Saturday, April 30, 2011

Painted Onesies

Between my super baby fever and the fact that everyone around me is pregnant I wanted to do some sort of baby craft and I'm procrastinating on the baby quilt.  So, I decided to do some painted onesies yesterday.  They are so simple.  I couldn't believe it.

First, I used my Cricut to cut out some cute shapes out of freezer paper (make sure it's shiny side down).  Then, iron it onto your onesie.  Put some sort of paper inside the onesie, under the design so that you don't have paint going through the fabric.  Fill in the design with fabric paint.  I used puff paint, but painted it on with a paint brush.  I tried a foam brush on this one, but you can see where it pulled at the fabric.


 I used a regular brush on this one and I think it turned out much better.






Then let them dry for several hours and peel off your freezer paper.  Be careful when peeling because it sticks and can peel up the fabric paint if you aren't careful.  Next time I might try peeling it off while the paint is still wet.  

Here's the final product:



Now I just need to figure out who to give them too so I can get them out of my house.  They aren't easing the baby fever at all.

I will be linking this up to Fabric Tuesday at Quiltstory and Whatever Goes Wednesday at Someday Crafts.

Thursday, April 28, 2011

Enchiladas

About a week ago, I found this recipe for cheesy chicken enchiladas.  Last night I decided to try them.  They are awesome.  DH loved them too so I think this recipe will become part of our regular rotation.


I didn't follow it exactly.  I used half cheddar and half pepper jack.  That's partly because we didn't have Monterrey Jack and partly because I'm not a big fan of it.  I also used canned chicken because I was feeling lazy.  Oh, and my pan only fit 7 tortillas.  I don't think it's a true 9x13.  The only change I would make for next time would be using purees peppers.  My cans had tiny little hard pieces from parts of the pepper you wouldn't normally eat so I'm going to try it with a puree. 

I'm actually looking forward to lunch so I can eat another one of these and I don't usually like leftovers so that should tell you just how good they are.

Tuesday, April 26, 2011

Strawberry Jam

Recently, I found this blog post about making strawberry jam and was inspired to try it out.  Conveniently enough, my grocery store was offering a buy 1, get 2 free deal on boxes of strawberries so I knew I had to do it.  I am so glad I did.  It was really simple and the flavor is awesome.  I might add a little less sugar next time (I prefer my jam with a little tartness), but this recipe is still awesome.  The recipe that is shown at the bottom of her post made about 6.5 jars worth.  I can't remember what size they were, but they're small.  Not baby food jar small, but smaller than most of the others there.  It's still enough to last us quite a while. 

Saturday, April 23, 2011

A New Purse

I've been wanting to make a purse for a while and I had the fabrics picked out for the outside, but couldn't decide on the lining.  I've had a lot of free time this week so I finally made a decision and drew out what I wanted.  I put it all together today.


Both fabrics are from the Sanibel line by Henry Glass.  I love this line. 

The lining:


It's not the greatest picture (taking pictures of the inside is always difficult), but it at least shows you the adorable turquoise polka-dot and that there are pockets in the same green fabric as the outside.  I need to work on my pocket skills, but I'm really happy with how this one turned out.  Now I just need to take all my stuff out of my other purse and switch over. 

Thursday, April 21, 2011

A Garden

 When we first moved into our place we had a nice little garden out front, but over the course of the last couple months we kinda let it die.  I wasn't thrilled with most of the plants that were in there to begin with and this winter was really bad so we never went out there and took care of it.  It looked like this at the start of last weekend



Yes, that is a fish tank you see.  We use it as the travel tank for our bearded dragon.

A view of the side


We wanted to fix it up and I wanted to grow some food plants, especially tomatoes.  So we made a trip to Lowes and bought a bunch of supplies.


And at the end of the day it looked like this


The purple plant at the top is freesia.  I couldn't tell you what the others are.  I couldn't find zinnias and these were pretty so we planted them.

This is the food part of our garden.  On the left is strawberries (which have grown and now have flowers on them) and tomatoes on the left.


The empty looking corner actually has garlic bulbs, then leftover irises we didn't want to move, and a tiny little zucchini plant.


It looks so much better out there now and I love that we will have fresh food grown from our own garden this summer.  Once we finally buy a house we'll be planting a lot more.  If you haven't tried growing your own fruit or vegetables before I highly recommend it.  The taste is so much better than the stuff in the grocery store and it's much cheaper to buy the plant and just pick what you need from your garden.

Tuesday, April 19, 2011

New Dishes

Ever since we moved in together DH and I have been using old plates.  Really old plates.  They were the set his parents got as a wedding gift.  They weren't technically dishwasher/microwave safe either.  We actually had a plate crack down the middle while in the microwave one time.  The worst part is that since we didn't have the whole set (his roommates broke a lot of them before we got together) we had a ton of mismatched pieces.  Even with all the mismatched ones we still ran out all the time because we didn't have very many of anything.

At various times we picked up a couple cheap bowls to add to the set, his brother brought dinner to our house and left his plate behind, and we both had roommates leave various dishes behind when they moved out so we acquired them.  It was a disaster to fit into the dishwasher because nothing fit together. 

We've wanted new dishes for a while but have had a really hard time finding a set that we both liked, was microwave and dishwasher safe, and didn't have really deep bowls (they're hard to fit in the dishwasher).  Well, we finally found them. 





It's this set from Corelle.  I don't know the name of it, but the red stripes are really cute and they fit really well with all the red in our kitchen.  


I can't tell you how happy I am to have new dishes.  They fit together in the cabinet and in the dishwasher.  They also aren't ridiculously heavy (did you know plates from the 70s could also be used as weights?).  And since they're Corelle they're designed to withstand dropping without cracking or chipping.  I suppose they might if you threw them at the ground, but my mom has similar dishes and she has dropped them without any issues.  The set she has is older than me and still in great condition.  So I imagine we'll have these for a while. 

Now if you'll excuse me I'm going to go eat some ice cream out of one of the bowls.

Sunday, April 17, 2011

One Year

One year ago today I married my best friend.  I love my husband more than anything and I'm so lucky to have him.  It has been a great year and we've had a lot of exciting stuff happen (moving and new jobs are probably at the top of that list).  I can't wait to see what the next year brings. 

Saturday, April 16, 2011

Anniversary Trip

This weekend DH and I took some time off so we could go on a vacation to celebrate our anniversary.  On Friday we left early so that we could go to the San Francisco Zoo.  We got there just in time to see them feed the grizzly bears, which was awesome.  One of them attempted to catch a fish right in front of us (she didn't get it).  It was amazing.  We saw lots of other animals too like giraffes


He was going to town on this leftover branch from the morning feeding.  Because we were the only people there to watch this show (which was really only about 7 feet away) we skipped the feeding later in the day.

We saw gorillas.


It doesn't really look like it in this photo, but this guy is huge.

We also saw kangaroos.


These guys are super lazy and this is one of the only shots I got of one standing.  There was a really loud bang right before this that made every kangaroo jump up.  There are also peacocks everywhere at the zoo.  They go in and out of a bunch of different animal habitats.

This guy was also massive


One of my favorite things to see.  He was enormous and he kept moving around.  Seeing one of these in the wild would be terrifying.

We got to see them feed the penguins, which was great.  I love penguins so this part was very exciting for me.



Unfortunately it was hard to get a decent picture because there were so many people around. 

Finally, we saw this big guy.


He's a new addition to the zoo and we got to him right at the end of his display time.  They were draining his pool because apparently that's the only way you can convince a 4000 pound hippo to get out of the water and go to bed.  We waited quite a while before he finally gave up and walked inside.  It was totally worth the wait to see him get up and move around.

DH and I both got really sunburned while we were there.  Fortunately, it was a bit on the chilly side so we had sweaters on.  It's just our faces that are burnt.

After our trip to the zoo we went to Pier 39 and had some dinner and got some treats at a shop called Chocolate Heaven.  If you're making a trip to San Francisco I highly recommend it.  They had some delicious treats, including a handmade smores candy that we devoured tonight.  After that we drove to Sausalito where we had intended to spend the night.  When I told DH that the GPS said we were only 42 miles from Bodega Bay he convinced me that we should drive up there.

Last year at this time DH went away with his friends for his bachelor party.  They ended up staying in this really nice hotel that he's been talking about taking me to ever since.  We found it late at night and got the last room.  It was worth the drive.  The Bodega Bay Lodge is wonderful.  The people are nice, the restaurant was delicious and the hotel room was amazing.  We had a great view of the bay and the ocean.  It has spa services on site and a heated pool and spa.  If you're looking for a romantic getaway this is the place.

This morning we got up and spent some time on the beach, ate a clam chowder bread bowl at The Tides restaurant (that's the restaurant from the movie The Birds), and then decided to cut our trip short and head home.  DH has some work stuff coming up this week so we decided to come home so it would be easier on him.  We were ready to come home anyway.  The zoo and a ton of driving exhausted both of us.  We had a wonderful time and I get to check some things off my list and we still have tomorrow to enjoy together (which is our actual anniversary).  It was great to get away just the two of us and spend some quality time together without having to worry about schedules.

Thursday, April 7, 2011

A New Bed

A couple weeks ago DH and I made the decision that even though we didn't really want to spend the money, we desperately needed a new bed.  Neither of us were sleeping through the night because we kept running into each other.  We needed something bigger.  So we went out in search of a bed.  We mostly thought we'd just get an idea of what we were looking for and wait a little longer, but we found one that was perfect and had a price we could live with too.  Today, it got delivered and I am so excited to sleep on it tonight, although I might need a ladder.  It's really tall. 

The new (much larger) bed, necessitated us getting some new sheets and a new comforter.  So we picked up our comforter at Bed, Bath and Beyond (yay, gift card!) and some sheets from Target.  It's finally set up, but since none of our furniture matches, there is nothing on our walls, and it still looks more like a couple college students live in our bedroom, I won't be sharing any pictures.  I will, however, share some when it starts coming together and looking like an adult bedroom. 

So that means two more things crossed off my list and a comfortable night's sleep, which I am ridiculously excited about.  I'm also pretty happy that we now have a reasonable guest bedroom.  It's not put together yet, but it should be ready to go soon and I'm very happy about that.  Now if only we had our own house and I could paint and change things around and really make it feel like ours. 

Monday, April 4, 2011

Random Road Trip

On Saturday DH and I decided to go for a drive.  Even though it had been sunny and gorgeous for several days beforehand, it was rainy and gloomy on Saturday.  We still wanted to get out of the house though.  We picked a city that is fairly close, but not somewhere we'd spent any time.  We saw the signs to Yosemite, but decided it was too far.  Until we made it to the first city we picked.  At that point the sign said we were only 24 miles away, so we went for it.  It was so worth the drive.  Because it's still early in the season there weren't as many people as we've seen there before.  There were still a lot of people, but nothing like it is in July. 

We saw Half Dome:


and Yosemite Falls:


and sweet little deer.


It was a great trip.  I can't wait to go back again once it warms up a bit and we can ride our bikes around in the valley.