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.

Summer Eats

Wow.  Summer has gotten crazy in this household.  I've been exhausted!  Too exhausted to post.  I've thought about it.  A lot.  I've taken lots of pictures but at the end of each day, my energy was all gone.

But I'm back.  I'm back with a food post.  Last weekend when I was helping my baby sister try on wedding dressing (YEAH!), my dad gave me a TON of food from his massive garden.  Among the beauties that I got were these tomatoes.  What do you do with a ton of tomatoes when you're too tired to cook?

You roast them.  You roast them with their friends, onion and garlic.  I roasted these for about 2 hours at 350 degrees.  I then added oregano from the garden and roasted them for another 45 minutes at 425 degrees.  Not a lot of work involved here.  Well, not a lot of work for me, my poor oven on the other hand, I wasn't sure she was going to make it.  She stopped working part way through but I've learned if you hit enough buttons and hold them down long enough, she'll start working again.

After all that time in the oven, they look something like the above picture.  I then threw them in a food processor (skins and all) and blended them until they were nice and smooth.  I put them in a pan and simmered them with 1/2 cup of white wine. That was it for that night.  I put the finished sauce in the refridgerator for the next night's meal.  Before you all decide to give me a "mother of the year" award for making homemade tomato sauce, let me fess up and tell you this:  my son was eating Ramen noodle soup while I was busy being Betty Crocker.  Yeah, go ahead, give me that award now.

The next night I breaded some chicken tenders with Panko breadcrumbs and assembled the meal all together.  It was delicious but I have another confession to make, it appeared my son enjoyed the Ramen noodle soup more.  Kids.

Hot as Hell Take II

Ok, so it turns out that all the boys needed was a couple hours of sleep (I'd like to think air conditioning too).  Since my son decided to behave this afternoon and my hubby hasn't complained once about the air conditioning being on, I decided to treat them.  I made them each a glass of Homemade Raspberry Lemonade.

Just as simple as my last post but add in some raspberries.  

Here is the recipe:

Homemade Raspberry Lemonade (Single Serving)

Fill a cocktail shaker with ice.
Add:
 juice from one squeezed lemon.
5-6 raspberries (fresh or frozen)
2 Tablespoons sugar
16 oz water

Muddle the raspberries to break them up a bit.  Shake the cocktail shaker for about 1 minute.  Serve in a nice big glass.  Garnish with mint from the garden if you have some.  If your luck you can sip it while staring at beautiful houses across the street. 

I get to stare at this beautiful bungalow everyday, aren't I lucky :)

Hot as Hell

It is as hot as hell here.  No joke.  I can't even stand it.  This weather makes me tired and cranky.  My husband and I fight about the air conditioner all the time.  He is so cheap he doesn't want it turned on EVER.  Today was different, I had a plan.  A good plan. I took the birthday boy out for an all you can eat pancake breakfast hoping that when we got home he would carb crash.  Oh I'm so sneaky.  Look at him so peaceful in that chair.  Pancakes work every time. 

Good thing he doesn't read my blog.  I wish you could see me right now, I got an evil grin on my face and cool artificial air blowing through my hair.  Why does it feel so good to be so bad?  So while the boys are sleeping I got this huge urge to guzzle down a big glass of lemonade.  Fresh lemonade.  A quick search on pinterest and all I get are huge pitchers of lemonade for like you AND your family.  Forget my family! 

This little boy has been a huge monster all weekend (he's lucky he is so darn cute) and the birthday boy is going to be mad when he wakes up and sees that the air conditioning is on.  So I wanted to make lemonade: just. for. me.  So while the two boys are sleeping I made myself a nice big cold glass.

Here's how:

Take a cocktail shaker and fill it up halfway with ice.  Squeeze the juice out of one lemon.  I love my little lemon juicer.  Put in 1-2 tablespoons of sugar depending on your taste, I only used one tablespoon here because I wanted it fairly tart.  Fill your shaker up with water, about 16 oz worth, or as much as fits in your glass and shake the heck hell out of it.

Pour it into a nice big glass and enjoy with an evil grin while staring at your loved ones while they sleep.  If your lucky, you might have time to make two batches.  Enjoy.  I am.

Road Trip Comforts

I just got back from a road trip, eh.  Guess where, eh.  No, not Wisconsin or Minnesota (good guesses though).  I'm back from the land of Canada.  We drove there.  With a four year old.  Fourteen hours each way.  Yes, I deserve a metal.  In truth it wasn't that bad.  My son did pretty good in the car.  I did make him a gift before we left to make life a bit easier {on both of us}.

I made him a leap pad cover (he calls it his ipad).   Santa brought this for him back at Christmas but the cover in the stores was sold out everywhere.  Sewing a case for it has been on my "to do" list for six months.  It is nice to finally cross ONE thing off that ever growing list.

You can find the pattern over at Pink Stitches.  Her instructions made it super easy.  The whole project took me a few hours from start to finish (counting my screw ups, I really should learn to read directions).

There is a front zipper pocket for all his little games.  As scary as a zipper is to this newbie sewer, it was a must for this project!  Those games are small and easy to loss and too expensive to replace.

I can't believe the zipper pocket was that easy.  Those suckers are a lot easier than they look (if you have never tried one, DO IT)!  Of course I used super hero themed fabric.  Don't you just love the super hero fabric?  I love it.  So does my son.

He has been totting it around ever since I gave it to him.  That makes this momma happy.  Some might even call me a super momma! *wink* 

Father's Day Gifts

Oh yeah, this superhero theme is going to spill over to Father's day!  It started out that my son was obsessed with all things superheros but now I am just as obsessed as he is.  My baby's daddy (haha, yeah I am not cool enough to pull that off) is getting this card for father's day along with these:

Meant to hold this refreshing beauty (my best friend):

Oh beer, how I love thee.  Ok, back to the third love of my life:  my baby's daddy.  Third you say?  Yes, right behind my son and the beer pictured above.  Don't judge me, I'm from Wisconsin, I'm required to love beer (till death do us part).  It runs in my veins, I wish it ran through my home's water pipes.  In all seriousness, here is a super easy gift you can make in about 10 minutes (one minute to cut and glue and nine minutes to let the mod podge dry).  Just go to a second hand book store and buy some cool comic books, the cheaper the better (that rule applies to everything in life except beer).  Just cut pieces 4 inches by 4 inches and round the corners.  Glue to the back of cardboard coasters or even better some cheap ceramic tiles from a home supply store (I used cardboard coasters here). 

I'm pretty sure my hubby will be taking these to work.  While he works at a pretty cool place, it ain't cool enough to use these as beer coasters.  He'll probably use them for something boring like hot tea (see why he is third!).

I got a couple other ideas brewing (yes, pun intended) in my head.  See you soon!

Out of My Comfort Zone

Ok people.  I grew up a tomboy.  Sure I had the typical 1980's toys like cabbage patch dolls, barbies, pound puppies, my little pony, and rainbow brite, but those toys didn't see much action because I was too busy playing soccer, collecting frogs in the stream (which at the time I was convinced gave me warts), climbing through the swamp and over downed trees and of course watching ThunderCats.

I don't wear dresses,   I don't see the need to wear a lot of make up, my favorite shopping is scoring a bargain at second hand stores, and I don't understand why women insist on wearing uncomfortable shoes for the sake of looking good.  I love sweats, t-shirts, and my stinky dirty unfashionable crocs.

$5 Goodwill find BRAND NEW (no I don't wear them in public)

  It wasn't until after college that I took on activities that tend to be "girlie" like cooking, stamping, and now sewing.  With a spouse, a child, one dog, and two cats at home all of them BOYS, I feel outnumbered but I feel so. at. home.

 So today when I set out to make a girl version of my popular superhero banner,  it took a little bit more time and little bit more effort than usual.  Princesses, castles, and fairy tales don't come naturally to me.

 I'm so happy I got my inner princess to come out, because this is so stinky cute.  Those of you with little girls know that this "princess" thing is not going away anytime soon (just like my son's "superhero" thing).  

I made this using Papertrey Ink's Boxy Banners Dies.  I added pink and purple card stock to the back of each fairy tale picture.

I think this is so cute and is perfect for any little princess you have running around.  This cute little gem is available in my Etsy Shop. 

Of course, if you are like me, and this is too pink and "girlie" you can of course still stare at and admire (or buy!) my superhero banner.