Umami Yummi

Last night for dinner we tried out a new recipe I found while tastespotting.

Marisa's Beef Chow Mein

picture via The Creative Pot

It was easy, TASTY, and didn't have any random, wierd ingredients that require a special trip to Many Lands. I think the only thing I'll do differently next time (because there will be a next time) is season the beef a bit before cooking it. Thanks, Marisa, for sharing!

p.s. Tomorrow I'm totally gonna go to this. And while there I will get the world's most delicious donut.

For Cute!

They're totally out of my price range, but aren't these book ends sweet?

From Etsy Seller Graphic Spaces.

{Trying to} Welcome Fall!

(apples from the Farmers Market)

I am a summer girl all the way. I love the sun, the heat, the long days, all of it. I'm from Arizona, what can I say? BUT, I'm trying to be better about embracing the here, and now. And here and now, I live in a place that has all four seasons, and cooler weather. I've been enjoying fresh apples from the farmers market and we took our customary drive up Payson Canyon to see the fall leaves, and I took NO pictures! I know, how could I? I'll refer you to this song for explanation:

O, love that song. (Sorry the video's a little shaky, but the audio quality is pretty good.)

Anyway, another fall activity I look forward to is making delicious butternut squash soup. And this year is extra special since I grew my own butternut squash! (remember how it took over my back yard? Suffice it to say, the takeover is even more complete these days!) I have a fantastic recipe my mom created that I love (and will definitely be making soon), but yesterday I decided to make up a recipe of my own. I'm not gonna lie, I'm really impressed with myself. It turned out amazing, and you're going to want to try it. So here it is:

Roasted Butternut Squash Bisque

1/2 a large butternut squash, peeled and cubed
1 small shallot, minced
1 small clove garlic, minced
3-4 cups chicken broth
aprox. 2 tsp. rubbed sage
salt and pepper to taste
oil

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a large bowl, toss squash cubes with sage, salt, pepper, and oil to coat. Spread out cubes on a cookie sheet. Roast squash until tender, about 25-30 minutes.

In a large dutch oven, saute shallot and garlic until soft. Add roasted squash and chicken broth. Puree with an immersion blender until smooth. Add more or less broth depending on your desired thickness. You'll notice from the picture that I like mine thick. My husband says it reminds him of baby food, but baby food is not nearly this delicious. If you prefer something thinner, you can add more broth or evaporated milk, regular milk, whatever you like.

That's it! So simple, and so delicious. The only thing this soup was missing was a nice crusty roll to enjoy with it. Let me know if you try it!

Vote for Austin!

Okay folks, my twin brother Austin is competing for an amazing job in Los Angeles, and is very close to getting it. But he needs our help!

It takes literally 5 seconds to vote for him - Click Here to VOTE!

Etsy Wish List

One of the blogs on my reader is CraftGossip, because they have about a bajillion posts daily linking to craft blog awesomeness. You can tell they like the good stuff, because they linked to Nancy's Post Here.
And in a continued display of awesome, they're doing the best giveaway ever! Here's how it works, I post my etsy wish list here (spending up to $100) then comment on their giveaway post, and I could win my wish list! Yeah, I'm down with that. Although, I gotta tell ya, it was HARD to pick a list that was under $100. There's so much on etsy to love! I decided to limit myself to things for Jane (which was still hard to pick). So, here's my list of baby cuteness:

Handmade crayons for little hands from kittybblove.

Cute wooden woodland toys from ImaginationKids

This sweet hand-knit jacket from Zarina2009

And finally this fun dress from Hopscotchavenue

Keep your fingers crossed that I win!!

The Fruits [And Leaves] of Our Labors

At the beginning of the season we planted a vegetable garden in our back yard. We've done this in the past, but two years ago pretty much nothing produced anything, so we didn't do it last year. This year, things are different. Here's what the garden looked like when we first planted.
We planted 4 different heirloom tomato varieties, 2 cucumber plants, 1 crook-neck squash, 1 butternut squash, 3 different bell pepper varieties, 4 hot pepper varieties, sugar snap peas, cilantro, and basil. Notice all the empty space covered with bark? Here's what it's looking like lately.

It's filled in beautifully! Most of what you're seeing is the butternut squash vine that has taken over the back yard, but I don't care because I already have a few big squashes on the vine. I'm pretty excited about it. See what's coming along.

We've eaten some sugar snap peas, and I've already had two BLT's with my fresh tomatoes. Fa-Nominal! But I was too busy enjoying them to take a picture.
One of the things I'm most excited about is the basil. It's thriving, so I finally made some pesto. Oh man, it's beyond good! I picked about three cups worth of leaves off the bush, and you can't even tell I took anything off the plant (I'll have to make some more!). Here I am (in my new Anthro shirt, told you you'd see me in it soon!) cutting off some leaves.

I brought them in the house and put them in a big bowl of cold water to wash off any dirt and/or bugs. I put them through the salad spinner to get them dry, then I put those in the food processor with about 2/3 cup walnuts, 2.5 oz Parmesan cheese, 1 clove garlic, 1 cup canola oil, and salt and pepper to taste, and voila!

Put it on pasta, bread, a cracker, a fork, whatever! I've eaten three meals of whole-wheat pasta and pesto in as many days. And I might just have it again for dinner tonight. It's that good. Or you can come over and have some with me. The Rockstar doesn't like it (He's crazy, but we love him anyway) and I need someone to enjoy this with me!

Cup 'O Tea

Saw these nifty bracelettes and thought of my mom.

I think she'd be into them.

And now, I'm off to the beach...

Tipping

Wow, I didn't know the star feature in Reader was going to be a novel thing for you all! I'm so glad I could help out, although, I apologize if I've only further fed your addiction. To make up for it if I did, here are a few more awesome tips:

• Baby Shampoo is a cheap, yet effective eye make-up remover. Just rub a little with warm water on your eyes and voila, clean eyes, and no tears!


• A grapefruit spoon is not a grapefruit spoon when it's a peeler for fresh ginger, or a strawberry huller, or a great tool for getting kiwi out of it's fuzzy skin.


• Newly shaved legs + Baby Lotion = Silky Skin Perfection


• This makes for a great summer foot exfoliater. The next best thing to getting a pedicure, but way less expensive.

And coming soon, another shirt to cardigan tutorial, but with more pictures this time...

Gold Star!

Do you use Google Reader? It's kind of, totally addicting. WAY worse than email. With email, I constantly check back and am disappointed, because no one ever emails me. With Reader, there's always something new, because it loves me more than email. I love it too, because it allows me to "Star" posts that I like, and keeps them all in one place for me. That Reader, so thoughtful. Here are some posts I've recently starred in Reader:

• Recipe for Homemade S'more candy bars. Yum...
  
• Ingenious new use for broken clock.


• Cute [free] softie pattern with tutorial.


• Delicious Melt Aways recipe.


• How-To for cabinet knob wall hanger.


• Gorgeous and inspiring table before and after.

Have a lovely weekend!

The Lamest Tutorial Ever

I tried my hand at an upcycled garment! I had a plain white long-sleeved t-shirt sitting in my closet, just asking me to do something with it.

I decided to make a cardigan. I know, "It's the middle of summer!" you're saying. But my office is always a little bit chilly (as are these Utah evenings, if you ask me) so a light cardigan to warm my upper arms was just the ticket. Plus, is it just me, or does anyone else feel like their arms are a little bare in a cap sleeve? So I can just throw this on over and voila! No more bare cap-sleeved arms.

I thought I'd make a little tutorial for it, but, as it turns out, I'm not very good at making tutorials. I'm just not patient enough to stop at every step and take a picture, but I'll try to give good instructions in lieu of some of the pictures.

*As a little caveat, before you go doing this yourself, understand that if the shirt you start with is fitted, you're not going to be able to button it closed once you're done with the project. I knew this from the start, and was okay with it, since I never button my cardigans anyway, but if you wanted to be able to button your cardigan up, you'd want to have some extra (contrasting would be cute!) fabric on hand to add to the middle of your shirt once you cut it up the middle, and you'd put your buttons and button holes on that.

So, here's a picture of the shirt I started with (and still had picture-taking patience).

I wanted three-quarter length sleeves so I tried it on and figured out about how much I wanted to take off, then added about an inch to that so I could hem the edge and still have the sleeves the length I wanted. (How's that for a run-on sentence!) I measured that amount on both sleeves and chopped them off. Now my shirt looked like this:

Next I used that yard stick you can see on the right edge of the picture and measured the middle of the front of the shirt all the way up, then cut along that center mark. Here's a picture:

You can see where I marked up the center of the shirt with my washable marker. Next I folded under 1" on each side of the center cut and pinned it down.

Here's a close up shot:

And that's pretty much where I stopped taking pictures of my steps, but hopefully I can give good written instruction.
Next, using a ball point needle (because my shirt was knit) I sewed up the folds on either side of the center using a straight stitch. I did my stitch closer to the outer edge of the fold so that the buttons would be between the stitching and the edge of the fold. (Oh, geeze, does this make any sense? Why didn't I take more pictures?!)
Next, I laid out my buttons down one side to figure out basic spacing, and decided I wanted six buttons, about 2.5" apart. I marked on the shirt where each button would go using my washable marker. I made corresponding marks on the other side of the shirt where the button holes should go.
I know, these buttons are purely decorative, so I didn't really need to put button holes, but I thought it would look weird with out button holes. Plus, my machine has a button hole setting and I get strangely excited any time I get to use it (just in case you didn't already know I was a nerd!).
Still using my ball point needle, I stitched the button holes down one side of the center. I didn't even bother cutting the "hole" part of my button holes, just stitched them on for looks.
Now, my machine also has a stitch that will automatically sew on buttons, and I was all excited to use that, but...I broke my first button. Cracked right between the holes. Better than breaking a needle, I guess. Feeling a little defeated, I sewed them on by hand. Don't worry, I have since learned how to sew buttons on using the machine, and it worked beautifully. Hopefully I get around to posting about that project as well.
I don't know why I left this step until the last, but finally I hemmed both of the sleeves, so they didn't have raw edges. I just folded them under (like I did for the center seam) and did a straight stitch using the ball point needle. Sorry, no pictures of that!

But I did take a picture of the finished cardigan!

What do you think? I have an identical black shirt that I plan on doing the same thing with, but maybe this time I'll do a little more embellishing. If you wanted to, you could make some of those cute fabric flowers that have been floating around the blog world using the extra fabric cut off the end of the sleeves. Maybe I'll do that on the next one...and take pictures, too. :)

Weekend Loveliness

I had a most enjoyable weekend. We were able to spend Saturday with family at my nephew's baptism, which was followed by a signature Fancy Nancy party. Love those! Then Nancy, hostess extraordinaire that she is, watched the kids while I went shopping at Anthro with my mom, Emily, and the Rock Star. Oh boy, did the sale rack yield up her treasures! Fortunately I had some birthday money to spend, which I did with reckless abandon.

I got this top, only I got it in a cerulean blue (which I can't find a picture of online)

I also got these pants (which I'll have to hem like 6 inches off of, but such is the life of a short woman).

And I got another top, but there are no pictures of it to be found online. I'm sure you'll see me in it one of these days. Thank you Anthropologie, for having a sale rack. I'll love you forever for it!

Been a While

'Member how I used to blog? Yeah, then I just stopped for months! Lame, I know. I've been doing a lot of thinking about making, but just not getting around to the actual making part. Some things I've been thinking about making...

Bakerella's Pillow Cookies (brownie and chocolate chip cookie all in one? Yes, Please!)

Home made basil pesto, with my home grown basil, which hasn't died! I'm not the best at keeping plants alive, but the Rock Star pretty much tends the garden, so this stuff is thriving.

I am in LOVE with these overalls. The print, the bow, the ruffles on the bottom? C'mon! I want to try and copy them. Mom, you may be getting some sewing related phone calls soon.

I'm also feeling so inspired by all the upcycling people are doing in the blog world, turning old and boring clothes into new and fabulous clothes. I have a few pieces set aside that will hopefully get a make-over soon. In the mean time, here are links to some of my favorites

1. Katies Scandalous to Fabulous Skirt

2. Ashley's Stained Shirt turned Shrug

3. Katie's Liberty Shirt Turned Skirt

4. Jess's Floral Refashion

5. Nancy's T-shirt Skirt