Crafting for new baby

A new addition is due to come any day. (or at least I am hoping any day soon)  While I wait for her arrival I've kept myself busy doing some crafting. As always I am a procrastinator so I've felt like I am rushing through projects. There are also lot of other things I'd like to make but know I won't have time to do it.

Here are some of the projects I've finished already.

One of my mommy groups this hat was talked about so I decided that I have to hurry and make one before she is born. It is a cabbage patch hair hat. I can't wait to put it on her. May just have to make some more in different colors and styles.

I am a HUGE hello kitty fan therefore of course new baby will need her own hat. 

I made an owlie sleep sack for my son and I loved putting him in it when he was small. I knew I wanted to make another one for this new baby. I've had this yarn around for awhile and I have a lot of it so that's why I went with it. I think if I could do it over I would of just done a solid pink or purple color. 

To go with the Hello Kitty hat I had to make a matching little dress. The dress is crocheted also in matching HK colors.  Can't wait to see how she looks in this. 

Pom Pom hats seem to be the "in" thing to do so yes I jumped on the band wagon and knit up a super easy hat and added the black/pink pom poms. 

 I love this heart blanket pattern from Fibertrends. Sadly I did have one row that goofed up the entire blanket but while it may not be perfect I am sure the new baby will love it. Knit in a cotton/acrylic blend it should keep her nice and toasty.

I'm hoping to try and maybe get a couple other yarn crafts done. I do have a small list of sewing projects I'd like to do before she is born but dragging out my sewing machine does not sound very appealing right now.

Crafting for a baby girl is so fun as there is just SO many things one can make. It's definitely a lot of fun!

My daughter's vision of My Little Pony Costume

For Halloween this year my daughter wanted to be a My Little Pony. I tried looking around the internet and local store for a ready made costume but 1) couldn't find any locally and 2) the price just seemed too high online.

So what did I do in this case? I got creative. I went to youtube and pinterest to look up My Little Pony costume ideas.

Over one weekend we went to a local thrift shop to try and see what we could find. While we couldn't find any My Little Pony Costumes we did find some items that could be put together to make her vision a reality. Her costume idea is based on the character, Flutterbye.

Found this dress. While the dress didn't fit her she liked the bottom half quite a bit. I figured that I would cut the top part off and use the tulle skirt. To make my life less complicated (meaning less sewing and altering) ended up cutting the skirt and adding some of the pink fleece to the back of it for a tie.

Found the perfect yellow top for the top portion of her skirt. It is just a plain yellow cotton shirt.  The shirt was not altered at all. What I did was cut the tulle part off of the sleeves of the above dress and just safety pinned it to the shoulders of this top to add just a little decoration.

For the tail I found this pink fleece scarf.  All I did was cut this scarf up into long strips and sewed the seam together to make the tail. The tail was then sewed on to the very bottom of the top.

For the ears I just used a pink child's headband and fleece. I used this tutorial for the ears. Super easy and quick!

We bought wings at a local store and wa la costume completed. On the day of Halloween parties and Halloween we sprayed her hair with some pink hair color and she was all set. She was very happy with the costume and it was very budget friendly! Here is the finished look!

Altered Hello Kitty Binder

The other night I was thinking to myself how I needed a quick crafty project to do. I decided on making an altered notebook binder which I can easily carry around. I am a Hello Kitty fan and I love incorporating her into my crafts.

So I have a couple of these binders which have been sitting around for awhile. I picked them up at the kinokuniya stationary store in Japantown a few years ago. I do remember that they were on clearance. I originally had planned on using them to keep track of my knitting projects, but my knitting slowed down a lot. Anyways here is the binder before being altered:

                               Front View:

                           Side View:
                                      
                                        

I wasn't sure if I wanted to use some type of Hello Kitty themed paper and decorate with stickers or to use fabric. Then I happened to look over at this one section of my desk and saw my Hello Kitty duct tape. Perfect!!!!!

So basically all i did was cut strips and pretty much just taped all around the binder on the inside and the outside. I felt then that I needed something to help break up the busyness of all the HK heads so I added a few stickers to the front.

Here is what the end result looked like:

I am still a big fan of writing things down, so I have scraps of paper all over the place. (Yes I know we live in the digital age, but you know sometimes these electronics just don't always work when we want or need them to. ) Sometimes I need to have these notes with me so I decided that I'd keep this in my binder, but where would I put them??

Well I decided to make a little pocket on the inside. This was super simple to make. I took an old envelope from throw away mail and just cut the sides to fit and then I took the Hello Kitty tape and taped it in the inside cover. I then added a couple more stickers and wham a cute completed inside pocket.

So that pretty much completes my project. I enjoyed making it and am glad to share it.

New Obsession-Nail Polish

I've always enjoyed painting my nails but sometimes it just feels like a lot of work therefore I never really keep up with it. Well now I'm back on the wanting to paint my nails kick. With the discovery of pinterest and nail blogs I have rekindled my interest in trying my hand at some different type of nail art.

 For now I am just keeping it simple and hopefully in the future try new things. China glaze is one of the very popular brands that I have finally gotten to try. I will admit I had never wanted to really try the higher or well known brands, therefore just sticking with some of the inexpensive store brands. Well after trying China Glaze I have been converted. Below is my first time using China Glaze. The main color is called Dorothy Who? from the Wizard of Oz collection. The tip is done with glistening snow from the Holiday 2012 collection. I used 3 coats for each color and topped it off with Seche Vite topcoat.

Bottom line is I LOVE this look. I am in love with the Wizard of Oz collection and the Holiday 2012 collection.

Stuffed Bell Peppers

When I was out grocery shopping last week there was a great sale on green bell peppers that I couldn't resist. I had not had stuffed bell peppers in so long and when I saw them I knew I had to pick some up.

People ask me for recipes for some of the dishes I make and I always feel bad because I don't have exact recipes. The way I cook I don't always follow recipes and I don't always measure. (In fact I hardly ever measure if I am making something out of the blue) I am a type of cook that kind of wings it as I go along. I know what my family likes therefore I add/omit many things. ( A dash here, a handful there, you get the picture)

I've decided if I want to try and blog some of my dishes that I should at least try and keep a log of the ingredients and their measurements. (note i said try)

Anyways here is an estimation of ingredients and cooking times.

Ingredients: (for this dish was)

6 green bell peppers
approx 1 lb of ground beef
6 cloves of garlic, minced
1 box of rice a roni (prepared as instructed on box)
1 can diced tomatoes, drain the juice
1/4 of an onion, diced
6 small to medium mushrooms
1 - 1.5 cups of shredded cheese (your choice)
1/2 cup black beans
small amt of oil
salt- to taste
pepper - to taste
tomato/chicken bouillon - to taste

Meat Mixture (stuffing for bell peppers)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

1. Saute the garlic,mushrooms, and onion in oil until the mushrooms are almost tender.

2. Add the ground beef to the above mixture. Add salt, pepper, and tomato/chicken bouillon to taste. Cook until there is no pink left in the meat.

3. In the meantime start the rice a roni (follow the instructions on the box)

4. Once meat is cook drain the oil and add the diced tomatoes and black beans.

5. Turn heat to medium-low and stir the ingredients in the pan. Basically since everything is cooked this step is to warm the newly added ingredients with the meat.

6. After a couple minutes add the rice mixture to the ground been mixture. Stir everything together well.



Preparing Bell Peppers:

1. Wash the bell peppers.

2. Cut the tops off the bell peppers.

3. Cut and scrape out the membrane and seeds inside. Discard

4. In a baking dish place the 6 bell peppers on their bottoms. Add a small amount of cheese to inside of each bell pepper. (Basically you want to just cover the bottom of the part of the bell pepper in cheese)

5.Stuff the bell peppers with the meat and rice mixture all the way to the top.

6. Top off with cheese

7. Place about 1.5-2 cups of water in the baking dish. ( or just enough water to cover the bottom of the bell peppers so they don't burn and to help them cook)

8. Place in 350 degree oven for about 35-40 mins or until the peppers are tender.
(please note this cooking time is approximate)

Here is a picture of the finished bell peppers:

Here is the picture of what the inside looks like:
(this bell pepper is on my daughter's dish)

This is my first time writing a recipe online to share with others (or have others read). I am no way an expert on doing this.

Recipes are great to follow but always feel free to make dishes your own. If there is something in my dish that you don't like take it out. Want to add something different, go ahead. I'm all about experimenting and making up things with what I have on hand.

I hope you enjoy.

New Hobby-Cooking

Lately instead of crafting I have been cooking. I have always enjoyed to cook and make new dishes for my family but never had the time. I have had some free time open up and besides taking care of new son I am watching a lot of Food Network and scouring all different types of cook books.

I recently just started trying to cook Asian food. I have always had a little trepidation with trying to cook any type of Asian dishes as I just never thought I could. Recently I was craving pot stickers and I decided to look up some recipes on how to make it. Once I had my ingredients written off to the asian supermarket I went. I was a little terrified at the time commitment that it takes to make potstickers so I had tried to start early. Let's just say it did take awhile but it went a lot faster once I found this great gadget that formed the potsticker wrappers for me. Eventually I will learn to fold them correctly. The potstickers turned out wonderful and we ate them all up within a couple of days.

Half of the potstickers were filled with a mixture of cooked chicken, napa cabbage, bamboo shoots and garlic. I basically just used my food processor to chop it extremely fine. The other half were made with the same ingredients except they had a ground beef/pork mixture.

I personally enjoyed the ground beef/pork mixture.

I am planning on trying my hand at some more Chinese cooking later this week.

July 16th weekend sewing

I've been itching to sew for the past week but due to time contraints and pregnancy issues just couldn't find the time. So when the weekend came I decided I was going to make it a sewing day. I have a list of projects I want to do and finally tackled some of them.

I had this really cute cupcake fabric in my stash that I wasn't quite sure what to make with it for my youngest daughter. I asked her if she'd like an article of clothing or would she like a purse. She chose a purse. She liked the size of my prior asian inspired purse so I chose the same pattern and off I went.

This is the 2nd time using this pattern and the instructions finally clicked for me. I was able to figure out how to do the lining. It did end up making the inside look much more finished inside. (Not like my first one). The pattern calls for a magnetic snap. I personally don't like snaps on my purses as things may fall out, so like my previous one I added a zipper. I still have to figure out in between which step I should be adding the zipper because I'm still having trouble getting to look right. I did think I was brilliant by sewing the zipper on the lining prior to understanding the directions. Big mistake. Since I didn't have the patience to actually use my seam ripper to rip out the zipper I just cut it off from the lining and left the strip of material on it. Messy I know, but I'd probably pull my hair out trying to fix it properly.

All in all it came out much better than my first one. Guess practice makes perfect.
Here's a picture of the finished Cupcake purse:

And here is a picture of daughter modeling it.

Next up was to try to make an infant light jacket. I used a knit jersey material. The pattern was simple. 3 pieces. I love it. This was my first time working with this type of material and I must say I was pleased with it. I did make a mistake though when cutting the fabric out as I had a decided to try and save some material. Oops cut against the grain. Oh well live and learn.

I took the same pattern from the little jacket and used cotton flannel material to make another jacket. Since I had enough material I also made some pants. These look like little pajamas. I can definitely tell that the cotton flannel lacks the drape from the pattern of the jacket. Oh well. I think it'll look when it gets on him.

So all three projects were made in one day. My sewing area was quite the mess but at least I got something I wanted done accomplished.

Camouflage Fleece Outfit

Every boy needs to have at least some type of outfit which is made out of the camouflage pattern. Originally my idea was to make a jacket that would fit our soon to be new arrival within a couple of months of his birth alas I wasn't thinking when cutting the pattern out and the size used. So instead of having a jacket for a younger age he'll have one for when he's probably closer to 9 months or a year. Knowing me though I'll stick him in it when he's little just because I'll have to see how it looks on him.

Since I had extra fabric left over I decided to make a pair of pants also to go with the jacket. I used the same pattern from my other pants but just cut the fabric a tad bit bigger once I realized the jacket was going to big. So here is the end result:

Here is the back. The hood seems a little big but I just left it as it. Chances are he'll be wearing one of my handknit hats:

Here are the pants:

I'm really happy that I was able to make something like this. The pattern originally called for a button front but if you have kids it's quite well known that the child does not always stay still enough to get it buttoned, so I opted for a zipper. I was proud of myself that I remembered to buy a zipper that separates. (I didn't for when make my daughter's jacket)

Now I can't wait for the "little dude", as my husband calls him, to come.