pins and needles

is what the girls have been on waiting for these fabric panels to arrive!


We found the sweet modkid ragdolls after browsing Patty Young's blog here. They have been oohing and ahhing over her Life in Plastic, It's Fantastic! post about the Barbie exhibit at the Indianapolis Children's Museum (okay I've been oohing and ahhing it too, I still love a Barbie).


On the sidebar of the blog she had a link to her Potty Girl A-Line dress pattern - they said "what is that for?" so we had to find out. :)


And now the doll panels are here and ready to be sewn up with some little dresses!


Some more Playdate fabrics arrived too - you can view the rest of the fun collection on the Michael Miller website here.


Shirts? Dresses? Maybe new bibs? Who knows! But my little Vanna White likes 'em.

we love our Jennifer Paganelli

Love her, love her fabric! She featured a couple pics of the tank shirts I made with Sis Boom fabrics on her blog today.



I almost burned some Twinkie cupcakes in the oven because I was so excited and had to write home to mom and dad (er, email).

these got me through...

a *couple* boring classes in college - thanks IA State Daily!

Now part of my only "me time" during the week is when the new issue of People magazine arrives and momma gets/attempts to sit on the couch and spend 5 minutes doing the crossword puzzle. :)

Thank you to Purple Elephant Designs for including us in your treasury!

mess with Mod Podge

This morning I saw a beautiful piece of mosaic art on the Sis Boom Sightings flickr group. Melissa of A Hundred Billion Stars adds some of the most amazing goodies to the group - check out some more of her pics and other fun creations made with Sis Boom fabric here!

Since the heat index is 107 degrees, the parks are flooded, and the thought of tackling the weekly grocery shopping in a store where they don't have water gave me the heebiejeebies (the city south of us had 8 water main breaks), we opted to stay home this afternoon.

Inspired by Melissa's fabric mosaics, we spent some time making a mess of our fabric scraps - always a favorite passtime around here! Then I let them loose with their own canvases and Mod Podge.

Colby started by placing squares side by side, then went for the layered look

all finito!

her little sister was ALL about the glue :)

she declared "All done! Isn't it fantastic?"

After the canvases were finished they painted their new snakes from Hobby Lobby. A couple weeks ago they each picked out one of those plastic snakes at Happy Joes with their tickets (those broke of course) so when they found these they were beyond excited.

chicks & mixtapes

Thank you to DaniJoDesigns, Pennamite and tlynette418 for including our bibs in their recent treasuires!

strawberry lemonade jelly

Since the pickles turned out so well, I was feeling domestic and wanted to try something new the next day. There was a recipe in Fannie Farmer for lemon jelly that was marked with an asterisk to mean "family favorite" and decided this would be a yummy one to try (I've been on a lemony kick lately).


a dozen lemons + 4 large apples


Thinly slice the lemons and coarsely chop the cored apples. I added some strawberries too.


Add just enough water to cover the fruit in the pot.


Cook until the fruity is mushy, then strain through cheesecloth draped over a colander.


Measure the amount of juice - for every 1 cup of juice, add 3/4 cups of sugar. I added 2 pouches of liquid pectin after the sugar dissolved - because of the strawberries we ended up with a lot more juice than the original recipe estimated. Bring to a boil and cook until the mixture reaches 220-225 degrees, Fannie says 15 minutes, but we ended up boiling for a bit longer.


Pour into the jars and assemble with the lids and bands, then process in the canning pot for 10 minutes in boiling water.


Strawberry lemonade jelly! Sweet and tangy and I love how the color turned out.


We made up a batch of apple butter too. A couple of years ago we caught a Food Network show about apples, and my BIL said that they would always eat bagels + cream cheese + apple butter growing up. Pretty sure I was pregnant at the time - so that turned into a craving that we've been eating ever since. This recipe is more like glorified creamy applesauce, or maybe pureed apple pie. :) It is goooooood.

adventures in canning

A few weeks ago I told my neighbor I was planning on making pickles from the cucumbers in the garden, and bless her heart if she didn't bring me 2 huge bags of cukes from her garden last week. So now I pretty much had no choice but to walk the walk and not just talk the talk of canning.

I found a recipe for Janice Pike's Perfect Pickles in my go-to cookbook (Fannie Farmer: one of the most practical/favorite gifts ever from my momma...I had no idea that Christmas just how often I'd use it). We made a quick trip to the grocery store, made an executive decision to go with one large Walla Walla sweet onion vs. 18 small white onions (still anti-onion since childhood unless they're breaded and fried) and went with apple cider vinegar vs. regular cider vinegar.

Cucumber-cutting commenced and continued for the next hour or so while baby slept and the girls played in pool/hubby played in dirt outside. I cut some into spears and some into slices. 3 red bell peppers and 3 green bell peppers also had to be cut up - and when hubby saw the massive amount on the cutting board his eyes bulged out. At this point I was having some self-doubt about the outcome of this recipe, but since I had spent so much money on the dadgum peppers I was committed to using them. All the veggies had to be covered with 2 trays of ice cubes and coarse salt to stand for 3 hours. Enough to fill 3 of my huge pots. Now I was asking myself how I was going to keep the jars hot (answer - dishwasher) and get the waterbath going in another pot to process the pickles (answer - husband went to the store to get 2 gigantic canning pots thank goodness) if all of my big pots were being used just to cook the pickles.

After 3 hours they needed to be rinsed, drained, rinsed again, and then cooked to a boil with the additional ingredients. He filled the jars, I put on the lids/bands and he stuck them in the canning pots to process. He likes to take-over certain parts of projects where I might burn or harm myself, and I am thankful for this.



But the end result - SUCCESS! After 24 hours they're all sealed perfectly, and the pickles seriously live up to the name of the recipe. I was actually surprised at how good they are - even our 6 year old couldn't stop eating them. Not too shabby for a first attempt at pickles - let alone first attempt at canning!