Pride Cometh Before the Fall

So after my foray into embroidered pillows, I was feeling pretty good about my amazing embroidery skills. So rather than continuing to do piddly little projects, I decided to do something bigger. And harder. For some reason I always have to do the hardest of anything first. So I decided I wanted to do a children's book illustration. I chose to do this one from The Little Prince, or Le Petit Prince, for those who read it in its original French.

Shouldn't be too hard, right? Simple black outlines with solid colored blocks. Instead of using fabric applique this time I decided to paint the colors in before sewing it. That part went okay. Then I sewed. And oh my. The poor Little Prince.

I tried to pretty it up by putting it in a nice frame. And from far away it actually doesn't look to bad. But you have to move in closer to see the worst of it.

Umm. Is that his nose attached to his eye? And his mouth looks like it's hanging open to catch flies. And yeah, just ignore the loose threads hanging everywhere. I got tired of trying to tie them off and just started snipping.

Now, I know it's not a complete disaster. You can at least tell what it was supposed to be. But it sure isn't the masterpiece I was picturing. Oh well. Practice makes perfect, right? Anyone want a slightly disfigured Little Prince?

Cheap food anyone?

So I went to the grocery store yesterday. I didn't buy that much stuff, but then again I didn't pay much either. I bought 14 cans of Progresso soup (for our food storage), 6 cake mixes, and 2 pounds of butter. And the grand total? $.63 Yep, you're reading that right, 63 cents. Don't believe me? Here's the receipts:

You'll probably have to click on them to read them, but I did two transactions. One was 30 cents and the other was 34. And you know what's even better? At the end I was left with a $10 coupon to use towards my next purchase. I love it when grocery stores pay me to take food off their hands.

Sunday Home Decorating

What better to do on a slow Sunday than some home decorating! I had a bunch of family pictures sitting around with no frames to put them in. So by combining a few things I managed to make a fun wall arrangement.

I stole this idea from someone else's blog, and I can't for the life of me remember where. So as always, thanks to the anonymous benefactor!

First we need our supplies.

I got the drawer pulls for a buck and change at Home Depot. You need to buy some hanger bolts (the double-sided screw on the right) in place of the one-sided screw that comes with the drawer pulls. The hanger bolts will let us screw the drawer pulls to the wall.

Next we need what we're going to hang.

I have a million pants hangers from when I was in the military. The original project I saw used the wood pants hangers, which I also have, but I liked the metals ones better. The pictures I had were in the black folders they came in from the photographer, but I'm sure you could just buy some mats and tape the picture behind them.

I used push pins to decide where I wanted everything hung.

That way I didn't have huge holes after I changed my mind and moved everything around, which I did.

And then the most important ingredient:

After screwing one end of the hanger bolts into the drawer pulls, I used my muscley arms to screw them into the wall. You could drill a hole first, but when the drill is out in the storage shed, we must make do. It wasn't hard anyways.

And that's it! Hang your pictures and enjoy!

I love that I can switch them out super easy any time I want. And it's one less bare wall I have to stare at in my house. Hooray!

The Homemade Gifts are Done!

So giving away five homemade gifts from me was really just an excuse to try out some crafty things I'd been looking into. I hadn't yet thought up an excuse to experiment, and this giveaway was the perfect chance! So for those lucky five (Andrea, Monique, David, Angela, and Julie), you get to be my guinea pigs! Now don't you feel lucky?

So the craft of choice for this giveaway was embroidery. I've been trying to decide if I like hand embroidery, machine embroidery, freehand machine embroidery, etc. I didn't want to go out and buy all the stuff to try each one out only to discover I didn't like it. So being the weirdly anal person I am, I read a lot about all of them on the internet. Then a foray into the dusty craft bin led me to discover I had all the materials I needed right here at home! I was soooo excited. Yes, double-sided interfacing got me excited. So without further ado, here are my five homemade crafts.

First off, we have a lovely example of the hand embroidery.

A simple little village-esk scene. The clouds look pink because the transfer paper was red. Note to self: Don't use red transfer paper when you are going to be stitching in lighter colors.

Next up, the repeating pattern hand embroidery. Back in the day when my mom would buy us stichery kits when we drove to California every summer, I knew how to do things like French knots and such. Well, this sure wasn't like a duck to water. I think I had to do each one of their eyes over at least twice. French knots, ugh.

Then I moved on to the applique with hand embroidery. The little wings didn't feel like staying put while I was trying to sew around them. But there is just something about that little "hoot" that makes me smile every time I see it. Then it makes me think "Give a hoot, don't pollute."

At this point I said, forget the hand embroidery. It's too slow and makes my fingers hurt. I need something with more immediate results. So out came the sewing machine. Now, I have no sewing skills. I took the obligatory Home Ec in Jr. high, but everything I sew manages to fall apart at the seams. So pulling out the sewing machine to do anything is quite daring. But let me tell you, I think I'm in love.

I'm tempted to keep this pillow all to myself and make something else to send away. How totally cute is that little apple and pear?!? I sewed them on freehand with my sewing machine. While this is a difficult thing to do when you have a nice, calm crafting area, I am doubly plauged. My "sewing area" happens to be at our kitchen table. And it seems like no matter how involved my kids are in something else, as soon as they hear my sewing machine they come running. I had a kid hanging on each arm while I was trying to sew that. So whichever of the five winners that gets this one, just ignore the squigly line that goes up the right side of the pear. That would be Alex's fault.

And last but not least, the piece de resistance.

My sister saw the pattern for this chicken and fell in love. So I had to make the chicken. And since he's obviously dancing, what other dance does a chicken do beside the Funky Chicken? He's also machine embroidered. I love his little crossed eyes.

This one got a fun back too.

Those are all leftovers from a really hideous quilt I made when I was pregnant with Ella. I am so not a quilter.

And there you have it. Five little embroidered pillows for five of my lucky friends.

And those of you who were too cool to play along (you know who you are) maybe next time you'll think twice. :)

And for those who won, email me your address so I can send these out poste haste! travelgirlut [at] hotmail [dot] com

Russian Wafer Cake

In our wanderings around town we've stumbled across a couple of Russian grocery stores. The first one we went in I saw these colorful, circle wafer things that were rather intriguing. I asked Anton what they were, and he had no idea. So when we stopped in a second store today and they had the same wafer things, I had to know. We asked the lady who worked there and she started explaining to me how to make some sort of layered dessert out of it. She pointed out the ingredients and in her broken English did her best to translate a fairly simplish recipe. I didn't have Anton to be my interpreter since he was chatting with another guy who just got into the country 10 days ago.

So armed with the ingredients handed to me by the nice lady, I went home to try my skills.

Three ingredients, piece of cake!

First I melted the butter, even though the lady just said soft butter, but I really think she wanted me to melt it.

And the reason I think that is when I opened the can of mystery stuff (Anton couldn't figure out what it was. All we knew was it was some sort of sweetened condensed milk carmely stuff.)

It was solid. Really solid. So I figured some nice hot melty butter would smooth things over. It didn't want to mix together, but I made it go.

Then because I was the cook and the photographer, there are no pictures of the next bit, but we spread some of the super thick carmely stuff on each wafer and stacked them one on top of the other.

That's the top layer there after I told Anton to start snapping pictures.

Alex was really excited to eat some cake! Anton got cutting honors.

Yummy layers.

Alex went with the peel off each layer and eat them one by one method.

Anton went with the pick up the whole pile and take a bite method.

And Ella went with the shove as much in her mouth as will possibly fit at one time method.

I just went with the eat so much it makes you feel sick method.

And the final verdict? It was okay. I think it needed some sort of creamy layer in it After we ate it I decided to look it up on the internet. I found one, count them, one website that remotely talked about this kind of treat. You can find it here. Seems like Russian things are not the most popular blogging/cooking topics. She describes various fillings I could have used in addition to the carmel we used. And it seems I should have mushed it somehow and let it sit overnight before eating it. I'll maybe give it one more shot to see if I can make something yummy out of it, and then I'll give it up as a tried it and didn't like it.

Want something homemade by me?

Well, all you have to do is be one of the first five people to comment on this post and offer the same thing on your blog! Easy, right? Well, of course there are rules.

1- I make no guarantees that you will like what I make!
2- What I create will be just for you.
3- It'll be done this year.
4- You have no clue what it's going to be.
5- I reserve the right to do something extremely strange.

The catch is that you must repost this on your blog and offer the same to the first 5 people who do the same on your blog. The first 5 people to do so and leave a comment telling me they did win a FAB-U-LOUS homemade gift by me! Oh, and be sure to post a picture of what you win when you get it!

So there you go! Hop to it!

My Productive Day

Anton and the kids were gone again today. And while he was slaving at his mom's house, I was actually getting things done here. Here's what I've managed to accomplish since they left last night:

1. I got much farther on the job I was working on than I had planned.
2. I did the dishes and washed all the plastic baggies that had been collecting next to the sink. (I reuse baggies. Yes, I'm a scrooge.)
3. Took the burners off the stove and cleaned off the whole thing.
4. Swept and mopped the kitchen floor. (It's only about 3x6, so this isn't a huge feat.)
5. Scrubbed my bathroom toilet.
6. Updated and organized my grocery price book.
7. Found my sister an easy recipe for her London broil.
8. Folded, stuffed, and labeled all the invitations to our March Enrichment activity for church.
8. Added to my emergency storage by filling all our empty mason jars with water. This added 3.5 gallons of water to the 35 gallons we already have stored. Every little bit helps!


Things I still want to do today:
1. Find my sewing machine. Not sure where it got put after we moved. In the shed perhaps?
2. Finish the job I'm working on so I don't have to worry about it tomorrow when I have the kids underfoot.

So this may not be the longest list in the world, but compared to what I accomplish on a typical day, this is monumental! It feels good to actually get something done around here. Too bad the to-do list is far from being done away with. Anyone want to help me sort through the piles of clothes my kids have managed to aquire? Ugh.