Weekend Recap

Wow we had a jam packed weekend. Mr. took Friday off with me. I don't think I told you, but Mr. has been working CRAZY hours the past month or so. This was the first weekend off in a month, we definitely enjoyed family time.

Friday:

Baby Fox wanted to watch the pool man do his pool man things...cleaning, sweeping, chemical pouring. Baby Fox was sad when pool man was finished, tears were shed.

Then we headed to the mall, and Baby Fox went on his first escalator ride...and then again, and again, and again...

Going UP!

Going DOWN

Then Baby Fox went on his first Ferris Wheel ride, cool malls have carousel and Ferris wheels rides, didn't ya know?

After nap time Baby Fox made these for his Grandparents

and then he made everyone dinner, Baby Fox Style (on the ground with a wooden butcher knife)

 I did get a sandwich too, but was too busy eating to remember to take a picture.

Saturday:

Was low key, we were preparing for the Halloween Party we were going to.

You didn't think I was going to show you our costumes did you? Think again!

Sunday:

Baby Fox stayed up extra late...like 3 hours extra late...so he slept in till 10am! When we woke up he helped daddy do this:

So we could do this:

And go here:

That's Walmart, I wanted to get a greeting card, but instead got some windshield wipers, isn't that how it always works, go in for one thing, walk out with something else. The bucket was left at Walmart, my backpack wasn't big enough.

 and here:

Then we went here to look at some plants for our backyard, but he wanted to stay and watch these go round and round:

All in all we had a great weekend. Hope yours was as fun as ours! Till next time!

Candy Corn Cookies

This past weekend we went to a Halloween party. I thought I would be festive and make this Candy Corn Cookie recipe. This particular has orange zest in it, if you don't want that flavor you could try this recipe, which is your basic sugar cookie recipe. I am going to have to try that one out next time.For this tutorial though, we're going to use the first recipe.

What you'll need:

• 1 cup butter room temperature
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 egg
• 2 Tablespoons orange juice
• 2 teaspoons orange zest
• 1/8 teaspoon salt
• 3 cups flour
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• orange gel food coloring (I used icing gel, found at Micheal's)
• yellow gel food coloring (I used icing gel, you can find them separately too)
• sanding sugar (I actually used crushed Sparkling Sugar)

Instructions

   1.   Preheat Oven to 375°.  Cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.

   2.  Zest Orange and squeeze orange for juice

   3.  Add the egg, orange juice, orange zest and salt.

   4.  Combine

   5.  Slowly add the flour and baking soda. Beat until combined.

   6.  Place parchment paper in loaf pan. If you don't have parchment paper, you can use plastic wrap.

   7.  Here comes the fun part. Divide the cookie dough into three portions.Add the first third of the dough to the loaf pan pressing it evenly in the bottom.

8.  Add a few drops of orange to the second third of dough and press that into the pan.

Thank you to the Mr. for helping me out, I actually made the orange last and didn't have orange (they had a copper that would have worked, but I'm OCD like that, I wanted bright orange) in my icing color pack, so I had to combine yellow and red, and my hand was getting tired of trying to mix them together.

   9.  Do the same thing and make yellow and press it into the pan.

From the side view this is what it will look like:

   10.  Wrap the cookie dough and refrigerate until firm. At least two hours or overnight.

   11.  Unwrap the cookie dough

 This picture is totally deceiving, I thought this would work, but in reality it didn't. 

I dumped it upside down, and then pulled on one of the corners.

   12.  Slice into 1/4 inch slices

   13.  Slice the dough into triangles.

Mr. wanted to get in on the fun too

  

14.  Put sugar into baggie and using rolling pin, or spoon or whatever to crush them a little smaller (you don't have to do this, but I figured since the cookies were so small that the sugar would be too big, in reality it wasn't so this step isn't totally necessary, but didn't realize that till after I crushed it, so I'm sharing my wealth of knowledge)

  Please ignore my chipping nail polish...there was no way to take this picture without showing you my nails, 

don't worry I took off the polish just after this picture was taken.

   15.  Dip one side of the cookie into the sanding sugar.

Okay let's get real for a second...this method takes WAY  too long, but it makes for a good picture right? In reality this is how I did it:

I took the whole row, put in sugar

Place on cookie sheet and then separate

and there you have it!

   16.  Bake for 7 to 10 minutes (I baked mine for 7 minutes 30 seconds). Cool on a cooling rack.

   17.  Enjoy!

 Yep I put this on a paper plate, I didn't have any cute Halloween plates, and I knew that I would probably never remember to bring my plate home with me...

Bet your wondering what we are for Halloween? You'll have to wait till Wednesday to find out! Now go out and make some cookies!

Photo Quilt

Since I've started to quilt, I've made 3 photo quilts. One for my roommate (you know the first wedding I was in), one for my professor from college and one for my cousin (the second wedding I was in). I have pictures of the first two, just not my college professor...boo. Mr. took my old computer and was going to give it to a family friend, but wipe out my hard drive before giving it to them. He thought all of my pictures were in "my pictures" folder, they were not...so I lost a bunch of photos, sad times, I try not to think about it, but occasionally it does still come up...

Anyway, I hardly ever follow a pattern when I make a quilt. I just come up with a design and then go for it. My roommate one was a time consuming one, but worth the effort in the end. College professor was a simple square pattern, and cousin quilt also another easy one.

I don't have pictures detailing the process, but when I do another one, I'll make sure to take lots of pictures and to keep Mr. away from all hard drives.

The hardest (not really), part is to get the pictures on the fabric right? Well you could buy this but you only get 5 sheets and it's expensive, so if you want more than 5 pictures, you'll have to buy two packs and that is only going to give you 10 pictures, assuming you don't mess up. So I'm going to tell you how you can make your own so you won't feel guilty about mistakes, because you know there is always a mistake.

I didn't find this link until I started making mine, but  this is a really good article. I would also like to say that I have not done this before, I skipped the Bubble Jet products, not knowing they existed until after the fact (kicking myself that I didn't know about it), but will be using this product for my next photo quilt.

So you're going to need the following:

• 100% white or ivory cotton fabric (ask your local fabric shop what the tightest woven fabric for printing on is)
• Bubble Jet Set (here*  or here)
• Bubble Jet Rinse (here* or here)
• Inkjet Printer
• Iron
• Freezer Paper
• Sissors
• Pictures (duh)

* I have not used this website before

1. Saturate your fabric in Bubble Jet Set according to directions, and let dry (if it's wrinkly, you can iron it when it's dry)**
2. While you're waiting for it to dry, set up your pictures, I do it in Word, just so I can arrange them how I want them to maximize my effort (don't forget your 1/4 seam all the way around)
3. When the fabric is dry (I find it easiest to do it this way, you can do it however you want, as long as the end result is the same), tear off some of your freezer paper, enough that it's going to cover at least 8.5 x 11 surface. I like to make mine bigger, so I can get two or three out of each go around. 
4.  With the waxy side facing the fabric, and the non-waxy paper facing you, iron the freezer paper to the fabric. I find that it gets a really good hold, and won't start to come apart going through the printer. It will work the other way around, but sometimes the wax just isn't enough and it doesn't stick. Repeat until you have enough for all of your pictures
5. How I save on waste, is that if I know only 1 picture is going to be on that particular sheet and is taking up much less space, I'll cut the fabric/freezer paper smaller, not a full 8.5x11. Cut out how many sheets you're going to need.
6. Print out pictures, let sit at least 30 minutes
7. Peel off freezer paper, gently wash in cold water and Bubble Jet Set Rinse, this will make the pictures permanent and washable.**
8. Cut to size for sewing into quilt, pillow, etc.

 ** I am not affiliated with Bubble Jet Set, I have just heard good things about them.

Now for what I know you guys were waiting for, pictures!

Here's the one I did for my roommate, and the first wedding I was in (sorry, it's a picture of a picture, not the best quality).

This is the quilt I made for my cousin's son, M, on the front is a picture of each month for his first year

On the back, are pictures of her and a kid, him as a kid, a picture of them while she was pregnant, a picture of M as a baby, and then M stats and a "homemade with love, Aunt Sarah"

Finally a Sweater!

It's finally cold enough to wear a sweater without looking like a total nut job! Yay for cooler weather! Hope it stays this time. I have to admit this is my first time pairing a skirt with a sweater and I think I'm liking it for this slightly cooler weather. Gives the perfect balence, not too hot, not to cool. You know because use girls (according to Mr.) has a 2° difference comfort zone.

I love the back of this sweater, it's a zipper, although you can't really tell from this picture.

I would also like to a moment of silence for my shoes...yes, that's right, they've died and gone to shoe heaven, unless I decided to stop being lazy and take it to a shoe repair shop. The stopper on the heel fell off and is now showing metal...yikes, not good for our travertine floors!