Thursday, December 19, 2013

Ice Crystals- Beauty in the details

Jack Frost has been nipping at my nose.... and my window. Mr. Sir, James and I watched "Rise of the Guardians". It was a really adorable movie. So when I saw this frost on my window I immediately thought of that movie.

Sometimes beauty really is in the details. I had to take pictures and share.






Live and Love

Wednesday, December 18, 2013

Plaid Diaperness

My sisters mother-in-law gave me an old shirt to upcycle. I was originally going to make diaper soakers with it. But I am a sucker for plaid, and what is cuter than a little plaid tushy. So here is a plaid diaper cover that I made for James.

I played around with diapers, but so far I still like just using prefolds with covers.

Here's the cute tushy.


.
The socks are hand dyed by Wendy Richardson owner of Quilt Tapestry Studio. Aren't they adorable?


Live and Love

Thursday, December 12, 2013

Rendering Lard, Fatty Pigness

I love pies, I love pie crusts. So does Mr.Sir, he practically begs me for pumpkin pie year round. I just strongly dislike rolling out pie crusts. I will just squish it into the pan before I clean off the counter to roll out one pie crust. So what I do is I will make 5 or 6 crusts and freeze them. After making a few crust with oil recipes and one with a lard recipe. I am a believer in Lard. Lard is a super fattening ingredient but if you are having pie, you are splurging on calories anyways so might as well make it good. Everything in moderation.

I went to Wal-Mart to buy lard for my pie crusts , found a box and brought it home. Mr. Sir read the box and said "Uh, Honey? Why did you buy hyrdogenated lard?" I had no idea, I just saw the word "Lard". I was using lard for the flakeyness and to avoid hydrogenated oils to begin with, yet here I was buying hydrogenated lard. So Mr. Sir and I agreed that we would try the real stuff.



When we went to pick up our beef from the butcher I asked to buy some lard. He gave me this big bag full of white and pink stuff. I've never seen unrendered lard before.



I got home and used this tutorial on how to render it by My Humble Kitchen. Mr. Sir helped me chop it up and we stuck it in the crockpot.


After a couple of hours, I strained out the cracklings and poured it into mason jars.



 4.6 pounds of unrendered lard got me a quart and half a pint of snow white lard. It is going to last me ages, but its the good stuff!








 Mnmmm Pie

Live and Love

Tuesday, December 10, 2013

Cheese Potato Egg Breakfast Pie

One morning I had a lonely pie crust sitting in my freezer. I thought to myself "This must be used!!" (Mostly because we had 3/4 of a cow to go into our chest freezer in meat form. But also because I was really hungry. ) So I dug through my fridge and freezer and came up with Cheese Potato Egg Breakfast Pie. It consisted of

1/2 a bag of Bob Evans Breakfast Potatoes
3 Eggs
a handful  of frozen cauliflower
1/4 cup cheddar cheese
1/4 cup of velveeta stye melty cheese
a couple of spoonfuls of cream cheese
salt
pepper
herbs of choice

mix the eggs, cauliflower, salt, pepper, and herbs. Put potatoes in pie crust, pour egg mix over potatoes, cover with cheese and throw the slabs of cream cheese on top. Bake at 350 for 25 minutes or until eggs are done. Yum. I usually just cook by eye and handfuls so do what works best for you.



Live and Love

Thursday, December 5, 2013

Baby stuff you just hate to throw away.

I found out about this website.

babyearth           http://www.babyearth.com/renew/

                             It is excellent.



You know that stash of baby stuff that is just sitting in storage. Those expired car seats, old strollers and etc. This company will recycle them for you. They accept
- Strollers
- Car Seats
- Swings
- Jumpers
- High Chairs
- Diaper Bags
No needing to track down  someplace that will take them. You just pay shipping, send it off, and they give you a 5$ coupon to their store. Sounds good to me! James's car seat expires next December 2014. I have been dreading that time, because I have to throw it away instead of keeping it for future children. (My sister used it before me for my niece, so it has been used quite a bit!) The reason I cringe is because this car seat still looks like new. A sticker has fallen off, but other than that it looks perfect even though it is going on the second child.

I urge you to check it out and keep these large items out of our landfills to be repurposed or find new homes.


Here is James chilling in his car seat earlier this summer. I believe he was 3 months old. 


Live and Love

*I am in no way affiliated with BabyEarth.com I just find their mission to be excellent.*

Tuesday, December 3, 2013

P-P-P-Pie Day.

My sister had this brilliant idea of doing a pie day after Thanksgiving this year. Because really, we always have a ton of leftovers and it usually ends up being turkey sandwiches. After many years of turkey sandwiches; it was time for a change. A pie change. Instead of going out and buying crusts I decided to make ours in advance so I came equipped with 5 wheat pie crusts (lesson learned: next time don't play with the pie crust recipe and just make them white crusts instead of getting fancy and adding wheat flour, they baked a little tough)

So our Post-Thanksgiving menu consisted of
- Leftover Turkey Pot Pie with veggies and leftover brussel sprouts.
- 2 Apple Pies
- Leftover Pumpkin pie
- and an absolutely delicious Pecan Pie

Pot Pies
I made the pot pie, my sister made the apple pies (with both fresh granny smith apples and some frozen apples that I prepared earlier this fall), and our mother made the pecan pie.

Apple, Pecan, and Pot Pies
The pecan pie was wonderful, it was made with dates and date sugar with only a little bit of brown sugar used. It was so sweet you could only eat 1/2 a slice with a cup of coffee. It was wonderful (in my opinion, because I like sweets).It also had an almond flour crust. Nice and nutty with the pecans.

Apple Pies

My sister also brought some Apple Mead. Oh. My. Word. Chilled Apple Mead = Complete Bliss.
Apple Pie

I hope that you had a wonderful Thanksgiving!
Live and Love

Thursday, November 28, 2013

Stuffin' Stuffers.

I have some microfiber inserts and wasn't using them. They should not be used directly on baby's skin because it can dry them out and cause diaper rash. I bought the microfiber inserts at first to stuff pocket diapers, but I have a strong dislike of my kawaii pockets. (I actually just sold my pockets! Yay! More money to buy new diapers that I prefer better.) So I covered the microfiber inserts in flannel to use them inside a PUL by themselves. The microfiber inserts also act as sponges. Meaning they leak under pressure, pressure like baby bums. Therefore the flannel outside the microfiber should help prevent overflows by soaking up the extra leakage.

This is just a microfiber insert covered with flannel.

I have used it a few times, works great for pee and makes quite a mess with poop unless used with a prefold to catch the poo. 

It was a great way to use the microfiber inserts and make do with what I have. They weren't being used before, and now they are!

Live and Love!

Tuesday, November 26, 2013

Zoo animals that criticize my Hoo-Ha

When James was born we got some zoo animal suction stickies for the bottom of the bathtub. I intended to just use them as toys, until we moved into an apartment with an extremely slick bathtub. After nearly doing the splitz a few times, and having Mr. Sir very nearly take a chunk of his skull out  I installed them into the bathtub.

Well, as I was showering one day I looked down and the first thing I encountered was this...
 I can just hear the hippo saying, "Oh, dear!" Of course, after that I see this, the jaw dropping giraffe....
and the surprised panda bear....
and then the appalled monkey...
oh, can't forget the shocked cat...
Sorry about the sideways pictures, blogspot keeps turning them.

These zoo animals are just GREAT for my self-esteem as they criticize my hoo-ha every time I shower.

Oh, well, it's a good thing their opinion doesn't matter. *wink*
Live and Love



Thursday, November 21, 2013

Folders not Stuffers.

I saw this diaper in some of my diaper tutorial perusing. It made me real intrigued. Some diapers take a long time to dry in the dryer. This diaper opens up and so it will take much less time to dry. I have not tried using it yet but I am excited to try it out. It also means that I don't have to go searching for stuffers, it is all one piece. More ease for momma? Yes, please!







I do need to resize it though, the medium is a bit big for James.

I used this pattern from Wittey Bums
http://prefold2fitted.blogspot.com/2013/03/sized-flat-wrap-fitted-diapers.html

Like the last one, I need to play with it some more. Snaps, elastic, so on and so forth. Make it fit and make it work.

Live and Love!

Monday, November 18, 2013

Adding Fluff to the Fluff-Butt

James is cloth diapered. He has been for approximately 7 months now. Do you want to know what that means? That means his prefolds have been washed every other day for 7 months. Which also means that his prefolds are thinning out and falling apart. No longer can we just stick a prefold on him. We need to stuff them too or they end up sopping, soakey, wet. I have been toying with the idea of sewing him fun cloth diapers for ages now. So I started by taking the most beat up prefolds and turning them into some fitteds. I am still playing around with fit and soak. But this is what I am working with.











I figure that I can practice with his beat up prefolds. Once I get the fit and soak right I will make some from scratch.

I used WitteyBums pattern and idea for the prefitteds from here.
http://prefold2fitted.blogspot.com/2011/08/basic-serged-prefitteds.html

I need to toy with snaps too. At the moment I am using a snappi to keep it shut when not in a cover, while in a cover I don't bother clasping it. I also need to toy with the elastic and stretch it more. These whole things are a big game of trial and error.

Live and Love!

Tuesday, October 15, 2013

Pretty Dresses

I just have to share a happy moment for me. I tried on my "skinny" dress. The one that hangs in the back of the closet because I wanted to fit into it someday. It fits! Just gotta say that breast feeding is amazing.

Friday, September 6, 2013

An Update of Non-Crafty Proportions

Since obtaining my job working for an insurance agent, I have turned into a sponge. Soaking up as much as will fit into my brain. I love that my job now entails helping people and working with people to prepare them for the unexpected. Also, teaching them about insurance. I knew very little before I started and now I have the chance to teach people about exactly what they are paying for and customizing it to their life once they understand it.

But in all of this craziness I have done no crafting or done anything new domestically (besides the zillionth diaper load in the laundry, but daddy and James's grandma helps with that). It is okay though, because once life is settled, I will have just that much more inspiration. Also, by learning about something new, I am improving my quality of life. I am increasing my knowledge and becoming more well versed and defined. (Hah, slowly but surely) Which will also give me tons of inspiration.

Because I don't have anything new to show for this last month. Here is a picture of James going into a splash pool for the first time.



Thursday, August 8, 2013

Suffering From Mushy Brain

My brain is mush. Soggy. Everything is all fuzzy.

I am in the midst of getting my property and casualty insurance producer license. I am really excited that I got a job working for an insurance agent. So this week I am taking 40 hours worth of classes to prepare for my test next week. Talk about a crash course in insurance. I am learning an insane amount of material. I should be studying right now too, but like I said. I suffer from soggy brain and not even a caribou coffee is healing me.

I am staying with a friend all week to take the course. It is the longest I have been away from James since he was born. It was going to be 5 days but Mr sir surprised me last night and brought him for a visit and a little midweek pick-me-up. He surprised me and meet me and my sister for pizza. It worked very well and was much needed visit with Mr sir, James and my sister. (Have I mentioned how much I love him?) I miss them both but this week is for learning and I retain better when I'm not distracted by a cute baby.

I think I am getting a cold too. It started with allergies but now I have that weird feeling in my nose and throat. Yes, I have been taking my vitamins. I think it is just the craziness of my insane life catching up with me. I can't wait until I can get both feet back on the ground.

Alright, I took my break. Time to go attempt to retain some more information.
Live and love.