Meal Plan

This week I decided to give a go at meal planning.  Before I started sewing, I spent a lot more time cooking and baking and the thought of meal planning seemed silly seeing as deciding what to make and the process that goes with it was sort of the highlight of my day!  I still love to cook and bake but I just don't have the time I used to and it often takes a back seat to my sewing.  The thing I have the most trouble with is deciding what to make.  I often don't even think about dinner until 3pm and by that point the last thing I want to do is try something new so we end up stuck with our usual boring meals.

So this past Monday I went scouring the blog world for new recipes and made up a list of dinners for this week.  It's been great!  So far we've had pork roast, followed by pulled pork sandwiches recipe here  which were fantastic.  Neither Travis nor I are pork fans but this was good, and the kids LOVED it!

Last night I roasted a chicken and we had that with potatoes and corn and tonight I'm trying out a recipe from Tidy Mom  I can't quite figure out how I've never seen her blog before but wow is it a wealth of great recipes and tips!!!  Tonight we're having her Fire Roasted and Tomato Chicken Quesadillas  I can't wait, I love quesadillas and it should be  cinch to make using leftover chicken!

The other reason I've decided to go with a meal plan is an attempt to eat better.  My biggest fault with eating is grabbing something convenient for lunch like a muffin or a cookie instead of eating a real meal so my hopes is with lots of yummy leftovers I might actually eat lunch instead.  I'm also cutting out all snacks but veggies and fruits so with my metabolism that means I need to eat fuller meals so I'm not hungry in between.  So far it's been good!

I hope to continue to share with you the new recipes I try that I love and of course the places I found them from.

Winner!

First of all thank you all so much for entering my giveaway!  I got so many lovely comment from all of you!

And now on to the winner!!

Pink Stitches said...

What a brilliant idea! This is perfect for my son! Greenletterday at yahoo dot com

February 19, 2011 9:42 AM  

 

 

I used a random number generator and got number 115, and after counting and recounting to make sure I had the right number, Pink Stitches won! So congrats!  I'm off to send you an email to let you know!

Thanks again to everyone who entered, and if you didn't win, feel free to check out my shop for more car mats for sale!

A special thanks again to Rae and Dana for hosting the Celebrate the Boy Giveaway Day!

Celebrate the BOY Giveaway Day

Hi!  Welcome to my part of the Celebrate the BOY Giveaway Day!  I have 2 little boys so I'm a big fan of all boy projects.

Anyway on to the Giveaway!  I'm giving away one of my Take Along Billy Car Rollup and Play Mat   I first dreamt up these Car Rollups when my second son turned two.  He is one of those boys who loves matchbox cars so much he has to carry them around with him everywhere!  I got a little tired of ending up with my pockets full of cars so I wanted to make him something that he could carry them in as well as something he could play on whenever I needed to keep him distracted.  I wanted it to be compact and convenient and the Take Along Billy Car Rollup is what I came up with!  Each mat has intersecting roads and 8 pockets (my son calls them garages) to hold cars.

One person will win a Car Rollup and all you have to do is leave me a comment!  I will ship internationally so everyone can enter.  Please only enter once and please make sure your email address is available either in the comment or the comment entry field so I can contact the winner!  The winner will be chosen by a random number generator.  Contest is open from February 19th at 6:00am to February 20th at 8:00pm.

If you don't win but would like to buy your own Billy Car Rollup feel free to check out all the different ones in my Etsy Shop!

And here's a shot of my boys playing with their own car mats last summer.  (I really can't wait for that hot summer weather again!)

New Things and Cute Kids

I'm going for a photo post this time!

First up, recent pics of the cutest kids around (possibly biased)

And second up, new things in the shop!



Taupe With A Hint Of Pink

This morning one of my treasuries was on the front page of Etsy!  So exciting, I love it when they pick one of mine and this one was extra exciting because my Sister was in that treasury!  Here's a screen shot and if you want to see the whole treasury you can go here

The Willa Bag

This afternoon I sat down with some paper and came up with this bag.  When I first started figuring it out I actually had something quite different in mind but halfway through I changed my mind.  I'm so glad I did because I LOVE this bag!  I think I'll tweak the next one a tiny bit, I want to do the pleats a tiny bit differently.  I named this one after my Mom!  Well sort of, her name is Wilma but I went with Willa instead.  I think one of my favorite things in this design is its size.  It's not too big, not too small, just right.  The perfect medium sized bag.  Maybe I'll have to "mess" one up a tiny bit so I can justify keeping one ;)

And how fun is the fabric?  I bought it a few days ago thinking it would make a perfect Spring bag, I think it works great!



New Creative Outlet

As some of you know I've been buying a lot of hair clips for Ara ever since she was born with that big mop of hair.  There are so many amazing sellers on Etsy who make beautiful hair clips but of course after I spent a little too much money buying a bunch for Ara (and then of course losing half of them) I thought I'd try making some myself too.  I thought it would be nice to be able to give matching hair clips with the Little Girls Purses I make when I give them for birthday gifts too.  I made a few a couple days ago and now I can't stop!!!  It's so fun.  Sometimes it's really nice to have a project that comes together fairly quickly and the simple hair clips I've been making are just that.

Tea Wallet Tutorial

Alright!  As promised here's my little tea wallet tutorial.  And don't worry, even a beginner can sew this.  I use my sewing machine but you only use a straight stitch so you could easily sew these by hand as well.

You will need:

Scissors

2 5x7 inch pieces of outer fabric (I recommend quilting cotton or home decor weight fabric)

2 5x7 inch pieces of fabric for inside pockets (quilting weight cotton is best)

1 5x7 inch piece of light weight fusible interfacing (not needed if you are using home decor weight fabric for outer fabric)

coordinating thread

2-3 inch piece of thin elastic cord (or just cut a thin elastic hair tie in half!)

sewing machine or needle and thread

pins

iron and iron board

Step 1:

Cut 2 5x7 inch pieces of your outer fabric.  If you have a rotary cutter and mat, great!  If not scissors will work just fine as well.

Step 2: Cut out 2 5x7 pieces of your inner pocket fabric and 1 5x7 inch piece of interfacing.  You should now have a total of 5 pieces.

Step 3: Fuse your interfacing to one piece of your outer fabric.  You can find some tips on working with fusible interfacing here.  Set two outer fabric pieces aside for now.

Step 4:  Grab your two inner fabric pieces and fold them each in half and press.

Step 5: Sew a 1/4 inch seam along the fold of both pieces.

 

Step 6:  Take your piece of outer fabric that does NOT have interfacing on it and place one of your pocket pieces 1 inch up from the bottom.  Pin in place and sew along the bottom of the pocket.  (Note you will be sewing through two layers of the pocket fabric and one layer of the outer fabric.  Pin well if you are afraid of the fabric slipping, you want it to be stitched nice and straight with no bunches)

Step 7:  Take your second pocket piece and lay it along the bottom edge of the same piece.  Stitch along the the bottom of this pocket as well.

It should now look like this:

Step 8: Fold your pocket piece and half and press to make a crease.  Sew up this crease from the bottom to the top of your pockets creating 4 separate pockets.

Step 9: Take your piece of elastic cording or hair elastic and fold it in half.  Pin, looped side facing in, to the center right hand side.  Stitch in place.

This part can be tricky as it's pretty thick for most machines. I like to lower my presser foot right on top of it and do a couple back and forth stitches as opposed to trying to get up and over the elastic.

Step 10: Take your interfaced outer piece and pin to your outer pocket piece, right sides together.

Step 11:  Stitch all the way around all 4 sides but leave a 2-3 inch opening along the bottom.  Tip:  Sew with the interfaced side up, your fabric will shift less resulting in a more even wallet.  Clip all 4 corners taking care not to cut through your stitching.  This is important as it reduces bulk when you turn it inside out, resulting in cleaner thinner corners.

Step 12:  Turn your wallet inside out through the small opening along the bottom.  Use a point turner (or a chopstick like I do) to push your corners out.  Press both sides.

Step 13:  Top stitch all the way around your tea wallet.  Take care around the corners, especially the bottom two as there is a lot of fabric and your machine might balk a bit at getting through them all evenly.  Your wallet should now look like this:

and inside:

Step 14:  Pick a button!  This happens to be my favorite part and as you can see I have a bit of a thing for buttons.  Yes, that is only my cream, black, and brown colored ones, I have 2 other containers full of other colors :)

Step 15:  Sew your button on!  Take care to line up your button with your elastic loop to make sure it will fit over once stitched in place.  You also want to make sure you only sew the button through the outer layers and not through the pocket.  It's a bit tricky but it helps to hold the pocket open while you do it.  If you stitch through the pocket your tea bags won't fit.

And that's it!  There you go, your finished tea wallet!

Enjoy!

If you have any questions please leave me a comment, with your email address so I can reply!