Booties for Briea

I finally finished a pair of booties for my best friend's new baby girl, Briea. They aren't perfect, one is a little wider than the other, but honestly... these things are not easy to make!!! It took me 4 tries to get 2 that matched!

If you want to try making these yourself, and let me know if you figure out any secrets to making them turn out exactly the same each time, go here for the pattern at Stardustshoes.

Pumpkin Walnut Muffins

Yup here's ANOTHER muffin recipe.... what can I say we all love muffins!



I've never made pumpkin muffins before, so I looked around at a couple different recipes then decided to more or less wing it, here's what I came up with.

Pumpkin Walnut Muffins

1 cup organic cane sugar

2/3 cup extra virgin olive oil

3 eggs

1 1/2 cups canned pumpkin (or if you're ambitious you could cook you're own up and throw it in the blender)

1/2 cup milk

1 tsp maple extract

3 cups whole wheat cake and pastry flour (or you could just use whole wheat or all -purpose flour)

1 1/2 tsp aluminum free baking powder

1 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp ground cloves

1 tsp ground cinnamon

1/2 tsp ground nutmeg

1 tsp salt

chopped walnuts

Beat together the wet ingredients. Mix together dry ingredients minus the walnuts. Add dry ingredients to the wet and stir or beat until well combined.


Fill muffin tins 3/4 full and sprinkle the tops of each with chopped walnuts. Bake at 400 degrees for approximately 15-20 mins.


Enjoy!!

Tutorial!!

Alright folks, here it is! I finally got the tutorial done for the modge podged picture canvas... hope it makes sense!!



Picture Canvas

Supplies:


A canvas in whatever size you want
Modge Podge
Fine Point Paint Brush
2 Foam Brushes
Rags
Blending Gel
Brown Paint - I find that the darker the brown the better it looks, but for this project I used a more rusty brown color and it looks just fine
Varnish - liquid or spray
Picture(s)
Scrapbook Paper
Stickers, rub ons, stamps, whatever you want to embellish it with.


Step 1:

Paint your canvas!



I ended up having to do 3 coats of paint to get it to look how it does, it just depends on the quality of the paint. If you want your whole project to look more rustic, don't do as many coats!




Step 2:

Layout your project how you want it to look. Make sure you rip some of the paper so that you can apply the "antiquing" process. Always rip the paper so that white ripped part is facing up.



Make sure you have it laid out just how you like it, play around for a while because once you stick it down, it's not moving!


Step 3:



Using the modge podge as glue, glue everything in place. Make sure you cover every surface with the modge podge or it will lift off and create bubbles.



With each item you glue down, flip canvas over and rub the back to get all the bubbles out.




Step 4:

Mix together some of your brown paint and a couple little squirts of the blending gel, just enough to thin the paint out a bit.


Using your fine point paintbrush, put small dabs of paint on the ripped part of your paper, just a few dabs at a time. Then take a rag and rub it in. Do this to all torn parts of your creation. It should looked "aged" or burnt.





Step 5:


Add any stamps, stickers or rub ons you want.


Step 6:

Coat your entire project in modge podge!! Using your foam brush, swirl on a decent amount of modge podge over every surface. Don't do it too thick or it won't dry clear, but make sure you don't miss any spots.
It will look like this until it dries:






Step 7:

Once the coating is entirely dry, mix together more paint and blending gel, this time about half and half.




Mix it all up and using a rag, "paint" over everything to make it look more aged.






Step 8:



Once this dries (it only takes a few minutes) coat your entire project in varnish. Let this dry and voila! You are done! Hang it somewhere everyone will see it!

Slacking

Yes I've been slacking... but only in the blog world I promise! Actually it's because my "real" life is so busy that I just haven't had time to blog. I have so many things I want to post but no time to post them!
On a happy note I am ALMOST done my tutorial! Hurrah. I got going on it today and hope to have it finished tomorrow. I'm going to try figure out how to do it in a pdf format but we'll see how that goes.
In the process of sewing some booties for a special little baby girl who was born a couple weeks ago to my best friend, I hope they turn out! The tutorial I am using can be found here.
Let me just mention that my folder in my favorites labeled "crafts and projects to do" has now reached the number 33. Yikes. When will I have the time???

A Few of My Favorite Things...

A few months ago, Travis and I decided to switch to all natural "beauty" and cleaning products. Here are a few of my new favorite items.


Imperialis Moisturizer by Lush







Pumpkin Patch Soap by Rocky Mountain Soap Company





Fresh Water Moisturizing Shampoo and Conditioner by Live Clean










Vitamin E Hand and Body Lotion by Jason



That's all I use now for "beauty" products. I use the pumpkin patch soap on my face too and I love it!

For cleaning products I use a lot of just baking soda and vinegar, which is amazing, but for bathroom cleaners and for dish soap I use Method.

I really do like using all natural products, I find that my hair and skin generally feel better and when I'm cleaning it's so nice to not use bleach! Method has great smelling products and really when something smells good it's just more enjoyable to use!

If you use any natural products what do you use? What do you love?

this n' that

I'm making yogurt right now (and eating some too!) and I just have to mention how much I love my yogurt maker. It's so easy and convenient and it makes great yogurt. I wasn't able to do much shopping around when I bought mine because there really wasn't a large selection in my city but I am happy with what I got! Mine is a Donvier in case you were wondering!

Next on my list is to make some frozen yogurt with this stuff. I found a recipe I want to try on David Lebovitz's blog. Check his blog out if you have some time, it's great/

I got some more Christmas gifts started today... an apron being one of them! I LOVE the pocket I made on this one.

Tonight I made tortilla pizza's for dinner. They were pretty good! Nothing fantastic, but definitely quick and easy to make.

This is basically what I did....

In a medium bowl throw together 1/2 cup or so of mayonnaise, 1/4 cup or so of ranch dressing (or something else that suites your fancy), 1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese, a couple handfuls of chopped pepperoni, a couple handfuls of chopped green peppers, 3-4 chopped mushrooms, 1/2 cup of grated mozzarella. Mix it all together and spread out on a couple of tortillas on a baking sheet. Throw (or place, depending on the size of the mess you want to clean up) into the oven and bake at 400 degrees for about 10-15 mins or until the cheese is bubbly and golden. I'm sure this would work with all kinds of ingredients, or tomato sauce instead of the mayo and ranch, which would of course be much healthier... just depends on the mood you're in!

Crafty Day

Today I finally got around to making the foam bath toys I've been meaning to make for the boys. Basically I just bought some foam sheets from Michaels and cut out some shapes and letters. I thought about doing the whole alphabet but settled instead for just the boys' names. I didn't exactly feel up to cutting out THAT many letters!


The letters and shapes were a hit! Kaed loved them. He had a grand time sticking them to the sides of the bath, and the walls, and himself! I'll have to make up a few more sets for my friends kids considering I still have a huge stack of foam sheets left.








I also decided to spiff up my wipes container. I recently put a huggies plastic container in my bathroom filled with rags so that I can just quick wet them before I use them to wipe the boys' bums... it looked better than just having a stack of rags sitting on the counter, but still looked pretty tacky. I wasn't a huge fan of the peter pan pattern for our bathroom. Soooo, I took the container and some scrapbook paper I liked, along with some brown paint and modge podged it all together! I took a picture but it's kinda fuzzy, and to be honest I'm just too tired to take another one and upload it right now so fuzzy you get!

First Tutorial to Come Soon!!

One of my favorite things about other blog's is the tutorials that people post. I have wanted to do my own for a while, but I always forget to take pictures while I'm doing a particular craft or sewing project. So, in order to force myself to do this, I decided that I would post the craft I am going to do a tutorial for, and that way I will have to get it done soon!!

My first tutorial will be modge podging pictures on canvases.

They look like this:

A bit of sewing...

I've been neglecting my housework lately to get some christmas presents done and today I put the finishing touches on a couple of things. I'm pretty proud of how they turned out, even if they are not remotely close to perfect. Hopefully my friends and family will appreciate the fact that I've just started out, and really the gifts can only get better from here on in!


A couple sneak peeks of things I've been working on. Obviously I can't show you the finished product or those of you who know you have handmade gifts coming this year may just figure out what is for them!




I'm still not sold on the fabrics I picked out for this peice, but it's a little late to change now....

I got fed up with trying to put my push pins back into the container they came in all the time, so I quickly made a horribly ugly HOT PINK heart shaped pincushion to shove them into. I figured there was no point in making it pretty when I was just going to stab it all day. Then I found this pincushion pattern at Heather Bailey. Now I feel the need to make a new one, as if I have the time!!

Design for Mankind

I found this great magazine today and I thought some of you may enjoy it too. You can download a free pdf version of issue 5 here.

Applesauce Muffins

Somehow this morning my youngest son decided to wake up at 6am, while my oldest slept in till 7am! For Kaed (the oldest) that is really sleeping in (unfortunately). Considering I had to be up with Brayer and that he doesn't hang off my legs while I bake, I decided to quick make some muffins before Kaed woke.

I didn't really have any of my usual muffin flavoring ingredients, ie. bananas, raspberries, blueberries, etc. but I didn't want just plain muffins so I thought I'd try applesauce. Boy was that a good idea! I actually can only tolerate very minimal amounts of apple, but these muffins don't seem to bother me at all.

Applesauce Muffins

1 cup whole wheat flour

1 cup white flour

3 tsp. aluminum free baking powder

1 tsp sea salt

1/2 tsp cloves

1 tsp cinnamon

1/4 tsp nutmeg

1/2 cup honey

2 eggs, well beaten

1 cup milk

1 cup applesauce

1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil

Mix together dry ingredients. In a seperate bowl beat together wet ingredients. Mix all together until just combined and spoon into well greased muffin tins.

Bake at 350 degrees for 20 mins.

Eat warm with a cup of coffee : )

And just a little hint of something I'm working on....

Lions and Robin Hood!

Our boys on Halloween



Robin Hood with his trusty bow



Taking a break on a neighbours front steps




Daddy and his lion cub




Kaed super excited about the next house he might visit!