September Challenge

Hi! It's Maren here and I am going to post our challenges for this month. I can't believe it is September already!!

I am so glad that Celia included LeAnne's Trick or Treat Tote in the challenge last month because that is on my list to do before Halloween. I was scrolling through some of her tutorials and remembered that she also had a cute felt Halloween banner which would be another fun Haloweeny thing to whip up for a decoration this Halloween season.

Since I have girls I am going to post a few links of some girly things that I have been working on or that I have been thinking about working on. They are great for either the little girls in your life or for yourself.

First: Fabric Hair Rollers from Life with Monkey. Have you ever tried those pink foam ones. Well check out this little girl's hair using rollers from this tutorial. WAAAY better results. I think I will be wearing these to bed.

Second: Shirring. I have been hit by the shirring bug. And I have LeAnne to thank for this! She did a tutorial for a cute little summer dress and tipped me off on some patterns that were for sale on etsy. I manged to snag a few patterns before the shop closed forever and I really have enjoyed them. I'll post more about them later. I think that LeAnne did a great job with her dress tutorial and the great thing about shirring is it is so easy and so cute and so versatile. You can add wide hems of coordinating fabric, ruffles, different types of sleeves. wider strips for cap sleeves, ribbons, spaghetti straps etc. You can even make a top for yourself as well!

 LeAnne also did a great tutorial on shirring. I am so glad that she included a picture of what the elastic thread should look like. Months before I started shirring I picked up some elastic thread at JoAnns because I knew at some point I wanted to give it a try. My thread was on a plastic spool. I kept hearing that it has to be on a cardboard one. I went back to JoAnns to find the stuff that I needed and could NOT find it. I even asked someone and they were pretty clueless as to what I was even talking about. The label on the thread I got said it was meant for shirring so I used it. And it worked. However, The first day my daughter wore her dress I noticed that some of the thread broke and now I will have to go back and do it again! Not Fun. So I will be finding another way to get the proper elastic thread. Just a word to the wise.

Third: I have really been wanting to make my oldest daughter some cute flower hairclips/headbands to wear to preschool. I love these kinds of projects because they don't take a lot of time and you can make a whole bunch in one sitting. Here are a few tutorials. These flowers can be used for anything - brooch, clip for a purse or bag, gift topper etc. No sewing machine necessary! (sorry I was not able to get any of the pictures up - but go ahead and click. You won't be sorry)

Felt Peony
Felt Flower - the scalloped roll method
Felt Flower - the glue method (love the button center)
Satin Flowers - the candle method - I soooo want to do this one
Rolled Fabric Flower
Fabric and Paper flower roudup from Little birdie secrets -I love the painted newspaper flowers. It would be a fun one to do with  kids to give away to someone special (Mother's day, Valentines day, birthdays etc)


 Recipe: Triple Layer Carrot Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting

I love fall desserts and I love this one. I made this on a couple of different occasions. Once for my son's first birthday and now that I have an October birthday I think I am going to make it for my baby's first birthday next month. It is very yummy. I have done it with three layers, but it would also be yummy as cupcakes or made in a regular old cakepan. Delish!

XO

Maren

Framed Silhouettes

For Mother's day I was planning on making some lip balm, but I got my order in too late and didn't get everything I needed so I decided on framed silhouettes instead. I will by using lip balm as lots of last minute gifts (birthdays (for little girls and women!), VT, Valentines etc etc)These silhouettes are something that I have wanted to do for a long time. I have been looking and looking for second hand oval frames for some time and just on Saturday I found  a nice big one so I can start working on one of these for my house. I based these smaller versions on this one. I put it behind the glass instead of on top because I didn't get time to go to the craft store to get the sticky dot things. My MIL loved hers so I will pronounce it a success. I gave her the green one since she has a lot of that green in her house. I did the other one based soley on what I really really loved and would love to have somewhere in my house, so if I can indeed give it up, I hope the owner (keeping it a secret for now) will love it just as much as I do.

Sorry,there is a little reflection on the glass!

You can probably find tutorials out there for a fairly easy way to do these silhouettes. I have a feeling I did mine the long way (although I still was able to do it in one relatively short sitting). I did mine in Adobe Photoshop (I think it is CS2 or somethine like that) and since I am not terribly well versed in it, the tutorials I found in my short looking weren't in depth enough for me so I basically used a black and white paintbrush to paint over pictures that I had taken of my children's profiles. Once I had done that and cropped it nice and close to the face, I copied them into a word document and sized them down to fit in this frame. I am going to have to figure out how to do this on a much larger scale since I want all three in a large frame (bigger than printer or scrapbook paper). Anyways! Hope you all had a wonderful Mother's Day!!

XO

Maren

May Challenges

Seasonal: Mother's Day

See April's challenge for links and ideas for presents.
Free customizable Mother's Day card print outs


Self: Reduce Recipe Clutter
Recipe cheat sheet (another found here)
Essentially puts the ingredients of your "go-to" recipes on one sheet

30 Meal Plan
Step by step directions to finding 30 meals your family loves and getting them all in one place for easier shopping, menu planning, and pantry stocking

Everyday Meals
(you have to register and enter in your recipes online, but once you do that you can easily create menus and it will calculate and create grocery lists for you)

Kid: Prepping for pre-school
Basically the challenge is to find, print out, and organize activities for your preschool aged children. Here are some sites you might find helpful.
Letter of the week
File folder games
ABCTeach
Learning Page
Kidzone
If you're feeling really ambitious, you can build a Kid's Picnic Table or a Bigger Kid's Picnic Table

Recipe Recommendation: Dough-ntcha wanna try some?
Tried and true: Vanilla Pudding Cinnamon Rolls

These are divine. I've made tons of recipes of cinnamon rolls, but this is the best I've made yet. I've also used this recipe for orange rolls and used lemon pudding (since I didn't have vanilla pudding in my cupboard).

Something old: Wheat Bread (good enough for sandwiches)

Something new: Ezekiel Bread
What is Ezekiel Bread? According to info barrel, "The bread itself was said to be a recipe given to Ezekiel from god while his people were under siege and he was forced to live in the desert for two years. The bread is said to be nutritionally complete, containing more protein

than your standard wheat bread."

Their recipe is found here.

This recipe from Urban Simplicity looks superior, but it's more involved and takes longer than the other recipe.

April Challenges

Seasonal Crafts: Mother's Day

This blog is all about homemade bath products and is a great place for ideas. She has a cool tutorial for whipped shea butter and a new post on lip gloss. She also lists places you can buy things like essential oil and all that stuff.

This is a cool site for the the advantages of handmade lipbalms with some recipes. It is a project that is easy enough to do with kids

Vanilla lip balm, hand/feet scrub, facial mask

Bath salts

A few more fun bath recipes



Self (and possibly child) Craft: Refashioning and Publish Something

Here are almost 30 posts on the Make it and Love it blog on repurposing. She has dresses, skirts, shirts, leggings, pants and stuffed animals for boys and girls

The ever popular men's shirt-to-little-girl-dress
button up the back with ruffle (seriously cute!)
Made did two versions here and here
Two super cute jumpers, love the first one especially here and here

This girls shirt is so darling and it is made from an old men's t-shirt

I can't wait to make this cute ruffle skirt from an old tee.

And for the boys a sweater vest and boxer shorts!

Sorry, most of these are for kids! There are lot of ideas online for refashioning or embelishing clothes and blogs that are dedicated to refashioning alone. If you want to make clothes last longer, tweak them to your liking etc etc, give refashioning a try. It really is pretty fun and the possibilities are endless. I have started looking at our wardrobes in a new light. I think twice before I throw anything out or give it away.
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Blurb books and Lulu.com are great places to self publish. They produce high quality books of all sorts (photos, cookbooks, family history, journals, you think it up and you can print it up!) for a reasonable price. I've done two books through blurb so far and am in the middle of my third!


Child Craft: Quilts
I love myself some Crazy Mom Quilts.
She no longer blogs (so sad!), but her blog is still up and she has some wonderful ideas and tutorials for modern quilts. If you need ideas for the actual quilt, head to her site.

Straight line quilting tutorial


Free motion quilting tutorial video

Binding tutorial


Doll quilt tutorial

Grid quilting tutorial


Recipe Recommendations:
Resurrection Rolls (Easy Easter cooking with Kids)

Crash hot potatoes

These are delicious. I also made them with sweet potatoes, and I almost think I liked the sweet potatoes better (though the red were quite delicious too!). Oh, and I used crushed dried rosemary because I didn't have fresh handy. To make sweet potatoes I just peeled them, chunked them into big pieces (about the size of the red potatoes, maybe a little larger since the tend to cook faster than regular potatoes) and boiled them with the red potatoes till they were fork tender. Then I followed her directions after that. YUM! It was a nice, new way to have potatoes.