Pillowcase Tote Bag

This is a great one for beginner sewers. Two sides are already hemmed and stitched for you and the rest is all easy straight lines. The bags are perfect for taking to the library or the Farmer's market. We have one for each purpose (good thing pillowcase are sold as sets). You can use an old pillowcase you have lying around. According to Martha Stewart, we all have tons of old cute pillowcases that are mismatched. Most of them old and cute enough to be termed vintage. All unmatched, old pillowcases I own are either plain white or just not cute. I really don't wanted a Rainbow Brite tote bag. If your linen closet resembles mine, you can just buy your pillowcases. This allows two for you, or if you're more generous about it than I was, one for you and one for a friend. In my defense, I did make a second bag for my sister-in-law.

I'm going to direct you to Martha's site. She can explain it better than I can. I originally came across this bag, not on her website, but in her sewing book, Martha Stewart's Encycolpedia of Sewing and Fabric Crafts, a great resource for sewing basics, as well as a compilation of some wonderful ideas.

How To Make a Pillowcase Tote Bag:

http://www.marthastewart.com/273714/sleeper-of-a-bag

Unique but Easy Wall Art

Tying together a nursery theme can be expensive, as well as frustrating. My problem is that I get an idea of exactly what I want and get frustrated when I don't find it. If I do ever find it, it tends to be out of my price range. This is how my oldest ended up with a virtually undecorated bedroom until age two. At that point, we embraced his train theme and I got smart enough to create the decor rather than depend on stores selling me cutesy train items. (Our boys' now-shared room is more vintage than Thomas.)  Easy, unique, and fun.

How to Make Fabric Silhouette Wall Canvases:

Supplies:

Blank canvas

Fabric

Staple gun
Decoupage glue (like Mod Podge), in matte or glossy (I like glossy)
Cardstock or thin cardboard
Scissors
Pencil
Tempera paint
Paintbrushes

1. Trim fabric to cover the front of the canvas and stretch around to the back. Stretch and staple two opposite sides with a staple gun. Fold the corners and staple the other two sides.

2. Coat the front and sides of the fabric with decoupage. This acts as a primer. I like to use a sponge brush when decoupaging for a more even application. Let dry completely, at least 30 minutes.

3. While you wait, create a template. You can either print out silhouettes you find online or you can freehand your own. I created my own, especially since trains are boxy shapes easy to create with just a ruler.  Draw onto card stock and cut out.

4. Trace template onto canvas. Paint in the shape. I start with a thin brush, outlining the shape, and then filling in with a wider brush. Allow paint to dry. Apply more coats as necessary.

Twist on the project:
Once the paint dries, embellish. Some ideas for extra flare include buttons, ribbon, fabric cut-outs attached with decoupage, glitter, and gems.


adapted from The Martha Stewart Show

My On-Going Pizza Lesson

Pizza, yes, simple dough, sauce and cheese, has been my greatest hang up as a cook. I wouldn't mind this so much if it weren't for two points. First, pizza takes time. The crust is started a day in advance and while the steps are simple, they require attention and care. And second, while in Colorado Springs I could just buy the fresh dough from Whole Foods.  I don't have that option any longer.

So I gave pizza from scratch another, well, scratch. I was hoping some of my previous problems were just altitude related. I don't know why torn dough or pizza that refuses to slide off the peel would be caused by high altitude, but I was hopeful.

So after a day of anticipation, I finally had our pizza, bubbly, cheesey, golden. Only to have it refuse to come off the pizza stone cleanly. This time I got it off of the peel and into the oven; it just didn't want to come back out of it. But if you ignore a little messiness, the end result was still fantastic. Highly recommend this recipe and hope you have better luck than I did. And if you have any pointers, please share them!

This recipe yields two pizzas. Alton Brown recommends saving the second for later in the week, but if you have more than two people for dinner, make both pizzas. We only made one for the four of us and it was not enough. And my boys are little. I had already frozen the second ball of dough and so we instead had to raid the pantry.

I highly recommend watching the Good Eats episode, "Flat is Beautiful" but you'll have to rent it. Its not on the Food Network site any more. If you watch the episode, Alton suggests making straight cheese for your beginner ventures. This is so that you can really perfect your cheese/herb/dough flavorings before adding to the mix. Those three things are, after all, the heart of good pizza.

How to Make Pizza:
Alton Brown's Very Detailed Instructions for Pizza

"If You Can't Control a Sewing Machine, You Can't Control a Car"

My mother, like many mothers long before her time, insisted I learn to sew. But unlike those old-fashioned ancestors, it had nothing to do with preparing wedding linens to catch me a man. Her reason was much more life and death. I was not allowed anywhere near the driver's seat of a vehicle until I could sew.

It's actually brilliant. I will probably do the same with my kids. My mom's thoughts were that a sewing machine would teach me how to use a foot pedal. I think her words were something along the lines of, "I would rather you crash a sewing project than crash a car." And so I learned to sew. Not well, but enough to eventually be taken out for a driving lesson. I don't even remember what that first sewing project was. It's possible I did nothing but running stitches all over a scrap of cloth. But the lesson apparently sunk in, enough that I had the basics down when I again sat at a machine more than a decade later.

And as for the driving? Well, my husband says I have a tendency to drift to the right. I will have to look into if my sewing does the same.

So You Think Your Husband has Ruined the Cast Iron

We won't get into details. I think the title says enough.

My cast irons are my second set of babies. We joke that in a house fire, first I would grab the kids, then the cat, then the skillets. Insurance money can't replace years of seasoning on a cast iron.

So what do you do when scrubbing won't remove hard caked-on burnt food (like, say, from BBQ sauce)? I got to find out this week. Thank you, Yahoo! Answers.


How to Remove Carbon from Cast Iron:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Cover the skillet in about 1" of coarse salt. Cook in the oven for about 1 hour. Remove and scrub with a green scrubbing pad. Repeat if necessary. Wipe out the ash and salt.

Remember, your little skillet has had a tough day. Make sure to treat him with a little massage with oil and a cloth.

The Evolution of my Projects

The original concept and the finished product (the bodies wrap around to the back).




You ever get half way through a project, realize that your in over your head, and finally decide its time to call Mom? And later realize you probably should have asked her advice to begin with to save yourself a lot of heartache? This has been the running theme of my sewing projects as of late.

That was certainly the case with the zoo shirts I recently made for my boys. It was a project I had seen on Martha Stewart's website (I'll get into that wonder another day). The original project: freehand machine embroidery. Was supposed to be simple, or so said the cute girl that was making them. Fast forward several months and I'd started envisioning taking my boys to the National Zoo, now that we just moved under 3 hours from Washington D.C. Wouldn't they be adorable in those giraffe and elephant shirts?

So I ordered my supplies, printed the patterns, and was ready to go. Yeah, I said ordered. I live in a town without a craft/sewing supply store. Yes, its horrible. In Colorado Springs, I had Hobby Lobby practically in my backyard. Now the closest H.L. is 3 1/2 hours away. Thank goodness Michael's and Joann's are only just over an hour. But they are small versions of the stores, originals dating back to inception of these companies. Supplies are not always easy to come by and so I'm learning to trust ordering online. Not an easy thing when it comes to fabric that you can't touch, colors that might off, etc.

Supplies finally came in. Started sewing. Realized very quickly that I do not yet possess the control to freehand anything with a sewing machine. I NEED my presser foot. So that will be a skill to develop another time. Went to Plan B, hand embroidering the outlines. Realized even quicker that it wasn't a very good Plan B.

Enter my mom. She right away recommended applique. Applique! Why didn't I think of that? Of course! Applique would be quick, easy, and the more I thought about, make the patterns pop on the bold striped shirts I had purchased. So with my mom's guidance as to what to buy, the project was on to Plan C.

And she was right. My first appliques were so much easier to execute. I love the look of them and can't wait to go to the zoo with the boys. I also now feel like I have a new skill that will come in very handy. Halloween costumes, future outfits, even gifts. I've got so many new ideas for what to do with my new skill. I can't wait to get started.

Almost forgot, here's the blog I referenced to double check that I was doing the right thing: http://www.myhappycrazylife.com/how-to-applique/

Sometimes Plan C, D, or E turns out being the best plan of all.

What do I mean by a domestic diva?

I suppose I should start at the beginning. Why the title and what does it mean? Well, "I'm addicted to Martha Stewart" seemed a little obsessive. And my cake blog was just simply going to make me extremely fat. So a fresh start with a bigger picture seemed in order.

For the last three+ years, I've been learning how to be a stay-at-home-mom. Going from being a youth minister, a very busy career, to being a SAHM has been a huge change. Not that there isn't plenty to keep me busy. I've moved four times since our wedding, added two kids to the picture, and most days am just trying not to lose my voice, temper or sanity. But other days, the monotony of it can be frustrating. Those days, I go to my craft closet, my favorite idea websites, or just call my mom for inspiration. Those days, I try to work on the art of being the queen of my domain, a domestic diva.

What is a domestic diva? I want to be clear that I don't mean I wish away the hard work of women in the past century. A domestic diva is NOT a victim, of time, position, or male society. She is a servant in the great sense of the word, as one who serves her family and friends for the sake of love. And her home is the medium through which she serves that family best.

Am I a domestic diva then? No, certainly the "I want to be" becomes clear here. I struggle constantly to bear the little trials of my daily-ness with grace. I want my family to feel that surely all I do for them is out of love and yet so often my own pride gets in my way. So I pray and I learn and I try again (after I yell and I cry and I feel silly for doing it, of course).

So here I document the outward shows of this inner struggle, the physical signs of something more spiritual and less material, although it perhaps will appear otherwise. These are my little projects for my family, my experiments in baking, cooking, sewing, crafting and very often, my reflections on them and life in a larger sense.