Sew Mama Sew!

I've been spending all my spare time looking at all the giveaways on the Sew Mama Sew blog. Have you looked yet? There are some fantastic giveaways and some fantastic blogs. I had hoped to contribute to the fun this year, but I just wasn't able to get something in on time.

a few new fabrics

I've got some mother daughter matching aprons in mind for that top fabric and the bottom stuff will be made into a mei tai for a friend. Can't wait to get started, I have so many projects to get done and life is just getting so busy!

I also managed to pick up this adorable fabric at Value Village yesterday. I've got some kids art smocks planned for it.

Brownies!

I've always been a huge fan of brownies so when I found the nearly perfect recipe a couple years back I swooned! Seriously, if it weren't for my husband chocolate would be the love of my life. Anyway, I made them for my moms group a couple weeks back and a couple people asked for the recipe so here it is!

Chocolate Brownies

1/2 cup butter

3/4 cup sugar

1/2 cup brown sugar

5-6 ounces dark chocolate

1 tbsp corn syrup (I haven't tried leaving this out for fear of the gooey factor not working out but I'm sure you could try it. let me know how it works if you do)

2 beaten eggs

1 tsp vanilla extract

3/4 cup flour

2 tbsp cocoa powder

1/2 tsp baking powder

Melt together the butter, sugars, dark chocolate, and corn syrup in a medium pan over med-low heat. Stir constantly until the mixture is blended and smooth. Remove from heat and let cool.

This is usually when I like to grease and flower an eight inch pan so it's all ready to go.

Sift together the flour, cocoa, and baking powder and set aside.

When the chocolate mixture has cooled to warm, beat in the eggs and extract. Fold in the flour mixture.

Pour into the prepared pan and bake at 350 degrees for about 20-25 mins until the top is crisp and the edges are starting to shrink away from the pan. The inside will still be soft and chewy.

EAT THEM.

a fantastic weekend

My sister in law Kara came for a visit last Thursday. It was such a great weekend, we managed to get all kinds of activities in and also experienced every kind of weather. Thursday it rained so we went to the mall, Friday it was nicer but crazy warm so we took the kids to the Science Center. Saturday it was beautiful and hot so we spent the entire day out at the Archery Range. My parents were also in town so they met us out there along with all my siblings and we had some smokies around a fire. Sunday was also nice and included church followed by planting of the garden and hanging out in the backyard. Monday morning we woke up to snow. Nice.

picture post

new and improved

Picnic table is done! I'm pretty happy with how it turned out, although stenciling turned out to be a lot trickier than I thought. That could have a lot to do with the fact that the paint I used was left here by the previous owners when we moved in. Either way it definately looks better, and I can't wait till all the rain we've been getting moves on so we can have a meal or two on it.

Here's a before and after for you.

The entire project ended up costing me about $3... for the stencil. That's it!

A Work In Progress

The past few days have been spent almost entirely outdoors. It's been wonderful to have warm weather again so we've been busy raking, and digging out flower beds. We also expanded our vegetable garden and I already can't wait to eat all the good stuff that we grow.

Travis built a box to grow our potatoes in this year. I can't wait to see how it works out. It will definately save us a ton of room in the garden. The idea is that he'll build up the sides, and the dirt as the plant grows, which is supposed to make sure you get a large yield of potatoes.

As of now I plan (or have started already) to plant tomatoes, potatoes, butternut squash, beans, peas, carrots, lettuce, asparagus, and onions. I'm doing some tomatoes in the garden and some in pots on my deck, that way I'll have enough to make tomato sauce this fall.

I also started to refinish our picnic table. When we bought our house just over 3 years ago there was a very sad looking picnic table sitting in the yard. We haven't used it much because it just wasn't very nice. I decided to give it a good sanding and a fresh coat of paint. It probably would have made more sense to put new boards on the table top and bench tops, but I didn't want to spend any money on it, and I really liked the idea of making something old, new. It's nearly done, but I'll save the after pictures until I do the final coat of paint. Here's what she looked like before.

and after I sanded it down...

I'm definately looking forward to eating most of our meals on our "new" table this summer. I have also been thinking about doing some stenciling on the top.... I'll have to go see what Michaels has in that department.

We also got Travis' dad to pick up some big jugs from a farmer he knows to make rain barrels. Trav cut off the top, rinsed them out really well, and put a small tap on the bottom. Then he got some bendable rain gutter attachments and placed them going into the barrels. He also built some stands for them. Hopefully this will save us a bunch of water.