Autism Research

My sister is currently doing research for Autism and needs some help.  If you or someone you know is interested in completing an online survey to help Autism research  please follow the link below

MOMS!! Help us learn more about Autism Spectrum Disorders...Researchers at the University of North Dakota are conducting a research study and would like to ask you about your experience with pesticides and pregnancy complications. If you have a child who has been diagnosed with an Autism Spectrum Disorder including Asperger’s and Pervasive Developmental Disorders, please consider completing this online survey. Participants will not only have the chance of winning an iPod, but more importantly responses may help prevent autism and other developmental disorders.
Click here to help autism research https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/SCX9R2T

A little pick me up note

You know I love the No Big Dill blog.  She is AMAZING.  5 girls with baby #6 on the way, awesome sewer, amazing photographer and so creative. Today she had a note from her mother on there and it was such a good pep talk.  It's nothing I didn't already know or haven't hear before, but sometimes you just need to hear it from your mom, but since I don't have my mom in the picture, I will settle for listening to her mom!!!

Tried this

I made a recipe yesterday that is worth sharing. I love cheesecake and chocolate.  I would choose cheesecake any day over any other dessert. Not just any cheesecake, but thick no crust New York style. While that takes some skill and I needed to use some cream cheese and heavy cream I had in my fridge and found this recipe from Martha Stewart and thought it looked easy and required no baking and combined my loves.  I halved everything except the ganache.  I used a dark chocolate bar from Trader Joe's for the ganache and oreo cookies with the filling scraped off for the crust and more ganache drizzled on top.  It was a hit. It was even better as it sat in the fridge over night. Yum.  It was light but still a little rich and cold. It seemed like the perfect summer decadent dessert.

 If you look close you can kind of see that layer of fudgy ganache covering the crust.  I am no dark chocolate fan, but this was good. I always laugh when I read recipes that say "use the best dark chocolate you can afford" and snubbed my nose at those chocolate snobs.  Well, now I know why.  This isn't the best chocolate out there, but it's pretty good and organic and still creamy for it being dark. I may need to buy a box of these to have on hand next time I am there. 

For my niece

Ta-da!!  I upcycled an old dress shirt of my brother-in-law's to make a shirt for their daughter who is 3 years younger than Amelia. This was my inspiration. I really intended to add the buttons, but I liked the open feeling of this. (Hope you do too) It's a little small on Amelia but I was glad she modeled it for me lots of times so I could figure out the fit. Did I mention, no pattern?!?!  I am rather impressed with myself. Just looked and made.  The shirt also had some little stains on it that I had to avoid, which made it a little more interesting to cut out.  The sides have a panel to make it wide enough to fit and avoid the stains.  (You can't see it in the pic) but it's one of the little things I really like about it.  I just struggled with the neck and finally gave in to putting in the ribbon.  Then voila, it bunched the way I wanted and was functional.  I made this while Philip was gone late one night and it was so fun to try 2 new things with my machine: sew with the elastic thread and use the double needle. I am totally addicted. It's not completely tailored, but not too bad for not having a serger. I just wish I had finished it for the 4th!!  Sorry little Audrey. Maybe she will fit in it again next year.  Hopefully it brings a little smile to her papa seeing his little girl run around in an old shirt of his.  Thanks for giving me a fun project Annie!!

Birthday creations

It was my son's 3rd birthday yesterday and I decided he needed some boy bling for his celebration and later used in his room (when he actually has his own and is not living in a sea of purple and flowers from his big sister).  I made this out of a favorite old dress shirt of Philip's.  I had made a pair of shorts for him previously and I still had enough left over for this. It took awhile to get the letters to what I wanted and I am unsure about the b.  I went back and forth between capital and lowercase, but ended up with the lowercase and now I am regretting it.  Luckily it will be an easy fix if I do decide to change it. Then I did something I have never done before, bought bias tape!!!! How commercial, I know :)  It cut this project time in half, so I just might be sold. I also used a really thick pellon so they are very stiff, which makes them hang nicely.  I absolutely love it once I got it all together and up on a wall.  My machine was having a hard time with the tension, so the back is not as good as I would want, but I was done fiddling around with it, and who sees the back??  Actually the back is made of the same brown and white polka dot the letters and and it would be really cute flipped around with something on that side too.  Maybe temporary things later.

He also is very into pirates.  It literally is his alter ego. I made him a pirate ship cake with the intentions of filling it up with a bunch of different pirates from cake pops. I hated making cake pops.  They turned out not so good, but they weren't so bad you couldn't recognize them, so I only made 3 and gave up. My candles were supposed to be the cannons.  The package said they were sparkler trick candles. I was imagining them sparkling like the end of a cannonball, but they were just plain old candle flames, and the trick park was that they were just hard to blow out. I expected them to go out then come back on.  Maybe putting them sideways effected their ability to be cool. 

My other project was a superhero cape.  I saw my sister in law make 2 of these on 2 different occasions and they were easy and cute and her boys loved them.  Ben was kind of talking about it after a visit, so I decided to try it out. His favorite color is blue, so I decided to go that route instead of the typical red and I did all black because I liked the flowiness (and it's what I had in the fabric bin). I attempted 2 swords (that's what the grey things are) but it got way to tedious to sew so I bagged the handles so they came out more like just things on the side. I had limited myself to make it in a naptime only from start to finish. The velcro was sewn on as he walked out to my sewing room!!!  Just in the nick of time.  So picking it out and redoing swords was not an option. Plus, it's just play clothes. I loved the fact that when I came out to breakfast this morning, this is what I saw. That makes it a success.