I’ve been up to a lot lately, and had sort of a hard time deciding where to start. Since it seems like half of my friends are either pregnant or new parents, it seems most appropriate to start with my current favorite gift.

When we had Ada’s shower, my superduperawesome friend Carly gave us an adorable blanket of her own making; a cute flannel owl print on one side, and a snuggly super-soft plush fabric on the other. It’s Ada’s favorite, and she drags it all over the place (sometimes draped over her shoulders like a cape). I thought that would be the perfect thing to pass on to a new parent, but I wanted to add my own twist.

When Ada was tiny (it seems like a lot more than a year has passed since then), she always seemed to like the tags on her plush toys better than the toys themselves! If one tag is entertaining, wouldn’t a lot more be even better? I had been tossing around the idea of making a tag-covered toy for a while, and with that in mind, thought I’d apply it to a blanket. I missed the boat with Ada, as she’s not so easily entertained anymore, but this should keep another little one busy for quite a while.

So, here’s my materials list:
1 yard flannel fabric (prewashed – ALWAYS prewashed)
1 yard super-plush minky, chenille, or something else soft (again, wash it first)
a bunch of bits of ribbon, twill tape, bias tape, ric rac, webbing, etc. (think TEXTURE and COLOR)
thread

I cut a 30×37″ piece of each fabric (a funny size, I know, but it let me get two blankets out of the super-plush, and that stuff is not cheap), laid them out with the right sides together, then pinned around three sides of it. When I got to the fourth side (I picked one of the short sides), I pinned a bunch of loops of ribbon and other trims to the flannel like this:

Make the loops about half an inch longer (folded length – if you’re pre-cutting your ribbon, then make it an inch longer total length) than you want them to be in the finished product (remember you need to account for your seam allowance). Pin the fluffy stuff down over them.

Stitch around the edges of the blanket using a 1/2″ seam allowance and leaving about a five-inch gap along one of the unribboned sides. You’ll need this to turn the blanket right-side out.

Reach in and turn the blanket right-side out. Iron it to flatten the edges (and to set the edge on the unstitched area where you turned the blanket). Topstitch around the edges of the blanket about 1/4″ in from the original seam. No pictures of these steps – they’re pretty straightforward.

Now, pick a few points in your blanket to anchor the two layers together. I was using white thread here, so I looked for some white areas where the thread wouldn’t show.

Pin your top layer and bottom layer together at those points.

Put a bar tack (set your machine to zigzag stitch, stitch width at the widest setting, and stitch length to zero, then stitch 10 or 11 times) at each anchor point.

And there you have it! One supercute, snuggly busyfingers blanket to share with someone you love.

Can’t wait to meet the little man I made this for. Hope he likes it!

It’s been a crazy past few months! Ada’s party went off without a hitch, I helped two friends celebrate the imminent arrival of their first babies (one of whom has already joined us and is just as gorgeous as her mama), we took a trip to Germany, I helped a friend to make her wedding day as special as she hoped it would be, took Ada on her first camping trip, and Ada and I went to Oklahoma.

Hope that helps to explain why I’ve been absent. And now, if you are not related to me, you may wish to skip the rest of this post.

I feel like I’d be remiss to not post a little love for my girl, even if it’s a couple of months late in getting to the website.

Ada Bee, you’ve made our lives so wonderful ever since you joined us.

This first year has been amazing, and we’ve changed and grown at least as much as you have.

We can’t imagine the world without you now. <3

On to the party details: we had a great time! The size of the crowd meant we had to tone down the Martha Stewart-y stuff and concentrate more on just making sure everyone had a good time, but thankfully, we have some amazing friends who worked for hours helping me decorate cupcakes, unfolding tissue pom-pom garlands, and hanging up party decorations. It all turned out beautifully in the end, I think!

Mama with the birthday girl

Cupcake decorating crew

The aforementioned cupcakes

Sugar buffet - all homemade except the oreos and the candies

Littlebee's very first birthday cake

And the uncertain reaction to that giant pile of sugar

She knew just what to do with it.

Happy birthday, Little Bee. We love you so!

It’s so unfailingly cute in every way, fits her so perfectly, and is so simple and unfussy. It’s a perfect frame for her beautiful little self.

The fishie dress, worn at 2 months, was the first thing I sewed for her while she was in my belly.

The orange bubble dress, worn for her very first pro photo shoot (with the very talented Autumn Bradshaw of Picket Fence Productions), was such a happy color and so atypical of baby clothes.

This brings us to the most recent incarnation, the Birthday Dress. It’s sort of hard for me not to get all worked up thinking about all of the gorgeous photos we’re going to have of her in it, and how different she’s going to look in all of them. The baby face is fading fast, and she’s got toddler written all over her every expression. She has a marked sense of humor now, has music preferences, favorite things to do, loves to dance, makes friends everywhere we go (the kid is relentless – she WILL get a smile and a wave out of every single person who crosses her path)… She’s a far cry from the cuddly little lump she was when she first entered the world, and to be honest, it’s really freaking me out how fast this happened.

I’m doing my best trying not to think about how we only get 17 more years before she’s headed out of the house and off to college, only a few more years past that until we’re grandparents, and…

oh, life’s just so much shorter than I thought it was going to be. We’re planning to take a lot of camping trips this summer, and every summer after this one forever and ever. Or as long as we can.

Hope you’ll forgive me if I’m not on here as much as I used to be; it just feels like I have such pressing matters to attend to these days. I do have a few fun things in the works to share with you all, but between planning for Ada’s ridiculously large birthday party, a friend’s baby shower a couple of weeks later, a trip to Germany a few days after the shower, and the general business of living, it may be a while before I get them posted up here.

Love to you all!

I was forced to take a little break last night when an upset stomach kept me home from cake decorating class. I had made cupcakes to bring in to practice making little icing roses on, and since they ended up not going to class with me, we thought we might as well eat a couple. Holy cats, were those things good! So good, in fact, that I didn’t get a picture of them before they were devoured and/or sent to work with D to get the calories out of the house. Well, we sent most of them to work. I had one for breakfast. I refuse to calculate the Weight Watcher’s points on these.

I wanted to make Georgia Pellegrini’s recipe, but wanted to use the coconut rum we had here in the house, and also wanted to add a lot of brown sugar and molasses flavor, as the brown-sugary flavor is such a vital part of Bananas Foster for me. Besides that, using the coconut rum instead of dark rum meant that there was no source of umami in the recipe, so using a little molasses cured that.

I had an idea to make a brown sugar buttercream or penuche frosting, but ended up making frosting while holding a grumpy 10-month-old who is afraid of the mixer, so had to come up with a good shortcut. I really liked the result!

Here, by request, is the recipe:

Bananas Foster Cupcakes (adapted from the recipe by Georgia Pellegrini)

FOR THE CUPCAKE:
1 1/2 c all purpose flour
1 t baking powder
1/2 t salt
1 1/2 stick butter, room temperature
1/2 c brown sugar
1/8 c white sugar (for the egg whites)
1/2 t coconut rum
1/2 c coconut milk
1 T molasses
4 egg whites
1 large ripe banana, smashed

FOR THE CREAM FILLING:
3/4 c brown sugar
1/2 c flour
3 egg yolks
1/2 t salt
1 1/2 c coconut milk (or remaining coconut milk and enough cow’s milk to bring the volume to 1 1/2 c)
2 t coconut rum
a little drizzle of molasses (maybe a teaspoon?)
2 t vanilla
2 T butter

FOR THE ICING:
3/4 c butter, room temperature
1 lb powdered sugar
1 t vanilla
1/2 t salt (more if using unsalted butter)
molasses to taste (I probably used about 1 1/2 T)
water or milk (I used water, as I was closer to the sink than to the fridge)

Preparation Instructions

For the cupcakes:

Preheat the oven to 350° F. Line one muffin pan with paper liners or butter and set aside. In a bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, and salt and set aside. In a separate mixing bowl, beat butter, brown sugar, molasses, and rum until light and fluffy. With the mixer on low speed, add the flour mixture in three parts, alternating with the coconut milk, until just combined. Stir in the smashed banana. Set aside.

In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites on low speed until foamy. Gradually add the 1/8 cup sugar and beat on high speed until stiff, glossy peaks form, about 4 minutes. Gently fold a third of the egg-white mixture into the butter-flour mixture until combined. Then gently fold in the rest.

Divide the batter evenly among the muffin cups. Bake until the cupcakes are golden brown and a toothpick inserted in the center of a cupcake comes out clean, 25 to 30 minutes. Remove and let cool.

For the cream filling:

Combine the sugar, flour and salt in a bowl, and stir well to mix so there are no lumps. Set aside.
Mix milk, vanilla, rum, and molasses together in a separate cup.

In a heavy saucepan, beat the egg yolks well with a whisk. Over low heat, add the flour mixture to the egg yolks, alternately with the milk mixture, stirring constantly and scraping the sides and corners of the saucepan as you go so the egg doesn’t cook. When the mixture begins to thicken, add the butter, continuing to stir. Keep stirring until mixture reaches a nice pudding consistency, about 10 minutes. Remove from heat and let cool.

Fit a pastry bag with a small tip and fill it with the cream. Push the tip through the top of each cupcake and squeeze the pudding into the middle. You’ll need to apply a steady and firm pressure until you feel the cupcake start to give, then fill until the top of the cupcake rises and starts to crack a little. Don’t worry – you can cover it up with frosting later.
NOTE: If you are going to spread your frosting on with a knife, you’ll want to pipe the filling in from the bottom of the cupcake. I chose to pipe my frosting on so that I could go the lazy route, fill from the top, and not have to remove the cupcake wrappers.

For the icing:

Beat all of the ingredients (except water or milk) together in a bowl, adding molasses (and maybe a bit more salt) until you hit the right “brown sugary” flavor. The icing will be thick and pasty. Add water or milk, a little at a time, until you get the right texture. Pipe generously over cupcakes.

Disregard the dirty mirror. Disregard the fact that the sweater isn’t blocked (I’ll block it tonight or tomorrow; it’ll be a more perfect fit after that step). Pay attention to the fact that it is DONE a day early!!

Wahoo!

Oh man. We love cookies. Especially D. Have I mentioned that his favorite thing to do when there are cookies in the house is to eat a dozen of them for dinner, wake up and eat half a dozen in the middle of the night, then have the remaining dozen or two for breakfast in the morning? I totally understand that impulse, and if I were as skinny as he is, I might be inclined to do the same. With that in mind, I don’t know if it’s a good idea or a bad idea for us to have a bag of ready-to-bake (or eat raw) cookie dough hanging around in our freezer, but I think it might be a good idea for the rest of you with more self control.

I would also like to suggest that you try her Oatmeal Scotchie recipe, as well. I forgot to ask whether my friend Jeannine used the same recipe to bake the superdelicious cookies she brought to our knitting meetup. Hers were chewy and delicious and had just the right amount of crunch to them, and I think you should make this recipe on the off chance that yours would turn out even 10% as tasty as the ones I had today. Seriously, it would be worth it even for 10% of that yumminess.

So, y’know, do it. And save some of the dough in your freezer. And bake them for me when I come over to visit. Seriously, cookies don’t have weight watchers points if your friends bake them for you, right?

I also signed up for a cake decorating class because: a) I love learning how to do things I don’t know how to do, and b) I want a totally adorable cake for Ada’s party, but am unwilling to spend upwards of $80 for a cake that’s just going to end up in her hair.

For those of you in the San Diego area, I’m taking the Wilton course at the Clairemont Michael’s. Susie is teaching my class, and she’s awesome.

Last night, I decorated my first cake (click for biggerer):

Cute, huh? Until you get a closer look…

From a certain angle, those octopi look downright deranged, don’t they?

I still had some (quite a bit of) icing left over when I got home from the class, so I mixed the colors together and added a psychedelic tie-dye border:

I’m no Ron Ben-Israel, that’s for sure! There are some things that I’ve just got a knack for. I wouldn’t say cake decorating is one of them, but I know I’ll get better with practice. I’m not sure exactly what I will produce for Birthdaybee, but it’s bound to be better than what I would have done sans-piping education!

D and I had a great Valentine’s Day! First, we had a great photo shoot with LittleBee (who is getting to be not so little anymore). Click for biggerer.

That really is one of my favorite ways to spend a morning with the family – D and I trading the camera back and forth while Ada hams it up for us. If you look closely at some of those pictures, you can see some of her EIGHT TEETH. Holy smokes.

Afterward, Ada spent some time with her grandparents while we had lunch at Blind Lady Ale House, followed by some tasty ice cream on the best waffle cones ever made at Mariposa Ice Cream, which we ate while wandering around and musing on how lucky we are to live in San Diego (as well as how that food experience easily rivaled anything we’ve ever had, Paris and Buenos Aires included).

I made some progress on the sweater:

I also learned a valuable lesson; saying “not to jinx things, but…” is a surefire way to jinx things. Example: Saying “not to jinx things, but I’m making so much progress on this sweater that I wouldn’t be surprised if I have time to do two of them during the course of the Olympics,” will guarantee that the next row you hit in the pattern will bring things to a screeching halt for two days while you attempt to do the simplest of math in an effort to “distribute 41 yarn over increases evenly through the row.”

Without delving too deeply into the psychosis that led to this solution, I’m going to record here that my solution to the eyelet increase row in the February Lady Sweater was as follows (I’m making the 44-inch version):
k8, (yo, k5) x7, (k8, yo) x6, k12, yo, (k6,yo)x13, k12, yo, (k8, yo) x5, k8, kfb, k4, yo, (k5, yo) x5, k4, yo, k8

If that made any sense to you, you may have arrived at this after searching “February Lady Sweater / FLS eyelet row increase 44,” like I did before I came up with this insane fix. It remains to be seen whether anything has actually been fixed, though, so don’t use this until the sweater’s done and we can see whether I’ve got an extra arm coming out of my right elbow or something.

If that didn’t make any sense to you, you probably stopped reading a couple of paragraphs ago, and I don’t blame you. I’m off to repair my broken brain with some sleep.

To my great surprise, it was delicious! I really could have eaten a whole bar of it (or two, or three…). The ingredient list was very short, and it tastes like they used a pretty high-quality chocolate, and I could go on and on, but what you should do is find someplace where you can buy it and try some for yourself. I’m going out to track down the dark chocolate tomorrow (and maybe pick up another milk chocolate).

Trader Joe’s makes something called “Trader Joe’s French Cheese Souffle, ready to bake,” which is a bag full of little souffle nuggets (no pictures – didn’t think to take any until dinner was cooked) that you mound up into a ramekin and bake. It’s totally foolproof, delicious on its own, or you can add a little variety to it by mixing in some veggies. Tonight, we had broccoli cheese souffle; I chopped up a handful of broccoli florets, tossed them into the ramekins with the souffle balls, and put them in the oven.

When the souffles were almost done, I made a salad on each of our plates. For each, I grabbed a couple of handfuls of mixed lettuce (this one had minced herbs in it – yum!), then put them on a plate with a half-handful of dried fruit and nuts, then grated a little parmesan over the top. Drizzled with balsamic and olive oil.

The end. Yum!

So don’t go thinking we eat coq au vin every night, for crying out loud, guys! We’re big fans of the quick and easy around here!