FOE elastic baby rompers

After making a few PUL diaper covers a month or so ago, I realized that I hadn't been creative enough about my fold over elastic.  I had yards and yards of it sitting around waiting to be used for girls headbands.  The problem is that I have, for the most part, stopped making girls headbands.  When I made the diaper cover I realized what an awesome invention FOE was--think stretchy binding!  It's like the lazy-sewers way to finish an edge stitch and make it stretchy all at the same time.  It's amazing.  Truly amazing.

It was a great revelation at a great time, because I have found myself in need of more bottoms for my daughter.  She seems to have a wide array of tops, but no bottoms.  It's always great when you realize that you have all the pieces to make what you need already amongst your craft supplies.  I had this wonderful wide, soft, elastic that I had bought online for making cute skirts that I never got around to using.  I also have a lot of random fabric (including old jeans), and a ton of fold over elastic.  Voila!  The biggest problem was making up a pattern.  I probably could have found something online, but I didn't look... I used almost the entirety of one pair of old (hol-y) maternity jeans before finally giving up and just cutting material for a romper.  I made two, but then decided I'd try again for something more interesting and made some pants.   At least now I figured out what I'm doing, so the next ones won't be so hard. ;-)  

Making Monsters

Where has the time gone?  Three months since my last post?  It would seem that resolving to write posts more often doesn't necessarily result in more posts.  Go figure.

The kids and I were crafting some monsters today made from Costco pretzel containers.  I've been saving the containers in the hopes that I would envision some ingenious craft that would amaze everyone--including myself.  Sadly, that never happened.  So, why wait around filling your house with random pieces of potential-crafting items when you could simply use them for a sub-par crafting project that will not only expand the space in your home but somehow delight your children (despite its lack of amazingness)...?  Right.  That's what I thought.

So, here you have it.  Our monsters.  This could be a great Valentine's box.  Of course, Valentine's Day is five months away, and I'm not sure that these monsters will last one week let alone five months.  As it is, my kids just think it's great to fill them with toys they find.  For some reason this brings them great joy.  And that's wonderful.  Because, some of these crafting things have been sitting around for a year hoping to be used.  I would resolve to craft more often, but obviously we know what little comes of my resolutions.

To make:

plastic container

exacto knife (or scissors, or whatever you can cut the plastic with)

paint (I used acrylic)

cardboard for the feet

construction paper 

felt

ribbon (for bows)

yarn for hair (though I'm sure there are better ways to do their hair)

and...most important.... googly eyes!

Making Hash Browns and Learning About Process

It had been on my mind for weeks to make hash browns.  I kept seeing recipes calling them delicious and delectable, crunchy and satisfying.  Though I'd never been particularly fond of them in the past, I suddenly had an urge to try my hand at making this side dish that others found so tasty.  It helped that I had a few potatoes in the pantry that needed a recipe to call their own.  With an unexpected quiet time yesterday afternoon while three of my four children slept, I started grating potatoes.

I love to eat.  I also really enjoy making the food I eat.  Or at least, I used to find it enjoyable--before I had children.  Now I have less time and more interruptions and cooking is something I often loathe.  Really?  We have to eat dinner *every day*?  Who says?

Because I have learned that daily dinner means daily dirty dishes, I often make a point to double or triple a recipe.  Since my kind husband doesn't mind having leftovers (and my children simply don't know any different), I usually get away with only cooking half the week and having left overs the rest of the week.  It's wonderful.  Truly.

Sometimes, though, a recipe does not lend itself to doubling.  I want to believe that all I have to do is multiply the ingredients, but sometimes that's just not the case.  Yesterday, I got out the largest skillet I own (which is *huge*) and put in all the potatoes I had--four.  The recipe called for two.  And, truth be told, the recipe called for two normal sized potatoes, and mine were like twice the size of a regular potato since, well, that's just how they come in the 20lb. bag from Costco.  I suppose it's more efficient to pack fewer big potatoes into the bag than a whole bunch of small ones.  Way to keep things efficient, Costco.

But, I digress.  The point is, I was practically quadrupling the recipe.  The grated potato was supposed to be sprinkled at the bottom of a buttered skillet and left to cook until brown on one side, and then turned over to cook on the other side.  My grated potato did a wonderful job of cooking on the bottom, but the moment I tried "turning them over" I realized that my dream of deliciously crunchy hash browns was definitely not going to come true.  At least, not with those potatoes.

There were far too many pieces of potato to simply "turn" them over, and very quickly I was left with a mixture of about 1/4 cooked, brown, crunchy potato and 3/4 not-at-all cooked, soggy, non-edible potatoes.  What was supposed to take about 10 minutes of baking time took half an hour, and I was pretty much left with what could be considered extremely buttery mashed potatoes that, with some bites, had a slight crunch to them.

I decided I should be more particular about which recipes I try to double (or quadruple for that matter).  But I also decided this was a great metaphor for some parts of my life.

For how many years, and in how many situations, have I tried to get to my "end goal" through short cuts?  I have a beautiful picture of how I want life to be, but I often try to get to it haphazardly and with little care for the process.  It's not surprising that when I screw up the recipe, I don't get the same results I was looking for.  Know what I mean?

 I can't expect things to work out just like I hoped when I am sloppy and careless about how I get there.  I'm thankful that God has been gracious to bless me even in the times when I've been undeserving and "sloppy" in my process.  And I'm glad to know that even as I strive to be a better runner in this race set before me, He will always forgive me when I stumble.

The Mystery of the Cowlick

Simple Angry Bird mini cupcakes

I was really disappointed recently when I looked up Angry Bird cupcakes to get ideas for my son's upcoming sixth birthday.  There were a ton of awesome fondant ones.... but I don't have any experience with fondant!  And we just moved 1200 miles less than a month ago, so let's just say I don't have a lot of extra time to learn a new food art.  Honestly, I barely have time to get the laundry done amidst all of the moving-across-country logistics.

I wanted a regular cupcake but with something reminiscent of Angry Birds on top.  No, I didn't want anything complicated, but I did want something that looked better than a flat face of a bird on top of a cupcake, and so far that's all I'd found online.  Even on Pinterest!  Can you believe it!? (Besides, of course, the really amazing fondant ones.  But, heck, there's always next year.)

I am luckily in the time of year for candy corn and carmel candy corn with orange ends act as great beaks.  And mini m&ms are perfect eyes, right?  Or at least, yummy ones.

So, here's what I did:

1) First cut the brown ends off your candy corn.  There's a few reasons I did this.  You can try without, but I'm pretty sure it won't work if you leave them with the bigger/longer ends.

2)  Bake some yummy cupcakes!  I used a white cake recipe and added almond extract, which I also did to the icing just to give it a nice flavor.  Simple!

3) Make some buttercream frosting and then add your colors!

4) At this point, you have all your materials ready, so get to decorating!  Once you ice your birds, be sure to decorate them quickly before the buttercream gets harder.  Buttercream will always stay "soft", but it *will* develop a nice top coat and you want to make sure you get your things stuck in before that happens.  I would suggest working on one group at a time so you don't end up missing your window of opportunity. :-)

5) Though they are pretty simple Angry Birds, I would recommend at least putting some angry eyebrows on them.  But, as my daughter pointed out, there are NO eyebrows on the blue birds.  Which ended up working out for me since I didn't have much space for them. ;-P  But if you play the game, you'll know why I had to make three of all the blue birds.... :-)

And then you're finished!  They are super yummy, not tricky, and at least to some degree resemble Angry Birds.  Or at least, I think so!  The real test will be when the birthday boy sees them and if he a) responds in joyful glee that I made Angry Bird cupcakes! or if he b) says to me despairingly, "it looks like you tried to make Angry Bird cupcakes, but they don't really look like Angry Birds...."

PS--I tried making the yellow ones in a square formation at the bottom when I was piping.  Didn't work out so well.  But I am really not very good at piping icing, so maybe others of you will have better luck!!  (Since the yellow one is more of a pyramid shape, not a circle/oval)

UPDATE!!

Upon seeing the cupcakes, my son told me that we could definitely give the blue ones to his friends, but not the red ones or the yellow ones.  "If my friends saw them they would laugh and say, 'those aren't Angry Birds--they have no feathers!'"  He instructed me to put brown feathers on the tops of their heads and on their backs.  Of course, I had to oblige.  Here's the updated picture:

Christians and Life: On the Topic of Abortion...

My heart has been breaking lately, seeing articles like this one about Kermit Gosnell's trial...the grotesque images of what happened in his clinic in Philadelphia...  My mind has been on those tiny hands and feet of each of those lives he cut off from this world.

This won't be a long post, but I just wanted to share a question... Something my mind has been pondering for a long time, and perhaps something you should be asking too.  Yes, those of us who are "pro-life", we are waging war, but I wonder if we haven't had something to do with how far this war has come.

This question is for Christians--those people claiming to follow Christ, to live as he lived and who are called to seek his will.

Has this war come to such a front because we have lost the value of life?  

Oh yes, we quote our Scripture that talks about its holiness and uniqueness.  I do not mean to say that we don't know what our faith teaches.  We do know.  And His Spirit in us reminds us of the preciousness of our own life and those of others...

But our lives are busy.  Cluttered.  We are consumed with bettering our selves and our children.  Consumed with the newest fads and latest technology.  We have more to think about and do than ever before.  Our lives are like a whirlwind blowing from one locale to the next.

Is it right for us to live in America and preach our choice--our choice to live in what manner we want, and yet to point fingers at others and tell them that in this particular area, they can't?  They can prioritize choice in anything they want, except this.  In all other ways, god is self.  But in this one, no, our God says "don't kill the babies."

Yes, I am pointing the finger at you.  And me.  All of us.  We write, we talk, we live day to day going from one choice to the next.  I'd wager a guess that more of our Facebook statuses are about the choices we've made, will make, or are unsure about making, than we do about how highly we value our lives.

We've done it.  We, too, have accepted the lie that choice is King.  We cannot fight the battle of abortion on choice.  We do not choose when life starts.  God already did.  We cannot choose if it's important. God has already made it so.

Our battle is in the value.  But it's no surprise the war has gotten as far as it has, because we have been confused... we have thought it was of choice.

What if we started to live like we really valued life?  Ours.  Theirs.  Everyone's.  What if I valued life itself, this gift--this amazing thing that God has given that enables me to live and move and have my being--higher than I value choice.  I wonder how this war would change.  I wonder if eyes that were blind would see.  I wonder if we would change, and let go of our hold on choice as King, and let our Savior reign instead--breathing in joy and thankfulness for the simple things--of life and love, and of the true JOY it can bring when we savor it.

In essence:  We won't show them God by telling them what the Bible says.  We will show them how God values life when we value it.  1 John 3:18, "let us love not with words or speech but with actions and in truth."

A snowy winter day

This morning we went out and got our customary milk and bread before the snow.  Well, we actually went out for a whole list of things, of which bread and milk were a part.  But it seemed fitting to mention we had gotten those typical staples, as a storm was indeed on the horizon.

It started snowing after lunch and has been snowing since.  I've tried to get outside as much as possible lately, but with the freezing weather, we never seem to be out more than half an hour tops.  It's made for mighty cabin fever around here.

I noticed the other day that we've accumulated a large array of plastic containers for storing left overs.  It seems that I've kept every useable container, and now my plastic drawer is overflowing.  We do recycle, and I could very well simply recycle many of these containers.  But, I thought--before we recycle them, maybe we can get a little crafting use out of them...

So, on this snowy day, we started with craft #1 using the plastic containers.

Hats.

And, since I am a big fan of Amazon.com, I have lots of cardboard to spare.  Making a hat didn't take any out-of-the-ordinary supplies at all.

Here's a preview of my first idea on how to use those left over containers :)  (Well, maybe I should call it my second?  Since I used one of them last year as the face of Thomas the Tank engine in my oldest son's Valentine box as shown here.)