Choose Your Own Adventure: A Scarf Tutorial

On the first day of Christmas my true love gave to me...a partridge in a pear tree, but what I really wished he'd given me was a scarf.  These Nebraska winters are COLD!!

Being from sunny California originally I've never had need of a scarf until I came face to face with my first Nebraska winter.  Talk about cold.  I never realized how cold my nose and ears could get.  Regrettably I was forced to purchase my first scarf and I find I actually quite like to wear them now.  I have several sarapis, or old lady wraps as my hubby calls them, in all different colors.  I don't care if I look like an old lady, they keep me warm.

With winter now in full swing I thought I would learn to make my own scarves and make one each for my nieces.

To learn how to make an infinity scarf proceed to Infinity Scarf.  To learn how to make a regular old scarf proceed to DIY Garden Variety Scarf.

Infinity Scarf

Dead End. :(  Unfortunately for me, but good news for you all the tutorials I could find were for making an infinity scarf.  However, I just wanted to make a regular old scarf.   Click here for one such tutorial.

DIY Garden Variety Scarf 

Step 1:  Choose a fabric, something with good pliability.  Unfortunately for monkey girl I picked a nice crisp cotton fabric for her scarf because I knew she would love the plaid pattern, but as it turns out it is not very pliable.  I'm hoping it will get softer with washing. 

Step 2:  Cut said fabric to the desired length and width, making sure to add seam allowance around the edges.  To save yourself time go to substep A.

• A:  Cut your fabric on the fold to save yourself the time of doing two side seams.

Step 3:  With right sides together sew the side seam or seams together.  

To create a fringe look at the ends of the scarf go to step A.  To make a tapered or squared off look to the ends go to step B.

• A:  Turn the tube of fabric right side out.  Iron the fabric and seams flat then sew each end closed three to four inches from the edge.  Then cut vertical slits in the end pieces up to your stitch line for fringe.
  
• B:  Sew one end closed and the other 2/3rds closed.  Turn right side out and either ladder stitch the opening closed or top stitch both sides to hide the closure.

This brings us to the end of our adventure.  Hopefully your scarf turned out as nicely as both of mine.  I hope the girls like them.  Wish me luck.

DIY Dream Catcher

A scream catches in my throat and I sit up in bed, heart racing, eyes wide open.  Beads of sweat drip down my forehead as I look back and forth trying to reconcile the images from my dream...no, nightmare... with the reality of my bedroom. 

If you are anything like me this was a common occurrence for you.  I would have given anything to be rid of those horrible dreams that seem so real while you are asleep.  Once I found out my beautiful nieces sometimes have  nightmares too I thought I would make them one of these, a dream catcher. 

According to Native American culture, dream catchers sort of filter your dreams letting the good ones slip through and catching the bad ones in the web which perish with the first rays of a new day. 

 DIY Dream Catcher

 

 

There are quite a few tutorials out there and not a few pins on this subject as well, but none of the ones I saw really spelled it out the way this you tube video did.  So for a really great video to follow click here.

Step 1:  You will need a metal or other type of hoop, some string or twine for the outside and also some yarn or thread for the inner design.  Optionally you will also need beads or tokens and some feathers.

This is a small metal bangle I bought at the dollar store.  I also found some larger ones at the craft store for really cheap.
 

 

Start off by tying your twine, thread, or in my case some ribbon I had lying about, to your hoop with a standard knot.  You should even double knot it to be sure it doesn't come undone.

 

Step 2:  Start winding your ribbon around and around the hoop, covering all the space with your ribbon.  Note:  it really helps to have your ribbon in a little ball like this so you can easily throw it through the hoop as you go.  As you can see I balled up the ribbon and held it with a hair tie.

 

Here I am half way through.  It took a long time with ribbon and even longer when I did the second one with embroidery floss.  Don't give up, the end result is totally worth it.

 

 

Step 3:  You should now have the hoop completely covered all around.  Once back to the beginning, you will tie both ends together with a knot and you can even create a loop for hanging as I did by tying a knot at the top of the ribbon as well. 

 

Now to start on the inner web design you will need to take your thread or yarn and tie a knot at the top part of the hoop.  This will be the light purple (looks pink) floss in the picture below.

Step 4:  Placing a finger width (or however much you want the space to be for the webbing) between the floss, wrap the floss over the hoop like so.

Bring the floss over and under the hoop and back up through your web.

Pull it tight and you should have a pseudo knot and the beginnings of your web like so.

Repeat, repeat, repeat all the way around back up to the top where you started.  If you can't quite grasp what I mean by my picture then please refer to the video above.  It really does have wonderful instructions.  This is what it should look like up to this point.

Step 5:  You will now repeat the process, but instead of going over and under the hoop you will be going over and under the threading for the outer ring of your web.  Note:  for added flare you can slip some beads or buttons, etc. on the thread as you go.  As a beginner I just wanted to see if I could do it before getting all fancy.

 

Hope that was clear.  This is what the second ring looks like.  The tighter you pull your thread the better.
 

Now keep repeating the process around and around creating ever more rings of webbing until you can't do anymore.  Then simply tie off the last bit with a knot in the center of your work.  Here is what it looks like.
 

 

Now that the basic dream catcher is made, it's time to attach some dangling feathers.  Simply use the thread to tie a knot around the top of the feather and then attach it with a knot to the dream catcher.  I hung two at different lengths.
 

Here is what the finished product looked like. 

Turned out pretty nice.  I hope it works.  Wish me luck.


 

Operation Make My Sister Feel Better

If there is one thing I'm good at, it's making people feel better.  And in my family there always seems to be someone in need of cheering up.  This time it was my sister.  So even though she hung up on me and told me not to come over, I did anyway.  

Commence operation Make My Sister Feel Better.  

The first thing to do when trying to cheer someone up is really think about the things that make them happy.  For my sister that often involves food or Blistex.  So I ran to the store first thing to pick up the ingredients for her favorite meal, steak and cheesy potatoes.  

For the steak you need the best, fillet Mignon which incidentally is hard to find here in Omaha.  I did indeed find some, but it was outrageously expensive and not of very good quality, but it did the trick.  While picking up some potatoes for the cheesy potatoes I passed by the flower section and noticed some uber cheep roses on sale.  What girl wouldn't want to come home and find roses on the kitchen table?  No brainer here, I picked them up and strolled on over to the check stand.

Now before I give you the recipe for this lovely steak marinade I will just say that I don't usually measure things I just pour this in, give it a dash of that, etc.  so bear with me as I try to be as precise as possible.

What you will need (guesstimated amounts):

Fillet Mignon (6oz steaks are a good size) butterflied

1-2 large bottles (16-24oz?) Kikiman's Teriyaki Marinade

2-3 Tbsp Season Salt

1-2 Tbsp Garlic Powder

1-2 Tbsp Onion Powder

2 Tbsp Peppercorns

2-3 Tbsp Honey (optional)

Step 1:  Remove the fat from your meat (keep in mind that a good marbling of the meat is what you want and is not to be cut off as fat), butterfly, and lightly score it to allow for better absorption of the marinade.

Step 2:  Prepare the marinade.  I usually use a marinader, but you could just as easily put the mix into a Ziploc bag.  Pour in enough of the Teriyaki Marinade to cover the steaks, I usually end up using one to two large bottles for four steaks.  Then add your seasonings.  Here is where I just pour away.  You want a good amount of seasoning but don't go overboard.  Throw in a good amount of peppercorns for spice and if you like your marinade sweet add a good amount of honey or brown sugar.  I use honey, probably about two to three tablespoons.

Step 3:  Put the meat into the marinade and marinate for at least 24hours, flipping the meat halfway through.  Note that if you like just a light flavor I would marinate for less time.  The stronger you want the flavor, the longer you would leave it in the marinade.

Step 4:  Pull the meat out of the marinade and grill for best flavor, or pan fry if need be.  Sister likes hers pan fried so that is what we did.  We fried it in some of the marinade for more flavor.

Step 5:  You can also make up some extra marinade to dip your steak if you like extra flavor.  Simply pour some of your marinade into a small saucepan and simmer until slightly thickened.  Serve alongside your meat.

We usually eat our steak with some cheesy potatoes, a family recipe that I will not be giving out today anyway, but you can serve it with any kind of vegetable or potato.  Have fun hope you enjoy the recipe.  Wish me luck in future operations.

DIY Purse From a Pair of Jeans

The Holidays are around the corner and it's time to start thinking about what to get your loved ones for Christmas. I've seen these cool pins on Pinterest on how to make a purse out of an old pair of jeans and I thought, what little girl wouldn't love a purse that looks like jeans. 

Lucky for me I just so happened to have an old pair of jeans and random fabric laying around for the lining. 

Let's get started. 

Here are the sites I used for inspiration:

Site 1, Site 2

DIY Purse From a Pair of Jeans

Step 1:  Line up the waistline front and back, then iron out all the creases. Pin the waistline together so it stays lined up. 

Step 2:  Cut across the jeans just above the crotch line. I whipped out the quilting ruler and marked a line across for better accuracy. 

It should look like this when you are done.

Now looking at this pic you might be thinking that this will make an awfully large purse. Of course those over large satchel purses are kind of in right now, but I decided to make two smaller purses instead. So yeah my butt is big enough to make two purses. Depressing. But on the bright side I get two purses for the price of one. Oh yeah. 

So here I deviated from the other tutorials and cut the jean in half right up the middle so that I could turn it into two purses. Like this.

Back side. 

Then front side. I cut on either side of the zipper on the front cuz I didn't know what to do with it.

Okay now that I have my pieces it's time to make a lining and sew it all together. 

Step 3:  Make a lining by placing your jeans cut-out on top of your lining fabric and cut it out. I left room all around for seam allowance. 

Not sure if you can tell but I lined it up on the fold so there was less to sew later. 

Step 4:  Next up with right sides together sew the sides and bottom of your jeans. Then repeat with the lining. 

You can make a turn by leaving the needle down in the fabric, lifting the pressed foot up then rotating the fabric. Make sure to lower the presser foot before you start sewing again. 

If you want to box the corners like I did, make a triangle in the bottom corners and stitch across.

Repeat on other side and also for the lining. Here they are both done. 

Step 5:  Turn your jean purse right side out and place the lining as is inside of the jeans purse. 

About here is where I realized I had made the lining too big, but as it turns out it looked super cute folded over the top of the bag so I went with it. Just to make it nice I took the lining back out and hemmed the top for a finished look. 

Then I reinserted it. 

Step 6:  Make a strap.  Using the pant leg of the jeans cut out two identical strips.  Yeah this took me awhile because let's face it, I tried to save some time and cut a few corners.  Long story short, take your time and do it right.  I also realized here that the jeans fabric is too tough to easily turn right side out for a strap so...just make finished edges anyway you know how or use another type of fabric.

 

Once you have your strap made it's time to sew the lining and strap to the bag.  With the lining wrong side out place it inside your bag and fold the top down over the bag as seen below.  Then place the strap ends under the lining wherever you want them and pin in place.  This way the raw edges will be concealed under the fold of the lining top.

 

 

As seen above one side of the strap has been placed under the lining fold.  This is where I started stitching around the bag following the hemline on the lining fold.  Stitch all the way around the bag, don't forget to insert the other end of the strap in its place if you didn't already do that. 

 

 

 

It should look like this when finished.  Not gonna lie, the first one took me about two hours and I made a few mistakes, but I was able to whip out the second one in like ten to fifteen minutes.

 

Here they are together.  One for each niece.  Now I just need to grab some accoutrements to decorate them with and let the girls have at it.

 

Next up I'm gonna make them some scarves for the cold weather.  Wish me luck.

Groot Cupcakes

I've never actually squeaked like they do in books.  You know, the part where the character goes, "eek!" as they stumble upon something surprising or grotesque.  Well today that all changed.  Deciding to bake some cupcakes today I grabbed my mixer and reached my hand in to pull out the attachments only to let out a high pitched, "eek!" as my hand almost encountered the large spider living therein.  I mean I know it's been awhile since I've baked, but that's a bit over the top to have cobwebs and spiders taking up residence in my mixing bowl.  Gross.

After calling the hubby in to take care of that mess, I set to making some cupcakes.  Not just any cupcakes, but super moist, special cupcakes decorated all fancy like.  At least that was how I imagined it in my head. 

Before I get ahead of myself, let's just start at the beginning.  It all started with a poker player at the casino where I work.  He's a super hero fanatic.  You can bet that whatever the new movie out is he will have seen it the first day and come in wearing a t-shirt commemorating some character from the movie, complete with a figurine super hero as his card protector.  I look forward to seeing which one he will bring in next.  

So in honor of one of my favorite poker players I decided to make a cupcake commemorating my favorite super hero, Baby Groot.  I saw this super cute pin detailing how to make Groot cupcakes and I couldn't resist.

How to make Groot Cupcakes

Update:  either I had a saboteur in the middle of the night or my cookies were too soft. :( this is what I found when I woke up the next morning. 

Tips from my mom should you be so daring as too try it out yourself. Chill your dough and your frosting first to make it easier on yourself. Apparently this makes it easier to separate the other dough from your cut out. Also go for a hard cookie so they don't break as easily. 

Good luck. Be sure to share your experiences. And just remember, they don't always turn out like you envision but it's still fun to try and you usually learn something for future attempts. 

Step 1:  Make super moist, awesome cupcakes.

I don't know about you, but my cupcakes always come out dry and there is nothing worse than a dry cupcake.  Groot deserved better so I added a couple of things to the store bought cake mix to make my cupcakes extry moist.  

How to make a cake mix tastes like a homemade cake.

There is nothing like saving time, so I spiffed up a cake mix with a few extra items to make it a bit more moist and yummy.  

-Add an extra egg, check

-Use melted butter (twice the amount) instead of oil making sure to cool it to room temp first, check

-Use milk instead of water, check

 

Well that was easy, right?  Let me know if any of you have any better suggestions or some tips on this one that I might have missed.

After whipping up the cake mix, I then poured the batter into my lined cupcake tins, all I had were small little heart shaped ones, awwwww.  Or some really big circular ones.  I opted for the heart shaped ones and started cooking.  

Twenty three minutes and an awesome smelling house later I pulled out my first batch of cupcakes and boy did they look good.  For the first thirty seconds, then they started collapsing in on themselves.  Rut row.  What to do now?  Any ideas as to why this happened?  My best guess is that maybe I whipped the batter too long in the mixer creating too much air in the batter.

Arggg, so much for pretty cupcakes.  A little deflated and two batches later, I decided to just pour the rest of the batter into the big circular cupcake tin, making three large cupcakes just to get it over with.  Next up, make the shortbread Groot cookies.

Step 2:  Make the Groot-shaped shortbread cookies.

You can find a great tutorial for it here.  

You can use any recipe for shortbread you want, I used a family recipe.  Just butter, sugar, and flour.  So fattening, yet so good.  I made the dough as usual then floured a cutting board and rolled out my dough to about 1/4" in thickness.  Using a picture of baby Groot I printed from the Internet, I used the cut out as a stencil to cut out little baby Groots in the dough.  

Easier said than done as I was soon to find out.  This step was very tedious and hard to separate from the rest of the dough.  It worked better actually to just cut out a cross shape first, transfer it to the cookie sheet and then carve the figure a little better.  It was still horribly tedious and I gave up after about seven.

Then throw the cookies into the oven for 20 minutes at 350 degrees.

Step 3:  Ice your cupcakes and decorate Groot.

Okay, not gonna lie my baby Groots came out horrible, the cupcakes looked terrible and by this point I was sick and tired of making these things.  I found out today that I just don't have the patience for decorating or making super fabulous cupcakes.  Maybe if I had broken it down into separate steps on different days I could have done better, but today just sucked.  

Luckily for me at least one cupcake and Groot came out okay, but the rest are gonna get trashed.  Maybe I will try again when I have a little more patience and perfect these babies.  Wish me luck.