Wednesday, August 28, 2013

The Small Fry Skinny Jeans (Galaxy style)

I got the chance last week to participate in a sew-a-long and I jumped at it. I'm so thrilled I did. It took me a while to try sewing pants but thanks to Dana from made I got the extra push to do it. They were great and I learned a lot. I even drafted my own shorts pattern afterward. However it's been a while and I was ready to move onto the next step. Lucky for me Laura over at craftstorming.com came through. I learned so much from this project. I'm really glad I committed to participating because honestly if I would have seen the whole tutorial first then I may have thought it looked like to much work and passed on it. Breaking it down into days and knowing there were other people working on it at the same time was encouraging though. Plus this pattern was a piece of cake using Laura's clear pictures and easy to follow tutorial.


This was a lot of fun and if you've made pants but you've never done an adjustable waist or a faux fly before then you need to try it. This is the perfect project to learn with. I think I'll make a few more pairs and now that I know how to do those two things I will probably draft a couple more patterns soon.

I did have a couple problems along the way. However everything was due to my own error and easily remedied. The biggest change I made was that my pair are fully lined in bright orange. I should have taken pics of this however I was to anxious to try them on my little man. Why did I line them you ask? Well the fabric I chose ended up being much much thinner then I realized. However it ended up being a happy accident. Other then the obvious beautiful pop of color it adds to the inside and how lovely it matches the orange thread I top stitched with it also will make them a little warmer for the fall and winter months which are quickly approaching.


Oh and what does Fox think of them?


SUCCESS! Oh and they fit perfectly! My little man wears 2t to 3t but 3t are way long on him. I would say overall these fit him like a 3t everywhere but length. So if you have a tall thin child then I would try testing it in the smaller size your child normally wears and lengthening them. Then again they do have an adjustable waist so you could always go up a size and button them tighter. However they may not look as much like skinny jeans if you do that.

I've been hoarding that vintage galaxy print for something special but I never thought of using them on pants until I started raiding my stash for this project. I think they look like some sort of cool combination of "Star Wars" meets "Back To The Future". What do you think? Do you like how they came out? What do they make you think of? 

Friday, August 23, 2013

Homemade Pedialyte

Over this past week three out of our four babies have been sick. It's been a nasty little virus. Our kids normally don't get sick very often and when they do they are fortunate enough to not be sick for very long. This however was particularly mean.

My poor baby. She's still bright eyed and beautiful even when she's sick though.



Their pediatrician gave us a paper with a great recipe for homemade pedialyte though. According to her it is "the perfect combination of salt, water, and sugar to make your stomach turn over". That sounds like vomit but that is not what she was meaning. She meant that it helped readjust the lining of your stomach so you wouldn't lose liquids and become dehydrated.

So I bet you want the recipe, don't you? I thought so.

Recipe:

sugar - 8 teaspoons
salt - 1/2 teaspoon
filtered water - 5 cups

and it says you can use kool-aid to flavor it.

Also on the list was foods to avoid and foods they should eat.

AVOID LIST:

Juice, Soda, Gatoraid (These used to be good when sick but they aren't now that they are sweetened with corn syrup. Corn syrup is what they used to give babies to make them poop. It won't help with diarrhea.)

Fried anything, Red anything, Fast food, Most fruits and vegetables, Any other drinks with corn syrup.

SAFE FOODS: 

Start with Bananas, Cooked Carrots or Sweet Potatoes.

Then move onto Rice, Noodles (with no sauce), Plain bread or toast, Saltine or oyster crackers, Mashed potatoes.

When tummy is better able to handle food you can move onto Lean chicken meat, Scrambled eggs, Yogurt (as plain as possible WITH live cultures but no "junk food yogurts like go-gurt").


It's also important to note that you do not introduce a new food at this time. So if your child has never eaten something like sweet potatoes for example then that would not be a good option.

This worked for us but of course I am not a medical professional so don't take my word for it. When in doubt call your own doctor. These are just the guidelines that our great pediatrician gave us.

Of course I've got to share a well picture too. ;-)

Saturday, August 17, 2013

Taco Lasagna or Tacozagna

Lol, ok I don't think this is a new idea but I felt like I was inventing something new when I made it. I really winged it here on this but it came out great. Everyone loved it. I had my doubts while making it but even I liked it.

I started off by browning some hamburger in one of my big pots. I tossed a diced onion in there pretty early on too.

After that's all browned you want to add your taco seasoning. You could use a packet but I don't believe in those so I mixed my own spices.

Here is the combo and ratio I used for 1 lb of hamburger:

1 Tablespoon chili powder
1 teaspoon garlic powder
1 teaspoon onion powder
1 teaspoon oregano (or Italian herb blend)
1 teaspoon paprika
1 1/2 teaspoons cumin
1 teaspoon sea salt
1/2 to 1 teaspoon black pepper (depending on how much you like pepper)

Dump that in with your ground beef and you're well on your way. Next I added some red kidney beans and some great northern beans. These might seem odd for something taco in nature but trust me here. It works! If things are a bit dry at this point you can add a little oil. We always have olive oil so that is what I used. Besides we are blending Mexican and Italian here so it's ok, right?

It should look something like this at this point.


Now the fun part!

Spread some oil in the bottom of your pan. Now make a layer of tortillas over that. Next I added some of my funky concoction and spread it around. Then sprinkle some Mexican cheese on top. Add more tortillas and repeat until you run out of room. I added a layer of salsa to one of the layers too but I only had enough for one layer so all the other layers were just this mixture and then covered in cheese. Make sure when you get to the end you dump any juices left in the pot right over the top. Then give it a "healthy" coating of cheese. Then I topped it all off with some chopped up green onions.

Now bake in the oven uncovered for 15 - 20min at 400 degrees. This cuts and serves remarkably well. I was surprised. It also reheats well which I didn't expect. I thought for sure it would be soggy and yucky the next day but it wasn't. Hooray!!!




Friday, August 9, 2013

An utter failer

If you sew or do any craft for that matter than you probably know what it feels like when you have a stubborn project that just refuses to come together correctly. Aren't they frustrating? Don't they make you want to just scream? Or is that just me?

Well I just "finished" one of those projects. I don't normally name my dresses but this dress seems to beg for a name. All I can think of is "the failure dress". That doesn't seem very original though.

It might not look terrible in this picture but just wait.



Let me begin by telling you how this dress fought me in every step of it's creation.

I started out by drafting my own pattern. This normally goes quite well for me. I've got the process down pretty well so I don't think that is where I messed up here. I wanted to create an enclosed, lined bodice with sleeves and I think that is where the trouble started. I've never done this before and I winged it rather than researching it. First I started by adding a straight stitch to the sleeves so I could gather them and set them in. Then I realized I did this on the wrong side of the sleeve. My gathering stitch was on the hem instead of the shoulder. So I just went with it. I figured "that sucks but no big deal. Now they just look like flutter sleeves.". So onward I pressed. I sewed the neck pieces and the sleeves into the arms and left the two back parts open since I was planning to add a zipper. This would have worked fine except that when I went to flip it I realized I had one sleeve pattern up and one sleeve pattern down. I was annoyed and often at this point I would start a new project and stuff this in a bag or a box somewhere too patronize me the next time I stumbled across the failed garment. This time however for some reason I pressed through and unpicked the seam. This was no easy feat as the dress was the exact same color white as the dress and I think the exact same composition and the fabric is very soft.

Ugg, can you see where this is going?



Ok so, I get all of that unpicked and get it restitched. Then I stitch my skirt to my bodice. Let me tell you if you do it this way then stitch it to the INSIDE piece not the outside bodice first. I made that mistake. So then when I went back to stitch the back to it closed I was top stitching from the inside of the dress. BIG MISTAKE! I realized it was a problem as soon as I realized I would have to stitch from the inside. However I thought maybe I could just be careful and it would be ok. Somehow I managed to get all sorts of horrible bubbles and lumps and puckers and clumps sewn all out of wack. It was worse then I could ever have imagined. I would have had to unpick it regardless of if it was inside or outside but if it were inside then my picks wouldn't have shown up front and center on the dress. There was so over hang between the outside bodice and the lining because of the clumping so I trimmed this off. 

I was mad at this point and I'd already invested so much of my time with the whole sleeve thing that I wanted to just finish it. I couldn't leave it now!

So I picked and restitched. Somehow my stitches ended up short. I'm not sure if that is the right term or not but essentially all of the stitches pulled the fabric up together in spots. There was nothing I could do to fix this despite how I tried. So I just stitched over it and figured I could put a cute little bow over it in that spot and no one would ever know.

So onward I pressed......

The bottom ruffle was just annoying because this fabric frays like crazy! Trying to ruffle just shredded this stuff. So when I got done with my not so even ruffle I surged it. Still thinking that this dress might be wearable when I got done........


At this point all that was left to do was add the zipper. So I tried something new. I hate sewing the sides together and then sewing the zipper in and then picking all those stitches. I'd had my fill of picking on this dress already. So I thought maybe I could get away with stitching about an inch over where the zipper would be and then the rest of the way down where I would need an actual seam. This might have worked if executed better but I managed to flip my fabric around oddly and stitch it in like an invisible zipper on one side and made it look top stitched on the other. This wasn't to big a deal. I just top stitched the other side. The real problem here is that somehow the waist where the back bodice meets the skirt is nearly an inch higher on one side then it is on the other. I have no idea how this happened. Maybe where I trimmed the over hang due to the clumping issue? I dunno.

Blah!

Ok so if you made it this far then please share with me any insight you have or any project failure vents you might have of your own.