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We’re home from a lovely vacation on the Oregon Coast. I am back to the grindstone in regards to thinking about upcoming events and trying to design things for these events.

Instead of going all out and sewing Laurel a back pack for preschool I bought her one. I skipped the character backpacks, even though she really does love half of them. Why pay more and product that looks like it’ll be trashed in a few weeks? Also, I guess I really want her to stand out a little bit… I have a feeling all the little girls in her preschool class will have hello kitty or Tinkerbell, or Disney Princess backpacks. Though, last I remembered her class was mostly boys, so who knows?
Anyway, I opted for a packpack that has a cute little pattern to it, and I’ve been trying to design up a “robot” to put on it.. Laurel requested this, and I am trying to do as she’s asked. I’m vectorizing a vintage robot and colorizing it. (she wants red and purple, which may be awkward on her teal and brown backpack, but we’ll see). I’ll also do her name up as well.. the plan right now is to print it out on a tshirt transfer, iron on to some decently durable fabric, and sew it on, hopefully thinking of a way to cleverly thwart fraying without making it ugly in the process. I’d love to perfect satin stitching edges, but I need it much sooner than that.

This is what I have so far, it’s not as “cute” as I would have wanted, but I think it’ll be okay.

The other design project I’ve been working on is making some invitations to Alice’s Birthday party. We rarely end up actually sending invitations out, but I usually do design some for each party. Sometimes they are emailed and sometimes they just rot on the hard drive. Sad.. I know.
Alice is having a Max and Ruby themed party. I’m excited about the cake and several aspects of the party, but really it wont be very bunny themed.. unless I get crafty and make bunny ears for all the guests. hah!

This is what I have so far, I think it’s okay. In fact I think it might just need the info and maybe I’ll just have it printed at costco..

Forgive all the extra information on the sides of the sketches. They are important to the process, but wont be in the finished products, of course. I didn’t bother to remove them, because my 2 or 3 readers probably dont care

When I meal plan, things go easier. When I’m on the ball and plan out meals in advance AND purchase the items and sometimes even assign which meal goes to which meal.. things run smoothly.. It goes even better if I plan out lunches, but thats a bit over the top for me right now.

There’s an initial time investment, but it saves a lot of daily anxiety/stress that I seem to get from trying to figure out whats for dinner. My family is no help, by the way… Joel simply does not care, he just wants a bowl of food.. he’ll eat nearly anything, but will make underhanded comments if it contains beef other than ground, and he doesnt like seafood, doesn’t like ground turkey/chicken. I’ve learned to not care, because sometimes we eat things he doesn’t like, and he doesn’t make a big fuss. Laurel on the other hand, DOES make a big fuss, Alice too. Their pickyness can not even be explained here, because it is too extensive and seems to vary by day or by what quality of sleep they’ve been getting, or by what freaking phase the moon is, WHO THE CRAP KNOWS?

Anyway, sometimes I feel culinarily inspired, and I have soo many meal Ideas that I cant cram them into one week. Recently that has NOT been the case, and not even sitting down infront of food network with a note pad has helped. (okay, I admit it, I didn’t try that this week, but I have in the past and it usually works)

This morning I sat down and I wrote down 7 categories, because there are 7 days in a week.
Our current categories are as such:
1. Soup with Bread or Sandwich with Salad (lettuce based or other ;such as macaroni) Depending on Season, I imagine.
2. Make your own burrito (one of the only meals my whole family will eat without complaint)
3. Casserole or Crockpot meal (the idea being that I could prep it early in the day and have some free time around dinner hour which tends to be the climax of my day time stress)
4. Kid’s Choice (This will almost always contain hot dogs, hamburgers, or macaroni and cheese I’m sure)
5. Adventurous Eating day. (this means trying a new food, or trying a new recipe or cooking technique… hopefully this will keep me growing as a cook and keep the kids aware that we try new things regularly)
6. Convenience food (This could be picking up some burgers in a drive through, frozen food from the grocery store, ordering pizza, or if I’m really good and wholesome maybe it’ll be a prefrozen meal from my own freezer that I made on one of my casserole days.)
7. Eat out or Breakfast for Dinner. (depending on budget, most likely)

Next I took into consideration that I try to vary what sort of things we eat. We mainly live off frozen chicken breast tenderloins and ground beef. .. oh and hot dogs. .. but when I am conscious of our intake I like to to be something like this:
Chicken x2
Beef x2
Pork x1
Fish x1
Vegetarian x1.

Being unsure what to do with this data after having compiled it I wrote it on little papers. I drew stars on the back of the numbered list, and hearts on the back of the protein list.
I then had Laurel pick up pairs, one heart and one star.
Things like “kids choice” and “eat out” didn’t really need proteins pre chosen, so when I realized that I took them out of the pile.

We got the following:
Chicken Sandwich. (we’ll probably do Korean BBQ chicken sandwiches with some sort of veg salad)

Fish Adventure. (fish in our house IS an adventure. I’m a salmon lover, but maybe I’ll try to make Fish and Chips! Deep frying is BIG adventure)

Kids Choice: Laurel chose Corndogs and Applesauce.

Beef Convenience: I see hamburgers in our future

Pork casserole or crockpot meal. hmm, all this says to me is pulled pork, but I think I’ll do pork chorizo and turkey chili.

Make your own burrito night. (again, I didn’t let the protein card dictate this, because we almost always have beef taco meat, or a beef turkey blend.)

and Eat out.

I imagine though, that you could set more interesting categories for yourself. I sure would if it wasn’t picky house around here. Things like Salad night, or wine cheese and roasted seasonal vegetable night. Or “it’s too hot to cook so we’re having margaritas for dinner night.”

There are fun apps for iphones/ipod touches. One is called the Dinner Spinner by Allrecipes. It’s not nearly as awesome as the site itself is, but it is useful when you’re completely out of ideas. you can select a protein, a time frame, wether its a main dish or side dish or whatever, and spin away… it’s like dinner roulette.

I imagine this will become more stream lined as I use it. I’m considering using iphoto to catalogue meals.. by taking pictures of food and assigning keywords.. this would be helpful for my husband who seems to forget what foods we generally eat around here.

Now I should run off and design graphics for protein cards so I can laminate them. oh geeky me.

Today I worked on new sleeves for the princess dress. I like this solution, it’s almost as simple as the straps that are so easy for me, but it seems to have a completely different visual impact. Laurel calls them “wings” and she is insanely happy with them.

I quickly belted the dress with a small length of brocadey ribbon I’ve had in my stash for a while. It doesn’t really match, and I’ll probably swap it out, although I like the colors. Considering adding other detail trim all over, it’s not really needed, but it may add to the overall richness of the dress.

She definitely needs and underskirt, the teal panel is see through, which doesnt really matter, given that she’s 3 years old, and the dress at this point stays mostly closed. An underskirt will add some protection from transparancy issues, puff out the skirt, and possibly most important… it’ll add warmth. Laurel’s Birthday party will be in early October, and will likely be held in the basement, the coldest room in the house.

I’m undecided as to wether or not I need to continue smocking the bodice. My lazy side says no.. and my aesthetic side might agree, the belting is lovely, and the existing smocking makes it stretchy and form fitting.

Laurel’s princess dress was supposed to be purple and red, per her request. Instead I convinced her to let me use things I had in my costuming fabric stash. It’s probably not what either one of us would have chosen had we been buying fabric specifically for this, but I think it’ll be okay. I planned to continue smocking down the bodice, but I’ve also been playing with the idea of just putting an elaborate ribbon/trim around the waist, belting it looks really nice from what I’ve seen so far. I am considering trim other places as well, to make it more “fancy”. Also an underskirt as well to puff out the bottom and make the other underskirt more visible.
The straps right now are just some scraps sewn into quick tubes pinned on. I’ll do something for the sleeves, but as I said earlier.. I dont know what.

Ideas?

In other news, pudding pops were a success. I used cook and serve vanilla pudding and threw in some chocolate… if I do it again I’ll just use chocolate pudding, but I didn’t have it on hand.
I started some raspberry yogurt pops for tomorrow. Simple. I also got stuff to do peaches and cream pops.. I’m excited about that one.
It’s so super simple, but maybe I’ll do a silly photo tutorial. … you know.. once I clean my kitchen.

I’ve been sewing. (and camping and being eaten by mosquitos and watching fireworks be lit off by people who are a bit too lit themselves.)

A few things:
Sleeves. I need to increase my knowledge of sleeves. I’ve been working on princess dresses for my girls.. The eldest is having a princess/medieval party.. so they are both getting new dresses. I’ll post pictures soon. .. These are dresses made from no pattern, and that’s probably the heart of the issue. I’m not sure what sort of sleeves to do, straps are my go-to because they are simple. I want something swoopy and princessy. eh.

Double needles! Did you know you could just buy a twin needle for a standard machine and suddenly have professional looking seams?! I did not. I admit, it’s really fiddly with my machine.. the tension discs seem to dislike multiple threads in there.. but.. it’s darn cool anyway.

Machines! Speaking of.. I need a new one. This one I’m using is old and.. persnickety. Yesterday the bobbin housing bit came out and it took me and my husband quite a while to figure out how to get it back in. Even then… ick.. it’s just not quite right. May have to get it serviced, because it is slightly less than buying a new one. I could also start using my vintage White machine, but.. I seem to remember it having tension issues as well. May have to bust it out for a photo shoot anyway though.

***
Today it’ll be in the 90′s here in the Columbia River Valley.
I put home made pudding pops in the freezer this morning. We’ll see how they turn out.

Sorry for the lack of content and pictures, this post is brought to you by a stolen minute. The children are upstairs watching Max and Ruby.. and they have short attention spans.