September 2012 Blog Hop

Here is my September 2012 Papertrey Ink Blog Hop design.  The challenge this month is about gift packaging with fabric or felt.  I spent way more time than I should have creating this tiny little number.  Each leaf is die cut from felt and hand stitched because I wanted a rustic look.  All products (except ribbon and thread) are from Papertrey Ink.  

This little sucker is going on a good bottle of wine and is going to a good friend who will appreciate the hard work I spent on creating this little piece of art (at least maybe while she drinks the wine).  Enjoy!

Green Gold

I volunteered to water the garden at my son's school for the summer.  The benefit of volunteering was that you get to pick whatever is ready to be harvested in the garden.  I was smiling ear to ear when I arrived to find beautiful basil plants ready to be picked.  I came home with at least 24 cups of basil and it didn't even look like I touched the plants!

 

Look how large the leaves were!  This was like no basil I've seen (or grown) before.  This was basil on steroids.  Of course, basil like this needs to be put to good use as a nice yummy pesto.  I got enough to make myself 5.5 pint sized jars of this liquid gold.  If you have never made pesto, you really should, it is so simple.  Here is a super easy recipe adapted from Martha Stewart (I like more garlic):

BASIL PESTO
4 cups (washed & dried) basil leaves
1/2 cup of pine nuts
1/2 cup Parmesan cheese grated
2 cloves of garlic
salt (lots) & pepper
1/2 cup olive oil

 Dump all the ingredients in a food processor except the olive oil.

Turn your machine on.  Add 1/4 cup of the olive oil in a steady stream. 

Stop your machine and mix the contents (there is always one lone basil that hasn't been chopped up).  There is a life lesson to be learned from that lone basil :)

 Close up your machine, turn it on, and slowly add the remaining 1/4 cup of olive oil.  

THAT'S IT.  You are done!  So easy!

I am storing mine in pint sized glass jars in the freezer.  A pint should be just enough for a pound of pasta.  We like to saute mushrooms and chopped tomatoes in a pan and throw them in with the pasta for a complete meal.  Yum!

Sew Fun

Any ideas what this picture could be of?  It doesn't look like much, but trust me, it holds a secret.  I'll let you think about for a few minutes while I catch you up on the last few weeks of my summer.

I've been exhausted.  It is my busy time at work (my real job, not all this fun blog stuff) which means when I get home I'm too wiped out to do anything.  I've been too tired to cook nice meals and certainly way too tired to clean my house.  This all means, I've also been too busy to blog.

With the start of the school year means the start to some normalcy and more importantly a schedule in this household.  That means more time to craft and hopefully more time to blog about it. 

Speaking of the school year, here is my cutie on his 1st day in 4K.  Don't you just want to pick him up and squeeze him?  He is so darn cute (yes, I'm biased).  He's so happy to be back in school.  The transition to a new schedule has been a breeze for him, hopefully that trend continues. 

Alright.  Now that I left you are all in suspense for awhile, let me get back to the purpose of this post.  Any guesses as to what my latest sewing project was?  Couple hints.  It is for a one year old.  It has a multipurpose. It was super duper easy.   

It is a bag that holds a tea set and all the accessories needed to hold one fine afternoon tea party with all your doll friends.  When folded out the bag also turns into a double sided tablecloth for those high noon parties.   

I found some cute fabric at Joann's that had several different coordinating fabrics and picked out the three that I liked best (picking out only three of these cute fabrics was really the hardest part of this project).

Here are the coordinating cloth napkins.

And some placemats I made out of some pink felt.

My cats missed the memo that this was only for "pretend" and they were looking for actual tea (and the yummy food that usually goes with it).  Silly cats.

This was a lot of fun to make and a lot of fun to give as a gift.  If you want to try to make one yourself, check out Prudent Baby for all the details and great instructions. 

If you are looking for this tea set, it is from Amazon (B&N carries it too).  Two things that make it great:  it is made from recycled plastic and it doesn't have any "characters" on it so it will grow with the child longer. 

See you soon!  I'm going to go make myself a nice cup of {real} tea.