A Vist to the New Creve Coeur Red Racks and Jean Short Tutorials in time for August Heat!

Hey all my frugal friends! I wanted to tell you about my first trip to the new Red Racks store on Olive blvd. in Creve Coeur. I had never been to a Red Racks before so I didn’t really know what to expect, but I found it to be pretty nice, albeit a little pricier than stores that I usually frequent like Goodwill or St. Vincent De Paul. Red Racks did seem however, to have a larger amount of newer name-brand items that my sister kept pointing out, for example Seven For All Mankind jeans, J. Crew jeans, Ann Taylor dresses and tops, etc.

As for my top picks, I found a ton of awesome vintage leather belts! I also succeeded in not buying all of them and got only one, although I am still thinking about that Guatemalan belt, especially after finding pictures like this on Pinterest. I did pick up a vintage tooled leather belt with little bird silhouettes on it, similar to ones I found on Etsy for much more than the five dollars I paid.

I also came across a cute Eddie Bauer mini dress from the 90’s that channeled Claire Danes in My So-Called Life for nine bucks that would go perfectly with one of the many belts available and some tights and boots à la Angela Chase.

I was happy to hit thrifter gold when I came across some vintage Levi’s jeans, one pair in just my size that I snatched up just in time for my old high-rise jean shorts to be torn to shreds.

Since I had to make a new pair for myself, I figured that I’d include some instructions on how to properly distress your jeans to avoid “mom jeans” or as I see it, looking like a camp counselor from 1995. If I could only explain why that’s a bad look, but looking like an angsty high-school freshman from TV in 1995 is a good thing.

Here are a couple of good tutorials on making your own jean shorts. This is a basic one that gives good instructions on cutting the legs. Here you can find three fun takes on the basic cut-off with step-by-step photos. If you’d like a video, head to this one on YouTube by Mr. Kate, who has tons of useful tutorials!

Sometimes I can be a very picky person and I guess jeans bring that out in me. I really can’t stand fake-looking whiskers on jeans, and wanted my holes and distressing to look natural, so I didn’t want to just start cutting randomly. So, I developed my own strategy that I am very happy with. I just put the jeans on, sat (and sometimes contorted) and sanded over the wrinkles. It took a bit of time, made a ton of lint and made me sneeze blue, but it was worth it. Plus, it made the jeans so much softer and helped them fit better since the wrinkles weren’t as bulky. August is a little late for new jean shorts, but I’m very happy with them, and for three bucks I can’t complain!