For a Girl's BFF

I'm not an especially girly girl. While I like doing crafty things and cooking, and I try to look nice, the fact of the matter is that I didn't start wearing makeup until I was almost 24. And doing hair? hahahaha, I'm lucky if I can use a curling iron wihtout burning myself. It's only fitting then, that my BFF (not my husband) is also not a girly girl. In fact, she's even less-so than I am. She's very athletic and quite the tomboy. I saw that out od admiration, not to make her look weird or anything. She knows it and embraces it. Which is part of the reason why I love her so much. We were "next door neighbors" in the dorms so when I discovered my 1st semester roommate NEVER showered, I would often go next door and hang out with her. It was a haven for me. Through the college years we never got to live together, but we would hang out regularly and I always admired her. She was smart, awesome, quirky (in a good way) and knew she was her own woman. Yeah, I'm gushing. I can't help it.

Fast forward a few years and it's her birthday and I now have Pinterest in my life. When I saw this pin I got uber excited. KitKat (as I call her) is quite the baseball/softball fan. So I knew I wanted to make this for her birthday gift.

 

Because I am clumsy and not very familiar with baseballs (as Kaycee will attest from our little league days) I just bought the cheapest one I could find (since I would be taking it apart essentially). Bad idea. The ball ended up being a weird plasticy/foamy material. Other than that, I think this craft is pretty good. Here's what I did:

I was stuck at church while J had a meeting so I got out my ball and X-acto knife. It worked like a charm.

Within about 3 minutes I had the ball cut apart appropriately.

I cut the form apart and measured it around my wrist and then cut it to size. I think I cut it too large because it's loose on my wrist and KitKat's thinner than I am. But essentially I loosened the knots and cut off some of the white so that it would be tied.

And yeah, it's a bit too loose. I think I may either cut it smaller and/or go get a better, LEATHER baseball so that it looks nicer.

So is this pin worth it? Heck yeah! I think it's awesome! And for the cost of a baseball? Why not do it for the baseball/softball lover in your life? Oh, and even though she probably doesn't read this: Happy Birthday KitKat!

Happy Valentine's Day

I've recently picked up a new favorite hobby. While I love crocheting, it has now been paired with embroidery. I'm not talking cross-stitch. That's boring. I'm talking "Make it look like whatever you want" embroidery. My favorite website for all-things embroidery is Shiny Happy World with Wendi Gratz. That woman knows her stuff and is an EXCELLENT teacher. I've been learning stitches and how to do all kinds of things and decided I wanted to make something for my husband. But what do you make a guy? More importantly, what can you make him that is embroidered and not lame?

Well, one of the things I love about Wendi is that she creates the templates of what she embroiders and transfers them to fabric in a variety of ways. Most commonly I use the heat transfer pencil method. I draw what I want, flip the plain white paper over and follow the outline on the back. Next you iron the paper onto whatever fabric you want to use. Lastly, you go to town with your needle and thread. Here's what I did.

You can kind of see the marks left from the heat transfer pencil- it's pink.

The almost finished product. I used several different stitches which I love. The one I used on the clouds and sun is my favorite.

Framed. For the record, what it says (in French) is "I love your butt, Valentine". Yes, we're classy. But luckily we both speak French fluently so we can mask it from most people.

Here's a sneak peek of my St. Patrick's day creation...

This was inspired by a video pin that I have. If you want to pick up a fun new hobby, I recommend embroidery. And if you're brand new, I recommend watching all of Wendi's tutorials. She makes it easy peasy to pick up.

Disappointment in a cookie

The other night we were watching one of our favorite shows: The Best Thing I Ever Ate. One of the commentators showed a cookie from a NYC bakery. It was massive ( about the size of an uncooked hamburger patty) and was a chocolate cookie with chocolate chunks. I was debating making something for the Primary kids for Sunday and thought this looked like the perfect idea. So I searched the web and pulled up this recipe that looked pretty legit. And tasty.



Cookie shown on blog. Mine did not look like this.


Saturday night after a long day I decided to get started on my cookies. Because of the issue when I made the granola I decided to put my laptop on the counter with me and follow the instructions to a tee. The end result? Quite disappointing. I was tasting the batter as I went and it tasted great. Very chocolatey but not too sweet, and since the original blogger said the dough is very very thick I thought the consistency was correct. If it was, shame on the blogger! The cookies lost much of their flavor in the baking process and were incredibly dry. One of the kids only ate half of his cookie before throwing it away. Luckily my SIL had some cookies she had made and given to me to use. They were amazing (as most treats she bakes are).

Before going in the oven

After baking and while cooling. I took one while cooling to see if I would get the same "melted chocolate chip and awesomeness" picture.. Yeah... It didn't really happen.

Disappointment, thy name is double chocolate cookie. I actually (accidentally) deleted the pin because I was frustrated with it and upset about being so betrayed by chocolate.

Granola

I have a love/hate relationship with granola. I love it because it tastes great and makes me feel like I'm eating well. But then I look at the ingredient list and the nutritional information and I am disappointed. Recently I've been trying to eat healthfully and my dear, sweet, husband is slowly catching on to the idea. He has also decided he would switch from his regular Berry Colossal Crunch (the poor man's version of  fruity Captain Crunch) for granola. Yesterday I was out of my regular cereal and he suggested his granola. IT. WAS. AMAZING. It had been a few years since I had granola and even then I think it was on my mision and muesli (similar, but no added sweeteners/fats). Curse you granola, for tasting so good!
After work J and I had some time to kill uptown because he had a meeting down here at 6:30 and I wasn't in the mood to pick him up from work, drive up to Metairie and then turn right araound to drop him off. So we decided to go on our regular date of choice: to the grocery store. We're weird. But whatever. The grocery store is romantic. We went to Whole Foods and browsed around for a good bit until I decided "Hey! I pinned a recipe for granola this morning! We should make some!" So while J rolled his eyes as he usually does when I bring up Pinterest, I pulled up the pin and got the ingredients.


Mine definitely turned out darker than this. But not too different otherwise.


When I got home after his meeting I quickly got started on the granola. The only problem was that I read it on my phone instead of my computer and mixed up the steps. Instead of mixing a few ingredients separately, I mixed everything together at once. This didn't effect the taste, but it made it so that only a few things were in clumps as opposed to most things. Also, I followed the baking time which was off. We should have stopped after 30 minutes but cooked it the entire 40. Not that the granola was burnt, per se, but it did has a distinctly "cooked too long" taste. But this morning when I poured my milk over it, it tasted a-okay to me.

So here's the pin. I would recommend it. But like I said, follow the instructions better than I did and don't cook it for as long. 30 minutes is the longest you'll want to cook it.

Baby Girl's Birthday

A good friend of mine has an adorable baby girl who turned the big 1 today. I love this girl! I rarely refer to her by her name, in fact, even though I have nieces younger than her, I call her "baby girl". ANYWHO! I wanted to make something for Baby Girl's birthday that would be useful and precious like she is. I saw a few pins and thought I'd share them with you.

Here's the first one:  a clip holder with some appliqued pieces to make a scene of a cute owl. 

Next, here are the clips: a variety of felt pieces

Here's my bird with scenic background. She's saying "hey girlfriend"

I started by taking a simple 8.5"X11" sheet of felt and cutting it in half

Next, I free handed and cut out a few pieces for what I wanted

Adding the top strap

The finished product. It only cost be the price of the felt since I had everything else on hand. 

Closer up view

The almost finished product of one of the hair clips

I found the best way to use the alligator clips was to cover them. So I cut a little piece out that would wrap around it.

Cut a little slit for the clip to slide through

Hot glue it and glue the rest of the felt and clip together.

Everything combined

Here are mine: mostly felt, but some made up of fake flowers and silky flowers all on alligator clips.  The grey one ended up being my favorite. It's three circles stacked on top of each other with a single black bead in the middle. 

I wish I had had some closer up versions but oh well. I'm making some more for my biological niece and they're pretty cute as well. Oh! Also, I made a simple white headband that any of the clips can go on interchangeably. I honestly loved these two crafts. I like how different you can make every aspect these. Different colors, different designs.. I'm toying around with future ideas. We'll see how it goes. As for the pins, I highly recommend them. The first pin does NOT have a tutorial. It's a product from etsy. The second pin does and she's great.

52 Things I Love About...

Valentine's Day has gotten me in a very crafty mood. I've made two things for my Valentine and plan on making some lovey-themed items for our abode. One of the gifts I made is based off of the pin I'm sure everyone has seen where you take a deck of cards and list 52 things you love about the person. This is my attempt.

I punched holes in all of the cards

Using my favorite new paper punch (a huge heart shape) I cut out the appropriate number of hearts using a thick cream colored cardstock

Glue cardstock to cards

Because the hearts were pretty large I rotated their positions and such. Some covered holes, some didn't.

I cleaned up the ones that covered holes so that my three rings could go through easily

Arrange them however you choose. I chose to alternate red and black, but you could easily go by suites or numbers or what have you.

I free-handed a shape to use on the cover card which was also one of the spare joker cards. I traced the number and used my stamps for the letters. I never said I was good at stamping. But at the same time, I kind of ike the funky look of this.

Added my little tag to the back. Oh, and S'ghettis is Justin's nickname from me. Nothing weird. I just used to say "Ready sghettis?" a lot and it morphed into his nickname.

Finally, after adding the rings and such,  I began added the reasons why I love him. As wrong as it sounds, this was the hardest part... There are only so many ways you can say "I love your butt." 

And there you have it. It's a little time consuming, but once you get started it goes by pretty quickly and it's a personal and fun gift that I think would work well for anyone at any time. Who doesn't like knowing they are loved and why people love them? One recommendation I would make is to buy a large deck of cards. Not that this deck was an issue, but if you don't want to worry about the positions of the hearts and having to go back and hole punch again, just buy a bigger deck. I recommend it since the only thing I had to buy was the deck of cards ($1).  Here is the pin I was going off of.