Monday, October 17, 2011

Monday Musings

After a longish hiatus, I’m back.  I hope you like the new blog look.  My mom said it was too big for her screen so I made it a little smaller.  Mom, hope this works better for you.  I am to please.  I’m still working on the Etsy shop and hopefully will launch it before too long.  We’re still house hunting (spent 4 hours today looking) but we haven’t decided on anything yet.  We’ve got a few calls in though so fingers crossed something will come through soon. 

I’m hoping to have some crafty time this week, but house hunting takes priority so if we can go look at a few places, I may not get much done.  I’m itching to sew something, I just don’t know what yet.  I also have a yarn wreath that I need to finish. 

Here’s what’s for dinner this week:

Sunday: Chicken Parmesan Skillet Pot Pie
Monday: Hard Cider Pork Chops
Tuesday: Chicken, Bacon & Avocado Quesadillas
Wednesday: Chicken Ranch Pizza
Thursday: Italian Bubble Up
Friday: BBQ Pork Ribs in Crockpot
Saturday: Italian Pork Chops

And something to make you smile on this mundane Monday morning:

 

and this one too

Friday, October 14, 2011

New Name and a New Look

I know its been a while since I've posted (I'm sensing a theme here), but I haven't been neglecting the old blog entirely.  You may or may not have noticed that she got a new name--Casual Fridays.  I feel like it fits my life a little bit better than the old name.  It may stick, or it may not.  You'll have to stick around to see.  To go along with her new name, I gave her a new look too.  I'm also in the process of starting at Etsy shop.  I was going to wait to officially re-launch her next week, but I had some free time today so you get a sneak peek.

And speaking of new things, I officially started a new job.  I'm working in the same office but I am officially an attorney now, practicing in the state of Missouri and the Western District of Missouri (federal court).  I'm working on my Kansas bar application so in the spring I will be (knock on wood) licensed in Kansas as well.  I am so blessed to be working in the field that I want to.  Getting up in the morning to be at work by 8:00am is a little rough, but I'm sure I will get used to it eventually.

You may or may not know this, but this is one of the top 10 happiest days of the year.  If you know why, Rock Chalk!  If you don't, tonight is Late Night aka the official start of the college basketball season.  I am a HUGE University of Kansas basketball fan.  More often than not by this time of year, college football has gotten rather depressing for KU fans, so the start of basketball season, even if it is only practice, is very welcome.

Another reason I have been MIA is that we are looking for a new place to live.  We hate have outgrown our current apartment and are looking for a house to rent for at least a year.  Looking for a place to live happens to be one of my most hated activities so for now it is taking all of my free time and patience.  So bear with me for a while longer.  Hopefully soon we will have a new place to live which means a new space to decorate.

Have a great weekend and I'll see you all next week!

Tuesday, September 27, 2011

Puff Quilts 2 & 3

After I finished my first puff quilt the day before Easter last spring (so I could give it to my cousin and her baby on Easter), I started a puff quilt for Alex’s cousin who had also just had a baby.  Then came finals, graduation, the bar and recovery from all those things.  And puff quilt #2 sat unfinished.  Then our friends found out that they were having a baby and I decided I wanted to make them a puff quilt too.  Only problem was that puff quilt #2 was still not done and I decided that I couldn’t start another one before I finished the last one.  So I got my butt in gear and started sewing and sewing and sewing.  Puff quilts aren’t hard, they are just really time consuming.  I got Cole’s quilt (#2) done and in the mail the weekend before the shower for Baby J.  So I had a week to get Baby J’s quilt done.  And guess, what, I actually managed to pull it off.  Granted, I did the binding the morning of the shower.  But the point is that is quite the accomplishment for me, the World’s Slowest Sewer.  Here are some pictures of both quilts. The morning of the shower it was rainy and icky so the light was terrible, so the shots of Baby J’s quilt aren’t great.

This is Cole’s quilt:

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And here is Baby J’s quilt:

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Both of these seemed so much easier than the first one I did.  I messed up the piecing on Baby  J’s quilt, but didn’t have the time or patience to redo it.  I also don’t love the binding on either quilt.  That is something I can’t seem to get right and it frustrates me.  I even tried to do it differently on Baby J’s quilt, but it didn’t work either.  Practice makes perfect, so hopefully I will get a hang of it one of these days.

You may notice that the lion fabric shows up in all three quilts.  I love it, which is probably the ADPi in me.  I also have some trouble cutting the border pieces but they are the same width as the puffs, so one quilt’s messed up border is another quilt’s puffs.  I used two fabrics to bind Baby J’s quilt.  This was sort of planned and sort of not.  I originally wanted to bind it in green fleece.  I think that if I had more time and patience, it would have worked.  As it was, the week I was working on his quilt was also the week I found out that I had passed the bar so I wasn’t home every night.  When I finally got around to binding it a few hours before the shower, the fleece and I weren’t getting along and I didn’t have enough of any one fabric to make new binding so I used two different ones.  I actually like the way it looks and would probably love it if I could figure out how to sew it right.

Now I just need someone to have a baby girl because I am dying to make one of these in girly fabrics!

Monday, September 26, 2011

Monday Musings

0Alex, my parents and I are off in Jefferson City (the MO state capital for those who don’t know) so I can get sworn in.  That means that by dinner time I will officially be able to practice law in the state of Missouri.  I am really excited because this is what I have been working towards for pretty much my entire life.  I'm not sure what exactly my work schedule will be from here on out but I feel so blessed to have a job already. 

Here’s what we are eating this week:

Sunday: in Lee’s Summit with Alex’s family
Monday: BBQ Chicken Baked Potatoes
Tuesday: Slow Cooker Chicken Caesar Sandwiches
Wednesday: Kyle Chicken
Thursday: Bubble Up Enchiladas
Friday: American Royal Barbecue with my Dad
Saturday: Pork Chops

Here’s what I’m working on this week:

I have two wreaths that I started a while ago and need to finish so I can actually used them to decorate.
I know its early but I’m already starting to think about Christmas gifts, so I’m trying to figure out who needs a gift and what I should start making.
I’m also thinking about starting an Etsy shop so I will probably do some thinking/planning about that.

Here’s your inspiration for the week:

Friday, September 23, 2011

Baby Girl's Football Outfit

I know I already posted today but I wanted to share something related to yesterday's post. In Alex's group of close guy friends there is already one kidlet--you may remember back when I posted about her first birthday outfit. I couldn't let Baby J have all the fun so when I was getting the onesie for his football outfit I picked up a shirt for Baby Girl. But of course she needed something super-girly to go along with it so she got a Kansas City Chiefs tutu to go with her shirt. Personally I think she looks adorable. Now if the Chiefs would stop being terrible we'd be good to go for football season.

Pizza Waffles

When I make things, people seem to think I’m pretty cool.  They don’t really know that pretty much all I do is spend way too much time online (what else am I supposed to do when Alex thinks his video game is plotting against him and that is why he keeps dying?) and then I try, sometime with success and sometimes without, to recreate it.  And now that Pinterest is on the scene, I have all kinds of ideas to copycat.  And now I bring you pizza waffles.

Here is the original pin/link.  You will soon see that hers are a lot prettier than mine:

I should probably also give you another heads up.  My favorite place to go shopping is my parents house.  They have really cool stuff and it is free.  Well more or less free.  They prefer to charge in man hours.  My current payment plan includes stringing pompoms onto string to be used for some project when little kids visit my dad’s museum.  (Note my dad doesn’t actually have a museum.  He just works for a place that does.  Although he has enough stuff he could probably start a museum).  So anyway, stuff there is free.  It’s also a you take what you can get sort of situation.  Why am I rambling on?  Well I though you should know before you see the pictures and start scratching your head and wondering what in the world I am up to that I don’t have a real waffle maker like the one in the picture.  My mom does, but she didn’t give it to me.  Instead she gave me the Mickey and Minnie Mouse waffle maker.  You’ll be glad to know though that it works just as well to make waffle pizzas.  Well, sort of.

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This is the waffle maker.  It has some flour on it because prior to taking this picture I was checking to see if my dough was the right size.  The great thing about waffle pizza is that it can be super easy or super fancy, depending on your style.  I’ll let you guess which one mine is.  All you need is pizza dough and your choice of pizza toppings.  I used dough from Trader Joe’s—we had the wheat and the garlic and herb.  Both were good but the garlic and herb was pretty sticky.  I don’t know if it was just my batch or if it is always like that, but if it were that sticky again, I would probably just work some flour into it to make it easier to handle.

Here’s what you do.  Roll your dough out to the size of your waffle maker.  We did separate Minnie and Mickey pizzas because clearly I need to eat Minnie since I am a girl and Alex needs to eat Mickey because he is a boy.  Plus we don’t really like the same food, so I didn’t want to have to eat his.  Put your dough on the waffle maker, top with sauce and your choice of toppings, then put a second piece of dough on top, close that sucker up and let it cook.

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The amount of time it needs to cook will probably depend on how hot your waffle maker is and how thick your dough and toppings are.  Our only took a few minutes—maybe five or six.  I did flip them halfway though but I also do that when making regular waffles.

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In the link above, she says to trim off the extra dough.  I did trim off the parts that were hanging out of the waffle maker but as you can see, there was some around Mickey’s face that got cooked.  If you were going to for cute you could trim this off.  I chose not to because 1) I was starving and 2) I like bread.

One of the best things about this recipe is that you can customize it anyway you can customize pizza, which is pretty much limitless.  They were kind of like calzones, but better in my mind because the dough was more cooked—I hate when you get a calzone and the inside of the dough is still kind of doughy.

Thursday, September 22, 2011

Diaper Party Gift

So I don’t know if you know this or not, but the boy version of a baby shower is a diaper party.  For Alex and his friends that pretty much meant what they would normally do on a Sunday afternoon (drink beer and watch football) but they all brought diapers.  I know diapers are practical and all, but they are not very cute nor are they clever.  However, there are a lot of onesies on Pinterest that are cute and clever.  I have a whole board of things that are ideas for gifts for other people’s babies.  You should check it out.  Only thing is that not all of these onesies are appropriate for when Great-Grandma is around.  They are however, appropriate for a diaper party.  I decided that I couldn’t let the boys have all the fun, and little baby J needed his own six pack:

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I took an empty six pack container and spray painted it blue.  Then I got six bottles from the Dollar Tree (note, you could get real, nice bottles, but the bottles weren’t really the gift, what was inside the bottlers were).  Then I stuffed a custom onesie in each bottle:

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These two are my favorites.  Both ideas are from Pinterest, so I can’t take credit.  I did put my own design spin on them though.  I used Sure Cuts A Lot, my Cricut and freezer paper to make the stencils.  (Yes mom, I took these pictures at your house.  I was running a bit behind so Molly helped me get it put together).

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These two are painted too.  The brown onesie is from Hobby Lobby.  I couldn’t find solid brown onesies or kids shirts anywhere else.

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Just to mix things up a bit, I did some appliques too.  I ironed Heat and Bond to my fabric and cut it out on my Cricut.  Just make sure your mat is really sticky and you cut slowly or it will mess up and you will be frustrated.

Baby J is going to be the best dressed kid on the block, if you ask me.  At least when dad gets him dressed, that is.