Pretzel Gingerbread House

Just as I was digging out my gingerbread house pattern and recipe, my husband came by with a bag of pretzels and said, “how about using these to make a log cabin?”  "What a great idea", I thought.  And "Oh, did I marry well!"--My heart goes pitter-pat when he comes up with nifty ideas like that. Since it meant that I wouldn’t have to roll out cookie dough, we gave it a try.

To hold everything together, you will need to make some icing that dries rock hard. I used to make it with egg whites and cream of tartar like my mother taught me, but now I just use Wilton Meringue Powder mixed with powdered sugar and water. You can find Meringue powder in craft stores—follow the recipe for Royal Icing included inside the can.

I constructed the walls and roof pieces separately and let them dry before building the house, instead of building the house Lincoln Log-style.  I also added pieces of Rye Crisp to the insides of the walls for extra structural support.

 
 
 
 
 
 
The roof is made of graham cracker pieces.  I added gingerbread cookies to the roof  for a nice German look.
 

 

I constructed the house on a foil-covered piece of cardboard.  My mother taught me to lay down a good-sized blob of icing in each corner before placing the walls, then put a generous amount of icing in the inside seams.

 

After attaching the roof, let the icing dry and have the kids decorate the house with candy, add some icicles, and top with a dusting of powdered sugar.

Stupid Cabinet - How I Wasted my Summer Vacation.

Behold stupid cabinet! One day I will add some artsy fused glass or something to the cabinet doors, but for now, I’m calling it done!

It all started when someone who was interested in buying some of my paintings came to the house. We use our computers in the living room, and had been using some very functional, very baby-proofable, very ugly white cabinets to contain them. I knew they were ugly, but I was able to edit them out of my vision most of the time. At this moment though, when I was showing my paintings to a potential buyer, I realized that this was just not good marketing. Who is going to want to buy paintings from someone with cheesy taste like this?  It turned out that my potential buyer was kind enough to overlook the ugly cabinets—I’ll make sure to post the paintings that I made for her. She did have to wait a little longer than usual to get her paintings though, because I thought that I would just quickly whip up this cabinet and then get on with my other work.

I really didn’t want to take on a woodworking project, I just wasn’t able to find anything suitable to purchase. I made a thorough search, and just came up with nothing. The only thing that made sense was to order some custom kitchen cabinetry and modify it to work. Then the very naive thought came to me…”Well, I’ll just make it”.

“We’ll, I’ll just make it”, always turns out fine for me even when I don’t have a clue what I’m doing—which I didn’t in this case. I’m a master of winging-it and I also work very fast, so I have never regretted taking on projects like this.

Building cabinets is not difficult. Because of all of the right angles, it is much simpler than sewing. But I must warn all of the seamstresses out there, that cabinet making just…takes…a…l..o..n..g…time.

Had I known how long I would need to spend on Stupid Cabinet, I would have saved myself a lot of frustration. Instead I thought, “Oh, I’ll just whip up the cabinets this month and then get back to work”. And then I said, “Oh, I have the carcasses done, so now it’s almost done. I just have to build the doors, sand, and stain it!” And I just kept saying, “Oh, I have that part done. Almost finished!”. And then I was waking up early to work before the kids got up, and staying up late to work when the kids went to bed, and working on the weekends while my poor husband watched the kids. That is how Stupid Cabinet got its name—I started saying “I need to go work on that stupid cabinet”.

Stupid Cabinet was completed at the end of the summer, and I eventually caught up on my backlog of work. I’ll eventually think up some beautiful thing to insert in the cabinet doors, but for now it’s kind of convenient to be able to just reach into the cabinet without opening the doors. Our kids are old enough now that we no longer have to worry about them inserting sandwiches in the disk drives…knock on wood.

Father's Day T-shirts

It started a couple of years ago with this shirt. (Who does this guy's laundry?) We went from "what should we give Dad for Father's Day?" to grabbing a T-shirt and some acrylic paint. (which works great on T-shirts, by the way. No need for fancy fabric paint--the inexpensive craft acrylics that come in bottles work great for T-shirts)

The kids didn't spend much time of this shirt. With a couple of drips of blue paint for eyes, the blobs quickly turned into creatures. Dad loves this shirt. LOVES it. He wears it all the time.

This is a great project for very young kids. Just remember to protect their clothing, because the paint will never come out. I find that limiting the palette prevents muddy colors. Other than that, just stretch the shirt over a board, give the kids a brush, and let them go.

Now... how to top that last shirt! I have been itching to do some applique--I never dreamed it would be for something for my husband. Keeping the creature theme that worked so well before, I asked the kids to draw some monsters. Our six-year-old drew a one-eyed monster straight away, but our three-year-old just made some scribbles--No problem, the scribbles looked very creature-like. We found a flying creature and a mushroom-headed lizard creature in them.

I dug out a precious scrap of my Spoonflower fabric (can't waste those!!!) and we used Steam-a-Seam2 double stick fusible web to make the creatures into fabric "stickers". We slapped them on the shirt and then I pressed them with the iron and sewed around the edges. We added some button eyes and we were done!

He'll get the creature drawings as a Father's Day card.

Shhhhhhh! Don't tell him what he's getting!

Dog Park

My latest painting "Dog Park" is of dogs at our local dog park--I always feel happy after spending time surrounded by all those dogs.

It's a 24"x24" oil on canvas and you can find it at the Lagerquist Gallery in Atlanta.

Sewing Instructions for Girl's Flirty Skirt

I scribbled down these instructions for the girl's flirty skirt I showed in an earlier post. The skirt is made with the Spoonflower fabric I designed. Skirts are very easy to make, and this design with the elasticized waist will fit through several growth spurts--today's knee-length skirt will be tomorrow's mini.

The pattern for this skirt consists simply of three rectangles, and can be made by an absolute beginner. I tried to make the directions for beginners to use, but if there are any confusing parts please let me know. I'd love to see how your skirt comes out using this pattern--send your photos and I'll post them here.

For a young girl, like my three-year-old daughter with a 19'' waist, you can make this skirt out of two fat quarters (21"x18" sold to quilters) of fabric.

1. Take two body measurements (in inches):

a. Measure around the waist (or widest part, ie. hips, thigh..)

b. Measure from the waist down to where you want the bottom of the skirt to be. (best to keep the top of the ruffle above the knee so the skirt is easier to run and play in.)

2. With a as the waist measurement, and b as the length measurement:

Cut two rectangles for the main part of the skirt (ax.5)+3.5" by (b-1"). In other words, (half of the waist measurement plus 3.5") by (the length measurement - 1").

Cut one rectangle for the ruffle 3 3/4" by (a+6")x2.5 (In other words: the waist measurement plus 6" times 2 1/2.). You will probably have to piece two pieces together to have a strip that is long enough--in that case, just add an inch to the length. It is not so important that the length of the ruffle be exact.

3. With right sides together (the printed faces of the fabric touching each other), make seams 5/8" from the edges as shown.

4. Press the seams open with an iron.










5. With right sides together, sew the ends of the ruffle piece together (and sew on any pieces you may have had to add on to get the the length you needed). Press open the seams.

6. Hem the ruffle by folding up the bottom 1/4", then pressing, then folding up 1/4" again, then pressing, then sewing along the edge.

7. To gather the ruffle, baste (sew with large stitches) 5/8" from the top of the edge, and then again 1/4" or so from the edge. (Offset the start of the 1/4" stitching from the start of the 5/8" stitching by a few inches if you want the ruffle to be nice and evenly gathered)

8. Gently pull the ends of the threads to gather the ruffle until it is the same size around as the main section of the skirt.

9. Pin the ruffle to the skirt with right sides together. Sew (don't forget to set your stitch length back to normal after basting) together, stitching on top of the 5/8" basted stitches. Remove basting that shows on right side. Press seam toward the top of the skirt.

10. To make the elasticized waist, fold over the top of the skirt 1/4" or so, press, then fold over again 3/4" (or more if the elastic is wide), and press. Sew a seam along the edge of the fold, leaving an inch or so gap between the start and finish of the seam for inserting the elastic.






11. Attach a safety pin to the end of a piece of elastic (to make it easy to feed through) and feed in through the folded over stitching. Adjust the length of elastic and sew the ends together.

12. Done!

Sra. Yague's Underground Soup

I am asked for this recipe often enough that I thought it belonged on my blog. This is a delicious Spanish soup that a lady named Senora Yague taught me. I lived with her while I was studying Spanish in Madrid.


It is so flavorful, you would not guess that it consists of only vegetables, water, and salt. Sra. Yague, had a name for it that meant "underground" in Spanish (because of the underground vegetables). At the time, I didn't recognize the word. If anyone out there knows this soup and the true Spanish name for it, please let me know.


I like to dress it up with a drizzle of nice olive oil and nonfat yogurt, but it really isn't necessary. If you have an immersion blender, this is a very easy soup to make.


Peel and coarsely chop the following:
2 onions
4 carrots
4 potatoes
4 small turnips (or 2 large ones)


Put the vegetables in a pot and cover with water. Cook until the vegetables are tender. Then place two fresh tomatoes in the hot water until the skins can be peeled off. Removed the tomatoes, remove skins (after they cool a bit!), and remove the seeds. Return them to the pot.

Now just puree' with the immersion blender until smooth, and salt to taste.

If you are tempted to drain off some of the water before using the blender, don't throw it out, you will probably need to add it back in. Also, because of the potatoes, this soup doesn't freeze well.

Spoonflower Fabric Shirt and Skirt

Here's a shirt for me and a skirt for my daughter that I made from the fabric that I designed. I made the patterns for both garments myself. I'll give instructions for making the flirty little girl's skirt later--it's super easy.

The fabric was printed by a company called Spoonflower.

Clay Scrap Bowl

I made this bowl by pressing scraps of clay together in a slab roller. I used a wok to form the bowl shape and scraped a texture in the top. It's finished in a matte bone glaze.

Source of Ideas:
None really. This just happened when I was playing with clay.

Goop-Proof Polka Dot Chairs

I wanted some funky polka dot chairs for our foyer, but I couldn't find the right upholstery fabric that would resist sticky kid fingers. Just as well! I bought a couple of chairs with plain beige upholstery and painted over the fabric. Then, I topped it with a coat of polyurethane, so now they can be wiped clean.

Source of ideas:
Polka dots! - big juicy ones.
Black marble trim on my foyer floor.
I wanted to be able to wipe the seats clean.

Chiplun

This is a little 8x10 acrylic painting that I did. The colors and flowers remind me of India, so I named it "Chiplun" after a town near where I used to work in India.

I plan to start selling my tiny paintings online soon. My larger paintings are available through the Lagerquist Gallery in Atlanta.

Source of ideas:
My daughter's finger painting - pink and orange with vertical streaks.
Her pink and orange made me think of India.
The flowers remind me of ones painted on trucks in India.
The saffron-colored glaze on the top of the painting is reminiscent of India also.

My First Post!

Here it is! The first post in my blog--what fun! I haven't told anyone that I have started a blog yet, but what fun!. Someone will eventually read this. Let's see how many times I change the this blog's name.

I have chosen my first photo to be my new fabric that I designed. I made this maidenhair fern motif as a repeatable pattern and sent it off to have it printed by a new company called Spoonflower. I am really happy with the quality of the fabric and the printing--the colors are spot-on. I'll make sure to show you what I make with this later.

Where the design came from:

• Maidenhair ferns - I just love them.
• My mom's 60's era scarf - yellow and scudgy green combination.
• Flowers from the Dating Game show set and Japanese sakura flowers