Football pants

I tried to do a rolled cuff like thing on a pair of lounge pants. They didn't quite work out as I had hoped, because I made the pants way too long. I ended up having to hem them, including the cuff in order for Timmy to wear them. But he CAN wear them now and he loves them!

Embroidered Turtle Pincushion

I'm in the pincushion swap on craftster.org. My partner was looking for something earthy, but to do with the ocean/beach. I wracked my brain thinking of what I could make. A shell pincushion? A fish pincushion? And finally I settled on a sea turtle!

I made it so that the shell detaches and can wrap around her wrist so she has the pincushion right there when sewing/hemming/altering.

I haven't embroidered since I was a preteen, so please forgive the mistakes! Oops!

Goods from the garden

Today we had a great amount of veggies to come out of our garden. Just check out some of the yummy stuff!

Acorn squash!

Yellow watermelon and sugarbabies watermelons!

HOLY GREEN BEANS!

And, because there was such a huge influx of veggies I decided I had better take care of the ones that were already sitting on my counter, so I sliced, diced, shredded and cubed a TON of zucchini today and threw it all in the freezer.

Purdy Pickles

My children love pickles. We're always buying pickles in the huge jars. This summer we had a good crop of cucumbers, so Timmy and I decided to make some pickles ourselves. We found a recipe for refrigerator pickles, but totally did NOT follow it to a T. We added LOTS of onions and TONS of garlic to it. We used some cloves and a bit of cinnamon. Some sugar and some cider vinegar.
They are ready today and I don't expect them to last much longer, so I thought I had better take a picture to remind us of how nice they turned out! They taste wonderful! They are a bit on the spicy side, but my kids LOVE them.

Pirate Pants

A wonderful lady sent me some awesome pirate fabric the other day. As soon as I opened it I knew I just HAD to make something cute for the boys with it. I had some old ugly brown ribbed fabric laying around, so I thought I'd try to make a pair of pirate pants. I've never appliqued before. You can tell from the pics, I'm sure! LOL I appliqued an X onto the butt and put a pocket low on one of the legs. My ds LOVES them, even if they aren't perfect. I'll definitely have to work more on appliquing. Good thing they don't mind being my guinea pigs!

Squeaky Clean

I've been wanting to make my own soap for a while, but never seem to have the time, ingredients or energy to do it. With a little free time on my hands tonight, I decided to tackle the art of soap making.

I had attempted to make soap about 6 months ago, but it royall flopped. Tonight, though, I used a different way of making it and it is sooooo much better!
It was a cross between this and this. I also found some helpful tips from here and here.

Even though I stirred and stirred it before glopping it into the mold, there did seem to be some excess oil left on top. I was told by a soap maker, though, that once it is cut up it will dry out with no problems.

I used bayberry FO and Tea Tree Oil EO for scent and just a dab of shea butter to make it a little smoother. Unfortunately, I don't think I used enough fragrance, but that is fine. A lesson learned for the next time I make soap.

Gluten Free Mexican Chili

Tonight I wanted tacos for dinner. Darn! We didn't have any taco shells. I WANTED TACOS!! So I decided to make up some Mexican Chili. Um, I'm not Mexican, and don't even know if they MAKE chili and if they did, what it would taste like, so please don't let the name fool you into thinking this is REAL Mexican Chili.

I put in 2 large cans of diced tomatoes. 1 can of sliced black olives. 1 jar of salsa. 1 can of pinto beans. The equivalent of 1 can of corn (I used corn I cut off the cob from our garden). 3 green peppers. 1 onion. 1 lb ground beef. 1 lb ground turkey. Taco seasoning. 1 large bag of cut up onion greens (from our garden that I had precut and froze a while ago). Some gf shredded cheese.



I browned the turkey & beef until done. Just before it was done I threw in the cut up onions and green peppers. I drained the meat & veggies. Put it in a big pot and added the taco seasoning. I added A LOT of taco seasoning. Once the taco seasoning was well stirred into the meat and veggies, I threw in all the rest of the ingredients. I let it cook for 30 minutes, and served it hot! VERY good!

For Adrian's (Celiac Disease) I didn't put cheese on it, because we didn't have any GF cheese on hand. I threw in a couple rice crisps and he LOVED it.

For tomorrow, I'm going to take the leftovers and add a can of refried beans to thicken it up. I'll put it in the bottom of a cake pan and cover it with GF shredded cheese. Throw it in the oven until the cheese melts up nice and serve it with corn tortilla chips as a nice "bean" dip! :)

Recycled Men's Tie Totes

I was part of a swap on The Bat Girls and our project was to recycle something into something new and nice. :) I had a box of 60+ men's ties hanging around here, so I decided to do a bit of patchwork sewing and create some totes out of them.
I was very pleased with the end result!

Tie Dye!

My first time attempting tie-dye. :) These little nightgowns are for my 2 cousin's babies that are due in Oct & Nov