Saturday, June 13, 2015

Two Birthdays, Three Cakes

Not a bad ratio, huh?

Today was Mom's birthday so we went on the Enchanted Gardens of Northwest Denver Tour (benefiting the Conflict Center) and toured Proctor's Garden (benefiting Denver Dumb Friends League). Clarity spent the day with Daddy and went to the Mini Maker's Faire at DMNS.


Since we were going to be out in the sun all day, I started Balsamic Roast Beef Dip Sandwiches in the crockpot in the morning. This was a new recipe and is going into the regular rotation. It was extremely good.

Now on to the cake - Southern Coconut Cake, also a new (now beloved) recipe. Delicious. FYI if you try it, I didn't bother to use cake flour and ran out of coconut flavoring. The cake only ended up with 2t and the frosting didn't have any. I did use coconut milk instead of regular milk in the buttercream frosting. Used organic sweetened small flake coconut on the outside and didn't toast it. Still turned out plenty coconutty.



At the end of May, Clarity's 2nd birthday came and we had our "small family get together". Over 20 adults and 8 kids for our family parties now. Love it! That many people called for two cakes because running out of cake is a birthday disaster. 



Raspberry-Laced Vanilla Cake has raspberry liqueur in the buttercream frosting instead of milk. This is a very good idea.
Chocolate strawberry cake was this frosting  (used semisweet chocolate chips) and some random chocolate dump cake recipe. I frosted the bottom layer then added a couple cups of strawberries, lightly mashing about half of them and adding the rest chopped. I frosted the bottom of the second layer before putting it on to keep the cake from soaking up strawberry juice. After frosting the cake, I decorated with some more sliced strawberries. It worked well. The strawberries were sweet enough without any added sugar and the frosting also wasn't over sweet.

Other birthday pictures...



(Aunt Pauline has made each of the girls a beautiful quilt. She brought Juniper's over at Clarity's party. It's the "Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear" jump rope rhyme - love it!!!)

Tuesday, February 3, 2015

Marigold

 The Denver Waldorf School auction is coming up so I made an 18" dressing doll to donate. I was making my own pattern and she ended up chubbier than I expected so she reminds me of a mischievous toddler. I'm going to make another soon to try for more elementary age proportions. Her hair is a worsted weight wool yarn and a boucle mixed, pulled through a crochet cap and sewn into two puffy ponytails with bangs.

Marigold has a cashmere sweater (upcycled from an old adult sweater), with hand embroidery around the cuffs and collar. Her wool felt button also has a flower embroidered on it and matches her embroidered wool shoes.
A light cotton shirt and shorts have elastic at the neck and waist so she's easy to dress.

A little freehand design with white flannel and fusible velcro fasteners for her little diaper.

(Mostly) Holiday Handmades 2014

I wasn't very inspired this year but was pretty happy with the results of what did get made.

An hour on pinterest found lots of felt food ideas to go with the play kitchen my nephew was getting for Christmas. In me fashion, I took the ideas, didn't actually follow much of the how-tos and just went for it. There ended up being a bit of a theme of "fasteners". I was mulling some sort of pea pods with button peas that "pop out" through button holes to continue the theme but didn't get there. 
( I didn't get a picture of the bag of "popcorn" but it was based on this tutorial, although I just used one layer of felt and a little stuffing. They are stored in a red and white striped drawstring bag.) 
 

The slices were from this tutorial and then I just winged the peel. It closes with velcro.


The banana zips into its peel. I got to use another of the grandmother's never ending zipper stash. After the banana was made, I just pinned and sewed darts in the peel to get the right shape. Pain in the neck and worth making an actual pattern if I was making more than one but I was happy with the result.


Not for the holidays but a new baby got an owl sweater from Penny Straker's famous pattern. It's been years since I made one of these and it was fun revisiting an old friend.


Apparently having a preschooler entails very frequent birthday parties. One morning I was lacking a 3 year old birthday gift so a last minute baby carrier was made for one of my cuddle dolls to be a mommy to a jingle baby.



Quentin's main gift was a beginning blacksmith class series through Sarqit Outdoor School but I felt that he needed a little something homemade. This is a magnetic screw holder bracelet based on this tutorial. (Warning: The author of that DIY rambles a lot and doesn't have sewing experience - which she admits at great length.) I followed the general idea but used just a heavy twill from my stash for the fabric, skipped the rivets, and used fusible velcro instead of sewing it on. 
Harbor Freight carries the super strong tiny magnets so I didn't have to pay shipping from an online vendor. If you needed 100 of them online would be a better deal but not so much for 10.  
It's handy we had a pile of vent pipe from the in progress laundry room available for the metal and that Q just bought a nice new set of tin snips. I love the way cutting with tin snips feels, kind of smooth and buttery. I need to find more projects that give me an excuse to use them. 
My freehand attempt at a little sashiko style stitching finished off an otherwise extremely drab object. I went for "manly" looking embroidery so that's okay, right? ;)


I had the treat of going to a workshop at Fancy Tiger in November to make a pair of reversible Overmost overalls (by Deborah Moebes at Whipstitch). They're fully reversible with the Michael Miller owls on one side and a small wale gray corduroy on the other. Sewing without any child interruptions for 3 hours was quite the mini-vacation. I was also reassured that I haven't truly become less competent but that all those interruptions at home do just sap concentration.


Willow needed new indoor slippers. I buy premade sheepskin lined suede soles for these. The uppers are cashmere from thrift store sweaters.


Both girls got thrummed mittens. (One of Willow's is turned inside out in the picture to illustrate what "thrumming" is.) I made a the smallest size in the pattern for Willow and they're still too big for her. I modified the Clare's to make them smaller with no thumbs. Willow likes borrowing Clare's. Oh well.

I've been trying to use up a bunch of yarn from my stash and have designed several new hats so I'll have to coerce my model soon (preschoolers can be quite finicky about such things) and post patterns. Nothing fancy but still fun - a lacy swirl, a tricorner pompom hat, and kitty ears.