April requests?

April is fast approaching girls. Any requests for the challenges?

Quiet books? Quilts? Something with wood? Dinner, breakfast or side dish?

Appliqued Tie Shirts

I finished the boys' tie shirts for Easter. This time I used a thin iron on interfacing on the inside of the shirt and it was so much easier to sew on the knit.

I'm not positive this shirt will fit Walt. It's pretty big. So, I might have to make an 18 mo. old onesie and give both of these to Dean. These are quick to make, though, so no problem.

Celia's Bunny Baskets

Here are my bunny baskets. The white one was my first. I made the handle too big, so the second one was half the size. I'm tempted to unstitch it and do it over, but I HATE picking stitches and Matt says it's ok. I also spaced the ears a little too closely together. I found that by pressing the fleece to the polka dot fabric on the second ears, it looked much nicer and didn't pillow out. I want to add pompoms to the back for a tail, but I'm not quite sure how to attach them. I'll have to take a closer look I guess.

I used the square scrap basket as well and found it to be the perfect size for my little boys. The fusible fleece worked nicely for the interfacing. I also used a thin sew-in interfacing on my handles to keep them stiff and sturdy. I made two other fabric baskets before these with regular batting, and it worked ok, but was not as sturdy as I wanted. The first basket took me a while to figure out, but the rest were a breeze.

Maren's Bunny Baskets

I'm finally finished with my bunny baskets. I used this scrap fabric basket tutorial for the construction. I wanted it to be bigger though so I made it bigger. I figured out how big to cut my main squares and then how big to cut the corners. It is really simple to figure out how big you want to make it. I wanted my basket to be 7" so I multiplied that by three (bottom and two sides x the desired length/height - 7" in this case). So I cut a 21" square and cut my corner squares 6 1/2". Anyways, not that I needed to explain all that, but it took me a couple of minutes to figure it out so I thought I would share.

I also opted for long floppy ears to tie up to be used as the handles. I saw that idea last year and LOVED it so I thought I would give it a whirl. Unfortunately I bookmarked it on my old computer and can not find it anywhere online.

Things I would do differently. One. My interfacing is not nearly as stiff as I would like it to be. I tried to find just the right thickness but could not find it at my JoAnns. I should have done two layers of the interfacing for this size. Two. Try linen. I LOVE the look of linen and am starting to look for it in the remnant section every time I am at the fabric store. I would have loved to have done some in gray too.





Now for headbands!!!

XO
Maren

Blurb books

For Christmas I made a blurb book of my grandparents' posterity. I'm hooked now. No more paper crafting. No more scrapbooking. It's a simple, low frill way to do photo books.

I just finished Dean's first year. For a 102 pg. image wrap, hardcover book with premium pages (7X7 book), I was able to print 385 pictures for $40 total after delivery. The last time I printed out photos from Walmart it cost over $30, and I definitely didn't order 385 pictures! And then I had to pay for scrapbook paper and spend the time putting them in some sort of order.

Another great thing is you can purchase multiple books as gifts (mothers' day) or if you wanted a copy for yourself and your child(ren) you can do that too. Others can buy their own if they want. You can do soft cover, dust jacket, or image wrap. Regular or premium paper. You can make money off your books if you want. If I'd done a soft cover book it would have only cost about $20! Anyway, I sound like an add for them. Like I said, I'm hooked.

You can preview the first 15 pages or so of Dean's book here.

March Challenges

Seasonal craft
Easter/spring day baskets and/or eggs: Tutorials and inspiration

Square basket
Bunny Basket
Another Bunny Basket
Patchwork basket
Fabric covered eggs

Self Craft
Reversible Head band

Child Craft

Embellished onsies for girls
Tie onesies or shirts for boys

Recipe Recommendation

Oatmeal Pancake Mix
This came from one of my favorite food blogs. I made this up this week for the first time and it was great. Makes pancakes a piece of cake...hehe...on a busy morning. I stored the mix in my fridge. It makes a lot, so I suggest if you're not sure you'll like them, cut the recipe in half. I do think they're better with buttermilk as opposed to the half yogurt/half milk combo. I tried it both ways. Since I always forget to buy buttermilk I did as she suggested and bought a large thing of buttermilk and am freezing it in one cup freezer cups.

Clumpy Granola Celia Style

This is my third or fourth time making this granola. Every time I do something a little different, but try and keep the proportions the same (i.e. substitute 1 cup of walnuts for 1 cup of pecans).

This time my final recipe ended up with a walnut substitution for pecans since I didn't have any pecans on hand. I had whole almonds that I did a rough chop on . I added a little splash of coconut extract (but still used vanilla) and OH YUM!! I also substituted wheat germ for the sunflower seeds. In one batch I put in some dried fruit the last 15 min. of cooking. It's good, but definitely not necessary. You can always add it after, too. It didn't really get incorporated into the clump during baking. I put it in a gallon bag so you could see about how much it makes. The bag is open in the picture because I kept on snacking...

This is a little on the sweet side, so you can reduce the brown sugar a little. I did that the second time I made it. Still turned out yummy, but not clumpy since the sugar helps bind it all.