The Reversible Kathleen Cape

After my Little Red Riding Hood post last Halloween, one of my best friends requested that I make a cape for her daughter's birthday.  She asked if I could make it reversible too. She gave me carte blanche on color and fabric.  So here is the "Reversible Kathleen Cape".

First start by cutting out your cape circles.  You will need one of each color.  (For more details on this process, see my Little Red Riding Hood post)  The main difference from the original was that it's more of a semi circle rather then a half circle because of trying to make the height taller.

Find a hood that fits your child and trace around it, taking in account seam allowances.  Sew together two hoods. (more on this too in Little Red Riding Hood post)

Attach your two hoods to your two cape circles.

For your ties, cut out two strips of each color the width and length that you want with enough for seam allowance..  Sew the solid strip to the patterned strip right sides together, leaving one end open. Turn inside out and topstitch.  Repeat for the second set.

Pin your two capes right sides together.

Pin your ties in between your two capes at the point underneath your hood line.  See picture below.

Sew the two capes together, leaving a space at the bottom unsewn for you to to turn inside out.  Hand stitch the hole closed, and then top stitch.   And Viola! you are done!   I actually found the reversible cape to be easier then the original Little Red Riding Hood cape because I didn't have to hem or worry about covering any exposed seams.

What I loved about this project was that I was able to use thread I had inherited from my friend's mother to sew it together.  Her mother passed away from Leukemia several years ago.  This is exactly the sort of thing she would have loved to make for her granddaughter.  I am glad that through me she was still able to be a part of her granddaughter's birthday present.

Post dedicated to Kathy Bowman.  You will live on in our hearts and memories forever.
Please help beat Leukemia by donating blood or   platelets  to your local donation center.

Easy Stir Fry

One of our favorite meals to make is stir fry.  It's such a quick and easy meal.  It's fairly healthy too.

Here's how we make ours.

You will want to prepare all your ingredients ahead of time because once you start cooking it goes pretty fast.

First cut up some onion slices, and mince a few garlic cloves. Pour a couple of tablespoons of oil in your wok (or frying pan).  Turn your heat on high, and once hot throw in your onions and garlic. The amount of garlic and onions is really to your taste, but I recommend not skipping this step because they really add flavor to your dish. Saute until onions are clear.



Next put in your meat.  Chicken, beef or tofu all work well.  Your local grocery store even sells beef precut for stir fry if you're really short on time.  Make sure your meat is cut into about square inch pieces. Cook until meat is done, constantly stirring.  One of the tricks to stir fry is to continually mix it to evenly cook it and to keep it from burning.

The next step is to add vegetables.  We usually buy a premade bag of stir fry vegetables to save on time, but you can choose any veggies that you prefer.

In addition to the premade bag, we also add bell pepper slices.  One thing to note is that you add veggies in the order of longest cooking time.  Broccoli and carrots go in first, bell peppers go in last.  You want all your vegetables to stay crispy, so you only want to cook them a little while.

We also like to add noodles. The brand we buy is pictured below, but we just use the noodles and throw away the spice packet that comes with it.  These are prepared by poking holes in the plastic they come in inside and microwaving for one minute. Then add them to your wok.  If you rather, skip the noodles and serve your dish over rice.


Add about a quarter cup of water and add your stir fry sauce.  I'm sure there are some great recipes out there to make yourself but our favorite is House of Tsang. (Remember this is a quick meal, making sauce from scratch adds time). Their classic is good, but if you like spicy try the Szechuan sauce. Add to taste, I think we usually use about a quarter of a bottle.

Mix until sauce is hot and food is coated.  Serve immediately.

And that's it! Just 15 minutes to make a quick satisfying meal!

My Pumpkin Misadventure: Cooking up my Fall Decor Pumpkin

In January, I decided to break into my pumpkin from my Fall Decor.  I bought it in September and thought for sure it would be rotten inside, but just in case I didn't want good pumpkin to go to waste.   I cut into and it was perfectly fine!    I haven't done much cooking with pumpkin and was excited to try to find some yummy recipes to use it in.

My first task was to figure out how to take it from a whole pumpkin to usable for recipes.  I searched around and one of the solutions I found was to cook it like acorn squash.  Cut it up, put it the oven, fill the bottom with an inch or so of water, and bake until soft.  It kind of worked, but turned out to be a much bigger ordeal then planned.  The pumpkin was so thick that it took much longer to get the pumpkin soft then expected.  By the time it was soft in the middle the top had a nice crispy crust which I had to peal off in order to use the soft pumpkin underneath.  The other problem was because it was taking so long,  the water kept evaporating, so I kept needing to add more water.  One time, I wasn't thinking, and I added cold water to my pan instead of hot water.  The below picture was result of that mistake.  BAM! Explosion - glass everywhere.    :(   I'm sad too, because I can't find another blue glass 9 X 13 pan.

How do you cook a pumpkin?

The first thing I made from it were pumpkin pancakes.  They were quite yummy, soo moist.  I unfortunately don't know know what recipe I used.  Anyone have any good pumpkin pancake recipes to share? I'd love to try them out this season!

The one thing that I do remember was that all the recipes called for pumpkin  pie spice mix which I did not have because I don't like pumpkin pie  (yes, I know, how could I not like pumpkin pie? Well, I don't like cheesecake either. I'm weird - it's just a texture thing I have).  I looked up how to make it from scratch and all recipes included nutmeg, allspice, cinnamon, and ginger - all ingredients I had on hand.

The other recipe I tried was from a blog I like to read - Something Swanky: Desserts and Designs . Her blog is all about desserts and diy blog design tricks... kind of a weird combination but two things which I'm very interested in.  It appeals to both my tummy and  my brain.  :)

This recipe is to die for - so yummy and fairly easy to do too.  I recommend you don't pass this recipe up this fall season.

Photo Credit: Something Swanky

This is a pumpkin roll with cream cheese frosting... oh so delicious.  Just give it a try yourself, you'll be glad you did.  I'm bringing this recipe to the next Thanksgiving gathering I go to this year.

Pumpkin Roll from Something Swanky.  

So the season for pumpkins is here again - What are your favorite pumpkin recipes?

Introducing...

So I'm sure all of you out there are wondering why I stopped posting.  You probably noticed that I had fallen off the face of the earth and just disappeared.  Or not.... most of you probably didn't even notice.  :)

Well the reason for my very long absence is finally here.

Introducing our newest addition to the family... Alexis.

Pictures Copyright Megan Lamb of Bella Baby Photography

Mod Podge Storage Containers

I thought I'd put up a quick and easy project that only took a little bit of time, took very little money, and made my house look prettier.

So having an almost two year old leaves the problem of having toys all over the house.  I could keep them in her room, but her room is upstairs and we spend most of our time in the living room downstairs.  We had her toys in boxes out in the open but they just looked cluttered... we finally moved the boxes to behind the couch and moved the couch away from the wall so she has a little bit of a play area behind there.  It makes the room look so much less cluttered storing them out of the way and she can still easily get at them.

She does have little toys which don't work well in boxes because they get lost in the bottom and the pieces get separated and then she never plays with them.  So I came up with a cheap solution.  I eat oatmeal everyday...  I hate oatmeal, but it's for my cholesterol... so I continually have a surplus of empty oatmeal containers.   Well, I started storing her little toys, like her tea set, her legos, and puzzle pieces in these oatmeal containers.  I discovered they fit perfectly on the bottom shelves of our book shelves... (we're big book people... so have lots of book shelves all over the house).  But people would kind of look at us funny, seeing rows of oatmeal containers sitting out, so I solved that problem with this little craft.

I started with an empty oatmeal container.  I peeled the paper off.

I cut scrapbook paper to fit my container.  I had to use about one and a half sheets per container to cover the whole thing.  

I put a layer of Mod Podge onto the oatmeal container to stick the paper to it. I smoothed out the paper as best as I could, and then covered the paper with another layer of Mod Podge.

I let dry and I loved how they turned out.  I picked colors to kind of match my living room and I think it looks so pretty in a neat row on the shelf.  So much better then a row of oatmeal containers!!

I did have one little issue, the paper bubbled a little bit in places, but I've never used Mod Podge before, so anyone have any tips to get rid of this issue in the future?

I loved this project, it was easy to do while watching tv, and cheap too.  We'll see how long they stand up to a two year old, but if I have to make more, I have plenty more oatmeal containers and paper so that I can quickly replace any that get too beat up.