O' fun for... finally blessing my baby

Okay, so here's my post. We finally blessed Ellie a few months ago, and I made her blessing dress. I feel kind of guilty, since the boys didn't even get white outfits, but I guess it's just that much more fun to dress up a girl. It's okay- life evens it out later when the girls grow up and bear children and then clean up after them for the next 20 years...

I found enough white fabric from my Grama T stash to make the dress, but I wanted it to be a little fanci-fied. I decided to use the handy decorative stitches on my machine o' awesomeness to detail the fabric. It is hard to see in the picture, but the flower stitching in rows with white thread was something I added. It took longer then I planned, but turned out pretty cool:



I had fun trying out more fancy stitches on the bodice and sash, and did elastic-thread smocking on the back of the bodice. I didn't have a pattern, but smock-y dresses don't need to be too tailored.



I finished it off with little daisies on the skirt here and there, and then made a yellow and white bracelet to match. We put a huge Shauni-flower (that's just what we call it now, Shauni!) on her head to get the whole Cindy-Lou-Who thing going on, and then she was so cute it hurt a little:




And there you have it! That is the thing I am most proud of making over these last 6 months or so. Now I just need to get my craft room all back in one location and I can make baby-clothes and bows and whatnot like a madwoman. Right now half my crafty-room items are in the almost-finished craft room in the basement, and the rest are mixed in with a lot of junk in my old craft room upstairs, soon to be Ellie's room. It's amazing how much easier it is to do things when they are all organized! Plus, sometimes it's just fun to go look at all the colorful things on their shelves or in their cubbies.

I'll keep posting now- I have Christmas projects and wedding jewelry coming up on the never-ending list o' projects.

O' fun for...almost posting

Okay, I have about three minutes to post something before I have to head off to pick Brady up from pre-school. Five if I go in my flamingo pajamas instead of actual clothes... And now four for telling you that...

I had a baby, she is the cutest ever, I made a bunch of stuff after things got back to semi-normal-ness, and by the end of the day will post pictures of at least one thing I have made lately. By saying that here I have now committed to it.

Aaaand now I am out of time. But I'll be back...

O' Fun For... lazy bums

No, this isn't about bums. Just the lazy. I am officially going on blog maternity leave. The O' Fun For All blog administrators are very generous with their maternity policy- I get leave until the kid is born plus maybe a month or so, depending on how long it takes before life gets relatively normal again. I am due to have this kid April 30, but I'll at least let you know when she comes on out to join us, and possibly post something here and there in the meantime, or maybe not. So, starting now, this post is....

On Maternity Leave

See you once this kid decides to leave my poor bladder/back/stomach space alone!!

O' Fun For... clearing out the tumbleweeds

Can you see the big pile of them here on my blog? It's even bigger than the one that's been building all winter on the side of my house. So, here's a short but useful post to clear away the blog tumblweeds that have been blowing by...

It's a recipe for Chicken Pesto Pasta Salad O' Goodness. A few weeks ago I went to the Sunflower Farmer's Market in Orem. (Thanks for the tip Tiffany!) Kind of like Trader Joe's for all you Cali folks. You can buy various marinated goodness by the pound, so I loaded up a pound's worth of marinated sundried tomatoes, mushrooms, and artichoke hearts. After careful comsideration of what exactly to do with these tasty treasures, I came up with this recipe. I hope you like it...

Chicken Pesto Pasta Salad O' Marinated Goodness

*1 lb. total marinated artichoke hearts, sundried tomatoes, and mushrooms, chopped up

*1/2 lb jack cheese, cubed into tiny little cubes

*2 seasoned (I used a citrusy seasoning, but use whatever) chicken breasts, cooked and cubed

*1- 12 oz. package of fun noodles (spiral, wagon wheel, shell, etc.) cooked

* Half a jar (so I used about 11-ish oz.) pesto sauce- I used the kind from Costco

Mix it all up in a ginormous bowl and eat it. Mmmmm. I put some in the fridge and some in ziplocs in the freezer. It is nice cold or hot.

O' Fun For... discovering your true self

This is not making stuff related, but I thought this off-subject post was justified after the week-long streak of posts. A friend of mine posted a note on facebook where you type "(your name) needs" (quotation marks and all) into Google and share the first ten hits you get back. As I sat there at my computer putting off any kind of productivity, I thought I'd give it a try and share my findings.

"Dana needs" by Google

1. Dana needs... some breathing room

2. Dana needs... to negotiate a network television deal

3. Dana needs... help. (no surprises there)

4. Dana needs... a self-embedding U-Box. (?)

5. Dana needs... to be the center of attention (hey!)

6. Dana needs... some advice about her old girlfriend

7. Dana needs... a lot of comforting

8. Dana needs... a dose of transparancy, accountabitiy

9. Dana needs... emergency prayers

10. Dana needs... to slay the beast

Thanks for the idea, Tiffany! That was way more fun than folding laundry. What does Google think you need?

O' Fun For... this kid I've been growin'

Here are the finished blocks. Ta-da! The directions can be found from the link in my previous post about them. Okay, that link isn't working. The directions are from the London Mummy blog, and I have a working link in my post from December 29. I followed the directions as written, but added some fringe and ribbon and whatnot in the seams of some of the blocks since babies always seem to enjoy the tags more than the toys. Well, kid, there you go. Ribbon tags.



Now the name is set in... fabric. Unless we think of something we like better that can be spelled by rearranging the blocks...

O' Fun For... thwarting my attempts at plumbing

...or at least my attempts to sport the plumber's choice in pants.

It's all thanks to Spandex. This is rather shocking in light of my history with the stretchy sparkly fabric. One time in high school during cross country practice I made a wayward comment about Spandex involving the drill team, which was overheard (and misunderstood) by a very indignant Drill Team coach, who then passed the information on to the rest of her team. This lead to my being forced into writing an apology to the entire drill team on behalf of the cross country team, and getting cussed out in the halls by some drill teamers who were very defensive of their Spandex. (Who then turned away in unison and marched down the hall, arms flapping and heads bobbing in time to their marching... no, but that would have been a lot cooler...)

So who would have thought my saggy pants savior would have come in Spandex form?! I am humbled. And now, to show my new found respect for the elastic fabric of the gods, here is my...

STRETCHY PANTS TUTORIAL!

This is a picture-riffic tutorial on how to make maternity pants that actually stay up! It's true! They'll be there to cover your rapidly expanding bum through it all- the sitting and standing, the bending, the climbing of stairs... you get the idea. Let's begin...

You'll need:

*one pair of jeans, preferably low rise with a bit of stretch
*one big ol' piece of Spandex- not too thin a piece, preferably the kind that stretches up and down as well as side to side. (check out SpandexWorld- they have a minimum purchase requirement, but you could get extra to make a swimsuit... you know, for that time far off into the future when you decide it is safe to wear a swimsuit again...)
*plus a tape measure, thread, pins, all that sewing stuff

I have made a bunch of these now, and since they do- to some extent- grow with you, the specific size of the jeans you start with doesn't matter too much, as long as they are a few sizes bigger than you wear while not all knocked up. Really it's all about whether or not your preggo thighs want to fit into them or not that really matters.

STEP ONE: measure around your jeans about one inch or so below the waistband, all the way around. Now subtract a few inches from this, and you have the length for your Spandex measurement.

STEP TWO: Cut a rectangle from your spandex measuring 12 inches x the measurement you got at the end of step one.

STEP THREE: With right sides together, fold the Spandex rectangle in half so the 12" sides are touching. Sew a seam along the 12" side. (See the picture, my words are not working...) You should now have a Spandex tube. Try it on around your middle and make sure it is snug. Then take it in or taper the seam or whatnot as needed. In my example I needed to take the seam in more at the top then the hip area, so it tapers at the top. Just how snug to make it depends on how thick and stretchy your fabric is. The point is to make it stay put without your needing to hold it up while still not crushing your internal organs. Cut off extra seam allowance from the side seam.

This pic shows the seams:



This one shows how the tube should fit, (and what I have learned in my Photoshop class...):

STEP FOUR: Really quick before you forget, hand sew the zipper of your pants closed about halfway down the fly, like this:

STEP FIVE: With right sides together, pin your Spandex tube to your pants. The tube is smaller than the pants, so stretch the tube to fit as you pin. Make sure to line the tube seam up with one of the side seams on the pants. Now, hopefully to clarify and not confuse, I'll explain what you should have here. Looking at the pants you should see the pants inside the tube, and the tube is inside out and upside down. (The part you measured for your hips is on top and pinned to the jeans, the part you measured around your rib area is scrunched up awkwardly around the thighs of the jeans. If that was confusing just ignore it...)

It should look something like this:

STEP SIX: Use a zigzag or some stitch with a bit of stretch and sew the tube to the jeans about 1/2" from the top. (look at the picture above...) Start at one side of the fly and work around until you get to the other side of the fly. Don't sew over the zipper. Your machine won't like that. Also be careful for metal rivets or snaps or things like that as you sew.

**Reinforcing all seams by sewing twice or something is recommended since they will get a lot of strain put on them as you get freakishly huge**

That's it! Pull that panel on up and ta-da! Enjoy your pants! You can wear them before you get too big by zipping the fly like normal and folding the waistband over your hips to keep your pants firmly in place, like a belt. As you get larger and larger, you can unzip the fly (to the point where you sewed it shut at least) and pull that stretchy tube o' fun up to yer armpits there under your shirt.

Here are the pants worn with the waistband folded down:


And here they are worn with it pulled up:


Now go do some squats! No, that sounds tiring. Maybe instead put on your stretchy pants and go eat some brownies while you watch American Idol. Yes. Try that.

O' Fun For... blingin' up the wardrobe

...This is especially useful once you are in the giant tenty pregnant clothes that are not all that fun or wearing you husband's t-shirts with ginormous men's overalls to contain all your baby-house-sized self. Adding some sparkly, whether it matches or not, just makes you feel better. If you have to feel like an RV, may as well feel like a posh tour bus or something rather than the 70's camper, eh?

I've stopped making sense... time to move on...

A month or so ago my sister-in-law Jenny invited me to go "bead" with her. We met at her mother-in-law Alice's, where I discovered that the gem fair goes on all year long. I brought my own meager stash to work with and then marveled at the sparkly-ness of Alice and Jenny's stash. It was pretty awesome.

After forcing my mind to focus on the task at hand, rather than the sparkles around every turn, I decided to make a necklace out of some chain I had bought at the gem fair last year. I had never used it since I was unsure if the lighter silver wire I had for wire-wrapping would look odd with the dark charcoal-ish chain. Jenny convinced me to go for it, so I rummaged through the large pearly beads from my Grama T's stash, supplemented them with some crystaly ones and rock-ish ones from the same stash, and Jenny came up with the perfect deep purply Swarovski crystals to tie it all together. It was all kinds of fun to have Jenny there to consult as I figured out the layout- James and the boys, helpful as they are, don't have quite the feedback I am usually looking for when I am making something. ("Sure hon, looks nice," James offers while his eyes never leave the computer screen.... "I don't like purple," says Toby... you get the idea.)

I was pretty pleased with the outcome! The pictures are the best I could get- it is harder than it looks to photograph jewelry.

Woo! Thanks, Alice and Jenny!

o' fun for... endless crafting

Sorry it's been so long! To make up for it, I will post something new every weekday this week. Oh yes.

To begin, here is a link that you will love. (Or else!) It's the Top 100 Tutuorials of the year as ranked by http://www.thelongthread.com/ It is full of crafty goodness, so stick your kids in front of some Disney and get to it! (What? No.. that's not what I really do... that was just a joke...)

I recently made the kimono from a tutorial on the list. It is the 0-6 month size for a friend's baby shower gift. (I missed the shower, but late gifts are still fun, right?) Now I just have to deliver it before I decide to keep it for my baby...



No, I won't keep it. I'll just make one for Ellie also and then my friend and I can have matching wise-yet-comfy looking baby girls.

Enjoy the tutorial fun!

O' Fun For... tree huggers and preschoolers

...and anyone else so inclined to enjoy some granola goodness. But not you, Duke, so you can stop with the pathetic puppy face.



This last year or so I have been building my kitchen braveness. I have discovered that there really are a bunch of easy things to make that require pretty minimal time and effort. I know, who knew? Bread (thank you oh mighty KitchenAid), croutons, soup, pasta, and now... granola bars. It was quite a shock to learn that these things don't grow straight into their packaging on a special Wal-Mart farm somewhere.



I had tried granola bars before, but the recipe was a bit involved for me and didn't turn out like I wanted. I decided to try again (mainly as a way to distract the kids from destroying one another on this endless snow-bound day). I found what is perhaps the easiest recipe in the world on allrecipes.com, and before I knew it we were basking in oaty goodness.

**The link is having issues, so here is the recipe in a nutshell, or go to "easy granola bars: at allrecipes.com :

3 c. quick cook oats
1 14 oz can sweetened condensed milk
2 T. melted butter
4 c. mix ins o' some kind

Mix it all up, press into cookie sheet or 9 x 13 pan, bake 20-25 min, depending on how crunchy you want them, at 350. Cut a few min. after it comes out of the oven- before it cools.

Here are my sidenotes to the recipe:

*I have no idea if my oats were quick or regular, as they are in a huge #10 can marked "oats" and that's all. I think they were regular? Whichever kind was on a huge sale about 3 years ago at Albertsons. That cleared things up, huh.

*After the oats, sw. cond. milk and butter were mixed I put half into another bowl so we could get two different kinds of mix-ins. Half was butterscotch chips/dark chocolate chips, and the other half was golden raisins, tiny chopped pecans, and a little bit more oats.

*Just go ahead and figure the amount of oats, cond. milk, and butter called for plus 4 c. of mix-ins.

*I used a cookie sheet lined with parchment, and then sprayed that with Pam just for the heck of it. After they came out I cut them with a pizza cutter (again sprayed with Pam, because needless grease is just fun) and then lifted the whole parchment sheet onto the counter to finish cooling.

*Once cooled I wrapped them individually in plastic wrap and then put them all in a big ziploc. I got 20 from my batch, but I cut them pretty huge and will cut them smaller next time to make 30. You can make a ton and freeze a bunch if you are feeling ambitious.

And that's it! Not too tricky! Now go on and make some granola bars. Go on now, you know you want to.

O' Fun For... keeping up my BS skills

...and by that I mean bologna sandwich skills. You have to break those skills out in college art classes often as the professors want you to explain the meaning behind your paintings, and there isn't usually much to explain. See, a rookie might say, "uhhh, you told us all to paint that bowl of fruit... so I guess.. it's a bowl of fruit." A seasoned BSer would respond, "Well... (tilt head and look introspective) I guess I was trying to represent the fruit as the different personalities we all possess. I tried to capture the vulnerability of the peach through use of soft brushstrokes and flesh-toned hues, the obvious superiority complex of the pears by outlining them in black, and the inaccessibility of the pomegranate by keeping it unfinished."

You see the skills you learn? Invaluable.

So, here's what the heck that has to do with today's post. My awesome Mac died, I got a new computer, and I don't yet have Photoshop on it. I took pictures of recent projects, but need to crop them and such before I post them, so until then, please enjoy this exercise in the fine art of BS:


Here is a painting I have been working on. I haven't picked up my oil paints in years, but I think it all came back pretty quickly. Just like riding a bike.



The gesso I used must have been old- the paint is cracking pretty badly. The woman in the picture wasn't so much posing for me as being a crazy window-peeping stalker-type, but I thought I'd make lemonade out of that situation by using the time she spent staring eerily though my craft room window to get some painting done. Besides hollering "Cats! They're everywhere!" or random bouts of eye twitching, she held still for hours. Although, before I could get her eyebrows done, she heard sirens a few blocks away and took off running. Oh-well. I should really call the cops and report her tomorrow, since I suppose the whole situation was really pretty creepy. Hey, and I have a pretty good picture to identify her by now, don't I?!



I don't know where the insanity which fuels my thinking process flows from, but there seems to be an endless supply. Fun times.

O' Fun For... spending more money than I really have

Hello all. My computer has died for now, so I had to figure out how to do all the picture-importing-ness on James' for the time being. I hope the more I use his computer the more he will want to fix mine. After coming home last night to find cheesy Pringles on his keyboard and mouse pad, he explained to me how a person's computer is like their underwear- no one else should use it but the owner. I then told him not to leave his underwear (computer) in the living room if it was off limits...

Back to the topic- I thought I would blog a bit about the happiest place on earth. No, not Disneyland. (How many people actually think that, anyway?) It's...

Gracie Lou's Quilt Shop in Salem!



Yes, it just might be the happiest place on earth. Twenty bonus awesome points each to Lauralee and Shauni for introducing me to it. Here are a few resons why...

It is bursting with so many cute things that your wallet won't know what hit it... and you won't even care. Here are a few of the fabrics:





Those are a small few of the cute fabrics they have. They also have flannel fabric in similar cuteness, ric-rac the likes of which you have never seen before, fringy pom poms, buttons of all shapes and colors, ribbons, patterns, etc.

Also, they have on display throughout the store quilts, aprons, skirts, purses, etc. that make you realize you need to start a few new projects. Then they offer free classes on how to make these. (You pay a $20 deposit to sign up, which is returned as in-store credit to get the fabric for your project.) They have a million of these classes every month. See these cute aprons? Don't you suddenly feel the urgent need to make them?




And if all the cuteness isn't enough, there's the shop dog to distract your kids from wanting to grab everything they see:



They also have a shop Grama who plays with the kids and gives them candy while the moms shop. She wasn't there this time, so I didn't get a picture.

And when you leave, they give you cookies. See there on the counter? Yes. Cookies.



Also, I am not sure if this perk comes along with spending a certain amount, but last time they popped a dinner-menu notepad into my bag with the fabric I bought. I checked on this to make sure I wasn't accidentally shoplifting stuff, but no- it was supposed to be there. Awesome.

I was drooling over the flannel selections today and trying to think of ways to justify the ten to twenty receiving blankets my baby suddenly seems to need...

Here's the address & phone number so you can go visit the happiest place on earth for yourself:

416 North State Road, Salem UT, 84653
(801) 423-1339

After you go, call me and we'll sign up for a few classes together.

O' Fun For... uncooked batter eaters

The intense food cravings are back, and with it all the baking and cooking. Today I made ribs for dinner, complete with my own bbq sauce, an apple pie, and at about 10:00 tonight I decided I needed warm fudgy brownies right away or I might lose it. I am not usually this handy in the kitchen, but the intense food cravings lead me to the kitchen more often than I am used to. I hope my family makes the most of it before the baby comes and we eat off the Wendy's 99 cent menu for a few months...

Here is the recipe I used, minus walnuts. My regular pans seem to have all disappeared, so I used a 9" cake pan. This lead to a bunch of 5 minute checks to see if the brownies were done. You can only do so many of those before you decide the uncooked batter in the middle can be kind of like a sauce, so that makes it okay to take them out right away. I dug right in and dished up a gooey heap, and am burning my tongue on chocolatey, battery goodness at this very moment.

Here is a picture of my fix:



Ahhh. It's all better now. Or it will be after I get a glass of milk, and a few more plates of brownie goo.

*Five awesome points to the first one to name what show the blog title came from and who said it to who. Or whom? I don't know.

O' Fun For... people who like chess and their families

I realized I have never revealed the super-secret present I made for James' Christmas present. Well, the wait is over. Here is a picture of the super-secret present:



Still confused about just what is is? Well, I have a tradition of giving James a chess set each year for Christmas. This year I forgot to get one until after I had spent all the money I had budgeted on his other presents. So, I made a set of chess pieces from our family. I admit, it looked a lot cooler in my head, but there it is. James is the king, I am the queen, Toby is the Bishop, Brady the Knight, Ellie will be the rook just as soon as we get an actual picture of her, and Duke is all of the pawns. It worked well that we had the pictures of us in the Vanguard-themed party hats from James' birthday. I should learn to take more pictures as I make things so I can have better tutorials, but I guess a step-by-step will do for anyone who actually feels the need to have one of these super-cool chess sets of their very own.

1. Find pictures of all the people/animals that will be used. You need to see their whole face. Crop them in photoshop so you have just the faces, each about 1-1.5" wide.

2. Still in photoshop, cut and paste each face onto a letter-paper-sized blank background. If you are having trouble getting the images to stay the right size after pasting, make sure the resolution is the same for both the original image and the background you are pasting onto. You will need to paste the faces multiple times so you get the right amount of images for all the pieces. Make: 2 of the king's face, 2 of the queen's face, 4 of the bishop's face, 4 of the knight's face, 4 of the rook's face, and 16 of the pawn's face.

3. Copy each sheet of faces you made, and then flip the images horizontally, so you have the mirror-images of each sheet. This will give you a front and a back for each piece.

4. Print the sheets of faces you made, and cut them out.

5. Using fimo (polymer) clay, shape the bases for the pieces. I rolled the clay into balls about 3/4-1" wide, and then smooshed down from the top all around so they had flat bottoms. If you want marbley pieces, fold two colors together before you roll it into a ball. Use whatever colors and designs you want to designate which piece is which. (crowns, horseshoes, castle towers, etc.) Make a hole in the top-center of each piece with the wire you plan on using to hold the heads on. Bake the clay according to package directions.

6. Use wire-cutters to cut pieces of thick, sturdy wire for the posts of your pieces. Mine were about 2.5-3" long. You can make them taller or shorter for different pieces.

7. Cut a piece of packing tape or clear contact paper the size of your head-pieces. Lay one cut-out head face down onto the sticky side.

8. Put a thin row on hot glue onto the top of one of your wire posts. Lay it onto the back of the head piece you have taped. Use the mirror-image cutout of the same head to sandwich the gluey-wire. cover with another pice of tape. Now you have a sandwich- tape, head, wire, head, tape.

9. Cut away the excess tape- now it should just cover the head-piece with a bit extra around it.

10. Put a tiny bit of glue onto the end of the wire with no head. Shove it into the hole on the fimo-clay base.

TA-DA!! See? No? Well, I'm sorry, but that's the best I can do without pictures.

Next time I'll take pictures so you have some idea of what the heck I am talking about. Tutorials work better with images.

O' Fun For... finalizing vasectomy plans

It's a GIRL!!!

Yayyyyyyyyyy!

Last Monday was the ultrasound, and Dr. Anderson says he's 99% sure it's a girl. He never says 100% about girls in case the kid was just really good at hiding something from the ultrasound camera, but he gave us the 99% instead of his usual 98% since the view we got left very little possibilities of where a boy could be hiding things from us.

Here is a picture of Ellie: (yes, that's probably going to be her name. James is very attached to it, and I like it, too. I think the majority of her Terrorist days are behind her, although the name may come up again during her teenage years...)



This confirmation gave me the green light to start making a bunch of little girl stuff. However, making anything while pregnant adds complications. The kinds of complications that could be avoided if my brain was still processing and sending information like it should. (Although, I'm not sure it ever works entirely, the absent-mindedness lingers long past pregnancy. It's just nice to have an excuse for a few months.)

I made what should have been a simple sundress. It was still relatively simple, a one-afternoon project, but the lack of functioning brain cells created significant setbacks. See the brown ribbon around the bottom? I was planning on using it all along, but it ended up serving an extra purpose when I used it to hide the seam created after I sewed the ruffle on the bottom wrong-sides together, so the seam ended up on the right side of the dress. I decided the ribbon would hide the seam, since if I picked it all apart and tried again there was a pretty good chance I would sew it the wrong way yet again. Seriously.

Here is the finished dress on a blue hanger, since this whole pink thing is still pretty new to us:



I have also started on these stuffed blocks from the tutorial on the London Mummy blog. I am putting the letters of Ellie's name on them so James feels secure about the fact that we will be using that name. When I showed him the dress, he suggested using some white thread to embroider "Ellie" across the front. I decided against labeling our baby. I know my brain has functioning issues, but I am pretty sure I can remember her name. At the very worst, I'll call her "Tobraellie" as I stumble through all our kids' names to find the right one. Although, I think the clothes-labels might have helped at church. Think about it: someone goes to leave, picks up a baby from the Relief Society room floor thinking it is theirs, and then notices the name stitched across her dress. She then sets Ellie back down, picks up another baby, hopefully the right one this time, and heads home. Hmmm. Maybe I'll have to label her after all.

O' Fun For... Uncle Aaron and Uncle Brian

...but you can't tell them. It's their Christmas presents.

I had Toby draw 3 designs for me: one for a hooded sweatshirt for his Uncle Aaron, and two for t-shirts for his Uncle Brian. I then turned them into stencils and sprayed them. I think Toby's designs all turn out pretty dang awesome, if I do say so myself.

Here is how the hoodie for Aaron turned out:



The colors in the pictures were hard to get with the metallic paint, but it is a slate-blue hoodie with copper eyeballs on the back. Very cool.

Here are the two shirts for Brian:





The first, according to Toby's description, is of a bunch of different shaped lightning bolts all hitting the same place. It is in the copper paint. The second is an airplane getting hit by lightning. Kind of morbid, but oh-well, I guess that works well for grown-up-boy shirts.

Fun times! Now I only have one pair of pajamas and James' super-secret present left to make. And a few cheeseballs. Mmmmm..... cream cheesey goodness......

O' Fun For... people with very vivid imaginations

...because I didn't take any pictures of what we made to go with this post.
Sorry.
We were just lucky to get everything completed and come out alive, let alone take any pictures of the finished products. I can, however, offer links or recipes.

All week I have been printing these gift tags (from Amy Karol last year on the angrychicken blog) out on cardstock, hole-punching them, grommeting them, enveloping them, and finally delivering them for neighbor gifts this year. So much for my simple idea! Somehow I thought the lack of baking and not having to purchase a bunch of supplies I didn't have would speed this one along. Oh-well, it's done now, and my grommet-er is thanking me for the break. Plus, the gift tags are so freaking awesome, I had to share them.

Monday night we went to Grampa T's (my Grampa, the kids' Great Grampa) to make graham cracker houses. I withheld and did not make my own this year. That may be the first time in my life I have passed up that opportunity. I tend to get a bit... ummmm.. involved.. in making my house, and perhaps neglect my kids' frosting-placing needs as I decorate my own house. This year I decided to be strictly a frosting-squeezer for my kids. Sigh. It was still fun, though. This year's trends were adding peppermint wheels to the houses to make them mobile homes and using spare crackers to create garages. You have to enjoy the house building, because the eating part never happens. The origins of Grampa's candy are unknown, but we recognized most of it from several years past. Nothing like vintage candy for some teeth-breaking fun!

Also, we made sugar cookies o' yumminess to decorate last night. Man! That is quite the project with kids! I made the dough in the morning and put it in the fridge. That was the easy part. Then, after dinner, I took a deep breath, washed everyone's hands, and dove on in to the cookie-making adventure. James was very nice and joined the chaos in the kitchen as well. About an hour or more later every surface in the kitchen, as well as every part of us, was covered in flour, dough, cookies, sprinkles, and frosting, but we had enough done to deliver to teachers and home teach-ees, so I sent James off with the kids and the cookies and tackled the mess while they were gone.

Ahhhhhhhh. I remember now why we only do that once a year.

Here is the recipe for the best sugar cookies ever. They are like the pink cookies we would eat instead of lunch in high school. Mmmmm...strange eating disorders.....

Pink Cookies o’ Yumminess

1 c. butter, softened
2 c. sugar
4 eggs
1 c. sour cream
5 c. flour
1 t. baking soda
4 t. baking powder
2 t. vanilla

Beat the butter, sugar, eggs, and sour cream together in a huge bowl. Mix in the rest of the ingredients. Chill overnight. The dough should be sticky. Roll out ¼” to ½” thick. Bake for 12-14 min. at 350. (If I preheat my stoneware pan, it takes 12 min.) You know they are done when the top feels like a wet sponge when you push on it lightly. (They don’t taste like a sponge, don’t worry.) If they are getting browned, they have cooked too long.

I do have one picture for today. Santa stopped by our house while we were mid-cookie-ing! It was about the most festive moment possible: snowy night, baking Christmas cookies, Muppet Christmas Carol soundtrack a-playing, and Santa dropping by for a visit. It would have made the Grinch scream out in horror. Here is a picture of the flour-y kids sitting on Santa's lap:



I am now almost done with Christmas projects. Woo-hoo! I only have to make pajama pants, and something for James that I will not mention on the off chance that he reads this and I spoil the present. Oh- and also some shirt-stenciling for my brother and James' brother. I can't seem to get away without making anything at all, but I did much better this year than I did last year. I am actually getting sleep this year.

O' Fun For... computer nerds and their families

No, it's not some new memory or a shiny new video card. It's... cookies and hot chocolate mix! (ooooo!)

I got going with the holiday treat-making today. I started with the work-gifts for James to hand out. Halfway through I remembered that his whole department is part of a company-wide body fat losing contest until March. Well, their wives and kids can eat the cookies. Maybe I'll send a bag of baby carrots along with the treats...

I got some homemade hot chocolate mix last year and thought I'd be adventurous and give it a try this year. I found a recipe off allrecipes.com, but altered it enough that it will just be easier to write the version I used here:

Dana's Re-Vamped Amaretto Hot Chocolate Mix O' Steamy Goodness

*6 1/2 cups powdered milk (or maybe Morning Moo's Low Fat Dry Milk Alternative if that is what you bought on sale at Macey's food storage sale this year... it claims to have delicious milk flavor...)
*1 (5 oz.) package non-instant chocolate pudding mix
*1 1/2 cups -or a bit more- Great Value brand chocolate milk mix (I'm sorry but that is the only brand that will work. If you try anything else your hot chocolate will all be ruined. Ruined I tell you! Okay, maybe not, I've never tried...)
*1/2 cup powdered amaretto creamer (what? You want another flavor? Fine. Be that way.)
*1 or maybe 1 1/2 cups powdered sugar
*3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder.

Mix it all up in a big bowl with a whisk. Maybe break up the cocoa powder lumps with a fork before you add it. To make the hot chocolate add 1/3 c. mix to 1 cup really hot water. If the water isn't boiling or close, it may taste powdery. I warned you, so now you have no-one but yourself to blame if that happens. If everything goes right, you'll have a nice cup of creamy, thick, amaretto-y hot chocolate. Mmmmmm. It almost makes me not hate the snow. Almost.

I filled 5 big wide-mouth mason jars (are those quart-sized jars maybe?) just over halfway with the hot chocolate mix.
Then I made these cookies. The only change I made was to add about 1 1/2 T. of the amaretto creamer to the dough right after I added the vanilla. I was getting a little carried away with the amaretto goodness. These cookies are my favorite, but they make over 100 cookies, so I don't bust the recipe out too often. Somehow it never occurs to me to half the recipe...

After the cookies cooled I added a layer of plastic wrap over the hot chocolate mix in the jars, and then jammed the rest of the jar full of cookies.

Then we ate a ton of the leftover cookies so we could close the lid on our cookie jar:



In-between baking one million batches of cookies, I made labels and glued them to the jar-lids:



Here are the tagged and ready final products:



I started out with the intention of writing "From: James and those needy people who call him all day", but changed my mind after I had already written "From: James and those..." so I ended with "...other Haymore folks" instead. As I get older, something odd is happening. I am getting inhibitions and possibly small helpings of tact. I know, it frightens me, too. I changed my mind because I thought it might not be a good plan to bring the attention of James' boss to the fact that I call him once... or twice... or so a day while he is at work. See? Thinking ahead. What the heck? What is happening to me? Before you know it I'll be too hesitant to write "flamingo stylist" under "occupation" on forms or to sing to the Spice Girls with my car windows rolled down. Getting older sucks a little!

On another subject, I've noticed that the more past midnight it is, the more commas, (parentheses), -dashes, and... dot dot dots I use while posting. It gets annoying, I know, but that's just how it is!

O' Fun For... catching up here while slacking in the real world

Phew! It's been a while since I've posted! Sorry about that. James and I ditched out and went to Florida for a week, and then returned to a week of kids with the pukes. (Well, just one puker, and one fever-y whiner.) It's karma's way of making up for our nice peaceful week away. Psch! See if we try that again, eh?
So, here is my attempt to conjure something blog-related out of all this...

While in Daytona Beach we caught the last few days of Hot Rod Week. I felt so guilty about ditching our two boys and then spending the night checking out super-cool cars! Shhh... don't tell them that's what we did! Here is a picture of a car whose paint job I intend to copy if I am ever forced into owning a minivan.



Now don't get your panties in a knot- I have nothing against mini-van drivers. Most of my friends have mini-vans with awesome things like magic doors and DVD players and thirty-eight or so cup-holders. It's just that if I have one, it's going to have to be Pimp-My-Ride style. Besides this sweet paint job, it'll have those hubcaps that keep spinning when your car stops, blue lights from underneath, hydraulics, and a velvet dashboard cover with my initials embossed in it. Now that would be a van with unlimited crafty potential! I'll make sure to get it right about the time my kids are in Junior High. Old enough to be embarrassed by the sweet ride, and young enough that they can't drive on their own yet and therefor need me and the sweet van to take them everywhere. I plan on pumpin' some nice old school rap (and calling it that) such as "Gettin' Jiggy With It" and bustin' out the hydraulics as I pull up to the curb at their school. That would really be doing my parental duty of embarrassing my kids. Ahhh, it's fun to dream....

The actual projects this week have been mostly kid-related as I tried to entertain my sick kids with something other than 8 hours of tv a day. Here we see the snowflakes that Toby and I cut and hung above the kitchen table:



I guess it's nice that these snowflakes are still going to be seasonal four months or so from now, because that's at least how long they'll be up there. Just standing in my kitchen to take the picture I could see outdated craft projects taped to nearly every surface possible. After I tape something to my wall it seems to become invisible to me. That is the only way I can explain some of the things I still have on my wall. In this other picture I took of the snowflakes you can see the last link of our countdown-to-summer-vacation chain taped to the top of the back door, as well as pictures of monster trucks drawn last spring lining the wall next to it:



From the spot where I was standing I could also see a balloon and birthday sign taped to the wall going down the stairs. It is from James' birthday, which was over a month ago. The part of my back door not pictured is covered in at least 15 hand-turkey drawings from around a month ago, too. I forsee them staying at least until the Fourth of July. My house would look very bare without these outdated and forgotten holiday pictures taped to every wall.

Wish me luck on accomplishing something blog-worthy this next week!

O' Fun For... saving dinner!

I have lost my mind.
The baby (also know as The Terrorist) is stealing my brain away to make its own. Or maybe it was aliens, I don't know.
The point is, my brain has stopped being a reliable resource. Tonight was a fabulous example of my ongoing brain-loss...

I remembered that I had bought some potatoes last week for baked potatoes. I remembered to start getting them ready early enough that they would be nice and baked by dinnertime. As I scrubbed them, I noticed how yam-shaped they were. Then, as I was gouging out the eyes (so violent sounding!) I made an important discovery.
These potatoes were orange.
The potatoes were the last thing I picked up when I went shopping last week. I let Toby help me pick them out. I felt grossly sick at the time. I could come up with plenty of other excuses, but really- it all comes down to this missing brain thing I've got goin' on.
A few spots looked white, not orange, so I stuck them in the oven anyway and hoped that I had picked up some festive new kind of russet potato. After a while, the smell was unmistakable. They were sweet potatoes. Blast!

I searched through a million sweet potato casserole and candied yam recipes on allrecipes.com until I found this. Ahhhh! (That was the angel-miracle sound, by the way.) I had all the ingredients! (Well, garlic powder is close to a garlic clove, right?) I have been wanting to learn how to make gnocchi for a while now, so I decided this would be my dinnertime redemption! Hallelujah! Recipe-sharing websites be praised! (Uh-oh, starting to sound blasphemous. One day the lightning will get me.)

The recipe was easy enough, and once I realized why the water wasn't boiling (I may have...ahem..turned on the wrong burner or something...) the little orange gnocchies were cooked and ready for dinner. I was worried that this would turn out like the infamous spaetzla incident of '05 (lets just say there was sticky dough in every crevice of my kitchen with the exception of the pot of boiling water I wanted it to go into...), but no- these worked! They were fabulous! (If I do say so myself...) Even Toby ate his entire bowl of them. Yay! We ate them with store-bought alfredo-in-a-jar, and it was good, but next time I might try a less garlicky sauce, or just butter and parmesan maybe.

Here is my scary picture of the delicious gnocchi. They looked so nice against the blue glass pie pan, but my picture-taking skills are lacking a bit. I have yet to take a picture of food that looks appetizing. The pictures on allrecipes.com probably do it justice.



This whole incident reminded me of my favorite Bob Ross quote, "We don't make mistakes, we just have 'happy accidents'. "
True, Bob. True.



This post is dedicated to Bob Ross:
artist, philosopher, squirrel-whisperer.