July Comes to an End

This has been one of those weeks where we've been out every day. I wouldn't mind so much but I feel bad for Parker having to come with me and sit in his little stroller and/or carseat for so long. He's so good, though! He only starts to get upset once I've hauled him in and out of the car a few times. I'm very thankful for such an easy-going little boy.  :)

Between youth group events, grocery shopping, Bible study, doctor appointments, errands and family visits, it's been a long (but fun!) week. And that wasn't all...
Wednesday we celebrated our 9th anniversary! Our neighbors were kind enough to watch Parker for a couple hours while we went out for dinner. We hadn't had a date night in a few months so it was nice to go out ourselves. We went to one of our favorite new Italian places and had a wonderful meal. And by the sound of it Parker was perfectly happy here, playing with his little friend and eating his own favorite meal of macaroni and cheese.  :)
I was spoiled again, of course, when Kyle presented me with a beautiful purse along with a giftcard for new maternity clothes! I went to the mall the next morning to pick out a couple things. Yes, I have the sweetest guy ever!

The last thing we did this week was go to a baseball game on Saturday. The Dodgers were in town playing the Giants and a big group of Kyle's co-workers and their families were all going. We thought it would be fun to take Parker although we knew his little attention span wouldn't last the entire game. He did pretty well, though. We got lunch as soon as we found our seats and he was content to sit and eat french fries and snacks for a while. Pretty soon he was climbing off and on his chair, looking for something to do. We were able to distract him with a snowcone for a little while but by the 5th inning he was starting to get upset. He calmed down once Kyle pulled out his phone for him to play with. We finally ended up leaving during the 7th inning. But I don't think we missed much, as the Dodgers were up 7-0 when we left. It was a fun day! Even though Parker is too young to watch or understand the game, I'm still happy we took him. You can't beat spending time as a family!

So that was our week...  hopefully August starts out a little less crazy! I'm looking forward to some time at home. And I'm sure Parker is, too.  :)

Carseat Cover

Here's one of the baby items I've been working on. It needs one little finishing touch, but I can't do it until we unpack our carseat...which won't be for a few months.

It's a pattern I found on pinterest and I was very happy to have come across it. It can be a hassle trying to keep a carseat covered with a blanket without it falling off (or being pulled off by a nosey bystander). Annoying. This looked like a better idea since it attaches to the carseat handle and the sides can be completely closed in. It'll be perfect for when baby is sleeping or when we're out in bad weather.

Here's the website where I downloaded the pattern. The one shown is made from fleece but I chose to make mine from a double layer of flannel instead. The pattern is free, although it's pretty large so the pieces have to be cut out and then tiled/taped together. The flannel I used for the lining wasn't quite wide enough, so I had to sew a couple strips onto the sides so the pattern would fit.




For the outside I found white flannel with pink and brown dots. I used plain brown on the inside and put pink piping cord around the edge. It probably would have looked better with light pink lining on the inside but I thought if baby was sleeping, a darker color may help block out the light more.


It was my first time sewing piping and I didn't know how hard it would be. But the pattern showed how to do it and it's super easy--thank goodness!  :)

Since I don't have our carseat available I had to guess somewhat on where the straps should go. Once they were sewed on I asked my neighbor if I could come over and try it on their baby's seat. It fit perfectly! The 'finishing touch' I mentioned earlier is adding velcro or snaps to the sides below the handle so it can be closed more securely. But I'll wait on that so I can fit it to our own carseat.

I wish we had one of these when Parker was born! He was a Fall baby and we hated having to carry him around in the rain. At least his little sister will stay dry.  :)

Makeup Bag

My most recent sewing project was a makeup bag!  I made one last week at my July sewing class and it was kind of fun so I made another, smaller one.

The blue and black one has a handle and is just big enough to hold my wallet, phone and keys so it's a great little 'purse' to grab when I have to go on a quick errand. And I love that I can hook it over the stroller handle when I'm out with Parker.

The red one is the perfect size to tuck into my regular purse to hold eye drops, hair accessories, etc.

Our sewing instructor kept saying she loves making sets of these for gifts. May have to keep that in mind for later!  :)  I guess that's all for now... I've also been working on a couple baby items that I want to post, but I'm not quite finished yet so I'll wait on those!

Meatballs

I made spaghetti for dinner tonight and thought I'd share a little something I learned about making meatballs.  :) The recipe says to bake them on a cookie sheet and turn them while they're cooking. I've done it this way, but they still get flat and a little overcooked on each side you put them on. Not to mention they're a bit greasy.



So last time I made meatballs I tried a different way to cook them. I set a wire cooling rack on top of the cookie sheet and placed the raw meatballs on the rack.






That way worked SO much better! The heat can circulate all around them so they don't need to be turned, meaning they came out round and evenly cooked.








And I like that the meatballs aren't sitting/cooking in a puddle of grease--it all drips down into pan. Look at what was left on the cookie sheet after I took the rack off... disgusting, right?



Here's the meatball recipe I normally use. It's from Taste of Home's Quick Cooking magazine. The recipe makes between 30-40 meatballs, depending on how big you like them. And, of course, I recommend MY cooking method ahead of hers.   :)

Make-Ahead Meatballs

1 egg

1/2 cup dry bread crumbs

2 Tbsp. finely chopped onion

3/4 tsp. salt

1/2 tsp. worcestershire sauce

1 lb. ground beef

Combine all ingredients and mix thoroughly. Shape meat into 1-inch balls and place in a single layer on an ungreased baking pan. Bake at 400 degrees for 10-15 minutes or until no longer pink, turning often while cooking. Drain on paper towels.   

So that's my little cooking tip for the day! Hope it was helpful to somebody reading!

This last picture was one I took for fun while making dinner. The larger, regular sized bell pepper was from the store and the little one next to it was picked from our garden. Isn't it cute?  :)

Patriotic Sweets

Since the 4th of July is coming up, I wanted to make some kind of patriotic treats for our youth Sunday school class. I wanted something non-messy that they could either eat in class or take home with them. I'd recently seen chocolate-dipped rice krispie treats covered in sprinkles online somewhere and thought they looked fun, so I made some on Saturday!

It seemed easier (and cheaper) to buy individual rice krispie treats rather than make them, so I picked up a few boxes of those along with melting chocolate and red, white and blue sprinkles. I already had cello bags and ribbon at home.

Dipping them turned out to be a bit harder than I thought! I wanted to leave the ends plain so they could stand up while the chocolate set. That way they'd have a nice coating with sprinkles on each side and would look pretty. But dipping them into warm chocolate made the marshmallow even softer and they'd start to bend or squish a little while I was holding the end. I got out a corn cob skewer and tried holding it with that instead. It worked a little better, but I had to work fast or the krispie treat would still start to bend or stretch apart.

Finally I had them all covered and sprinkled! To make it easy for the kids to take home, I placed each one in a little clear treat bag and tied it with a ribbon. I used red, white and blue ribbon to match the sprinkles  :)

 I love holiday-themed sweets! I've found some other fun ideas recently that I want to try. Ones like this are so easy to make but people think you spent a lot of time on them. Of course, I don't bother to tell them otherwise...a good cook never reveals secrets, right?  :)

Cloth Napkins

My June sewing class was yesterday. The project this month was cloth napkins which seems like a simple thing, but I was very excited to learn how to make them! We use cloth napkins every so often but ours are really plain--just a normal edge that's been turned under twice and straight-stitched. I always look at the embroidered linen ones in the store and think they're pretty, although I can't bring myself to pay $10 per napkin. So I was happy to learn how to make my own. And all it took was some nice thick fabric and a wing needle for my sewing machine.

My first choice of fabric was linen but at this store it was a little out of my price range. Instead I opted for the alternate fabric they recommended, which was a thick essex cotton. After we cut out the squares, our instructor showed us how to press the edges to make a perfect mitered corner (also something I didn't know how to do!). Once the napkins were pressed, I sewed a simple stitch on the back along the raw edge to hold it down. Then I swapped needles and put the wing needle in and sewed around the top side of the napkin, over the first seam, using one of the decorative stitches on my machine. Done!

The instructor showed us all what some of the most common stitches are, but we had to play with them a little on scrap fabric to see which ones we liked. We found out that stitches can look completely different depending on the fabric used.

I liked the way her sample linen napkin looked, so I tried the same stitch on my cotton one and it looked NOTHING like hers. So I tried a few different ones until I found a pattern I liked, then I sewed it around my napkins. I made a set of four. They're navy with navy thread, so it's a little hard to see detail in the pictures, but here is how they looked when finished:

I didn't know they were so easy to make! It takes a little while to sew the decorative stitching around them, but they're so pretty when finished. I'm thinking this might be a fun idea for Christmas gifts!

Doll Diaper Bag

Parker's little friend turned two this week and we were invited out to a small local park/zoo to celebrate with her. It was a fun day! We saw a few animals, fed and pet some goats and then went on a couple rides. Parker was a bit scared on the carousel, but he LOVED the second ride--a ring of tiny fire engines and police cars that went slowly around in a circle. I buckled him into one of the fire engines and stepped back, expecting him to freak out once the ride started. But when it started to move he looked up with a grin and began turning the steering wheel and ringing the bell! It was the cutest thing ever to see him riding in that little car all by himself!   :)  He would look up at us and smile every time he went around. There weren't many people there so when the ride ended we got in line again and he got right back on. And then we did it again and again....and again! He was having a blast. Poor little guy...I felt bad when we finally decided to leave. I'm sure he could have happily stayed there all day! I think all the excitement wore him out, though. On our way home Parker was in the car for only five minutes before he crashed. Kyle carried him straight in to his bed and he didn't even wake up. That never happens!

We were happy we could help celebrate Kaylee's big day! I wanted to make her something for her birthday, but the week before was so busy that I never got a chance to work on it. My idea was to make her a doll diaper bag, something I had seen on Pinterest and thought it was just too cute! The picture was from a blog though, and that's all it was--just a picture. She didn't have a pattern or tutorial for it. I know because I emailed the author to ask.  :)  She was very nice and wrote back saying she had found a pattern for a regular bag and tweaked it to make it the size she wanted. Made sense. She gave me a few measurements to try. I'm not sure if this is actually the "pattern" she used or if she was just trying to be helpful. Here were the measurements she suggested:

back: 10x7
front: 10x7
flap: 10x7
sides: 4x7
bottom: 4x10
handle: 4x?? (depends how big your child is!)

Not having anything else to go on, I pulled out an old piece of cotton and cut out the pieces listed. I cut out a second set of pieces for the inside lining. Wouldn't hurt to sew a practice one and see how it turned out. I didn't take pictures of that first one I made, but it turned out pretty well. There was something about the size I wasn't completely happy with so, like the blogger, I made some slight adjustments. I didn't make another practice one, but when I cut out Kaylee's bag I changed the dimensions a little. I also added an elastic pocket on each outside end and a couple more pockets inside. I figured her doll would need a lot of accessories.  :)

I wanted the bag to have some stiffness so it would stand up on it's own so I lined the whole thing with fleece. Aside from cutting out the pieces, sewing the bag only took a couple of hours--I was able to sew it all during Parker's nap. Here's how it turned out:

I had a little extra time, so I cut out a matching changing pad and a few wipes. The wipes are squares of muslin. I used pinking shears to cut them out and left the edges raw. The changing pad is reversible, with one side matching the bag and the other side a coordinating solid. And I sewed a ribbon in one end to wrap around and tie it.

I picked up a magic bottle, a sippy cup and a mini fork and spoon to go inside, too. Here's the finished bag with all the accessories:

Considering I didn't have a pattern to go on, I was pretty happy with how it turned out! If our next baby is a girl, I know what one of her future Christmas gifts will be!  :)