Cake in Mug

Last night the Conductor and I wanted some dessert but all we had were store bought cookies and candy.  Not very exciting.  I persuaded him to revive a pregnancy favorite.  I didn't blog at all while I was pregnant with the Sprout.  But there was a period of about a week where we had the following conversation:

Him:  Do you want anything from the kitchen?

Me:  Yes.  A piece of chocolate cake with chocolate frosting.

Him:  Do we *have* any chocolate cake?

Me:  No.

Him:  (Rolls eyes at my crazy pregnancy logic).

My Mother-in-law had loaded us up with Christmas treats and before we could finish those, the Girl Scout cookies came.  Seeing as how we were already overloaded with goodies, I didn't want to buy a cake and with the pregnancy fatigue I wasn't about to bake one.  So we just repeated the futile conversation over and over until one night when the Conductor remembered and NPR interview he heard with a man who had written a microwave cookbook.

One of the recipes was for individual cakes in a mug where you mix the ingredients right in the cup then bake in the microwave.  They are all over the internet but here's an example.  Here's the finished product:

It makes a pretty large portion so two people could even split it.  We topped ours with some nummy Sanders fudge sauce (made in the Conductor's home state of Michigan) and some raspberry sauce that I made with berries from our yard.  (Just a saucepan full of berries and a handful of sugar cooked down to liquid).

It was delicious!  Now that we've had it a few times, some tips:

Stir the ingredients with a fork to blend better.  Don't add more batter than called for (I tried making individual cakes with a box mix and poured in WAY too much and it overflowed,  making a mess).  Keep the cook time to 2 minutes.  Anything more and the cake will get dry.

Great for a pregnancy craving...or a chocolate craving...when you don't want an entire cake sitting around.

Garden Shoes

Wow!  My maternity leave is just about over with.  The Conductor got two weeks for daddy leave.  He took one week of his FMLA leave after the Sprout was born and we wisely decided to use his other week about 2 1/2 months in.  This gave us time to get to know our little one's quirks, how he is in restaurants and on car rides and so on.  We were hoping to do some family vacation type stuff and since we were blessed with a good baby, it was a lot of fun.

We didn't do anything too wild with an infant, of course.  But we did have a few over nighters. For our first one, we went up to Baraboo, WI, home of the Barnum and Bailey Circus.  My sister lives there so it was nice to have a visit.   And she's funny, but no, she's not a circus clown.

The Sprout got to have his first train ride.  The Conductor was in his element - he is the 257th most important man in model railroading, after all.



The train ride was at a historic site which also featured a blacksmith demonstrating the technique.  He had all kinds of doo-dads that he had made stuck in the ground and all super cheap!



I spied these things, which he said were tent stakes.



But I was thinking of my garden shoes.  I keep them on our enclosed back porch.  Although it's enclosed, we still get the occasional mouse.  Ew!  I have a perfectly reasonable totally irrational fear that I'm going to put them on and have my toe bitten off by a mouse that decided to turn my shoe into its nest.



So, the blacksmith said tent stakes, (at $2 a piece - can you believe it!) but I saw this:




So, for four bucks, I'm going to try hanging them from the tent stakes outside the porch door.  They're rubber shoes so they can handle getting wet.  I'm hoping it'll keep the mud and dirt outside.  Too bad it won't keep the mice out...

No Frilly Dresses

So, I had a little Sprout.  Why no pictures of all the baby clothes I made?  Well, I didn’t make any.  The Conductor and I decided not to find out the gender ahead of time.  But at about my sixth month, I began to have really strong feelings that it was a boy.  I couldn’t explain it, there was no science behind it, I just kind of knew. The Conductor confessed that he, too, thought it would be a boy.  

I secretly hoped that it might be a girl anyway.  I am a seamstress, after all.  Think of the things I could make!  Dresses, short sets, pinafores, smocks, and bloomers!  And matching hair things!  There could be appliqués and rick rack and eyelet and ribbons!  Plus all the Mommy-and-Me matching stuff – like aprons and church outfits – and matching winter coats!  Endless possibilities like this one from Smashed Peas and Carrots.  

Still, when the conductor peered around the operating curtain and announced, “It’s a boy!” I wasn’t surprised or disappointed.  After all, I suspected it was a boy for three months.  The Sprout is adorable and from day one my heart melted every time I looked at him.

And then I went to the fabric store for the first time since he came.  They had the new pattern books out.  Time to see what kind of baby things I could make for my little guy!

Friends, there is NOTHING fun to sew for boys!  There’s about 27,348 patterns of cute things for girls.  There's maybe two patterns for boys - one for a long sleeved shirt and pants and another for a short sleeved shirt with shorts.  Big whoop. 

I was bummed but it shouldn’t have surprised me.  Boys don’t care about clothes.  They don't need ruffles and rick-rack and matching outfits for their dollies.  Boys are basic when it comes to clothes and fashion.  It shouldn’t have surprised me that sewing options for boys would be just as basic (and boring!).  

That’s when it really sank in.  There would be no aprons.  No pinafores.  No dresses with matching bloomers.  Eyelet?  I think not-let.   A cute applique?  Not today.  

Reluctantly I picked out one of the two boy patterns in the book.  I walked around the store trying hard to convince myself that sewing on bug fabric and car fabric and superhero fabric will be way more fun than sewing on eyelet and flower fabric.  Trying hard no to think about the pile of pink fabric in my stash, I took it home, laid out the pattern for a hat on some very non-girly paw print fabric and finished the project.  I put it on the Sprout's little bean to try the sizing as I wondered how on earth a paw print hat could possibly compare to a frilly dress with zig-zag trim and a matching apron and then I got this:

OH MY GOSH is he cute or what?  This is McCalls' 6575 which features three boy hats and (pathetically three girl hats, too.  How sad is it that they could only come up with three boy hat patterns?) I put this on him for a ride to visit the gals at the office - they all thought it was adorable.  

Here's the side view.  Is that not the cutest?  I've never made many hats before.  This was super easy.  If I didn't have to stop every 2 minutes to tend to the Sprout, I could've made this in about 20 minutes, including cutting time.  

 And here's one more.  He looks like he's ready to go for a drive in his new paw-print, very boyish - yet very stylish - driving cap.  Maybe sewing for a little boy won't be so bad after all?  (See how I coordinated his outfit with a onesie that had a doggie on it?)

Back from My Break

I haven't posted a thing on this blog since September 12, 2012!  Where have I been?  I've been busy baking....

baking a bun in the oven, that is.  Here's me at 8 months.  The Sprout was born in late May.

I had limited time and energy and spent most of my pregnancy just keeping up with work and housework and didn't have much time for the hobbies I blog about.  I didn't even do any baby sewing, except for one little sleep sack!   So not like me.

But I'm back in the groove!

I still don't have a lot of time, even though I'm out on a maternity leave.  The Sprout leaves me pretty busy and I often have to drop what I'm doing, of course, to tend to him.  I've been working on sewing myself a bathrobe, which would normally be something I could make in an afternoon.  It's taken me over a week and I'm still not done.

But he's worth it!  Here is The Sprout, himself at 2 days old, napping on Daddy's arm.

(For readers who know me personally, I am SUPER BUGGY about protecting him on the Internet so if you post comments, please don't refer to him by name).  

Self Built Spice Rack

Even with my husband visiting family out of state over Labor Day, I know how to keep things spicy in our house.  Ha ha.  Actually, I've been dealing with this, since before we were married:

Keep in mind, this mess of a spice cupboard is four jars deep and four jars high.  There's one wire rack holding some of them, but needless to say, because I cook with herbs and spices a lot, there's always digging, things fall out and into the sink, there's no way to keep good order. 

We have 51 jars of herbs, spices, & special mixes with more on the way as I continue to grow new herb plants in the garden.  One of those cute little spice racks just won't cut it for us. 

And boy did I try! My first attempt, (no picture) was to make a spice shelf big enough to be mounted on both cabinet doors. This required me to reduce the depth of the two shelves on the inside to make room for the mounted shelves- staining new wood, drilling out new holes for the shelf supports and everything.

I was careful to buy wood the correct width of the half-pint jelly jars that I store my herbs & spices in.

I was careful to see how many jars I could fit across a shelf. 

I was careful enough to make sure to allow enough height to get the jar up and over the shelf rails that I inteded to add.

But alas.  I failed.  First, although I love working on my Gramma's old kitchen table, the top is all crooked.  I kept getting frustrated that all my measurements ended up being off by about 5/16th of an inch and then finally the lightbulb went off - even a slightly crooked work surface will yield an ever increasingly crooked finished project.  DUH!!  Even after straightening out the crookedness, the wood shelves were simply too heavy to be mounted on the cabinet doors.

Attempt #2 was to accept defeat.  We need an orderly cupboard and fast.  After two months of marriage, I was getting irritated that we still weren't "moved in" yet and living in chaos.  A copout was in order.  I'm quite not ashamed to admit it.  We bought two of these racks from the Closet Maid line:

Yea, it's pretty clear that these will not even come close to being able to hold all 51 of our spice jars but we could at least keep the wire ones mounted for other stuff, right?  Nope.

Extract jars would slip right out, the salt, starch, and boullon jars are all to big.  Back to the store they went.  Time for Plan C. 

I headed back to the Orange store determined to find new wood and somehow find a flat, level work surface.  Down the aisle from me was one of those Earth Mother type women looking for wood.  She just went right up to the rack, grabbed two boards and threw them in her cart. 

Even my 8 year old niece knows better than that.  You need to eye them to make sure they are straight!!! 

And readers, the thought of spending hours in the store looking for straight pieces of pine almost made me cry.  Better woods like oak and mahogony are far more reliable, but you pay by the FOOT.  And I needed a lot of footage.  Too rich for my blood.

Then I spotted MDF.  And, on impulse, I bought some "boards".  (If you're interested in MDF, I'll post my notes tomorrow. Do read before you buy.  There are definate pros and cons).

I loved working with the MDF!!   See how nice and straight it is.  Cutting was a dream!

The super smooth surface made painting a breeze.  I used some leftover egghsell from when I repainted the kitchen walls:

Assuming you measure carefully, assembly was a breeze!  You do have to use screws - coarse drywall screws, which I never would've guessed.  And you need to pre-drill the holes with a coutersink.  But that was a snap:

(I was still a little intimidated by the countersink.  You can see here that the screwheads were still a little too close to the surface.  I made this side the unseen side and did a better job on the side that would be seen).

But, oh, that crooked table!  It was while framing this attempt that I had my lightbulb moment.  I screwed in the right sides of all the shelf pieces then I decided to mount the frame before screwing in the left side, just so I could lay my level across each shelf and double check for accuracy.  Smart move!  You can see I also used L brackets across the top, bottom and middle shelves for added stability.

To keep the jars on the shelves, I made rails out of lath, painted to match.

And here's the finished product!  All 51 jars and room for a few more or for bigger pint jars.

I couldn't get a ful front picture - there's a bookshelf across from it.

I do need to redo my jar labels soon.  Some of them got covered by the lath. 

The Conductor was very impressed.  I didn't tell him that this would be my project so it was kind of serendipitous that he brought home a particular gift from my mother in law:

Onion garlic spice mix - too cool! 

A Yellow Challenge

I've been meaning to take on some of the weekly sewing challenges at the Sew Weekly.  Last week was the first one that I looked at and it was a challenge to sew using the brightest of colors - yellow.

I found five pieces of yellow fabric in my stash.

I carefully contemplated each one.  Then I came to the conclusion that I HATE yellow.  I don't look good in it and I don't know why on earth I ever bought these pieces.

Without regret, I threw them all in the Goodwill donation pile. 

And that's about all of the "sewing" I did this weekend since I wasn't feeling very good.  This week's challenge is to sew something having to do with music.  Maybe I'll have better luck with that. 

Polka Dot Wedding Dress

Faithful Readers!  I've been married a month now and, whew! what a whirlwind.  We're still settling in, still getting The Conductor's stuff moved in and put away, trying to squeeze it all in between working our dayjobs and tending the garden.

I don't want to overload this post with tons of pictures of people ..and this is blog mostly about sewing and home ownership so I'll post a few that show off, what else? The Dress!


First, my bouquet.  I made it all out of buttons!  I didn't start out with a theme but ended up doing most of our stuff in polka dots and buttons went right along with the motif. 

Here's The Conductor and I with our parents. 

 And no, you're not seeing things!  My dress isn't completely white!  At the start of wedding planning, I was just getting inundated with all of the "you have to do this" kind of comments.  And I thought, "Why?  Who says so?"  I stumbled on The Offbeat Bride's site.  There are some *really* offbeat brides out there, let me tell ya. I love how the site just gives you permission to be...offbeat. 

In particular, I found this dress made by Princess Lasertron totally inspring.  I don't like her color choices, but I LOVED the idea of incorporating a print.  And I knew I wanted a vintage style skirt, pouf and all, so I was drooling over her colored crinolines underneath.

Here's our party people.  You can hopefully see that the bridesmaids are wearing the darker, watermelon pnk, from the polka dot fabric.  My nephew, our ringbearer, is wearing the sea green, also from the polka dot fabric, and the same color as my crinoline.

Here's us at the alter afterwards.  You can see that the colored parts go all the way around and the green peeks out from the bottom.  I also wore green shoes which was a fun surprise for my mom and step-mom (I wore white ones to practice in at the rehearsal so as not to blow the surprise).

Here's a back view.  I used Vogue 1172 for the skirt pattern and self drafted the top.  I wanted to make sure that no bra straps would show.  I also wanted to make sure that the sleeves were loose enough to allow air flow (it was HOT that day) and be long enough to cover my not so flattering upper arms. 

I also wanted a sweetheart neckline like the one in my grandmother's dress and my bust area  is large so I needed to make sure I got the chest fit right.  I've never self drafted a pattern so that was the most chllenging part.  It was all I could do to just finish the dress, so I didn't take very many technical pictures, which I'm now regretting.  I have no documentation of *how* I arrived at the final dress, or the mistakes I made along the way.  Oh well.

   I think this picture gives the best view of the bodice.  The bust area had a perfect fit, I assure you.  The fabric is just floppy because it was hot!  And our church has no air conditioning. 

This was right before I walked into the church and I was already roasting. 

This view gives the best idea of how the skirt spread.  Vogue 1172 is an AWESOME pattern to use if you want a very full skirt.  With two godets in front and two in back, a good petticoat or crinoline is essential.

(I'm holding my baby niece, V, here with her face whited out in case that is confusing anyone, by the way).  Wanting a crisp hem, and less work, I sewed the polka dot to horsehair braid and then sewed the other end of the horsehair to the dress, flipped it up, and machine stiched again.  (I am only wearing this dress once, no way in heck was I hand hemming!!  Who'd even notice?)

But before you can get a crisp hem, you need to make sure it's straight.  Fortunately I have a dress model that has my figure which I had been using the whole while to fit the bodice correctly.  After sewing on the skirt, I marked the hem using purple grosgrain ribbon and put the dress back on good old Grace.   

Then I simply cut along the top of the ribbon.  The fabric was actually bridal satin so my shears mostly slid around the ribbon, making for quick work. 

As you can see, my other objective was to ensure that the hem was short enough that the colored crinoline could peak out.

By the way, I actually wore two crinolines.  One was a simple one made out of nylon that I used in place of lining to make sure nothng (i.e. my undies) showed through the dress itself.  I also wanted a piece that I could wear again and again, as opposed to something permanently attached to a dress I'm only wearing once. 

The second crinoline was made out of - catch this - 24 yards of netting!!!  I had no idea it would take THAT much netting.  I made 7 trips to the fabric store just for netting becauase I kept thinking I had enough.  I made most of it white with just one strip of green around the bottom.  Again, I wanted to be able to cut off the green and use the main part again and again. 

I'm STILL sick of  the fabric store, all because of this crinoline.  I never thought I'd ever get sick of the fabric store.

So, that's the story of my wedding dress.  Next post I'm hoping to share a few pics of the honeymoon and show you the start of my next project.