crochet pacifier clip

a friend of ours had a baby girl recently and I wanted to make her something, so I searched to see what would be cute and quick to do.  I decided on a crochet pacifier clip like this one from BerryCuteBaby.

with doubled embroidery floss and a 3.25mm hook, I did a row of foundation double crochet until it looked about as long as I wanted, then did a row of double crochet down the other side and ended with a chain loop.  I fed the end through the end of a suspender clip and stitched it down real good, then stitched down a flower over that because to get it tight and secure on the clip it looked kinda... meh.  the flower made it cute and served its purpose to cover my sewing.

even if she ends up not liking pacifiers, this works good as a leash for teething toys.

dinosaur and robot

I was asked to make some props for Audacity Theatre Lab's play Dinosaur and Robot Stop a Train like the Blork doll I made a few years ago.

aren't they just too cute??  I was worried I wasn't gonna be able to pull it together and make it all work, but it did and it took me all the way up to the deadline to finish them!  I forget how much free time I had before kids when I try to tackle something that would have taken an afternoon to complete a few years ago and it takes me a month now.

the play is in the Festival of Independent Theatres at the Bath House Cultural Center until June 22nd - go see it!

Stuffed French Toast Crunch

I've been going to Sunny Street Café by our house and getting their French Toast Crunch.  it's breaded in brown sugar, coconut and granola - it's so good!  every time I eat it I think about how I can make my own.  then I started thinking about my other favorite French toast - IHOP's stuffed French toast with cream cheese and strawberries.  then I wondered how awesome those two would be together!  so out came my mom's Snakmaster and here we are.

 

  

THE BEST MOST AWESOME STUFFED FRENCH TOAST CRUNCH:

 

8 slices of bread (your choice of flavor, I used honey wheat because that's what we normally eat but cinnamon raisin bread would be really good!)

1/2 C shredded coconut

1/4 C granola (I use Archer Farms Pecan Sticky Bun granola cereal from Target because that's what I could find and it sounded good)
2 TBSP brown sugar

2 large eggs

1/4 - 1/2 cup milk

4 oz. cream cheese

3 TBSP butter

1/4 C powdered sugar

1 tsp vanilla

optional:
fresh or frozen strawberries, or other fruit
sugar
 

Heat strawberries on stove (or in microwave) with a little sugar (optional) until they can be mashed up.  Set aside to cool. Cream butter and cream cheese together, slowly add powdered sugar until combined, add a splash of milk if too thick, and mix in vanilla.  Tweak flavor if necessary and set aside.  Add milk to beaten egg and set aside.  Pulse coconut, brown sugar, and granola together in a food processor (I use a coffee grinder) until it looks like bread crumbs, set aside.  Spread filling onto a slice of bread and sandwich with another slice, dip in egg and milk mixture, then dip in coconut and granola mixture and lay in the preheated Snakmaster.  Close the Snakmaster for a minute, then check to make sure it's not browning too much.  When the outside is brown enough for your liking, take it out.  Top with powdered sugar and/or fruit.
 

Snakmaster!

I remember watching HSN when I was a kid in the 90's and seeing the Snakmaster - it looked so neat to me.. for some reason!  my mom got one and we used to put pancake mix in it.  it was fun for a little bit and then we forgot about it.  recently I've been using it and coming up with some recipes, and all our food has pretty much been triangular, but it's all good.

some things I've made are grilled cheese (Leo loves this with Ranch dressing and eats it crust and all),

leftovers quesadilla made from a tortilla and leftovers from the fridge (chicken tetrazzini, I think) and cheese,

"corn dogs" made from Jiffy cornbread batter and hotdogs,

and muffin mixes (Leo's finger in the corner waiting to snatch one).

I'll be posting some recipes I came up with soon, and I have to say, they are really good!

photo pocket mirror

I found some pocket mirrors at Michael's and thought they'd be really cute gifts for Mother's Day if I put pictures on the fronts.

I peeled the front part off - this wasn't easy and I had to be careful not to scuff the outer rim, which I did on all but one of them no matter how hard I tried to avoid it - and cleaned as much sticky off the inside as I could.  that turned out to be a waste of time because it didn't really matter if there was residue on it.

I printed off a photo slightly smaller than the inside of the indent, then laminated, and trimmed it to size.

then I put doubled sided carpet tape (found it at Home Depot in the flooring department) on the back (that stuff was super sticky!) and stuck it to the front of the mirror.

it wasn't exactly how I imagined it, but it was still cute!

bracelets for my boys

it's not quite summer, but it feels so nice outside that I pulled my summer bracelets out the other day and Leo immediately wanted to know where his were.  he walked around the living room whining about it because his past 2 years of bracelets are framed up on the wall.  I had to quickly whip one up, which he got excited about, but then went back to whining because one wasn't enough.  he's so smart.

 

as I was making more he came over to "oooooh" and "ahhhhhhh" over my basket of embroidery floss.  he kept saying "purple!" over and over so I told him I'd make a purple one.  then he wanted blue.  and green.  and black.  and whatever other color he pulled from the pile of floss.  it's so cute how passionate he is about his summer bracelets now :)

I made Jack some, too.  my favorite is the Scarlet King snake - red on black, friend to Jack :)  I thought it was pretty clever.  maybe someday he will like them as much as Leo does his.



melted ice cream



I made this lovely cake recently.  I used a recipe from Cookies and Cups for the cake, which calls for eggs, a box cake mix, and melted ice cream instead of oil and water.  my favorite store-bought ice cream is Blue Bell's homemade vanilla, so that's what I used with a yellow cake mix.  sometimes simple is awesome, but I really wanna try this with my homemade praline ice cream one day.

 

it came out bigger than any other box cake I've baked in a bundt pan, and it tasted really good by itself.

I melted some more ice cream and added it to powdered sugar for the glaze.  I think I'd just frost it with cream cheese or use a chocolate glaze next time, but it was still really good.

ObliviaSwan

I was reading some user reviews of something on Dollar Tree's website and found this hilarious lady  - ObliviaSwan - I quite enjoyed reading her reviews :P  I Google searched her user name and couldn't find anything on her, but maybe she'll do a search for herself and find this post!

 

these are some of my favorites:

 

Decorative Faux Fruit

"This comes with a big fat lemon, two non-identical apples, a lime, a yellow washing machine agitator, a buttered-up dinner roll and I think the fuzzy greenish brown thing must be the faux. Though made of petroleum and petroleum by-product they do, as advertised, have a certain charm. They don't really make you hungry or anything else unpleasant. And they float even better than "real" fruit. Not for the tempermental."

 

Decorative Accent Grapes

"Uh huh, they are a tad smallish. But they are VERY realistic looking, so just hold them a little closer. They seem to get along quite well with the faux and fruit assortment. The individual grapes can be removed and then suction-stuck to your face like a mole or wart. I'm wearing several now and adding more as I type. You can too."

 

I think I will be on the look out for more reviews from ObliviaSwan when I need a good chuckle.

wire bails

after making the fractured marble pendants a while back I have had so many new visitors to my blog  - thanks all you pinterest fiends ;)  over 24k views.  crazy.

when I started baking the marbles, I realized I didn't have any bails to turn them into necklaces with - whoops.  so I grabbed some wire from my stash and cranked out a few quick bails.  I thought for half a second "should I put this process in there?"  and never did because at that point I was done making them.  shoulda coulda woulda.  so, 8ish months later here is how I did them.

Mother's Day gifts

for mother's day I did a couple of gift baskets for my mom and Matt's mom... and forgot to get a pic of them when they were finished!  this has become a common problem for me lately :(

I made 2012 Mixbooks - I think a year without one would be a disappointment!  I feel bad that Jack isn't in there (except for the sonogram pics) but he shoulda showed up sooner! ;)

 

I did get some pics of the grandmothers with both boys, so they'll at least have those.  I framed them and also put them on the fronts of some pocket mirrors I found at Michaels.

     

I saw this set of washcloths and made my own with some cotton twine, and added a loop on one of the corners so it could be hung up on a Command hook in the shower.  or, over the stove and used to set hot pots on.  they're cute and they were fun to make however they get used :)

after seeing so many posts around about using transparencies in liquid soap dispensers, it gave me the idea to laminate pressed flowers (some from my yard, some snatched here and there!) and submerge them in liquid hand soap dispensers that I peeled the labels off of.  these were a hit, and I'm totally making myself one next.

I used some fabric napkins I had leftover from the granny square pillow to put in the baskets as liners, and added some bar soap from World Market that smelled sooo good, and Ghirardelli chocolate assortments.  gift baskets are so much fun to put together :)

foodwishes

I was browsing videos on youtube a few weeks ago and came across something (I don't remember what) on foodwishes.  that's my new favorite subscription :)  he's entertaining and makes it all look so easy and doable!  Leo even likes to watch with me.

my sister-in-law brought us a pineapple from Hawaii, so we grilled that up and I used the leftovers from that to make the cake.  turned out pretty good.  I forgot to get a picture, but it looked just like Chef John's - honest!  I was pleasantly surprised :)

granny squares pillow

for my mother-in-law's birthday I made up a bunch of granny squares and tacked them to a pillow I made.

I used this pattern with a 3.25mm hook and doubled embroidery floss.

I made the pillow from a couple of dinner napkins and did a blanket stitch around the edge.  it was a little time consuming but I'm happy how it came out :)

I liked using the embroidery floss for this because I could get so many different colors and I only needed a little for each square so it didn't cost a lot to have a variety of colors.  the strands would separate once in a while, so I wasn't able to crochet as fast as I normally would and needed to really pay attention so I didn't pull up a strand from the wrong loop, but other than that it was pretty easy to do.