More Peeks

Posted by: Paulette

My newest doll is almost complete. Here's some teaser pics.

These pictures were taken before she got her dancing shoes. When she's finished, she'll be up for sale in my Etsy shop.
 

Happy Birthday Dr Seuss!!

Posted by: Paulette

So you may have heard, it's Dr Seuss's birthday on Thursday March 2nd. I jumped the gun and made our green eggs and ham early. We had them with diner tonight, and it's a good thing I got a picture of them, because they were inhaled!

I had way too many. I'm afraid it's the curse of a good cook to be a bit fat fluffy. 

I set a pot of water to boil, with some salt in it. Once the water was boiling, I added each egg, using a pasta spoon, to the pot.
The eggs boiled for about 10 minutes and then I drained off the water and plunged them into ice water. This makes them super easy to peel. 
After peeling all of the eggs  (1 dozen), I put them into some water with green food coloring to sit for about 5 minutes.
 In a medium size bowl I mixed
1/2 cup mayonnaise
1/4 cup Dijon mustard
1/4 tsp sea salt
1/2 cup of sweet pickle relish
3 drops of blue food coloring
 
Cut the eggs lengthwise and scoop the yolks into the bowl, and then stir with a whisk.

Next, I took a quart size zip lock bag and filled it with the paste, and cut a 1/4 inch hole in one corner. Now you can use it like a pastry bag and fill the eggs up.

I had some Black Forest ham slices that I cut into thin ribbons that I used to garnish the deviled eggs with. 
There you have it.

                     GREEN EGGS  &  HAM

I made some jokes about how we should hop on pop while eating dinner, but Dave didn't think that was very funny.
  

Gluten Free Vegan Peach Muffins

Posted by: Paulette

These muffins taste just like a peach cobbler! So delicious.

Gluten Free Vegan Peach Muffins
1 29 oz can sliced peaches in juice
3 cups Pamela's gluten free bread flour
1 cup sugar
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon sea salt
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 cup vanilla soy milk
2 tablespoons ground flax seed
1 tablespoon chia seed
1/4 cup canola oil

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Spray muffin tins with nonstick baking spray or line with papers.

Drain off juice from peaches, and cut them into 1 inch chunks.
Combine gluten free flour, chia seed, ground flax seed, baking powder, salt, sugar, and cinnamon. Mix together with a whisk. 
Add juice from peaches, oil,  and soy milk.
Mix well and then fold in peaches. Spoon into muffin tins about 3/4 of the way full. Bake for 20 minutes.




 

Home Haircuts

Posted by: Paulette

I love to save money! Don't you?
As soon as I got married, I started learning how to cut hair. Since Dave isn't one of those men who really cares about his appearance, I was allowed to mess up some, and he didn't mind.
Now, 13 years later, I cut everyone's hair in our family. Do the math. Even if I was only paying $10 a haircut, that's $60 saved! 

 

 When Katie was 2 years old, the fantasy of having a little girl with Rapunzel hair was over. She hated having her hair combed and styled, and I had another baby to take care of. I took her to the salon and had them give her a short A-line bob. It was adorable on her, and a lot easier to comb through. She still has the same cut, and now I'm brave enough to cut her hair.

Love the volume the layering gives

  

 

 That baby I was talking about earlier, she's now three years old and the princess curls were just too hard to take care of. When Sophia started running from the comb, I decided to cut her hair shorter. She got a shoulder length bob. She lived with it for about a month, and was still running from the comb and crying. Rather than chase her, I decided to give her the same cut as her sister's.
So yesterday the scissors came out again.

Please excuse the snotty face.

 This is wash and wear hair. The only problem now is, I can't tell Sophia and Katie apart from the back.
I learned how to do this cut from Youtube. I just looked for how to cut an A-line.

Sewing For My Girls

Posted by: Paulette

 I've noticed that my girl's clothes have been looking really worn out and dingy lately. I love to dress them in bright pretty clothes. Since I have quite a large stash of fabrics, I thought I'd dig through them and do a bit of stash busting. 

This is a peasant's blouse. It's an easy blouse to put together. I added the pleated ruffle at the bottom and a waistband with a bow to give it some shape. The waistband is bias tape made from the contrasting fabric. 
Then it was sewn to the waist of the blouse about 3 inches from the armhole, and then 1/2" elastic was threaded through. You can find free peasant blouse patterns online.

 

Sneak Peek

Posted by, Paulette

Just a sneak peek at the newest doll I'm working on. She's going to be another ghost girl doll. A ballerina, I am thinking. 

 

 These are just quick shots, and I have to find a new photo editing software that I'm comfortable with, because Picnik is no longer available.

Gluten Free Vegan Strawberry Orange Muffins

Posted by: Paulette

This was meant to be posted on Monday. But you know how life happens! Enjoy.

 

Today I get to spend the day with my family. The kids and hubby are out of school and work for president's day. Usually we rush around in the morning getting everyone ready for school. Not today. Today we slept in, in shifts. The girls were up at the crack of dawn and Dave got up to be with them. I slept in until 8:30. I know. Heaven, right? He went back to bed to catch some more sleep. Poor guy! I kept him up until midnight while I worked on a new doll. 
On days like this, I like to have  a lazy breakfast. So I'm making some gluten free muffins to share. 
I don't usually cook vegan, but on those occasions that we run out of eggs, I'd like to have a little trick up my sleeve. I've done some research and found that you can use ground flax seed in place of the eggs. So I am trying that this morning. Hopefully the muffins will turn out well. Crossing my fingers. 


Gluten Free Vegan Strawberry Orange Muffins



3 cups Pamela's gluten free bread flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 tablespoon chia seed
2 tablespoons ground flax seed
1/2 teaspoon sea salt
1 cup sugar
1 1/2 cups soy milk
1 cup strawberries
1/3 cup canola oil
1/4 cup frozen orange juice


Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Blend together in a blender, soy milk, strawberries, canola oil, and frozen orange juice until smooth. 
In a large bowl, whisk together, GF flour, baking powder, sea salt, ground flax seed, and chia seed.
Add wet ingredients to dry ingredients in the bowl and mix together well. 


Spray (or line with papers) a muffin pan. Spoon the dough by 1/4 cup portions into each section. I use an ice cream scoop.
Bake for 30 minutes. Let cool for 5 minutes in the pan before removing to cooling rack.

Ruffle skirt

Posted by: Paulette

I'm not going to rewrite a tutorial that has already been done so well. I just thought I'd pass on the info about how to make the cute ruffle skirt that Sophi is wearing in out Ghost town pics.

 

Kari wrote the most amazing tutorial over at Ucreate.

You can follow my sewing pin board at pinterest.

 

Ghost Town Fun

Posted by :Paulette
The experiences of the last few weeks has me reevaluating how I spend my time. I am usually such a driven person. I have to get things done. And when I don't I am unsatisfied with my day.

Three weeks ago when I was in the hospital with my father, I was trying to get him to make some goals for the future, and was disappointed when he wouldn't, or couldn't. Speaking to the social worker taught me that sometimes we just need to be. I didn't understand what she meant by that at the time. 

A few weeks later after I'd returned home, I read a post by a blogger who was mourning the sudden death of her 7 year old nephew. I read about what a talented boy he was, and about how close their family was, and I thought that this child had a very full happy life. Even if he was only 7. 

It caused me to think about the time I spend with my own children. I decided that we needed to build more family memories together. And that I needed to live in the moment a little more. 

I didn't dress the kids to match. They wore what ever they wanted. And most of the pictures were not taken while I was yelling at them to "hold still." They were just playing.The pictures were taken in Goldfield, a ghost town in Apache Junction, AZ.

AZ Hold 'em

Burton Desperadoes

Workin' it

Backs against the wall

Come and get me, boys!

Dance Hall Girls

Daddy Daughter Dance

Curiosity

 

Stoppin' for a bite to eat

Gun fight!

" We'll have no more violence in this town!"

Retired shovel heads

The Whole Gang

Sittin' pretty

I'll sit for "one " picture

Next week we've promised the kids that we'll take a picnic to Canyon Lake. More pictures and more memories!

Valentine's Day Decor

Posted by: Paulette

My kids told me that the house doesn't have enough Valentine's Day decorations. I beg to differ.

I think we have plenty of love around here!
 

Organizing the Closet

Posted by: Paulette

I don't have any designer magazine worthy pictures to show you for this project. Just a well organized closet. There are a few things I learned along the way while doing this project. The first one is to wear shoes while moving furniture! 
 Here's my before shots:

All of my sewing and crafting stuff are kept in this closet. Those shelves are pretty well organized. But if you look to the top shelf, you can see stuff just crammed up there, and sometimes ready to topple.

 Unfortunately, this is where we keep stuff that we don't want the kids to get into. It gets thrown up there, and sometimes forgotten. That pile of backpacks on the right are supposed to be the start of emergency 72 hour kits. There was cans of tuna in there from 2006. Eeeew. They need to go somewhere else. And they need to be filled with stuff that will be needed in an emergency, and the food rotated regularly.

 Waaaay too many clothes! I live in Arizona. We basically have two seasons here; hot and cool. It something like Spring, Summer, Spring, Summer. So my off season clothes don't go into storage. And I've lost 50 lbs and regained 20. So I have sizes 12, 14, and 16. I probably won't be fitting into the 12's anytime soon, so those clothes have to go, as do anything that I'm really not that crazy about.

 I' tired of crawling all over the floor to find my shoes. They were supposed to go here:

 This is way in the back of the closet. It's dark and difficult to get to. 
After:

Lesser used things that were in my desk, are now in these baskets. One holds cords for all of our electronics, and the other DVRs and disks.

 One basket holds sweaters. The other holds belts and scarves. The used to be tucked around my room. Now they have their own space in the closet where they belong.

 Gross, right? This is what I meant by wear shoes while moving furniture. I got this great idea to use a bookshelf I had sitting in the garage to put our shoes in. Everything was fine until I tipped it forward just a bit and the shelves came out and broke my toe.

 It was a great idea, though. I'm not going for pretty here. Just functional. Maybe later, I can redecorate the closet. (yeah right!)

 I got rid of 1 1/2 garbage bags full of clothes. Things that hardly ever get pulled out of the closet were put into the small cubby holes I showed earlier, and the back of the closet. There's a filing cabinet in there too, which didn't show up in pictures. I had 9 years worth of stuff to go through and throw out, and I found some stuff tucked behind that, that I'd forgotten about that is going to Goodwill. 
There's also a new box of books that I was able to fit in there. I've cleared off a shelf on the bookshelf in my bedroom for a possible DVD player. I was given a flat screen TV last month. 

The backpacks are in one of our pantries. Yes I have two pantries. During the summer I like to can fruit, so I made the linen closet into a pantry.

Parson's Chair Slipcover

Posted by: Paulette

Someone did me a favor and didn't even know it. They donated part of a matelasse quilt to Goodwill. I love these kinds of quilts! I fell in love with a chair slipcovered in one, and have wanted to do a chair like that. However, when I found the fabric at Goodwill, I didn't know at the time exactly what I was going to do with it. I thought maybe make some pillow covers or something. 

Then one day while trying to get some stains off of the Parson's chair that I use at my desk, I thought, "it would be nice if I could just take the cover off and wash it." Hello! I have just the fabric for that! So I pulled out the fabric and started draping, and cutting, and sewing, and soon I had a new washable cover! I know, it's white, but I can boil it in Oxy Clean. Do you know about this trick? I'll have to tell you about it some other time.

All of the other slipcovers I've made have been using buttons. I envisioned this one being ultra feminine and wanted to use ties. It reminds me of a corset.