Dexter’s First Cooking Experience

September 10, 2010March 21, 2011 / lemonwoodclock / Leave a comment

We tried the Polenta Pizza Stackers by Cooking With My Kid. They were really yummy comfort food (think pizza grits, but better). If you’re interested, make sure you head over there for the recipe!!

I decided to brave it and let Dex help! He stood on a chair (I made certain he was supported on all sides) and helped me spread Smart Balance onto a pan. He really liked playing in that 🙂 It was awesome seeing his little finger marks all over the pan 🙂

Then I let him help me use a butter knife to slice the polenta. He thought that was the best. He chuckled the whole time 🙂 And he also broke a lot of the slices and ate them lol. Ours were way uglier than CWMK’s 🙂 We need to work on our slicing skills.

Thankfully our oven stays cool on the outside, because Dexter felt the need to monitor their progress.

See? Ours were all jagged from bad cutting and a chubby little snacker.

Dex was able to help me put a tomato sauce on two of them before he decided the most important thing he could contribute was thumb-sucking. Can you guess which two were his?

He also “helped” with the cheese by eating a chubby handful while I sprinkled.

These things looked awesome after they cooked! And they smelled great. Dexter realized when they were baking that they were pizzas. He’s so smart 🙂

Dexter gobbled these up!

I give these a 4 overall. I will certainly make them again, they were easy, pretty yummy, and Dexter really enjoyed both making and eating them. Plus, I can feel good about serving them because they’re really healthy. But I think I will play around with cheese and sauce to find the perfect flavor combo!

Nursery Decor WIP And Bad Photography

September 8, 2010 / lemonwoodclock / 7 Comments

Sometimes I have good photos on my blog. This is not one of those times. I need a different lens for what I wanted to do. And today was bad for natural light. AAAAAND I’m impatient and I want to do this blog RIGHT NOW. So you must suffer through ugly pictures.

Dexter’s nursery has never been very well decorated. It’s a blank slate with some furniture and toys thrown in. I’m working on making it more visually interesting.

Recently I found some flash cards in Target’s dollar bin. Dex LOVES them. So I decided to hang some over his changing table. I just sort of eyeballed it, and they look good, but they’re a little too low. He grabs them while I’m changing him, and that’s a battle I just don’t want to deal with.

Before we moved, I made his name letters for over his crib. I’m really glad to have those up!

I made them by fabric letters onto contrasting fabric, then stretching them into round embroidery hoops. This creates an insta-frame, and I was able to hang them by just pushing a pin through the frame opening!

There are definitely areas of his room that need work, and unfortunately I was unable to capture the whole room (or even whole walls) to give an idea of what the space is really like. I would have loved getting feedback and advice!

I am on the hunt for an inexpensive but child-safe bookshelf, if anyone has any ideas. Currently I’m storing his board books on the window ledge, which looks ok, but isn’t ideal.

And then there is the unsightly vision of his toys in random baskets along the wall.

The color of the room is just the standard-issue taupe that came with our apartment. It’s not great, but I’m not offended by it, and since I don’t know how long we’ll live here, I’m not willing to paint it. But I hope to get a few pictures hung up on other walls, and maybe some fun stuff for him, like low mirror and a chalk board.

I’ll leave you with a cute but blurry picture of Dex taken just before my battery died 🙂

Men’s Shirt Refashion (In Progress)

August 29, 2010 / lemonwoodclock / 1 Comment

I’ve wanted to modify a man’s button-up shirt for forever, but I was too intimidated. I’ve been learning a lot about drafting my own patterns, and so I decided to finally tackle the project.

It’s been both fun and frustrating. It’s kind of like playing mad scientist 🙂 I have all the parts to cobble together, and the possibilities are endless. It’s great! But there’s a lot of trial and error involved, and I’ve had to take out quite a few seams. One downside of shirting is that it’s not very forgiving of needle holes. I’m hoping when I’m all done they won’t be extremely noticeable.

So far I’ve cut down the body of the shirt and fitted it with darts and seams and I’ve created gathered sleeves.

Right now, those sleeves and that neckline look like the prairie-style dresses my mom made in the early 90’s, and homie don’t play that. (Sorry, mom!)

I plan to V the neck a little and top it with a mandarin collar. Then I’m probably going to try my hand at some ruffles. I think they will be raw edge ruffles. I’m using the existing cuffs from the original shirt. they’re wrist size, so they’re too small to completely close around my upper arms (boo.) The cuffs will just stay open on the outsides and be for decorative purposes. The sleeves will have to be a little tighter to accommodate those cuffs. And I’m shortening them because I tried the cuffs below my elbows and it was too irritating.

I’m pretty happy with how the back turned out. I created a seam down half the back to fit it better, leaving a little gather at the waist. I like the way the existing yoke looks, but it has some gathers the feel weird. Next time, if I notice the original shirt has those, I will take it apart. But I’d gotten too far into the process to stress about that.

The sides will have splits at the bottom for comfort and ease of movement. I hope I enjoy wearing this shirt! I hope to have it done by the end of this week, but it’s been slow-going. I just work on it til I get too annoyed and I pick it back up when I wish I had a new shirt 🙂

Impulsive Sewing Project: Design-It-Yourself Tunic

July 21, 2010March 21, 2011 / lemonwoodclock / 2 Comments

I’ve been getting antsy to take a break from my (many…many…MANY) current projects in order to make something cute and comfy for myself. I decided at about 9pm tonight to start something! That usually leads to disaster, but so far, it’s going great!

I decided to use one of my vintage sheets because it’s soft and I liked the retro print for the tunic style. (The shirt I’m making is the red one up in the left corner.)

The idea behind Design-It-Yourself Clothes is that you draft your own patterns from your measurements or from existing clothing, making changes to design new styles for your body. I’d already used the book and some internet resources to make my perfect tee pattern. I used that pattern as a guideline for this shirt.

I lined my pattern up along the centerfold, adding about an extra 2 inches to create the gathers at the waist. I also decided to use the hem of the sheet as the hem of my shirt. It won’t round up at the sides, but I really don’t know how much that matters. As you can see, it only makes about a half an inch difference.

I then marked where the placket should go. (Placket??? New to me… it’s basically where the buttons go. Google it if you want a better definition 🙂 ) I went ahead and marked this on my pattern in case I decide to make this shirt again.

This is where it gets tricky. The book gives very unclear directions for a lot of steps. They understandably assume that if you’re ready to design your own patterns, then you’ve obviously made many a placket in your day. So, there was not really an explanation for creating said placket, at least not one that I could really understand. So I felt my way through that one. I had to cut 3 different versions before I even came close. The one pictured above is wrong. It’s just the scraps from the shirt and was way too small. You need, as far as I can tell, 2 strips that are about 2 inches long than the opening and about twice the width of the opening if the front was unfolded. Here’s a really crappy drawing to illustrate. Just pretend the lines are straight and that it was not done in a hurry at 11:30 pm. The dotted lines indicate that you will fold there, or that you have cut those placket pieces on the centerfold.

Next I cut out my back using my tee pattern. This time I cut right on the fold, because I didn’t want any extra material in the back.

Then I pinned my shirt together from the outside and tried it on. That hurt a little… I guess not every pin was pointing out 🙂 But I figured if I could slip it on with pins in it, then getting it on without them would be a breeze. I forgot to take pix as I pinned it and sewed it, but here is a picture of it put together before sewing: I sewed the placket sides first, starting with the left side (if the shirt was on). This is the side with the buttons. Then I sewed the side with the button holes. I did it in this order because you’ll want the button hole side to overlap the side with buttons. Then I created the gathers by sewing across the edge and pulling the threads. Then I folded the bottom of the placket pieces under and overlapped them the way they needed to be. I pinned it all together and then top stitched the bottom. Tomorrow I will actually topstitch around the rest of the placket, but it was just necessary to get this part done. This was probably the hardest part, because it requires a lot of agility. it’s a small space and a lot of overlapping bits that want to slide around. Also, you want to make sure you have enough overlap for those buttons and button holes. I barely did, but I was afraid if I made it any tighter, the shirt would be uncomfortable.

Then I easily sewed the side seams and shoulder seams. This is where I decided to stop, because all that’s left are the sleeves and the collar. I want to think about what sleeves I want. I’m leaning toward a loose 3 quarter length with slight gathers at the shoulders, but I’m also really tempted to do sleeveless.

Here’s the shirt on my duct tape double: There’s a lot of extra room around the neckline. The neckline will curve when I’m done with it, so hopefully that will take out some of that bulk. Also, I’m going to do a little work to the back which should also help. but I’m really pleased with the front view!

From the side, it’s annoyingly shapeless. But I’m very small on top and my butt sticks out. so that happens 🙁 I’m hoping that by making darts in the area indicated in red that the fit will be more flattering. It’s not bad from the back either, but once again, it could benefit from some reduction in the upper back.

At any rate, I’m very happy with how it’s turned out. Especially for a spur of the moment decision 🙂

Fruit Cobbler

July 19, 2010July 19, 2010 / lemonwoodclock / 4 Comments

I love cobblers! They’re the best comfort dessert. I typically use strawberries or cherries. Tonight, I used strawberries and peaches, because that’s what I had on hand and I was worried they might go bad.

I use my mom’s recipe, and little by little, I’m tweaking it to create exactly what I want. Here is the most recent recipe I’ve used:

Feel free to print this out for your collection! You won’t regret it 🙂 The cobbler I made tonight was still a little on the sweet side, and I believe that was because my fruit was so ripe. In the future, I’ll probably back the sugar down a little. But it was still incredible. Strawberry and peach was a nice combo! Also, I didn’t have any vanilla ice cream on hand, but I recently discovered that it goes great on this cobbler!

(Note: You can use self-rising flour instead of Bisquick or pancake mix, but it gives the cobbler a slightly gummy texture, sort of like a dumpling. A baking mix will give it a fluffier texture, which my husband prefers.)

**Thanks to Homemade By Jill for introducing me to picnik, a cool and free photo editing site. Jill has created a great step-by-step tutorial that I used to make this recipe card!

Tutorial: Turning onesies into shirts

June 18, 2010 / lemonwoodclock / 4 Comments

These were done for my awesome twin nephews, Ty and Micah. My sister loved the shirts, but neither of us really like onesies for our boys now that they’re past the tiny baby stage.

This was a really easy modification. It probably doesn’t even require a tutorial; it’s more to show how something you don’t like as much can be recycled into a piece you’ll use. For example: you don’t want your baby to look like a dork with his polo shirt tucked in.

In picture, the shirts are already complete. But I cut as close to the legs as possible so the shirts would be long enough.

This up-close shot shows how I just turned it under and zigzag stitched the hem. As you can see, there is a little waviness to the bottom. It’s hard to tell how much is because of wrinkles and how much is because of warping. But I read recently that you can run a steamed iron over the wavy hem and it will help it relax. I’ll know more after they’re washed too. However, I feel like the shirts are fine for the little boys 🙂 They actually turned out better than I expected. The only thing I’d change if I could is to be able to fold the hem again for extra unraveling security, but I was just afraid I’d lose too much length. Hopefully I’ll get a picture of them wearing them this weekend!

Tutorial: Half Hour Skirt

June 17, 2010June 17, 2010 / lemonwoodclock / Leave a comment

This is *sort of* a repurposed project. I started a skirt a few weeks ago using the Angry Chicken 5 Minute Skirt formula. But for some reason it didn’t work out at all. Maybe I did my calculation wrong, but the skirt was HUGE. (However, I LOVE Angry Chicken 🙂 I feel confident that I did something weird, or my body shape just didn’t work for the pattern, because a lot of people really like that tutorial and I have no ill will toward it 🙂 )

This tutorial can be done using new fabric, or too-big skirts or dresses. The fabric needs to be stretchy, as this is a pull-on.

The I used fabric is odd. It’s cheapie Wal-Mart fabric, I think it was $1.50/yard. I thought it was a knit, but after I started sewing, it turned out to be a stretchy woven. I have no idea what it’s content is…

So, what I decided to do was use a recently purchased skirt as a template.

I cut slightly bigger than the skirt. I left a little more at the top because at the time, I wasn’t sure what I was going to do about the waistband. I’d originally planned to cut a band and sew it on like the neck of a t-shirt. It turned out not to be necessary, but I plan to try that with a skirt in the future.

Next I zigzag seamed the sides.

I only turned the hem under and zigzagged it. I’ll watch how it reacts to washing and then reevaluate. But as of now it seems good enough 🙂

For the waistband I turned it down about 2 inches. For a better fit, the fold is wider in the front than in the back. I wanted it wide enough so I could put a drawstring in if (I mean WHEN!!) I lose weight. I didn’t want to bother with that now because the skirt stays on just fine as it is.

Ta-da! Finished skirt in roughly 30 minutes. It’s more or less straight at the top and bottom, I’m not skilled enough to round things without a pattern 🙂 I plan to wear this to my husband’s birthday dinner tonight. I’ll have him take some pix of me wearing it and I’ll try to post them tomorrow!

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