Pioneer Dress Finished

What do you think?  I know it looks like a night gown, but I followed the pattern exactly!  I still need to make the apron and matching bonnet.  I am very pleased with the outcome, and so was the little girl I made it for, her face lit up when she had it on.  She is so excited to have a pink dress, very cute!  I used the McCall's pattern 9424, see the picture here.  The McCall's pattern was a little difficult to understand, especially the yoke part, but I was able to figure it out.  I also made some errors while cutting my pieces out, but fortunately, I had just enough material left to make more pieces.  On the pattern pieces, it says cut 2, but it really means you need 4 because you're supposed to cut the pieces out with the fabric folded in half.  Keep checking back to see the completed outfit.  There are also several projects waiting to be posted in April (they are gifts that can't be posted until they are given). 

Cake Tasting

 

I am making a baby shower cake for my sister next week and decided to try out some new flavors before the big event.  I have become a fan of the TLC show, Cake Boss, since I like cake decorating, and it comes on while I'm at the gym running.  (Hmmm, running and cake, maybe that's why I haven't lost any weight!)  I found a recipe for vanilla cake on TLC's website, here.  One of the ingredients in this cake is Italian custard cream.  I made homemade cream using the recipe here, which turned out really good!  The only thing I was disappointed in is that there are little lumps in mine, but it tastes amazing!  The overall verdict on the vanilla cake: just okay...  It was much denser than the normal boxed cake and had a different flavor.

The above cake is filled with homemade chocolate ganache, which was yummy.  After looking at several online recipes, I had to make my own recipe because I didn't have any heavy cream, so this is what I did:

Whole Milk Chocolate Ganache
1 cup whole milk
9 oz bittersweet chocolate chips
1 tsp flour
1 Tbsp butter
1 Tbsp light corn syrup

I cooked the milk and flour in a saucepan until it just started to simmer, using a wire whisk frequently.  Then I added the chocolate chips and whisked until they melted, then added the butter and corn syrup and whisked until the butter was melted.  Take it off the burner and let cool, put it in the refrigerator until needed to fill the cake.

This cake is filled with homemade Italian custard cream.  This one was our least favorite.  The bottom one is filled with plain old Smucker's strawberry jam.  

And of course, we had to have one with chocolate cake.  This one is actually my favorite, it kinda tastes like a Ho Ho.  It's filled with chocolate ganache and covered with is as well.  I love how the chocolate looks dripping down the sides.

 

 Lastly, I made a few cupcakes!  I filled them with the Italian custard cream by filling a piping bag with cream, stabbing the top of the cupcake, and squeezing.

Pioneer Dress - Girls

This is my newest project, a pioneer dress for a little girl in our church.  I met her at JoAnn's today so she could pick out the fabric.  I will be making her the middle dress on the pattern, but only to mid calf length, in the pick flowered print.  Then a ruffled half apron and a bonnet out of the white, which also has little flowers on it (they are hard to see in the picture).  This will be my first time using a pattern to make a dress, so I'm a little excited and a little nervous!  Come back and check out the finished project (it may take a couple weeks though, maybe I'll have to give an update along the way).

Teddy Bear Pizza

 Today's homeschool lesson was about bears, so we made teddy bear pizza for lunch!  The kids each made their own and helped make mine too.  Rebekah's is the one with no cheese, she was so excited to actually get pizza though!  She normally gets chicken nuggets if we have pizza.  I made homemade wheat pizza dough in my bread machine, and then mixed some pureed squash with the tomato sauce.  Mine has green peppers too, but I couldn't convince either kid to add them to theirs...  We read the story "Goldilocks and the Three Bears" while they were baking and decided that mine is the daddy, Rebekah's is the mommy, and Caleb's was the baby.  It was a fun school day today!  Pizza is always a simple joy of mine!

Basket Liner Failure!

My basket liner doesn't fit in my basket!  I took the old liner out and measured it, and then happily sewed away until it was done.  Either I measured wrong or used too big of a seam allowance, because there is no way that it will fit!  I will try and fix it another time, or make a whole new one.  I did not use anyone else's directions (maybe I should have!), but I did run across one at Make It & Love It.  I have not posted a lot recently but I have been busy sewing all sorts of things, but all for gifts, which means I can't show you until the recipients receive them first!

Today's Simple Joys
Friends that have the same values as you do
Hot water in the shower
Goodwill (or any thrift store!)
Chicken and rice cooking in the oven
Strength to run (I've been doing the Couch to 5K running program, I'm in week 6)
Homeschooling Information (there is tons of it I've been wading through for my son's kindergarten!)

Scrubs to Scrub Skirts

My MIL found some nice scrub pants at a thrift store and asked me to turn them into skirts for her, so here they are.  These first two are below the knee in length, and the last one is a long one.

I used an old white skirt for the extra material.  I was able to use the back section that already had a slit!

Toddler Dress from Onesie and Skirt

I had a 24 month onesie that was too short, and a 24 month skirt that was also too short for her.  I took the elastic out of the skirt, and also cut the bottom of the onesie off.  Then I just sewed them together.  I'm a little disappointed that it's still a little too short!  I was hoping that the skirt would have started a few more inches down, but I just didn't have enough length on the shirt.  But she likes it, and it will work for a little while...  Here's what I started with:

Felt Book

I made a little felt book for my new nephew.  I just hot glued all the shapes on and then sewed up the binding, it was really simple.  I tried to make pictures out of simple shapes.  Here are the results.

Ruffled Knit Scarf

I gave new life to a pair of yoga pants and made this scarf.  I originally tried to turn the yoga pants into a skirt, but it was a disaster!  Now it's a beautiful scarf!  I used the directions found on Make It & Love It.  My scarf is not as long as the pattern says because I didn't have enough material, and I made bigger ruffles for the same reason.  I love how it turned out, and it took me less than an hour! 

Camouflage Baby Gift Set

This gift set went to my sister-in-law, who is an avid hunter (as well as her husband).  The fabric is camouflage on the outside and an orange with white polka dots on the inside.  The set consisted of a tote bag with inside pocket, a diapers and wipes case, 3 decorative burp clothes, a vinyl lined pacifier case, a blaze orange fleece hat, and 2 wee wee wigwams!  The wee wee wigwams were the funniest things, everyone had a good laugh at their baby shower!  The pattern came from Make It and Love It, my favorite new blog!  They were so easy to make, only took about 5 minutes for both of them, and they only used scraps of fabric!  The hat pattern came from Jesse's Branch Charity Crafts, and would also be adorable in a knit fabric.  Check out the tote pattern in my previous post here, the diapers and wipes case here, and the pacifier case here.  I also made a felt book (shown in the background), which you will see up close in a future post!

Embellished T-Shirt (Up-cycled)

This is my attempt at an embellished knit t-shirt.  I found this wonderful blog called Make It and Love It that has a ton of tutorials for re-purposing clothes (I also made a boys vest from her site).  The picture below is her version, which is much cuter!  I had a really hard time sewing the flowers.  The stack of fabric was too big and it was too stretchy, so my flowers looked awful!  I ended up sewing them by hand, so I didn't stitch as far to the outside as the original, thus mine are more puffy.  I did successfully turn it into a short sleeve shirt from a 3/4 length, which I think I will do more of!  In the end, I'm not sure if I will actually wear this shirt, but I'm not giving up on altering knit t-shirts, I'm going to try some other versions on Make It and Love It! 

Here is a close up of my flowers.  The blue flowers are made from the remains of the sleeves.  For the white flowers, I sacrificed a stained hoodie that was too small anyway. 

This is the shirt I started with (I forgot to take a picture right away so one sleeve is cut already). 

This is a close up of my bad sewing machine job!  You can also see the white knit fabric that I added to make the neckline a little higher.  

Pinkalicious!

Rebekah is in love with this book called Pinkalicious by Victoria and Elizabeth Kann.  It's about a little girl that eats too many pink cupcakes and turns pink!  Since Rebekah woke up with what I hope is just an ear infection, I decided to make pink cupcakes with her and Caleb, hoping they would cheer her up.  Making them was fun!  We added pureed strawberries into the batter and the frosting to make them pink.  I also added some red colored sugar to the batter because I was out of red food coloring.  The red sugar dissolved and left us with a nice pink batter.  I actually made the cupcakes from scratch!  (I actually wanted a box, but the only white cake mix I had had milk in it, making Rebekah allergic to it...)  I used a white cake recipe from Better Crocker. 

Another joy... Chuck E Cheese!  We went yesterday to celebrate the selling of our house.  We were there for 5 hours, used over 200 tokens, won 664 tickets, and lots of junk toys!  I love Chuck E Cheese!  Kevin and I had as much fun as the kids!