Wednesday, March 25, 2009

For a Nursing Mother's Enjoyment

My friend Annie has requested lazy bloggers to update their blogs so she has some entertainment while feeding her adorable newborn. Well, I did happen to have a rather amusing thing happen to me yesterday. I just want to start out by saying, I have the best intentions when it comes to baking bread, and without fail, my three or four attempts have failed miserably. I would just love to be one of those people who whips up a batch of rolls in the morning and has them hot out of the oven just in time for dinner. But so far, the only thing that comes close to this in my house is Pilsbury Grands, which I have even been known to ruin. Well, yesterday, I decided to make the attempt again, I decided to make French bread. I whipped up a batch, and things were looking good, the dough wasn't too sticky and it smelled like bread, always a good thing. So I put it into the bowl to rise. I took the girls out for a quick trip to Joann's, came back, checked on the bread, and...it looked exactly the same. No rise, not even a little bit. I called my mom, she told me to put the oven on at 150 and stick it in there. I did, checked about a half hour later, and...flat as a pancake. So I call my mom back, she says it's either one of two things. The yeast is no good, which I decided was not the case, since it seemed to be working just fine when I started the bread. Or, too hot of water killed the yeast. Bingo! The recipe called for hot water, well, not knowing how hot, I put near boiling water in. Yep, killed it.



Okay, so here's my dilemma, it's 5:30 and that was my dinner. I was going to make a stromboli thingy out of the bread. Well, I whipped up some mac n' cheese for the girls. Then, I came across something I bought on a whim awhile ago...hamburger helper. Never tried it in my life. I thought, hey! Why not? Got the hamburger helper going for James and I. It looked a lot like this:



And tasted a lot like it too. Not going to be buying that anytime soon. My R.S. president came by and said, "Mmm, something smells good!" I told her I would not tell her what it actually was that smelled good, she could just think I had cooked something extremely yummy. Anyway, that was my bread failure #4. But I am not giving up! I'll let you know how attempt #5 goes.

Saturday, March 21, 2009

Random Projects

Before I left for Utah, I was working on a couple things.

I wanted to organize Natalie and Annie's clips, so I decided on this fabric and am going to put ribbons on it for the clips to attach to. It's harder to find the right color/size ribbon than you would think! It's just a picture frame with the glass taken out and fabric and batting attached.



I've been working on this doll quilt for a few weeks, here and there. It's actually more finished than this picture, but I didn't want to take another picture until it was completely done. This is a great way to learn how to quilt, it's a small quilt that you can finish in probably 3-4 hours, so you really see the quilting process quickly. I did a sew along that was on Sew, Mama, Sew! You can get it here.



And just some fabric that I got in the mail, I thought it was really fun. It's from the Hello Betty line.

Friday, March 13, 2009

Pictures

Head on over to Christy's blog to see some pictures of the girls. Christy was kind enough to offer to take pictures of the girls when I told her we needed some of Annie. I think they turned out really cute, I can't wait to see the rest!

Wednesday, March 11, 2009

New Fabric

So I'm in Utah with the girls and my Mom. We went to one of my favorite quilt shops here, Elaine's, and I got some really fun fabric for a new baby blanket. The designer is Valori Wells and she has the cutest blog. Find it here. The fabrics I chose are from her line Urban Flannels. And I'm going to do a ric-rac border in hot pink. Can't wait! I wish I had pictures to post, but I'm not on my own computer, I'll post some when I get home. I also have some other projects I've been working on that I'm really excited about!