No cooking for me

Make that no eating for me, because I am still cooking for the rest of my family, just not cooking anything new that I would'nt be able to try.
About 3 weeks ago I had my wisdom teeth pulled, (pulled I say, not removed because I was wide awake in the dentists office).You expect pain for the first, oh I don't know, week maybe? But at the end of week 2 I was still having quite a bit of pain. And since the holes were just wide open and not stitched shut I was being very careful to leave them alone. But after 2 weeks there was still pain and with that I had begun feeling something stabbing me in the cheek everytime I moved my mouth. So I stuck my tongue back there and sure enough! There was something poking out behind where they pulled my tooth!I guess bone fragments are not an uncommon thing when you have your W. teeth removed, but I had never heard of them. Since that first one about a week ago I have had 2 more come up, not far enough for the dentist to be able to pull them but far enough to cause pain, aching, and to stab me in the cheek in 3 different spots.So long story long, I am still on a mostly liquid-slash-mush diet (not a big fan of mush) because it hurts to chew. And can't eat much, so I have no recipes or pictures to share with you all.
The good news in all this, being on a liquid diet for 3 weeks, I lost 20 lbs :) Almost makes it worth it, almost :)

I have been doing quite a lot of sewing this summer so I have a few pictures of that to share, if anyone wants instructions on any of them holler and I will try to explain.

A tutu I made and stitched onto my nieces onesie. 2$

Pocket purses, I made each of my girls one, and also 1 for each of my nieces.
These were pockets from pants that the kiddos wore out, or grew out of.

This was an adults size sweatshirt I found for 2$, I took off the sleeves,
trimmed up the sides,and re-sewed them, so it would fit her better,
then stitched on the hood from a different sweatshirt.

This is a little sundress I made from a men's t-shirt- 1$

Sundress and matching leggings- I used 3 t-shirts to make this little outfit
(leggings too) total cost- 2$.

Capri's made from a womens dress shirt- 1 $

Sorry about the sideways pictures, I may have this new computer working but I don't have the new photo program anywhere near figured out!

I hope you are all having a great summer!!!

Need a baby shower gift?

I found this cute little burp rag idea on a craft blog called How Does She.....
Both of my Sister in Laws are expecting, there are a few women from church and one of my Hubby's co-workers that I wanted to make something for.
I cheated and bought a couple packages of Utility Towels that were on sale at Shopko to make these. I had some flannel that I bought on sale a few years ago, so my total cost for 5 of these was only 4 $, I am cheap like that :)

I laid the towels on the flannel and cut them to the same size, laid them right sides together and sergered them, leaving a hole so that I could turn them right side out.

I used my sewing machine to top stitch then all the way around. Then I rolled them up and tied with a piece of fabric cut into rickrack ribbons with my new, very first ever, pair of pinking shears :)
See how cute they turned out-

I am going to add some other cute homemade baby goodies to these, once I figure out what else to make, there are too many cute things out there :)

And the Krafting continues

I am hopping on quick to put up a picture of Miss M's latest T-shirt dress.
I used the top of a cute t-shirt that she had out grown, I added a couple pieces to make it longer and trimmed off the sleeves and added a ruffle- and Wahla!


She has been dancing around in it all day :)

I am also adding a picture of Miss K's robot

and robot's friends Momma Bird and Baby Bird


and my favorite- Mr. Turtle

I have been crafting and sewing like crazy, it's awesome.
I did find some time to do a bit of cooking also, here is a picture of my go-to rolls-

This recipe can be found here- at AR. It calls for a bread machine to make the dough but I just use my Kitchen Aid. This is my favorite roll recipe, I have used this one a lot.

Last week I tried my hand at making Pretzel Baguettes-
Aren't they pretty?!? They were so much fun, they tasted and smelled fabulous, there are a lot of steps but they are really simple to make I got the recipe from HERE.

And onto Dessert, I saved the best for last-

Flourless Chocolate Cake with ganache and raspberry whipped cream.

Flourless Chocolate Cake

Ingred;
4oz good chocolate broken into pieces (I used an extra dark chocolate)
1/2c. butter
3/4c. sugar
1/2c. powdered cocoa
3 eggs beaten
1t. extract of your choice (I used raspberry, but vanilla would be fine)

Heat oven to 300.
Prepare an 8 inch spring form pan, cut a wax paper circle for the bottom and grease the bottom and sides.
In a med. sized glass bowl melt together the chocolate and the butter.
Whisk in the sugar, cocoa and vanilla, when it has cooled a bit whisk in your eggs.
Pour into your prepared spring form pan.
Bake for exactly 30 minutes. Let cool for 10 minutes then remove the pans sides and cool completely .

Ganache-
1c. dark chocolate chips
1/2c. half n half (or cream)
1/2t. vanilla

Put the chocolate in a glass bowl.
Heat the cream in the microwave just to the point of boiling.
Pour the half n half over your chocolate.
Let set for 3-5 minutes, whisk together, whisk in the vanilla.

I let this cool in the fridge until barely warm then spread over the top of my cake.

Raspberry Whipped Cream-
1c. whipping cream
4T. sugar
1t. raspberry extract
1/4c. raspberrries

Whip together the cream, sugar and extract until solid peaks form. Stir in the raspberries and serve over your cake.

This is the first time I have ever had flourless chocolate cake, it was wonderful. When I was looking for recipes there seemed to be 2 ways to make it. This recipe follows the quicker method. I am going to try the longer more involved method next time to see how they compare.

Sparse and Few Between

I may be slow at posting for awhile I have a few things that I am trying to get straightened out, that are cutting in to my blog time, darn real life world!
Mainly car trouble, make that 'cars' trouble, also I am getting signed up to go back to college next fall when Miss M starts kindergarten. So I am getting all my paper work figured out and trying to decide what I want to be when I grow up, no matter what Peter Pan says I guess we all DO eventually have to :)

I have also been getting back into crafting and that is taking up a lot of my time, but I won't complain about that because I am enjoying it. I made the girls some t-shirt gauchos , skirts,& hair bows-

And I have also become addicted to making these little guys-

Amigurumi Pig -AKA- Pinky

Amigurumi Hippo -Aka Baby Hippo

Which are starting to take over my house, they are so cute. I will try to get some tutorials on here for these guys, maybe when I finishes the other 4 I am working on.
So between the crafting joy, and the craziness of my life right now I may not be on the computer as much. I hope everyone is having a great week, I am soooo glad tomorrow is Friday cause I am ready for a little break :)

From T-shirt to Pants in 30 Minutes or Less

I found this cute idea, how to make gaucho pants from a t-shirt on 2 different blogs-
Live Journal
and
Lil Blue Boo

Their instructions are a bit different from each other but the basic idea is the same. I used a serger sewing machine to make mine, it makes things so easy. My Mommer gave me hers, THANK YOU MOMMER!
It makes this project super super easy, it took me less than 30 minutes to make these-

Here we have our T-shirt, it's an Adult size x-small.
It turned into size 5/6 child pants

I have the sleeves and neck cut off


Then fold it in half and cut down the middle of the shirt.


Open them up, place right side together and match up your edges.
Stitch the V in the middle, that will be the crotch of the pants.


I opened it up flat so you could see what it looked like, it's always at this point where I have to look at what I'm sewing and wonder what I did wrong, so far nothing- it just looked weird.


Now right here at this point, if I was smart, I would have added the extra piece to the waist band. Cut 2- 4 to 6 inch wide strips, the length needs to match the paints waistband, match right sides together and sew to the waist of the paints Like this next picture-


Sorry, that one is out of order, but if you do it earlier than I did it will make it a lot easier.


Turn inside out and match up and pin your leg seams, the inside seams will be intact from the t-shirt, stitch the outside leg seams.


Here they are right side out


If you use a serger you need to trim all the ends and use some fray check glue,
so the seams don't unravel. Now you need to fold back the waist about 1/2 inch and sew it so that you can run some elastic, ribbon or cord through the waist to hold the pants up. I used the bottom of another t-shirt for my waistband so it was already finished and I was able to cut a hole in the existing hem then run my ribbon through there.

Here they are, all done and turned inside out so you can see all the seams.

And here we have our little Gaucho Pants model-

I can't wait to make more of these, they were so easy and so cute. I got the t-shirt at Goodwill for 1$, I found quite a few t-shirts that I am going to be re-purposing, we are saving the Planet here 1 t-shirt at a time :)

More fun skirts

I have been having some fun sewing again :) The JoAnn Fabric store by us had their clearance fabric 50% off! So I bought some fun fabrics to make the girls some skirts. Miss M's green strawberry skirt I used a Simplicity pattern, the other two I made up as I went.


Here they are again-


What the heck, one more time!

Now my Mommer needed her Serger back :( Oh Sad, Sad day :(
I am trying to talk my Hubby into letting me get my own but they are pretty pricey machines, so I don't see that happening any time soon.
Oh well, someday..............


This will be mine! Muahahahaha! lol

Sew What I'm still a Rock Star!

OK, now I know I will never be a great seamstress, but I enjoy creating, so every once in a while I get out my machine and play around. My girls are so sweet they greet all of my creations with joy and love. Even going so far as telling me that, and I quote " mommy you are the very best sewer in the world". Wonder what that one was buttering me up for? oh well.
So last weekend I got the urge and out came my SM it's has a nick name, stupid machine, It & I have never got along very well. I think it's possessed. I learned to sew on my mothers old sewing machine & I loved it. This one just has it out for me I think, it enjoys torturing me.
It takes me forever to get the tension right, after getting that figured out the bobbin thread runs out, then my needle breaks..... you get the picture. Anyway I babied it along long enough to make this for M.

I love the owls and monkeys.
Then I wanted to try my hand at making something like a poodle skirt, the school sock hop is coming up. I begged my mom to let me borrow her serger, she finally gave in and I AM NEVER GIVING IT BACK! I love the serger it is my new best friend. There is no machine like it. I came up with this skirt for M and it definitely has some great twirlability going on.

Now this has somewhat backfired on me, my Hubby wants to know ,since I made 4 skirts last weekend, why I haven't patched his jeans yet. I plead the 5th. :)