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Growing up I can remember my mother bemoaning the fact that when she was my age she was forced to wear clothes sewn by my grandmother. I heard countless stories about how she would swap clothes with her friends on the way to school and inevitably get caught wearing the "wrong thing" when school photos came out. Needless to say I grew up never wearing a stitch of handmade and by the time I was in the 9th grade I was shunning department store duds and hitting the racks in at local vintage shops. I loved finding one of a kind dresses. I cherished garments made with exquisite tailoring and details, clothes that were created with care and in many cases homemade.
I have said in the past that one of my parental missions is to bring homemade into the lives of my children. I want them to value the process of making and also the rewards that come from creating something from scratch that is uniquely their own. Hopefully they will grasp the notion that something made with love and care is infinitely better than anything you can buy at a department store.
Here is my first attempt at making a dress for Tess. I have to say I find sewing difficult and making a dress this small was a huge challenge for me. Admittedly my sewing skills are very limited and anything beyond sewing a straight line is way beyond me but I managed to sew, rip out and re-sew enough to finally finish my first garment. Despite the struggles I am still determined to keep practicing and hope that by the time Tess goes off for her first day at school she will proudly be wearing something Mommy made.
I tried making sugar cookies once back in high school and they were so awful that it has taken 26 years before I would attempt to try again. I still remember putting in all that effort to end up with wonky, saltly cardboard cookies that went straight from the oven into to trash. This time I was determined to find just the right recipe, meticulously measure everything and hope that my baking luck like myself had matured and mellowed. I found a great recipe for cream cheese sugar cookies over at Blonde Designs and a royal icing recipe at Martha Stewart that I modified by adding some lemon extract and fresh lemon zest. I prepared the dough a day in advance and let it chill overnight in the refrigerator then the next day while Tess was napping I proceeded to bake them until the edges were just barely brown. I saved the decorating for later that night after we put the little one to bed. Here are the final decorated cookies. I must say they turned out much better than my first attempt, so good in fact that I'm thinking of revisiting some other teenage disasters to see if some of those might have gotten better with age as well.
Growing up I always remember loving Valentine's Day, it was always such a mystery over who who sent what card and who wrote what secret message. I always cherished the special cards, the ones that didn't look like the boxed cards that I always passed out. I never did make my own Valentines growing up, our house was not the most creative back in those days, I guess that's part of the reason why I now make such an effort to try and incorporate handmade into Tess' life. I still love Valentine's Day, not the store bought, gift required, obligatory token of affection but the sweet simple gestures of love that make me feel all warm and fuzzy. I wanted Tess to have a hand in the card making so I laid our several sheets of red construction paper and made a template so that she could apply her paint dipped finger in just the right place.
Materials:
white finger paint
red construction paper
small envelopes
circle paper punch
ink pen with white ink
One of the best things about working on a product launch is taking product photos which usually entials the client sending lots of product samples. On some projects we might get a bunch of boxes, or packages of soda but every once in a while we get great things like chocolate, like cookies, and cosmetics. On this occasion we were working with amazingly great smelling Aveda aromatherapy oils. When we were done with photos we had all this product left over and on a whim decided to try our hand at making soy candles. With a little bit of internet research, 10lb of soy wax, a double boiler, three dozen glass containers and some luck we ended up with some pretty sweet smelling candles that we gave to friends as holiday gifts. Not all the candles turned out perfect, we had to scrap a few but for the most part we had a great time, learned something new and found a use for all the incredible Aveda product we had left over. Here are images of the project from the raw product to the poured candles to the boxes we custom designed and printed to the final candle all wrapped up and ready to go.
Materials:
100% Soy Wax
glass candle containers
Aveda personal blend oils
candle wicks
double boiler
cardboard
Uline blank boxes
ribbon
spray Paint
rubber Stamp
With a little extra time over the Thanksgiving holiday I was able to get out the sewing machine and finally attempt to make some softies. I made three in all and we christened them with the names Pinky, Red Hot and Bobo. Little Bobo was my first attempt and admittedly I made some mistakes but in the end his quirky charms won Tess over and he was her favorite of the three little monsters. I timed the last of the dolls to get an idea of how long each was taking and it came in at about an hour and 12 minutes from start to completion. I had a lot of fun and plan on making a few more softies for the holidays as gifts. Each doll comes out a little different and you can play with hundreds of fabric combinations and facial details. The best part was watching T covet her new dollies knowing that I made them and they came out better than I had hoped.
Material:
Wool Felt - 4 colors (face, body, eyes, mouth)
Yarn- 2 colors (eyes & whip stitches)
Thread - 3 colors (eyes, mouth, face)
Doll Stuffing
Since having a baby I have become a huge fan of grab and go food. I am always looking out for healthy alternatives to store bought packaged treats that I can pack in my bag. Snacks that won't fill me up with empty calories or leave my on the down side of a sugar rush. I love those fruit and nut Larabars but they can get expensive so I decided to try and make my own version of the ever popular "energy bar". I used the nuts I had in my freezer, honey, some agave nectar and crystallized ginger for some zing. I wasn't completely sure how long or on what setting to "cook" the bars so it was a of bit of trial and error. Here is the rough recipe and a photo of what I ended up with. I think you probably could make them in an oven with slightly higher temps. For me the key was to flip the bars so they would completely dry out.
Ingredients:
1 cup rough chopped raw almonds
1 cup raw sunflower seeds
1/4 cup sesame seeds
1/2 cup honey
2 tsp. agave nectar
zest of one large lemon
1/4 rough chopped crystallized ginger
spread mixture out in thin sheet in dehydrator and "bake" at 118 for 16 hours.
There's not alot of show stopping Fall fireworks here in East Texas. While rest of the country is starting to get chilly days and experiencing the first of the light freezes we are all still running around in tank tops and flip flops. I can't say I don't miss the autumnal bright yellows, oranges and reds but we enjoy what we do have and in my garden it's agave, succulents and aloe. T and I were outdoors today and picked some of the new sprouts and brought them indoors to create a tiny terrarium. The succulents when they divide let out small offshoots called pups we collected these and some river rock and moss to create our little green world. Materials:
Glass container
Drainage rocks
Catcus soil
Assorted plant clippings
Moss
River Rock
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