Homemade Elsa Dress

A while back I decided to make June an Elsa dress. I'm not entirely sure why, except that I could buy fabric for much less than some of the $50 dresses I was finding online. Plus I was looking for a new sewing project. 

I used another dress that fit June well as a pattern. It was fun to construct it, but that stretchy fabric was almost too much for a newbie like me. 

That poor little dress has really been put through the ringer since I finished it. So much so that I never went back and added the sequins from the bodice like I'd planned.

It has even withstood two accidental trips through the washing machine, which I had intended on avoiding.

It's definitely not the fanciest princess dress she has, but she seems to like it!

DIY Elsa and Rapunzel Yarn Hair

I've undertaken a new sewing project. I'm trying to make a Princess Elsa dress for June, which is proving harder and harder to get the motivation to complete. In part because the fabric is really hard to work with, and in part because late night tantrums have me wondering why I'd spend my precious hour before exhaustion hits sweating over a sewing machine instead of with a glass of wine on the couch. 

So last weekend, with the dressmaking stalled, I got to work on a smaller project that was much quicker to complete. I wanted to make an Elsa braid to go with the dress. I knew June would love it because she is always wanting to play with my hair and drape it over my shoulder like Elsa wears it. 

To make the braid, I bought one package of very light yellow yarn from Hobby Lobby. I figured that the light yellow could work for Elsa hair, but it could also work for Rapunzel hair. 

I measured out how long the braid should be and added on a few inches since braiding hair shortens the length. It just so happened that the total length of my "hair" was the distance around the four legs of one of our kitchen table chairs. So I flipped the chair over onto the table and wound the yarn in a big circle around the four legs until I had a nice thick layer of yarn. 

I cut the yarn at one point and looped the yarn around one of those stretchy headbands on the other side. 

I secured it to the headband with a single piece of yard, then braided the whole thing and tied it off again. 

June had watched me make this whole thing. I told her that I was making her some "hair" and that it could be Elsa or Rapunzel. The problem with this is that she pretends to have Rapunzel hair a lot. She does this by taking a Moby wrap, holding it behind her neck and then walking around the house while it trails behind her. 

Like this:

And this:

So once she heard that I was making Rapunzel hair, all of a sudden she didn't think the braid was long enough. It couldn't be Rapunzel hair because it wasn't even touching the floor! She didn't even want to leave the braid on, so disappointed was she. (Did I mention about the tantrums?)

So I tried it on. For demonstrative purposes only, and not because I wanted to pretend that I too had a giant blonde braid.

At this point, I took the leftover yarn and made June some real, long Rapunzel hair. I know, I'm encouraging the tantrums, spoiling, etc. I know. But I just...was going to throw away (or compost!!!) the extra yarn anyway, and...I don't have any other excuses. I just made her the stupid extra hair. I'm a terrible parent. 

I used the same process but this time wound the hair around the entire kitchen nook table and chairs. Snip and secure to another headband (from the ones I bought in bulk back when I made the tutu dress) and we were done. 

So that's how we came to have not one but two fake yarn hair pieces around the house. 

I obviously need to make a third one for Bennett.

The Compostess with the Mostess

We're composting over here, y'all!!

In my adventuring with gardening, I keep coming across how wonderful compost is. ("If your tomatoes don't turn out great, try adding compost and next season they'll be wonderful!") One webpage leads to another and soon I'm reading about how all-around awesome composting is.

You reduce the amount of waste you produce. You create organic compost, which is great for the garden and super expensive at the store. It's a great learning experiment for kids. Plus, I just think it's really neat, you know? Science! 

Then I saw a site about how you can create your own compost bin at home for much less than it would cost to buy one. (The cool rotating ones on Amazon do look amazing, but they have a smaller capacity and cost $100 plus shipping.)

To to Home Depot I went and bought one of those giant plastic storage bins for $15. I decided to get a 35 gallon one, which seems humungous but most folks who went this homemade route said they ended up buying a second one because they filled theirs so quickly!

So I took 'er home and drilled 10-or-so holes in the top and bottom. (Bennett was my assistant. He's always sleeping on the job.)

Then I filled her up! (Not really. She's probably only 1/6th full right now, and that's with all of the materials fluffed up to take up maximum space.)

In this beginning run, I put in newspaper, shredded paper, coffee grounds, coffee filters, laundry lint, toilet paper and paper towel rolls, used paper towels, grapes-gone-bad and the stalks of broccoli that we didn't use from dinner last night. 

As you can see, the stuff you can compost is varied. There is supposed to be a balance of nitrogen-based items ('green' matter, like grass clippings and fruit and veggie waste) and carbon-based items ('brown,' like paper and dead leaves), but there are plenty of guides online to help you determine what falls into which category and what is outright prohibited. 

For example, you don't want to put any meat or dairy products because then scavengers would be attracted to the pile. Also, without these items, the trash-y smell you might predict is avoided. Instead, a well-made compost pile just smells a little earthy, like wet soil.

I piled a little bit of our soil on top (to introduce the native soil organisms), sprayed it with a little water and then gave it a little stir.

I'm going to keep my biggest tupperware container under the kitchen sink for me to put new compostable items into, then take it out to the bin when it gets full.

I'll stir up the bin as often as I can to encourage the decomposition process.

Hopefully within the next 3 months I might have usable compost. How quickly it is ready will depend on keeping the ratios right, how often I turn/aerate it, moisture and how much new material is added.

So here we are, my mini composter and I, demonstrating the bin's resting place with the garbage bins behind the storage shed.

Wish us luck with our 'black gold' as it's called in the business!

DIY Tie Dye Cupakes!

I asked June what she wanted her birthday party to look like (because I'm not sure if she knows what "theme" or "motif" is yet), she just said "purple, pink and blue."

As you might recall, my stance on cupcakes is to spend more time on the baking/recipe OR on decorating...not both. I went with decorating this time, but fancified the cake instead of the icing for a change. 

I started out with a box of white cake mix, then separated the batter out into three containers.

I used food coloring to make purple, blue and pink batter. I used plain old blue food coloring for blue, but for the purple and pink I bought special ready-made color gel that I bought at Hobby Lobby for about a dollar each. This was out of a combination of laziness and mistrust in my own ability to mix good enough colors. 

Each of those colors got poured into a plastic sandwich bag. I snipped a corner of each and, alternating colors, squirted some of each bag into each of the cupcake papers. When I was done, I took a knife and swirled them a little to really get the tie dye look.

FYI - I used a cool cupcake tip I found on pinterest. Normal cupcake cooking instructions are to fill the cups 2/3 full and bake at 350 for about 22 minutes. The tip is to fill the cups 3/4 full and, once the cupcakes are in the oven, lower the temp to 325 and bake for 25 minutes. This causes the cupcake to rise up more and look like a more full cupcake (rather than the sad little flat ones that you normally get out of boxed mixes). 

This tip worked out really well for the ones that I was able to fill 3/4 full. Once I realized I was running low on batter and wouldn't have enough cupcakes for the party, I started filling them lower, so I did end up with some flat ones. 

Check out how cool they looked when they were done!

A little twirl of store-bought icing and some purple sugar sprinkles and, voila, done!

Of course, the kids barely noticed that they were cool colors. They were just, "ZOINKS ICING NOM NOM NOM"

My only tip for others would be to buy more than one box of cake mix if you really want/need the full 24 'cakes for your occasion. (Of course I can never seem to get a full 24 cupcakes out of these box mixes, so maybe I've just always filled mine up too much?)

Nursery Tour!

I present to you our baby boy's nursery!

The view from the door - the crib with a little pine tree garland hanging above it. 

I feel like the one thing we're still missing is a big photo of our family in here. I think that a big old canvas of a portrait of our family (after the baby's born) would look good and fill the space to the right of the crib in the picture above.

Our glider and pine tree decal. That's the door to the little closet.

A close-up of some of the wall decor. The moose is Fred Jr. from this site, the bear I painted (more from this post) and the 'B' was just painted onto a raw cut of wood that I bought at Hobby Lobby for $4.

Our dresser/changing area. That's a little lantern that we hope to use as the 'dim light' when doing late night feedings and changings. I hope to get a little something else to put here to prop up the lantern, or somehow  add a little more pizzazz to the area. Of course, I'm sure it'd be better to leave it clear for the wipes dispenser, diaper cream and other random baby things.

I really love the map of the United States that we bought (from here) and have hanging above the changing pad. If this baby doesn't know the capitols by the time he's 6 months, I will consider myself a failure.

I have to say that the fish rug might be my favorite part, though.

Back when we first knew we were moving in this house, I started looking for rugs to cover the floors in some of the rooms. Knowing that we were going for the outdoorsy theme in the nursery, I instantly came across this fisherman rug on Craigslist and was IN. LOVE. I drove 40 minutes away (with June in the back seat) to fetch it. Now June calls it the "Fish Rug" and I love it. 

About his bedding...

As the room came together, I decided we really needed some bold green here. The room was feeling very brown and this was the place to bring color in. I searched and searched and searched for a crib sheet and crib skirt that was what I was envisioning and had zero luck. I must have looked at hundreds of options on Amazon, Google and Etsy. Everything was either pastel green, ridiculously expensive ($69 for a crib sheet?!) or just not right.

So I didn't make the crib skirt out of ambition or because I'm a great crafter (I'm actually a pretty lazy seamstress), I made it because it was the only way to get what I wanted. I used a tutorial online like this one for the crib sheet and this one for the skirt.

The skirt isn't really a full skirt, with one large piece of fabric that lays over the crib springs. It's three panels that hang along each side of the crib. I went this route not only because it seemed endlessly easier, but because of the function. Since each panel just ties onto the springs under the mattress, when you lower the crib setting to accomodate your older, climbing child, you can just move your panels up. They won't bunch and drag on the floor!

The ties I sewed into the panels:

So there you have it - our nursery about as done as it's going to get before our little boy joins us! Now I just need my little boy who I can rock and cuddle in that glider in the wee hours of the night!

Life Gave Us Lemons

Huh. I just realized that I never posted about my lemons. I KNOW YOU'VE ALL BEEN SHAKING WITH ANTICIPATION. 

So, as you may recall, one of my earliest observations about our new house was that it had a fully-grown Meyer Lemon tree in the backyard that was positively full of lemons. I might have campaigned for us to get this house just because of that tree.

You see, when we were doing our whole yard renovation in Phoenix, we pulled out our dud orange tree and put in a Meyer Lemon tree. And ooooh, how I looked forward to one day having a crop of lemons to enjoy! (Meyer Lemons are known for being a sweeter, milder lemon.) 

I nurtured that thing like you wouldn't believe to try to get it through its first crazy Arizona summer. I was adjusting watering schedules, I was buying citrus tree food, I was cuddling with it at night. I was going against my instincts and pruning some of the lemon buds so our little plant would put its limited energy into a few promising lemons. 

And then we promptly moved to Sacramento.

So when we found a house for rent with a lemon tree that looked like this...

I shouted "WE'LL TAKE IT."

And let me tell you, I had plans for these lemons! But it was starting to get colder outside at night and I knew these guys wouldn't hold up in the upcoming freezes, so I had to get on my #1 project immediately, which was preserving lemons. 

Preserved lemons are a big part of Moroccan, Middle Eastern and North African cooking, and I was once given a jar of them by a coworker. I fell in love and swore that one day I'd make my own.

I went out back and picked three baskets worth of lemons, which seemed like a lot until I stepped back and realized the tree looked like I'd barely picked any.

Then I brought them inside where my 24 sanitized quart-size mason jars were waiting.

(The funny thing is that making a single jar of these from lemons you got at the store would take only 15 minutes. But because I set my sights on making 24 jars of them, it was a tad more time consuming.)

If you're interested, you can check out some background on these lemons, how they've been used historically and the recipe on this website.

The only ingredients are lemons and coarse salt. (And the amount of salt you go through...whoa.) But the salt and the juice from the lemons seeps into the lemon rind and softens them until they are the component that is used in the cooking. Most of the sites I've read about don't even use the fruit of the preserved lemon...you use the peel. 

And once the jar has set for a few weeks, you just pop out a segment of the lemons, cut it up and put it in anything. Anything you'd normally make with lemons, except preserved lemons have a sort of mellowed-out taste, not really the bite of normal lemons. 

I've been using mine for lemon pepper chicken, I put some in with asparagus I was sauteing, you can make salad dressing, use it with fish, put some in with crock pot recipes, anything really. And they stay good for over 2 years!

I ended up making 20 jars worth before the holidays. The problem was that I wanted to give them to everyone I knew for Christmas, but by the time I got around to planning the trip back to Arizona, it was a little late to think about shipping them. So I only managed to bubble-wrap and pack about 6 jars into my suitcase before the size and weight limits indicated that it was enough. (Not surprisingly, I got one of those cards in my luggage saying that TSA had searched inside by bag.)

So now I have about 14 jars of preserved lemons here in Sacramento and no one to give them to. I might just start bringing them with me on outings and forcing them on strangers. I want to share my love with someone! (Delivery room nurses - you've got a treat headed your way! A salty, citrusy treat!)

Nursery Beginnings

Even though we've technically been in this house since Thanksgiving, so much of that time has been holidays and the go-go-go of the season. (Hell - I was out of town for three weeks straight.) And now that I'm back for good, I started getting the shakes whenever I looked into the nursery and saw this:

Yeah... not exactly baby-ready. Not  exactly good for the nesting instincts.

So this weekend we kicked the nursery prep to the top of the To Do List and made some progress.

For Baby Boy's nursery, I did some thinking and looking (and Pinteresting) to shop for ideas. I knew that we wouldn't be able to paint the nursery (we're renting the house) and we couldn't hang tons of stuff on the walls (they're plaster and we've been asked not to punch a lot of holes), so that caused some limitations.

When I saw this mood board for a log cabin/outdoorsy/mountaineer nursery, I felt like it was the one. I showed it to Michael and he gave me the go-ahead.

This weekend Michael cleaned out the miscellaneous toys and other stuff that has accumulated in the baby's room. I used June's nap times to work on two little projects that I've had my eye on.

First, I saw this little print for sale from this Etsy site during my search. 

I thought it was adorable, but I felt a little weird about paying $21 plush shipping and handling for a piece of paper...one which I'd still need to get a frame for. So after realizing I already had black and yellow paint and some small paint brushes, I bought an 8x10 canvas at Hobby Lobby for $8.

I free-handed the bear outline and then filled 'er in.

And the finished product!

It's definitely not perfect, but it's the little imperfections that  show that it's homemade with love, right?

That night I measured and cut out the fabric for a little pillow I wanted to make. In the mood board above, I loved the bear pillow and loved the idea of having something like it for our rocking chair. But the more I Google Image searched, the more I was inspired by all kinds of bear pillows. 

So I used a piece of June's coloring book paper and traced a bear off of the internet straight from the laptop screen. Then used that to trace out a brown fabric bear. The next day, I pulled out the sewing machine and got to work on this guy:

For the back, I used some flannel and worked in a hemmed slit so the pillow case can be washed.

So who cares if we don't have a crib sheet or changing pad cover?! We have a pillow and some small-scale art! ;) I think the baby'll love it no matter what.

Can't wait to see this room come together!