Sesame Street Birthday

Wow, it's been a while!  We've been a bit busy over here, with a new baby and the Mouse turning 2!  We had her birthday party this weekend, and it was a smashing success if I do say so myself.

The Mouse, like most toddlers, LOVES Sesame Street.  Bert and Ernie are her favorites, but she has a soft spot for anyone on "Sess Seet" as she calls it.

After scouring Pinterest for ideas for her party, I made this door sign:

These party favors were forgotten at home, and Daddy had to go get them.  Thank God for my super husband!

Some of this food was also forgotten (Daddy to the rescue again)!

This Texas Trash Dip was popular, as always (thanks again, Pinterest!) and disappeared despite Oscar's grumpy face watching over it.

The birthday girl was especially impressed with her cake, which took way longer than I anticipated, but was so worth it in the end!

 

All in all she had a wonderful day, and since we had her party at The Little Gym the cleanup was a breeze!

Cookie suckers

This recipe I found this recipe at allrecipes.com

 Fun cookie sucker

Here are my step by step pictures.

Original recipe makes 2 dozen cookies

• 3/4 cup butter, softened
• 3 ounces cream cheese
• 1 cup white sugar
• 1 egg
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

• 2 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• assorted colors of paste food coloring
• 24 lollipop sticks

1. Directions

   In a bowl cream butter, cream cheese and sugar until fluffy. Add egg and vanilla; beat until smooth
2. In a medium bowl combine flour, baking powder and salt. Add dry ingredients to the creamed mixture. Stir till soft dough forms. Divide dough into fourths. Tint each with a different food color. Wrap in plastic wrap and chill for 2 hours.
3. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Working with each color, shape dough into 3/4 inch balls. For each cookie place 1 pink, 1 green, 1 blue and 1 orange ball together to make 1 large rainbow colored ball. Shape into a 12 inch long roll (like a snake); starting at one end, coil roll to make a 2 3/4 inch round cookie. Place cookies 3 inches apart on lightly greased baking sheet. Carefully insert lollipop sticks into bottoms of cookie
4. Bake cookies for 8 minutes or until lightly browned. Cool and store in an airtight container.

I cut each color 

 I found that dipping the sticks into egg white before inserting into the cookie help to make the cookies stay on the sticks. 

Make sure you do not over bake and they will stay soft for days if wrapped after they cool. I wrapped them in small treat bags I purchased at Michael's.

Reversible table-runner and matching cloth napkins

Table-runners and napkins finished just in time for the silent auction to benefit 

http://www.newwayacademy.org/

This school is for children with learning differences. 

Ok I need these jeans to last 5 more weeks!!!!

Fixing jeans

My 9-year-old has holes in every pair of jeans he owns. As much as I love seeing him in fresh, new clothes, I couldn't justify buying him new jeans for school when summer is just around the corner. We live in AZ, so summer is never too far off!

I saw some different methods of patching jeans when looking around Pinterest, but decided to experiment on my own. I had to do this in secret, because when I asked my son if I could fix his jeans, he was VERY adamant that I leave them alone.

I stole a pair out of his drawer while he was at school (I figured if he hated them I could just buy one new pair).

I started by ripping out a section of the side seam about 10 inches long (5 inches above and below the holes). If you're going to hand sew your patches on, you don't have to do this, but I wanted to use the machine. I went into my stash of fabric and found something that would work for this pair of pants.

I free handed the star and guitar on the reverse side of the fabric with a sharpie. For a more precise look, you can print out the shape you want and make a pattern to trace. I then used the serger around the edges. (Use a zig zag stitch if you don't have a serger).

After pinning the patches in place, I zigzagged them to the pants. I used my server to close the side seams back up, and was done!

My 9 year old thought they were awesome and requested I do the other pairs of pants, too.

No need to purchase jeans till next school year. Yeah!!!

Char

Pillowcase Dress!

I made my first pillowcase dress! Hooray! Huzzah! Yippee!

Now it wasn't easy, but I also didn't follow all of the directions in this tutorial from Prudent Baby.

The dress came together really well until I tried to do the armholes. I sewed them and ripped them out 3 times before realizing that I wasn't going to get them to lay flat. I didn't use bias tape like the tutorial said to, however. I made my own. Next time I will get bias tape from the store and see if I can improve it!

I still think it turned out pretty cute, and the Mouse looks adorable in it!

Now to finish the matching bloomers!

Lisa

Shhh.

Can you keep a secret? You can't say a word to Sally, but I kind of, sort of, despise her.

Sigh. There, I said it. Publicly.

She's just not what she used to be.

She skips stitches.
She lets the bobbin get all wonky.
She doesn't even sew a straight line anymore.

She's being replaced very soon.

By whom? I don't know. I'm in the market.

Does anyone have any suggestions for her replacement?

Requirements:
Straight stitches
Consistent stitch length
Zig Zag capabilities

Help!

Knit Elf Hat

This hat was a two to three day project. Easy to knit and I found a free pattern on line. The first one turned out so cute, I decided to make more.