~Scrap fabric storage solution~

Like many of you who sew I find it hard to part with my scrap pieces of fabric. As long as the a large enough to be used in the future I keep them. Up until now I kept them in a mesh laundry bag. It has been overflowing for quite some time. I was shopping one day and found this nifty mesh shoe organizer. I knew instantly what to use it for. Fabric storage of course. Because it is mesh I can see my scraps and it had more room than I need. I use some of the pockets to keep jellyrolls, charm packs, and just random remnants that are too small to put on a mini bolt. For now, it is hanging on that exercise bar in the door way until I find a permanent home for it. I am in the middle of updating my sewing room so everything is kind of everywhere. ;) Hopefully I will have a bright, beautiful, functional sewing room to share with you soon. Until then if you have any neat storage ideas I am all ears. Feel free to share!

Sorry for the not so great photos .... it was late at night. ;)

Great recipe finds!!!

Ok so I have been a little lax about blogging....you know things to do and people to see. To make up for it I come bearing some great recipe finds. The other night I wanted something light and out of the norm so I set out for a nice salad. I found this... Southwestern Summer Salad... http://www.skiptomylou.org/2011/08/05/southwestern-summer-salad/

from Skiptomylou's blog. It was wonderful. Super easy and so very refreshing. Oh and did I mention no cooking!!! I took a few pics and made a few changes because I am a picky eater. ;) I am sure it is yummy just as it is...I just changed it to suit my finicky taste buds. I used roasted red bell peppers instead of raw (I don't like them raw), I used an extra can of black beans (we LOVE black beans) , I would have used sundried tomatoes instead of raw but I forgot them (I don't like raw tomatoes either...see I told you I was picky), oh and I added black olives. Olives are a staple around here. hehe. Here are some pics of this must have salad. Oh and the dressing she makes is YUM, YUM!

Almost forgot, I used blue corn chips with flax seed. If you haven't tried these yet you should. They are awesome! Plus you can sometimes find them on sale at Target for 2.99 a bag. Oh and they are organic. I could eat these all day long...even plain. Hhmmm....I think I need a snack.

The second awesome find is from The PioneerWoman....Need I saw more. She is awesome. I love her blog and she has endless, to-die-for recipes. She makes me feel as if I am right there on the ranch with her. I would love to bump into her one day. So for Mr. Wonderful's birthday breakfast treat I searched her lovely blog. I took one look at these and was drooling all over my laptop. Ha! MONKEY MUFFINS! Shut the front door! This is a melt in your mouth goodness that makes you weak in the knees. Oh and it is super simple. I made these with K and E rummaging through the kitchen and still managed to keep it a surprise from Mr. Wonderful who was still in dreamland. Quiet kids and awesome baking...that is a rarity in this house. Trust me. Here is the link .... http://thepioneerwoman.com/cooking/2009/12/monkey-muffins/

You must try these and if you haven't checked out her blog you should. She also just landed a spot on the food network. Kudos to her! Here is a link for her show info... http://www.foodnetwork.com/the-pioneer-woman/index.html

I hope you will try and enjoys these recipes. Feel free to share some of your own or check out my Yum board on pinterest. I have gotten a few more pics loaded today so hopefully tonight I will squeeze in a few more post. I hope everyone enjoyed their holiday weekend!

Pinterest! and some questions.....

I finally jumped into the pinterest pool! Yay!  I love it! I will have to really make sure to manage my time wisely on there. I am sure I could get lost for hours on there. I think i might set a timer for 30 minutes and only allow one visit a day to see if I can control myself. Ha! I am a very visual person. Having all my bookmarked items in one place will do wonders for my craft productivity. I would love to see any of my readers pins if you would like to share. Feel free to follow mine as well. Do you think I should make my profile name my blog name or leave it as my real name? I was thinking for blog readers it might be easier if I used my blog name. Anywho, I am very new to the whole pinning thing and all tips are welcome. Hope to hear from some of you!

P.S. I have a few post lined up I just need to get my pics on here. I promise there are crafts and recipes soon to come!

Ice cream cake adventures....it was definitely an adventure!

Mr. Wonderful's birthday was this past weekend. He is the type that likes a low key birthday to-do. So every year he gets a meal of his choice and a cake of his choice. This year he decided he wanted something new....an ice cream cake. I have never made one and thought "Ah, it can't be that hard". Well it wasn't hard per se but definitely a learning experience. Now because I can laugh at my self I am going to show you how it went from great to "What is that!?!"  HAHA! Oh this is going to be good.

I started with a recipe from the Cake Doctor book. I used the butter cake recipe which was very yummy. I decided along the way I wanted a chocolate layer so I added some cocoa to half my batter and viola....chocolate cake. Things were still going great at this point.

Here are my baked cakes and the first of the trickle down affect. LOL! I put a little more batter in the vanilla cake and they didn't bake evenly. :( It wasn't bad though. They were both still very moist and tasted scrumptious. Just a little uneven. I cooled and cut to even them up.

Now for my ice cream layer. Mr. Wonderful is a very big fan of French Vanilla  ice cream. I am not a big fan of vanilla but this is a little better than the plain vanilla. So I took my cake pan and lined it with a little plastic wrap. Once I had filled the pan, it went back into the freezer. Still ok here.

Once the ice cream had set, I put all the layers together. This is where the cookie started to crumble so to speak. See this stack....in my haste to get it back in the freezer I forgot to cut the sides so they were all aligned. I also should have made a smaller ice cream layer.

See the wonkiness....it looks like a barrel.

I wrapped it pretty good and put back in the freezer to set. I had plenty of time to cut it to size. Being myself I had a hundred things going and didn't even give it a second thought. I don't know how I missed this step. I mean looking at this shape you think it would have been a no brainer. Right?!? Again I was trying to do to many things at once.

 Mr. Wonderful doesn't really care for frosting and detest fondant. I decided to give ganache a try.  I was surprised at how easy and tasty this was. The recipe I used called for 1 cup of heavy cream and 12 ounces of chocolate.

 I boiled my cream, added it to the chocolate and the most delicious ganache was born. This was so yummy. I don't know why in the world I waited so long to try this.

The ganache took a little while to cool so I did all my other cooking. Once again this big barrel of a cake slipped past me without getting a trim. I pulled out my cake and was so excited about the ganache I poured it right on top of my cake. I then sounded like Ralphy from "The Christmas Story". Thankfully I was alone in the kitchen and no one had witnessed this. LOL

I sat and starred at it for a minute and thought....you know what, it still taste good. I am no pro at baking or cake making and don't claim to be. I tried my best and now I know where to improve on next time. It did taste Amazing. I am stopping my self right now from getting a slice from the freezer. The moral of this cake craziness is....it came from love and that is all that matters. Mr Wonderful loved it and didn't even blink twice at his uneven, ganache doesn't stick to icecream, wonky, cake. Oh how I love that man. My sweetheart <3.

What I will do differently next time: take my time. Think things through. And RELAX...it's just a cake. Not use so much icecream. Try to make the layers even and trim my cake. I hope this gave you a good giggle and a few good tips!!

Cute potholders........9 months in the making :-o

Right before E was born I decided all my old potholders must go. I collected all of them and started tearing them apart to salvage any useable parts. I really had every intention of finishing them before he came. Well a few days later I was in the hospital having an emergency c-section with E. He came a month before his due date.  So the months rolled on and life got in the way. I have been burning my fingers with the dish towel for some time now. Nine months to be exact. So I sat down and picked out some of my favorite fabric. I also had the perfect pattern. When Mr. Wonderful got me my new machine he also included this...

It has some wonderful ideas and patterns in it. It is also so very knowledgeable. I love it. Anywho, this book had the cutest heart shaped potholders in there. The second I saw them I knew I must have them for my kitchen. They were very simple and oh so cute. Ok, so I just looked on her website and guess what....there is a step by step free tutorial!! Yay! So if anyone wants to make them here is the link.... http://www.marthastewart.com/how-to/heart-shaped-pot-holders

I made 4 for myself and had a little extra so I made another for a great friend of mine. Here are my little cuties...hope you like them and make some for yourself. They are so fun...

Now some tips. I didn't want to go to the store have insul-brite so I improvised. I used 2 layers of batting and a layer of canvas. I have used them on everything and not once burned myself. Also, you can kinda see in the pic, I added three lines in the middle and it folds like a dream. One right down the middle and one on each side. Make sure not to catch the pocket though. These have definitely started something. I have the urge to now redecorate my whole house. I hope to make major changes. I guess time will tell. ;)

Sewing madness!!

You know when you hit that moment in your craftiness when you are like....Really...Did I just do that!?!...What was I thinking!?! AHHHH. Well this was me last night. I will admit sometimes my urge to create blinds my ability to really think things through. So what simple task would I make increasingly complicated....an ironing board cover. Yes a simple ironing board cover. How in the world could I make that difficult? Trying  to sew it at 12:30 am because I really wanted to get it done. That's how. LOL So here are some photos of how not to do this....

So when I took my old cover off I noticed the manf. had just sewn a channel with a cord fed through it (like a drawstring). I thought I will do that as well. In my haste I cut my fabric and started my channel. Yeah I totally forgot the cord. I should have pinned my cord down and sewn the channel over it making sure not to catch the cord. I would have been done. Alas, I did not and had to feed the whole cord through with my loop turner.....

Yeah this tiny little hook and this slippery cord through all  that narrow channel...what fun, let me tell you.(can you feel the sarcasm) I was so irritated.

Here is my naked ironing board laughing at me. I swear I could hear the chuckles. (See in my haste to get this posted I forgot to flip this pic) I need to learn to cool my jets.

 Here is part of the tedious threading. Thank goodness you can't hear through these pictures...I probably really hurt my loop turner's feelings. LOL

I did finally finish the ironing board cover and I am pretty happy with it. As fate would have it, the batteries died in my camera right before I took a pic of the finished product. Of course that would happen. After I charge the batteries I will try to remember to share a pic. So do you have moments of sewing madness you would like to share or vent about? Feel free...thanks for listening to me whine. ;)

What's in a name...no this is not Shakespeare ;)

I thought I would share with all of blogland Exactly where my blog name came from :) It is always interesting to find out what is behind the blogger and it usually starts with their name. Well as you know my little sister started this blog for me some time ago. Shortly after she made it I decided that it needed more of me in it. So I revamped my whole blog even my name. Not that hers wasn't lovely....it was just that..her vision of my blog. So after I beautified it I began to ponder on a name. I thought what does my blog mean to me? Well it is a place where I can go that is all my own. A place away from my everyday life where I can speak on any subject  or craft that I want. I instantly thought of Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz. In the story she wanted a new place, or adventure and after it was all over she wanted to go home. So what did she do ....she clicked her heels and said the infamous"There is no place like home". That was it, with my own special twist.  I loved the thought of a blog for the escape and outlet it offered but at the end of the day home is always where my heart is. Hence the name There is no place like homemade.

I really enjoy blogging which I never thought I would. Meeting new moms who share the same interest is always great. That I have followers is still a bit surreal for me. I love that people are really interested in me. In time you will get to know me a little. You will find I am a very honest person. I am also a very nice person and usually get my feelings hurt way to easy. That being said I really dislike  passive aggressive mean gestures and comments. So if you ever feel like you need to express something with me feel free to email me. There is a link in my profile to contact me. Amazing feature...everyone should have it!  I am always understanding and usually will give a person a chance to prove themselves before making judgments or blunt assumptions.

Anyway I just wanted to share a little bit about myself and let my readers know I am always here for conversation. Even if you feel it isn't suitable for comments email me. If I in any way offend someone please email me. I will always be open for discussion and I also know how to admit when I wrong.
So to my followers I am grateful...... I hope you enjoy my journey down my own yellow brick road!;)