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Showing posts from January, 2012

Frayed Ruffle Heart

Make a little frayed ruffle heart pillow for Valentine's Day! What you'll need: Fabric remnants in a variety of prints and colors Transfer paper, tracing wheel, straight edge Stuffing Beads Scissors Needle, thread Start by using the heart pattern to cut hearts out of fabric. Each pillow will need four hearts: the back of the pillow, the front of the pillow, the lining, and the front backing. Choose a fairly bold print for the front and experiment with contrasting colors and prints for the other layers. Transfer the diagonal lines onto the wrong side of the front backing. Pin the front, the lining, and the front backing together. They should all be right side down, with the lining in the middle of the "sandwich." The wrong side of the front backing, with the marked lines, will be on top. Stitch along these lines. (I found starting with a line in the middle kept the fabric from shifting around.) Turn the heart over and cut the top two layers betwe

Make your own gourmet tea

I love tea and we have a nice little gourmet tea shop near us called Todd & Holland . They offer amazing combinations of all kinds of tea and a wide variety of lovely teapots and cups. It's a wonderful place to go. Unfortunately, they're getting more and more expensive. Too expensive for me, in fact. So I've been making my own tea blends. Grocery stores that stock Mexican products often offer herbs in bulk. They're pretty cheap, particularly if you can find the large one pound bags. You can also grow and dry your own herbs or make your own dried citrus peel . Once you get the ingredients, it's easy to come up with tasty combinations. Here's the one I made today: 1/2 C Hibiscus flowers (Called Jamaica in Spanish) 1/2 C Chamomile flowers 1/2 C Mint leaves 1/4 C Dried orange peel 1 T Dried rosebuds I put about 3 heaping spoonfuls into my big 38 oz FORLIFE teapot . For loose tea like this, it's great (but not required!) to have a tea press or

Pickled horseradish hummus

The pickles I made are all gone. But what about the veges I pickled them with? Well, though the celery was too sad and limp for anything, the onions were delicious on burgers. Now I'm left with the horseradish, swimming around in its magic, murky brine. It seems too good to waste. How about adding it to hummus? Most recipes for hummus include tahini. But I don't use that much; the jars I buy always seem to reach a very ripe old age in the fridge. So today I simply used olive oil. It's a nice match for the brightness of the horseradish. 1 clove garlic 2 pieces (roughly 3/4" square) pickled horseradish 1 can chickpeas, rinsed and drained Juice of 1 lemon 4 T olive oil 1/4 t salt pepper to taste In a food processor, chop up the garlic and horseradish, then add the remaining ingredients and pulse until smooth and blended. Spread on toasted pita bread or try it on rosemary crackers. Now the only question, as Jay says, is whether this is "Yummy hummus&q

Make your own zombie masks

Tonight we're headed to an anniversary party. And, since it's Friday the 13th, the dress code is (What else?) "Zombie Formal." Time to make masks! First I took aluminum foil 4 layers thick and smooshed it down on the top half of my face. (Since this was all an experiment, I didn't start on Jay's till I was finished with mine. This let me reuse the aluminum foil.) Jay actually did a better job at this part than I did, so his mask (on the right) has a better formed nose than mine, which makes it more comfortable. Then I took pieces of flesh-colored fabric and dunked them in "Aleene's Fabric Stiffener & Draping Liquid." The fabric I used was a very thin cotton so I thought I might have to leave the aluminum foil backing. Nope. It stiffened up plenty. A few thoughts about the fabric stiffener: I've had this bottle forever so I'm not sure if it comes this thick but it was THICK! I watered it down a little, more for the second one

New Year's Fast

No sugar, alcohol, or caffeine for six weeks. That's the fast my husband and I are on this year. We've done this about five years now. Each year is slightly different in what we exclude but this year we're keeping it simple with the big three. We always start January 4th, the day after my birthday, and end around Valentine's Day. The first couple years were hard and we cheated a lot. But it's gotten easier, because, bit by bit, it's changed our permanent diet. Oatmeal, for example, before the fasts used to require spoonfuls of brown sugar. Now we just go with raisins and chopped fruit. (We eat oatmeal almost every day so this adds up to a lot of sugar!) After the first fast or two, I was sooooo happy to go back to my caramel-y sweetener. But somewhere along the line, I quietly realized I really preferred the fruit and just never went back to sugar. And that's what it's about: small changes, year by year, eating better so you feel better. In fac

Gifts for her. From her.

Yesterday was my sister Robin's and my birthday. She gave me some heart-shaped plates that say Love, Hope, and Dream. While out shopping, we had seen them and I had admired them greatly, thinking, "Oh, wouldn't these be just the perfect romantic gift?!" Except what guy—like Jay?— would even be caught dead in any shop that sold them? Don't get me wrong. I love my husband Jay very much. He even on occasion buys me flowers or cool jewelry. But to be honest, one of the best gifts he ever gave me was a HUGE tackle box in which to store my beads. It's true. There's just a guy reality — washing their stinky gym socks, or dealing with guitars, well, everywhere (like the kitchen table...sigh). Then there's a guy fantasy — Ryan Gosling stocking up your tea because you're hosting Stich N' Bitch this weekend... But we can do it for each other, can't we? We can buy our sisters and girlfriends all those frilly, lovely, girly things, like a loll