Poppy Headbands

This summer I saw a tutorial on Ruffles And Stuff for this headband and was inspired. I thought it was a brilliant use of resources! And it was so cute. I finally got around to making some in the early fall. I decided to sacrifice my only red purse for the project. It was too small anyway, so now it lives on in a more useful capacity. I like to think it's happier that way. :o)
I changed it up from the tutorial a little. I made poppies instead of bows, and I added some beads for the flower centers. I also did decorative stitching. And I didn't glue anything, I sewed the flowers on. So really I just took the idea of killing a purse to make mother-daughter headbands! Disney at Ruffles And Stuff is great for inspiration like that. She has a craft budget of 0.0001% of the household budget, same as me. So her projects are very do-able.
I love how ours turned out. I love poppies! I think we'll wear them often, since they'll go with most of our winter clothes. Well, most of my winter clothes. Suzy's wardrobe is still mainly pink and purple, whatever the season. :o)

A close-up of my pretty girl:

This is really blurry. I had to zoom in to crop out my face. Don't judge! Anyway, I think you get a vague idea of what it's supposed to look like:

And just because she wanted her picture with Daddy too:

Ribbon Dresses

I made these two dresses at different times. I made Suzy's* dress last year, which is why it's a little short. I made Sydney's dress during her visit to us this spring.
These are super easy dresses. I simply took a length of fabric from selvage to selvage, and sewed the selvages together, leaving a couple inches at the top unsewed. Then I gathered the top, and attached it to ribbon for a bodice. I sewed the ribbon onto the wrong side, then flipped it and sewed it again to make a quick lining. At least, I did for Sydney's. Suzy's was just scratchy, poor thing!
I added some ribbon straps, a button and button hole in the back of the ribbon, hemmed it and added trim on the hemline, and I was done! The girls loved having matching dresses.
I made a couple of these dresses for Suzy last summer. I think I may try one in a heavier fabric to make a jumper for fall!
*Please excuse her wild fluff of hair. This was before I discovered curl creme!

New Recipes!

One of my prayers is that I will glorify God in how I care for my home - how I take care of my family. One way that I love to do that is cooking for them. So we all noticed when I got in a rut cooking. Every week, I could only think of the same things over and over. It had been my policy previously to try one or two new recipes a month. I had some winners - La Madeliene's Tomato Soup and Chicken Yum Yum (don't mock the title! It's accurate!) and some losers. California Sushi Rolls didn't go over big with Nate or Suzy, but I believe Vanilla Butternut Squash Soup was the biggest bomb I ever made. But I had gotten so into a recipe rut that I hadn't even thought of looking for new recipes.
I mentioned it to Nate, and he agreed that it was getting a little boring eating the same thing week after week.
I flipped through my cookbooks, but nothing struck my fancy. I googled "recipes", "frugal recipes", "easy recipes", and "quick recipes." It gave me information overload! Millions-billions- of recipes...I couldn't even think, my eyes just glazed over. Finally I googled something like "in a recipe rut!" And a blog came up that was just what I was looking for - Breaking The Recipe Rut!
I very quickly found two do-able, affordable recipes. I made them last week, and they were both winners with the family!
I thought I'd share them here.
The first is a lowfat marinera sauce. I added a bag of frozen meatballs to it. The first night we had meatball subs, and another night we had spaghetti with meatballs. And I froze about half of the meatballs for later meals, so it ends up being super frugal.
------------------
Main Event Marinara Sauce
Olive Oil Spray
1 cup minced yellow or white onion
2 tablespoons freshly minced garlic
1 (28 ounce) can crushed tomatoes
1/4 cup water
2 tablespoons no salt added tomato paste
2 teaspoons honey (I substituted 2 teaspoons sugar because I was out of honey)
1 tablespoon dried oregano
2 teaspoons dried basil
1/2 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
salt, to taste (optional)

Spray a medium nonstick saucepan with olive oil spray and place over medium heat. Add the onion and garlic and cook until just becoming tender (they should not brown), 4-6 minutes. Reduce the heat to low and with a wooden spoon stir in the tomatoes, water, tomato paste, honey, oregano, basil, and pepper flakes until well combined. (I add the frozen meatballs at this point.) Cover and cook, stirring occasionally, for at least one hour. Season with salt if needed.
-----------------
This was a huge hit with Nate, so we will definitely have it again.

The second recipe is a white chili. It's actually a Racheal Ray recipe.
---------
White Bean Chicken Chili
1 32-ounce box chicken stock
3 cans white beans, left undrained
5 cups cooked chicken, rotisserie or boiled (I used canned chicken)
1 16-ounce jar salsa
1 8-ounce block pepper jack cheese, grated
2 teaspoon ground cumin
2 cloves garlic, minced (I used a teaspoon of garlic powder because I didnb't have time to chop the garlic!)
Black or white pepper to taste
1/2 cup finely crushed corn chips
Sour cream, for garnish

Place all ingredients except the corn chips in a crockpot. Cook on high until the cheese is melted (about 1 - 1 1/2 hours).
Chili may also be cooked on the stovetop over medium-high heat until cheese is melted.
When the chili is ready, add the crushed corn chips, if using, and simmer for 10 minutes to thicken. Garnish with more chips, cheese and/or sour cream and serve.
------
This made an enormous pot of chili! I should have immediately frozen half of it instead of letting it languish in the fridge.
Here's another recipe. I haven't tried it yet, but it sounds pretty ingenious, so I intend to. SInce I know most of you, like me, usually have frozen chicken breasts in the freezer, I thought I'd share it before I tested it. If you make it and it's good, let me know!
-------
Easiest, Yummiest Chicken EVER!
When you are in a pinch and dinner is an hour away and all you have on hand is frozen chicken breasts, which are still as hard as a rock since you didn't even think to thaw them, this is the recipe for you! You'll fool everyone with the flavor and they'll all think you slaved away.

Here it is:

Frozen chicken breast
Mayonaise (we use Best Foods Lite)
Season Salt
Foil

That is it for ingredients, and we can't even count two of those items as ingredients! Wouldn't season salt be...a seasoning? Anyway...

Take a nice big square of foil, slap the frozen chicken breast down in the middle (do this for as many as you need to make). After the chicken is laying stiff as a board and cold as ice on the foil, take a tablespoon and drop a plop of mayo on each breast, being careful not to actually touch the spoon to the chicken. When all mayo is plopped, use the spoon to spread it across the frozen breast, then sprinkle each with a healthy dash of season salt.

Bring the corners of the foil up and pinch them together, forming an airtight tent around the chicken, but leaving air around the chicken itself. Place each bundle on a jelly roll pan and bake at around 350 or 375 for an hour or so (check for pinkness before serving. If I'm in a hurry, I'll bake at 400). Remove from oven and let sit for a few minutes, then de-tent the chicken and place on a platter. Be sure and save the juices in the foil and pour those over the chicken.
--------
Sounds easy, doesn't it?
I

Mother-Daughter Aprons from a Shirt Jacket

I found this jacket at the dig store in Corinth:

It seemed like something a sweet old lady would wear to church. But I loved the fabric, and my friend Gabi encouraged my to make an apron out of it. Gabi is very bad about encouraging me to make aprons out of things. We went thrift shopping this weekend, and she set me up with an 80's dress and a muumuu. For aprons, I mean.

Anyway, back to this jacket. I cut it up, and played around with the pieces to see how it'd all fit together.

At this point I felt very guilty, thinking of the sweet silver-haired old lady that could have proudly worn this to a Wednesday night Bible study but for my butchery. I didn't know what I was going to do with it. And I must have sneezed or something while cutting the right sleeve, because I took out a huge chunk out of it. Then I remembered an old tablecloth that I thought would coordinate with the fabric. I got it out and chopped it up too. I found using it I could make one apron for me and a little bitty one for Suzy. I felt much less guilty and got to work.



She's feeling a little camera-shy in that last one!
I used the body of the jacket for the skirt of my apron, and a sleeve for the bodice. The sleeve had a notched cuff that I turned up to get a little extra length. I used the edging of the table cloth to make the ties.
For Suzy's apron, I made the skirt out of the other sleeve. I folded the cuff down for a cute waist detail. I made the bodice out of a piece of the table cloth. I used the last of the table cloth edging to make her ties and edge the skirt. Then I used the collar to make the neck tie for Suzy. It opens and closes with the collar button, and I added a button on the other side for symmetry.
I love how they turned out. Suzy is thrilled to have a big girl apron to match mine when she helps me in the kitchen. I'm so inspired, I think the muumuu and '80's dress will be turned into mother-daughter aprons as well!

Air-head Moments...

Today I was at Butterflies and Bumblebees, a children's boutique in Selmer. Most of the clothes were wildly out of my price range, but as I was leaving, a small sign that said "$5" caught my eye. It was attatched to a small rack of clothes. The clerk told me that the price was actually three dollars, as they had been displayed on an outdoor rack, and were a little dusty. Woo-hoo! I started going through the clothes, looking for Suzy's size. Most of the things I found were tops that faded from a dark color at the bottom to a lighter color at the top. Not exactly my style, but for $3, I was willing to comprimise.
For a grand total $13.11, I left with over $200 worth of designer clothes - 3 tops and a skirt.
I was feeling super proud of myself. In the car, I took them out of the bag to show my haul to Suzy. That was when I noticed the fading seemed to be uniformly along the shoulders and sides, even on tops by different designers. They were sun-bleached! I could just picture the clothes hanging there forlornly, days on end. Because, who, really, with a brain, is going to spend $54 on a pink size 4T tshirt? So they began to fade away...
So now, instead of my little darling prancing around in a very trendy outfit, she's prancing around in aged, sun-bleached rags. Ha ha, I guess it's all in your perception? So don't tell her, she likes them!

Little Bo Peep Skirt

A couple weeks ago, I found this mini-skirt at my favorite thrift store (Designer Bargain Outlet in Corinth, Mississippi. Hey, Amy!) and intended to make a peasant skirt for Suzy out of it.

It was so easy in my mind. Simply rip out the zipper, and sew up that seam:

Then cut off the existing waistband, which had some funky elastic on the hips:

I folded down 1/4 inch and pressed it, then folded another 1/2 inch and pressed. I stitched it up, leaving 1 inch open to thread elastic through. I sewed the elastic ends together, and there was my skirt. Easy, simple, no hemming, no messing with pins...except it looked like this:

Not very practical for a four year old. So I went back into my sewing closet. I divided the hem into sixths. Every six part, I stitched two parallel lines, set on the longest stitch setting and low tension:

I tied off the threads at the top of the seams, then gathered from the bottom and tied those off as well.

Then I added a little blue bow by hand.

This is how it turned out:

Much better! I love how whimsical it is, and it makes everything Suzy does look dainty. Here she's showing you how to look like a lady while preparing to chunk a rock.










The end result was one happy little girl!

Making It Cute

I like to improve common items, to make them a bit more me. Nate teases me about my desire to make things cute, but he likes it. I think.
Today, between laundry and dishes, I convinced myself that I really should take pictures and make a post out of it. Because I'm sure you're dying to see, right?
First up, Suzy's breakfast. Oatmeal is the homliest of all breakfast foods, so I cute it up with a heart-shaped cookie cutter and rainbow sprinkles.


Isn't this pretty fabric? You'll never guess what it's on.


That's right, I sewed a coat for my spray bottle.
Next, my kitchen gloves. Just the Mr. Clean gloves from Walmart. Sooo plain. So I added a little lace trim. It may seem silly, but I have to wear those things three times a day, so I needed to enjoy looking at them. And they coordinate with my spray bottle and apron...though I admit I am the only one who cares!



And this is my lesson plan book. It came with a sterile green plastic cover that gave me chilly memories of grade school. I warmed it up with some fabric scraps.


Here's my daily planner. It was already cute on the inside (like so many of us) but very plain on the outside.


I just added a little ribbon to the cover to make it's outside more feminine.


Here is my Bible. It has a burgundy leather cover, half chewed up the spine by a puppy fond of over-stepping her bounds. Since it was the Bible Nate gave to me on the occasion of his second proposal to me, I made it this little cover to keep it protected from any future marauders.


I wanted a little journal in which I could write Scriptures that are significant to me. I looked many places for a cute one that was inexpensive. Finally I bought one with a plain cardboard cover for $4 at Borders. Or Barnes and Noble's. Or Books-a-Million. One of those bookstores that starts with a B. I knew it would be perfect, because I had enough fabric leftover from my Bible cover to make them match. How cute!

Look how cute they look with my coordinating sermon notebook, bought at the same B. bookstore:

For practicality, a 3 ring binder was ideal for my prayer journal. The plain white one I bought was so impersonal. I fixed it up with fabric from a vintage pillowcase and a scrap of ribbon.

Put all of them together, and it becomes clear the next thing I have to work on is developing a central color scheme:
Go here more people making it cute:

Suzy's new Jean Skirt

I love taking something old and turning it into something new, useful, and pretty. I love craft blogs with easy and clever ideas.
I made a skirt like this for Suzy using this tutorial:

Tea Rose Home Jean Skirt Tutorial
I thought it was a great idea. I had a pair of Levi's with huge holes in the knees, so I was really happy to give them new life.


Doing a little dance:

The only issue I had was that I did not have cute little flower cookie cutters to make appliques. And I looooved those flower appliques! After several failed attempts to freehand some flowers, I used a star and tried to make it look like a five petaled flower. Please tell me it looks like a flower!

The skirt turned out a lot cuter than you can tell from the pictures. I had a rather unwilling model: