ho-ho-homemade buttercream frosting!

Oh cupcakes... is there anything better? No, especially if we're talking holiday cupcakes. Earlier today I decided to whip up some cupcakes for a holiday party we were going to this afternoon and after a quick Flickr search, decided to put my own spin on these.   I used Betty Crocker Devil's Food cake mix, and instead of store frosting I experimented with making my own buttercream frosting.  The first recipe I used was too sweet and almost glaze-like (which the reviews would have told me had I bothered to read them), so Jared and I hustled to the co-op down the street to get more butter and I tried for round 2, this time using a slightly different, much more positively reviewed recipe.  It tasted SO good, and with a bit of green food coloring the frosting was done.  (By the way, I had never previously looked into what was involved in making your own frosting, but it's surprisingly super easy.  If you can make cupcakes from a mix, you can definitely make your own frosting.)

Instead of using my standard knife to cupcake approach, I loaded the frosting into a Ziploc bag, snipped off a small corner, and tried my hand at piping the frosting onto the cupcakes.  It probably would have been easier to use a pastry bag and piping tip, but in a pinch I think the Ziploc baggy worked pretty well.  To finish off the cupcakes I sprinkled them with crushed candy canes and stuck each one with a mini candy cane.

the bird is the word

Thanksgiving in our house this year was far less stressful due to one essential addition to our appliance arsenal: The Big Easy Infrared Turkey Fryer from Char-Broil.  I was skeptical when Jared first told me about it, but after he tested it out with a small chicken a couple weeks ago, I knew he was on to something.  In addition to cooking perfectly juicy poultry in half the time of a normal oven, using the fryer this year meant one important thing: a free oven ALL DAY.  All of you who've attempted the chaos of trying to perfectly time all of your Thanksgiving dishes without a double oven - put this fryer on your Christmas list.

And here's the delicious turkey Jared cooked:

We tried a new stuffing this year, Tyler Florence's Carmelized Onion and Cornbread Stuffing, and it was a big hit! Easily one of the best stuffings I've ever had. We couldn't find cornbread muffins, so we used an 8x8 tin of cornbread from Whole Foods instead, and it worked great.  Some of the reviews on Food Network said the stuffing turned out too dry, so I added a few extra splashes of heavy cream and stock just in case.

For dessert we had Martha Stewart's Old Fashioned Apple Pie and Sarah brought down a couple dozen of her famous cupcakes as a belated b-day/thanksgiving treat.  The most popular were the carrot with cream cheese frosting, and classic yellow cake with chocolate fudge icing (honestly, if there's a better cupcake on earth I have yet to find it.)  Sarah even made custom cupcake picks for the occasion using paper punches and her own little bird template.  Let me know if you'd be interested in a tutorial and I'll ask her to put one together.

For more food pics from our yummy little Thanksgiving dinner click here.

Thanksgiving weekend coming to an end can only mean two things: 1) running, yoga, and pilates are all very much in order, and 2) I have less than a month to finish a long list of Christmas crafts. Ack!

a Yudu-tastic birthday

I woke up last Friday the 13th still feeling a little too sleepy to celebrate my birthday, but Jared insisted on giving me by present that morning, and who was I to argue?  I had no idea what he’d gotten me, and had even less of a clue when he began pushing this huge wrapped box into our bedroom.  I began tearing off the paper and saw the ProvoCraft logo… and then Yudu!  Seriously, I have the best husband ever. Did I mention that he intentionally ordered it from Paper Source to make sure I got the $50 PS gift card that comes with it?  Yeah, best husband ever.  :-)

I can’t wait to start using this thing.  Nothing in my house is safe from the impending screen-printing insanity.  Just when I thought I had all my Christmas projects planned out! I already have some printing ideas, but first I have to figure out how to actually use it.  Stay tuned for a review, tips, and hopefully some project pics.

holy stromboli

We made homemade pizza a few weeks ago and had some leftover dough to use up, so I went on the hunt for a good Stromboli recipe.  Jared had somehow made it through 20+ years in NJ/NY without ever having the deliciousness that is Stromboli. Very strange.  Anyway, I decided to go with this recipe, courtesy of one of my favorite blogs: Serious Eats.  We nixed the peppers, and used salami instead of pepperoni, but OH MY did this thing turn out good.  It was one of those meals that after every bite you feel it necessary to declare how good it tastes, high-fiving one another after every 3^rd bite or so for possessing such culinary brilliance.  Honestly, it was that good.

We only had ½ the dough required for the recipe, so we made 1 roll instead of 2, and halved all the other ingredients.  1 roll ended up being plenty for 2 people, and I even had a little bit leftover to take for lunch the next day.  I highly recommend trying this out, because it’s really much easier than you’d expect.  Oh, and here’s the pizza dough recipe we used.  Only tip I have is to make your “well” in the flour fairly wide.  We tried a volcano approach and ended up breaching the flour walls, resulting in an oily mess all over our kitchen counter and floor.  The second time around, we made the well about 5 inches in diameter and that worked much better.

Happy eating!

4 Weekender Bags in 4 weeks

I've had a lot of overly-ambitious crafting ideas in my life, but this one was beyond insane - with only a month to go until my wedding I would make EACH of my bridesmaids the (infamous) Weekender Bag by Amy Butler.  That worked out to 4 bags in 4 weeks.  Of course I got my heart set on the idea before I searched the blogosphere and discovered that this was a beast of a pattern.  But, I was determined.  The first bag took me about 2 weeks (with my bachelorette party in Vail squeezed in there) and by the time it was done I was dreading the fact that I had 3 more to go.  It was everything other bloggers said it would be, and then some.  No tears, but a heck of a lot of ripped seams.  The whole process was so exhausting that the only pictures I took were with my phone!  (I promise, this is the last project I'll post with such crappy pics.)

Anyway, here's bag #1:

The second bag was SOOO much easier than the first one.  In fact, if you're attempting to make this bag, I definitely recommend making two - just so you can remember the whole thing fondly and enjoy the satisfaction of feeling like there's no pattern you can't handle.  Here's bag #2:

And bag #3:

Finally, (and trust me, it was a BIG, WONDERFUL, HAPPY finally) bag #4:

It was all worth it in the end:

Here's my advice should you decide to embark on your own Weekender Bag adventure...

Scour the blogosphere for all the hints, tips, and pictures you can find.  The tips from other bloggers that I found most useful were:

1) Use seam tape when making the prepared cording instead of sewing the seam closed. I tried it both ways and the seam tape actually creates a much cleaner look and you don't have to worry about making sure the seam is hidden when you sew the cording to the exterior panels.

2) Add interior pockets. The pattern doesn't come with any, and it's such a big bag having interior pockets is a really nice addition. I added a small zipper pocket (tutorial here), and used the large exterior pocket pattern piece to create two additional pockets inside (cut 2 extra pockets when you do your initial cutting, sew wrong sides together, then attach it to the lining by basting the sides and bottom, and sewing a seam up the middle to create two pockets.) You'll have more than enough fabric leftover to make the pockets, so don't worry about having to buy extra yardage.

3) A lot of blog posts indicated that there was no such thing as a 30" non-separating zipper. There is. I got this one and it was neutral enough to use for all 4 of my bags (you really can't see the zipper much once it's done anyway.) You might want to add a little zipper pull, though, because the zipper takes a bit of breaking in, especially on such a big bag.

4) Many of the blog posts below (and in general) were written before Amy Butler revised the pattern to improve upon her first version. If you buy the pattern now, it should have a lot of the tips and work-arounds already included (such as using Peltex instead of Timtex.)

5) The cutting for this bag takes a LONG time. Be prepared to devote most of your first day to getting everything cut. (You won't feel like doing anything but kicking back with a nice big glass of wine once you're done with this part.)

Here are the blog posts I found most helpful (i.e. couldn't have made it through the first bag without them):

http://miss-behave.de/2009/02/weekender-travel-bag/

http://www.amyalamode.com/blog/2008/09/14/second-times-a-charm-orchristmas-in-september/

http://hiuma.blogspot.com/2008/10/first-big-project-weekender-bag.html

http://craftoholic.blogspot.com/2006/05/my-weekender-bag.html

http://knitlint.wordpress.com/2007/07/14/finished-object-amy-butler-weekender-bag/

ties and dachshunds and spartans, oh my

As if I needed another excuse to craft, my best friend gave birth to her first child this summer... a handsome and happy little guy named, Will. I am a firm believer that stuff is just cuter when it's small, so when I saw the appliqued tie onesie tutorial on Crap I've Made, I could think of nothing cuter to make for the new man in my life.  I used some of my hubby's old clothes for the fabric, and followed Char's instructions to create onesie #1:

But why stop there when onesies come in packs?  :-)  The dog in Will's life is a sweet little dachshund mix Lindsey's parents adopted named Kallie, so I created my own doggie template and used one of the hubby's old dress shirts for the fabric.

Front

Back

And lastly, I had to make sure Will was decked out in some one-of-a-kind Spartan gear - which Lindsey was sweet enough to put on him when he went for his 3 month pro pics.

stocking stitchery

Among the many things Jared and I purchased last year for our first official Christmas at home together were these cute little felt stockings from Joann's.  Having always had personalized stockings growing up, the white stitching on the front of the stocking begged for matching embroidered names on the cuffs.  I've been fascinated by Jenny Hart's amazing embroidery ever since Sublime Stitching, and couldn't wait to get started on my first project. I experimented with a few different ways to get the outline of our names onto the stockings and found the easiest was to do the following:

1. Use WordArt in Microsoft Word or Illustrator to type out the names in an outlined font.  Be sure to type the names from last letter to first so they read left to right when you transfer them to your project. Lastly, view the names at 100% to make sure they'll be the right size.
2. Print out the names on regular computer paper.  Place a sheet of tracing paper over your print out and trace the outlines using a transfer pencil.  Make sure you use a pencil color that will be easily hidden underneath your stitches.  I used a white transfer pencil and it worked great.
3. Transfer the names to your project using a dry iron.  If your project is oddly shaped and won't lay flat, it's helpful to pin the tracing paper down before ironing.

I used white embroidery floss and split-stitch around each of the letters.  Here's how they turned out:

For Jared

For me

For the pups

Happy little family stockings :-)

once mitten twice shy (sorry, had to do it)

My first non-scarf knitting project wasn't nearly as complicated as I feared.  I wanted to make some nice mittens for my sister for Christmas and found a free pattern on Ravelry (a wonderfully endless source of inspiration) I thought would perfect: Cozy Cabled Mittens.  The pattern was easy to follow, except for the thumb part - which I imagine is awkward for a first-timer no matter what.  All in all, I'm pretty darn happy with how the project turned out.

three weddings and a shopping hiatus

On January 1st, 2008 I made a promise to myself that I wouldn't buy any new clothes for an entire year. I was allowed to buy second hand (most often from Buffalo Exchange downtown) and if I wanted something new, I had to make it myself. The point was to try to force myself to learn how to make a variety of different types of clothes. As with most of my overly-ambitious crafting adventures, things didn't work out quite as I had planned (i.e. I didn't make nearly as many clothes as I thought I would.) The first thing I made was a dress for our friends' wedding that spring. I started with McCall's pattern M4826, and modified it to add a panel insert to the front of the skirt.

I had zero expectations for how it would turn out, so I was pleasantly surprised when it actually fit!  (The duct tape dress form Jared helped me make helped a ton.)

The next dress was for another wedding and this time I used Simplicity 2951.  In hindsight, I wish I'd used a cotton fabric (maybe in navy) instead of satin.  Something about the light colored satin and the shape of the dress made it feel slightly too young for me, but I'm still happy with how it turned out.  The fit was even better than the first dress, and when it was done I felt like I was actually starting to get a hang of this whole dress making thing.

(ignore the bumpiness of the dress form)

The third dress was for - you guessed it - another wedding.  I've always loved the simplicity and ease of matte jersey wrap dresses (perhaps from my days working retail at Banana), so I decided to try DKNY pattern V1027.  It was such an easy dress to make (especially compared to the first two!) and it's super comfy to wear.

Bodice front

Bodice back

Full dress from the front

Full dress from the back

a scarf made for Michigan winters

Winters are no picnic here in Portland, but they're nothing compared to what I dealt with for the 5 years I lived in Michigan.  There's nothing quite like the feeling of single digit temperatures to make you want to stay inside by a warm fire until May.  But, when you have to go outside, braving the cold often means sacrificing style for warmth.  That's why, when I saw this amazing chunky braided scarf at Anthropologie I knew I had to replicate it for my best friend, Lindsey - whose love of Michigan winters is borderline crazy.  I don't have a picture of the original Anthro version, but my version was made by knitting 3 long, skinny scarves (approximately 30 sitches across of stockinette stitch) and then braiding them together.  I hand-sewed the scarves together in the back where they crossed to make it more stable, then attached tassels at both ends using all 3 yarn colors.

Sadly the only pictures I have are the ones I took with my old Blackberry (so, sorry about the crappy image quality!):

Scarf close-up

Full view

me wearing the finished scarf

a green tote for a green thumb

This was the bag that reignited my passion for sewing.  My mom taught me how to sew when I was a little girl, so it seemed fitting that my first real project as an adult would be a gift for her.  I decided on the Garden Tote from Lotta Jansdotter's Simple Sewing, with green canvas for the exterior, and black and white floral cotton to create a nice contrast with the interior.

Garden Tote gift set

my adorable Mom proudly showing off her xmas gift

Garden Tote close-up

The design of this tote is great because it has lots of pockets to store your gardening tools, and it's sizable but not so much so that it's too bulky or awkward to carry.  The pattern is fairly easy as far as bags go, and the only real trouble spots were the corners when sewing the bottom to the exterior.  I gave this to my mom for Christmas in 2007, and it's (thankfully) held up very nicely for her since.