"New" Casual Summer outfit (plus pants' alteration question)

This is my "new" summer outfit for around the house. I was really just looking for the pants, but came home with both the pants and top. I bought both at Value Village, pants about $5 and top about $4. I absolutely love the pants. They're roomy in the hips and legs, which allows me to do all sorts of physical work in them, without any binding or constricting.

The problem is this, they're at least a full size too large. I couldn't try them on at VV, as VV took out their fitting rooms in 2021. But I knew they would be too big anyway. I just didn't have a realistic plan for what to do about it.

My original plan was to make two darts in the back. 

However, the back pockets have extra fabric that extends up to the waistband, making the pants fabric plus pocket fabric too thick to do an inconspicuous dart.

After checking online, the neatest way to take these in would be to remove the waistband, take in the back seam, redo the top stitching, add a seam to the waistband just above the back seam (to make the waistband the right size for the resized pants), then resew the waistband back on. That sounds like a lot of work to me. have any of you taken a waistband off of a pair of pants in order to take the pants in? What would you do to size-down a pair of pants styled like this pair?

For the time being, I'm borrowing my daughter's belt to hold the pants up. They're really great pants. They just are too big in the waist and slip down without a belt.

p.s. I love the top more than I thought I would. This length of sleeve comes to the elbow and conceals upper arm flab.

A Successful Food Save and Three Other Frugal Things From My Week

Between the raccoons, squirrels, and blackbirds, it didn't look like we were going to get any cherries from our 2 trees this year. One tree was already bare. 

After many mornings, afternoons, and evenings of chasing critters out of the tree, I had had enough. Last weekend, the four of us picked almost every pink or partially pink cherry on the tree. We wound up with a small bucket full of cherries. 

I pitted the cherries, then made a sauce with all of them along with some chopped rhubarb. I bumped up the cherry flavor with almond extract (sorry Live and Learn at the mention of the extract) and some sugar and a pinch of baking soda. I made about 1 1/2 quarts of rhubarb-cherry sauce, which was devoured by my family.

In past years, we've had to pick unripe cherries, too. My go-to use for these cherries is pie filling. Pie just isn't in the cards for me right now, so I made the sauce. A delicious way to use fruit that we would not have had. now if I can just keep the critters out of the apple and plum trees.

My daughters made us a red, white, and blue gelatin dessert for the 4th of July, using blue and red Kool-aid powder, sugar, plain gelatin, and marshmallows. Jello brand blue jello was over $1.50 for a box last I checked. Homemade colored gelatin made with Kool-aid powder costs about 40 cents.

We wrapped our 4th of July cutlery in plain white napkins, then sealed with patriotic stickers that we received in the mail. A little thing, but everyone enjoyed choosing their napkin.

The wood seats to the chairs I'm refinishing. If you remember, both wood seats had ventilation holes that were 5/8-inch in diameter. I bought a 5/8-inch wood dowel, sawed of 1/4-inch lengths and used wood glue to secure the disks in the holes. They were a tight fit, which is a good thing. I sanded all parts that were protruding, then used wood putty to fill any cracks/gaps. 

That about wraps it up. Have a wonderful weekend, friends!