Thursday, August 30, 2007

My Craftiness

As promised here are some of the projects that I have been working on lately:



Here is Abbie's dress, I am so pleased with how it turned out. I even made her a pair of bloomers to go with it. I am also planning on making her a headband in the pink fabric to go with it.


Lately I have been thinking more and more about bringing my own bags to the grocery store. It's not necessarily an environmental thing with me, although that is a side effect, it's more that I don't like to waste and it feels so wasteful to use plastic bags. I have a couple of the acme bags from www.reusablebags.com, but they are rather pricey. So, when the dogs recently ripped one of my king sized fitted sheets I decided to recycle it into some cloth shopping bags. I got the pattern from www.morsbags.com and they have been pretty quick to put together.


Lastly this is a project that has been lurking in my sewing room for nearly three years now. Shortly before my son was born a friend gave this cross stitchery to me that she had found in a antique store. It was in a frame that I didn't particularly care for so I took it into my craft room to do "something" to it and it has just sat there ever since. Tonight I was inspired to make it into a quilted wall hanging. I origninally had put another outer border on it and did not like the results so I dug though my stash of 30's fabrics and found this green polka dot that I think is perfect. I don't have anything that I think will work for the binding so I think that tomorrow I'll stop by the quilt store to see what they have, I am thinking either solid green or solid cream.

The Cost of getting better

2 visits to the urgent care $20
1 visit to the lung Dr $10
7 prescriptions $49
5 shifts missed at work $1000

Having a husband that can work from home and help out with the kids... priceless.

I have been sick since August 13th and I just can't seem to shake it. Yesterday I went to the lung Dr. and she thought that I still had an infection in spite of 12 days on 2 different antibiotics and a 6 day course of steroids for my never ending cough. So, I am on a 3rd antibiotic for 14 days now and am on steroids for another 5 days. Thankfully I have good health insurance so those costs have been relatively reasonable, but I don't get sick time at work so that has been quite an impact. Hopefully this latest round of prescriptions will do the trick.

I have been managing to get some crafting done so as soon as I get some pictures taken I'll tell you all about it. Hint: Abbie's dress is done!

Mac and Cheese

I'll admit it, I'm a bit of a food snob and I just can't stomach the thought of feeding my kids mac and cheese from a box. This has made it so that I can't use one of those staples of childhood lunches, until today. Today I remembered an episode of Good Eats where Alton made a stove top mac and cheese that he presented as an alternative to the box ones. Well I have to say it was quick and tasty, I even had noodles left over from last night so the whole thing probably took less than 10 minutes. Now cost wise I have to admit that it was considerably more, probably $3 to $4 in ingredients depending on sales but it made a big batch and tasted good enough for me to want to eat it. Try it out yourself.

Sunday, August 26, 2007

A nice day with a couple of friends

Two girlfriends and I got together today to hang out and make the handkerchief dresses that I reviewed here. All three of us made Halloween themed dresses and one of us made a cute Hello Kitty one. I am very pleased with how they turned out and they were super easy to make, especially with a serger. I also got some time to work on Abbie's birthday dress today and all I have left is the hem and the buttonholes.