homes and crime wouldn’t exist. Procrastination would be a myth and therapists would be obsolete. We are irrational beings, filled with emotional compulsions, habitual impulses, family values absorbed or scorned, social influences, primal needs and wants, the propensity to find justification — all these factors are viewed through the various filters that are like fun house mirrors. They warp and twist and distort the simple equation of rationality. It’s what makes us wholly fallible and profoundly creative.

I was doing my best at being rational and taking all the correct steps: I’d cut all the non-essential spending I could, worked two jobs, nixed my social life. Yet, I could constantly feel the familiar and tantalizing tug of “maybe if I buy that [insert some shiny object], I’ll feel better. I deserve a little something for working so hard.” The more I resisted, the stronger the irrational pull. It was only because of M and the astronomical guilt I felt about his generosity that I didn’t succumb. Okay, I did succumb once in a while. But rarely. Despite my efforts, though, I wasn’t making fast enough progress on my debt-reduction plan.

I hadn’t fooled anyone and I knew that the San Francisco life I originally tried to create was like visiting the Hollywood studios. The artfully constructed sets look great from the front and on the surface, but a quick peek would show you that there was nothing behind them — just the backside of the cheap plywood structure hastily erected and a tangle of messy wires. I’d dismantled my little land of make believe and it didn’t feel liberating at all. Just empty and sad. I needed to learn how to build real things. Solid, immutable, deeply valuable things.

It was time to leave San Francisco. M and I had been discussing the possibility of my joining him in Seattle and I figured that if I was avoiding all social contact in SF, I might as well move to a more affordable place where I knew no one save M, and earnestly work on getting rid of my debt. So in March of 2002, I said a solemn and defeated good-bye to the city of lights and headed to Seattle.

**

I am going to fast forward here because I feel like I need to get to the point. The next phase was a lot of slogging through. So much happened, mostly bad, and M and I teetered on the edge of dissolution for many years. We lived together in one frightening apartment after another (I’ve since discovered that it’s his specialty to find scary living quarters, but they were cheap). With the dot com debacle, jobs were scarce and M had trouble finding work. I was lucky enough to interview at several good companies and worked an insane night shift position that paid the best out of my options. We had no car so I rode a bus across town at 11:30pm to basically babysit petulant workers unaccustomed to supervision, then I took two more buses after I slept a couple of hours to tutor rich high school kids in English literature. While working the night shift, I became friends with the grocery clerks at the Safeway down the street because I had nowhere else to go at 3am on my breaks. I was intrigued and inspired that my friends had saved up enough money to send their kids to college with their cashiering job, and seriously considered applying myself and punt the tutoring job. However, I was promoted to a daytime position after a year so I put the cashier idea to rest.

At this point, my income was over $60,000 and I was getting regular bonuses and raises each year. I covered all expenses as my repayment to M and that included rent, utilities, our phone bills, his gym membership and whatever he charged on his credit card. For two years, all I did was work and pay bills. By the middle of 2004, my student loans were paid off 5 years ahead of schedule. And in December of 2004, I opened my tracking notebook as I did every month, and I’d finally hit the magic number: $13,000. In one year and nine months, I paid M back in full — my $30,000 debt was gone. Two months later, M proposed.

moneystory-finale

 

I often wished for a magic bullet while I was in debt and in the back of my mind I thought that if I looked hard enough, I’d find it. I wanted to pay it all off without anyone knowing, while maintaining a stylish appearance. No magic bullet exists, of course. Yes, I was blessed by M’s magnanimous nature, and if it weren’t for him, I probably would have continued accruing more debt at the rate I was going. He’s the hero of this whole story. In accepting his money though, I’ve wondered if I ended up paying a greater price: M may never fully trust me with money. We’ve talked about this. And maybe he shouldn’t. Maybe it’s an important awareness for both of us to have — that I am prone to trying to keep up with the Joneses, that I tend to fill emptiness and insecurity with material acquisitions, that it’s easy for me to revel in the brief high of feeling like I belong because I have the right bag, the right pair of jeans, the right smart phone.

It’s now been 10 years since I paid that last bill, and we’ve remained debt-free. To get here, I’ve had to find ways to make more money, spend less, lather, rinse and repeat. But the two most important ingredients for me, I found, were accountability and removing myself from surroundings that triggered my spending. As long as I kept my debt shrouded in secret and continued to interact with people that I wanted to impress, I kept digging deeper holes for myself.

It’s been hard, this unmasking. I’ve spent many years thinking about how I let my spending get out of hand, and beyond the usual explanations of wanting to fit in or the lesson of learning how to accept myself, I needed to understand how to stay debt-free. To create practical new habits. We make conscious and sometimes embarrassing choices to this end. We rent a run-down townhouse that fits squarely in our budget and drive a jalopy that is a far cry from the Lexus I declared I’d cruise around in when I was fresh out of college. But we bought it with cash and it runs just fine. We don’t use credit cards. Ever. We have savings and never touch it. I choose my friends carefully. Most of all, I listen intently for that tantalizing call to pretend to be someone I’m not — it’s how I know I shouldn’t be in a particular situation or with a certain person.

I’ve realized over and over that whenever I act out of a need for external validation, my life starts to veer off in the wrong direction. It hasn’t been just the debt. My health suffered by staying in jobs that sounded impressive. There were many bad relationships based on dating guys who fit the “right” mold, the kind of boys other people would approve of that I didn’t actually connect with. I ardently believed I needed to be thin to be accepted, so I dieted like a maniac. And on and on and on. The debt, however, was one of my biggest lessons to date. It was easy to buy an image on credit, to borrow the illusion of happiness with the best of intentions to pay it back later when I hoped my projected image and happiness would have solidified into reality. Except it didn’t happen that way.

I have more to say, but my story is at its end. I think there are many, many ways to go about eliminating debt if that is something affecting your life. My way was unglamorous and filled with shame for many years, but only because I made it that way. I believe it can be done with dignity. I’m clearly not a personal finance expert so I don’t have answers, but I do know this: most of my possessions now are humble or secondhand or wonkily handmade, but I’ve never felt richer. I have my health. And my family. And good friends. And time to create. These, I believe, are the true currencies of a rich and happy life. One more thought: after ten debt-free years, I am finally learning how to build real things. Solid, immutable, deeply valuable things.

perspective

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And now for the Giveaway!! With 2015 rapidly approaching, perhaps some of you have New Year’s goals or resolutions in mind? I have a piece of paper stuck above my sewing machine with the word “gratitude” — I’ve long stopped consciously noticing it, but I find it to be a helpful reminder when my eyes occasionally focus on it. I also like the word “perspective”. I wonder if you would like a customized illustrated word of your own? Or maybe a cute animal or a portrait of your child(ren) wearing an outfit? Amber brought up the custom illustration idea and I thought it sounded like loads of fun.

I would love to offer 10 custom 5 x 7″-ish illustrations. They will be original watercolors on coldpressed paper. To enter, it’s a bit interview-esque, but I liked this question that my editor asked me recently: “What would you like to be doing in five years?” For me, I’d like to be working on another book or two and have my own studio where I’m cranking out beautiful clothes and fun illustrations and much-improved photography!

I will keep the giveaway open until Christmas and will announce the winner shortly after. I don’t need to mention that international folks are more than welcome by now, right? Good luck!

Thank you for reading
My tale of money matters
Parts 1, 2, 3, 4

P.S. My mama is in town and ’tis the holiday season, so I will take next Monday and Wednesday off. Merry, merry!

A Debt-Free Life Part 3

moneystory-part3

He went ballistic. Telling M about my debt was not going well. He started to do the frantic head-clutching move reserved for extreme stress and duress, and he looked at me like he’d never seen me before. I bawled.

“How much???” He practically keened and clutched his head some more.

And here, I have to confess that I shaved off a few thousand dollars because I was scared out of my wits, but then quickly admitted the real sum because at this point our future together seemed unlikely. What did I have to lose? By the time I told M about my financial burden, I’d managed to chisel down my credit card balance to $13,000 from $22,600 in 15 months and had started making my monthly grad school payments. My total debt came out to approximately $30,000. His eyes bulged.

Then, still protecting his head as if to ward off an oncoming asteroid, M did something unimaginable. He said, “I’ll help you.” Help? Keep in mind, this was a man who had just lost his business with the collapse of the dot com bubble and was sleeping on the floor of a minuscule apartment, surrounded by all the computer equipment from their defunct company. I couldn’t understand what he was saying.

He had some stock that he could sell, he told me. Not enough to cover all of my debt, but enough for the credit card amount. This was an act so outrageous and so unexpected, I absolutely refused. No. Nonononononono. I was even more ashamed — I couldn’t owe my boyfriend money! I can pay it off by myself in a few years, I insisted. But he wouldn’t take my refusal. He said he couldn’t be with me while I carried on wasting money through so much interest. Debt, in every way, made him crazy.

After much heated debate, we came to an agreement. I would accept his generosity, but I would pay him back every penny and make drastic changes to do so. I would let go of the last vestige of my mirage of living the covetable life: my dream apartment. My charming little studio with crown moldings and the claw foot tub in the stylish neighborhood of Russian Hill. My money-draining haven that I gripped onto because I didn’t want people to know how bad a shape I was in financially. Instead, I would move into M’s slightly cheaper and decidedly dilapidated apartment, and he and his business partner, by necessity, would move back to Seattle HQ to officially close up shop. The San Francisco expansion had failed. His whole business had failed.

Secretly, I was relieved that I wouldn’t be moving into Fight Club in Chinatown where roaches skittered ceaselessly and the bunkmates were all men – That was where M first lived when he arrived in town, but a few months after we started dating he had found an affordable rental in North Beach (affordable at least by SF standards though I can’t find the exact amount in any of my journals). He’d marginally upgraded to an alleyway flat that reeked of a blend of bolognese sauce and raw fish and lived with his business partner while shutting down his tech company.

moneystory-part3-2

It was a period of turmoil. M handed me a check for $13,000 and left San Francisco. I cut up my credit cards and paid them off, sold almost everything I owned which wasn’t much, really. A dresser. Some pots and pans. A friend agreed to store my iron daybed. I scrubbed clean my sweet studio I’d called home for three years, and moved into M’s dingy room with one tiny window, and became the warden of his computer equipment. Since I couldn’t afford to pay for the entire apartment by myself, we found a girl from the Czech Republic and her American boyfriend to settle into the other bedroom. I began a new and confusing chapter of frugal living.

Perhaps the word “grim” described the situation best. Or maybe “appalling”. I would often wake up in the middle of the night while sleeping on the tatami (bamboo) mat that M had randomly inherited from somewhere. My roommates fought at top volume in the wee hours, often following it up with wild and equally loud love-making. They ate my food in the fridge without ever acknowledging it, and in the bathroom, I was greeted by her leopard print and neon thong underwear strewn all over the place (this would explain my intense aversion to leopard print now). Food crusted the counter tops and floor and our place looked less like a human habitat and more like a guinea pig cage. A guinea pig cage with really dirty guinea pigs. They were both smokers, and somehow had difficulty with the concept of ashtrays, so I would step into mounds of ashes and cigarette butts every morning when I left for work. I’m pretty sure they dabbled in hard drugs too and their source of income was a mystery. We barely exchanged words except for my meek requests for cleaning help. I started to notice things disappearing: my scarf, a pair of shoes. And this was just the first month.

Meanwhile, I avoided my friends because I now lived in what was essentially squalor with two delinquents, still with significant debt, and I had a hard time wrapping my head around my new set of circumstances. How did I end up here?

Owing M money made me feel worse than the previously looming presence of anonymous creditors. This new fiscal arrangement introduced a weird dynamic between us, and living in different cities didn’t help. We hadn’t quite worked out the logistics of how I was going to pay him back (would the rent I’m paying count since I was subleasing from him? Do I send him monthly checks? Do I pay him back in one lump-sum? It made me dizzy), and he now viewed me as irresponsible with money. Rightly so, but that didn’t soften the blow. I could sense distrust on his part, and that hit me hardest. Even though we talked on the phone frequently, neither of us could spare the extra cash to visit each other. Long distance relationships are notoriously difficult to maintain, and we knew that.

And then my roommates stopped paying their rent.

To be continued….*

 

*Okay, I actually have the whole thing written out, but it is mega mega long, so I had to cut it off. Finale on Friday + a giveaway that’s a little different from my usual fare!