Craftacular: Ribbon Tag Blankies

Seems like I'm a roll with finding household appliances that have been safely forgotten about and then digging them out and going on a home ec bender. Not long ago, I dug out my old sewing machine. My mom, a very talented seamstress, gave me the machine when I moved into my first apartment (oh, about a million years ago!) I managed to make one set of hideous curtains and then my sewing machine found its way into a craft-esque oubliette.

After staring at the machine and reading the 17 page manual for the zillionth time (I was really hung up about winding a bobbin. Traumatic bobbin incident back in '02), I thought it was about time to get this party started.

I have a almost 4-month old niece (Claire) and a 6-month old nephew (Henry). For Hanukkah, I gave each of them one of these Taggie brand Take-a-Long toys. They were such a hit, I told my sister-in-law, that I'd be happy to make a blankie version for Claire Bear. Well, I can't just make one for her and not for Henry, so last night I whipped out these cuties in no time. Easy, inexpensive (material for 4 of these blankies costs about $13. ONE store bought Taggie is $20.00. Yikes!)

They're folded just for easy of photo taking, but the blue one (for Henry) is about 15" x 17" and the green one (for Claire) is 18" x 18".

Fancy Mac 'n Cheese

Oops! It's been a whole week without a post. I guess that's what happens when you rocket off into a huge start. It's easy to come up short some weeks.

No worries, I'm back and tonight I'm cooking up Pioneer Woman's Fancy Macaroni. There is zero anything diet about it. I figure pairing it with a nice spinach and strawberry salad would help cancel out some of the zillion calories caused be the THREE cheeses...and bacon...and butter. Eek!

Last week was kind of busy for me with some really neat opportunities ahead. I'll be sure to post about them later this week as developments evolve.

A+ Homework!

Last night, I finished my first Class Cake. Besides the Electric Lemon yellow base icing, I have to give myself a pat on the back. It's not a bad cake, eh? The text says "Happy Birthday 2 Me!" since tomorrow is my birthday and I can't let good cake go to waste.

Wilton Class, Level 1, Session 2

Okay, so at Cake Decorating School, students have homework. You have to bring a cake (or if you don't want to bring a cake, you can buy a cake, use a styrofoam dummy cake, or the back of a cake pan covered with wax paper. However, I think all of these options are cheating and kind of missing the whole fun of being in a cake decorating class: you get to eat cake!) that's been iced.



Just for a second, please disregard the blinding shade of "Big Bird" yellow and focus on the lovely smoothness of the buttercream. Buttercream icing is actually tricky to smooth just using an icing spreader. It tends to go on like spackle and can look a lot like a poorly textured bathroom wall instead of a yummy, pretty cake. There is a trick to getting the texture of the icing smooth and pretty and it involves using a paper towel. Once the icing has formed a crust (when touched lightly the icing won't pull away from the cake and end up on your finger), you lay a non-textured paper towel (like Viva) over the cake and gentle rub the surface with a light touch. Or you can use a fondant smoother. However, I don't have one of these gadgets, so I had to improvise.


Yep, that is a jar of hair styling product that I used just this morning. However, it has a very smooth lid and when used in the whole smoothing-the-buttercream paper towel trick, well, it's quite handy. I think Alton Brown would be quite pleased that I didn't purchase a fondant smoother, being that it is a unitasker and all. So now my homework is ready to decorate, complete with a fancy white icing star border to hide the crap that covers the cardboard round. I'll post tomorrow with the results of Lesson 2: Decorating a Cake With So Much Icing That Just Looking at it Will Send You Into a Diabetic Coma.

Barney Stinson: The Musical!

At the Sassy Pants home, we're late-comers to the comedic genius of "How I Met Your Mother". I'm a 100%, full-on Neil Patrick Harris fan. From "Doogie Houser, MD" to Sesame Street as the "Fairy Shoe Person" to himself in "Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle", I totally pink-puffy-heart NPH! But nothing, and I mean nothing, tops his performance as Barney Stinson. (I sometimes think HIMYM should be renamed "The Barney Stinson Show: With Robin, Who's Hot, Lily, Who's Also Hot, Marshall, Who is Adorable, and Ted." Even though, HIMYM is all about Ted and how he met his kids' mother, I sometimes yell at the TV, "More Stinson! Less Mosby!" But I digress.)

The other thing that I pink-puffy-heart is musical theater. I credit my sister with introducing me to the genre when she went through a phase back in high school. I can't imagine a more perfect story-telling style.

Knowing the above, what do you think happened to me when HIMYM combined Barney Stinson and the American musical? It might have looked something like this.

So in case you missed it --- HIMYM 100th Episode "Girls vs. Suits" Musical Number

Like a Champ

I frequent a message board for married woman that was a spin off from a message board for newly engaged women planning their weddings. On the boards, I see a lot of posts about pregnancy: who's pregnant, who's trying to get pregnant, who just had her baby, etc. They're pretty uninteresting to me for the most part, but that is probably because I have a kiddo and not intending on having another one soon. I read these posts and sometimes I think, "Meh. Big deal. So you had sex. Got knocked up and gave birth. Me too. But can you walk backwards on a tight rope while juggling three blazing batons and singing the National Anthem in Pig Latin? Now that's real talent."

Of course, I do understand that a lot of the PG posts ("pregnant" not "parental guidance". Hee hee! Pun intended.) are about woman who struggled to become or stay pregnant and they're celebrating or looking for support when things go badly. I'm totally with that.

But it all gets kind of weird to me when a mom on the board will announce that another mom had her baby (that's not actually the weird part) and run down the stats. It looks something like this:

MrsMamaJama: TwinkleToes339 had her baby! Baby Madison Feathers TwinkleToes339 is a beauty. 8 pounds, 20" long and breast feeding like a champ. All is well with mama and baby.

Okay, so can you guess which is the weird part to me? And it's not that TwinkleToes339 is breastfeeding (though, when did announcing that you're breastfeeding become a required part of motherhood is beyond me.) That's cool. That's recommended. Brava. It's the "like a champ" part that makes me go "Whaaa?" I don't really get it. I mean, I do get it, but aren't there better phrases?

"Champ" always makes me thing of Mohamed Ali. "Breastfeeding like a champ" makes me think of a breastfeeding Mohamed Ali. And not baby Mohamed Ali. Full-on, heavy weight champion of the Wide World of Breastfeeding:

Michael Buffer (famous boxing announcer): "In this corner, stands our defender, coming in at 10 pounds, 11 ounces, champion heavy weight nurser, Mohamed Ali! Now let's get ready to ssssssuuuuuccccckkkkkllllleeeee!"

Think about that next time someone says their child is breastfeeding like a champ. And maybe ask to see their kid's title belt.

Voila!

I'm finished! This cake took six hours, three cake mishaps, three batches of butter cream icing, and two scrape offs, but it's done. I'm so proud! Well, it didn't quite turn out to be exactly what I was going for, but for a first attempt, I'd say it ain't too bad. I think my customer will be quite pleased (he seemed to be as he kept yelling, "Cake! Cake! Mah Cake! Cake Peas, Mah Cake!")

Learning Curve

I've been baking for the past two hours and after two two-layer cake attempts I have exactly one layer. What is happening?! This shouldn't be that hard. I mean, come on!

I know, I know. Sounds like a repeat of the Hard Boiled Egg incident (remind me tell you that one). Three of my four layers broke because I was a little too excited and tried to turn them on to the cooling rack a little to early. Lessons learned? You bet!

1. Sift. Sift the flour. Sift the powdered sugar. Sift. Sift. Sift. I have so many tiny lumps in my first batch of "buttercream" icing.
   
2. "Buttercream" icing as made by Wilton actually has no butter in it.
3. "If there is no butter, than how is it butter cream?" Well, my friend, let me tell you: Crisco and "butter flavoring."
4. When the recipes says "Wait 10 minutes before turning cake onto cooling wrack," do as they say! They mean it or else your husband will be scraping cake bits from the pan and asking you if there was supposed to be this much cake left behind ("No honey. Not really.")
   
5. Don't wait until the night before your son's 2nd birthday party to decide you're going to make a layer cake from scratch with homemade icing and hand decorated.
   
6. If you do wait until the night before, don't wait until 9 PM to get started knowing that you've never done this before and there is a high potential for cake disasters.

Onward bakers! Two more layers to go and let's up I don't crack these, too (or I'm going to be cracked!)

Hello Gorgeous!

Look who just came out of the "gift" closet? After being shamed by my decorating class last night that I was letting a very coveted and awesome machine go to waste, I made Andrew pry her out of the bowels of the gift closet (Don't worry, Dad. She was never going to be regifted. I promise!).

Tonight I'm making cupcakes for Ben's birthday party tomorrow and possible a layer cake just so I can practice some frosting and decorating techniques. So the mixer, aka "Momma's Other Best Friend" is going on her maiden voyage tonight. I was showing Ben why this is mommy's favorite new toy in the house. His response? "Cake! Cake! Peas, momma, cake?" Guess I better get baking!

Give Away!

Ok, I'm not really giving anything away, but I see this a lot on blogs lately. I wonder how many of the prizes are things that the giver just didn't know what to do with. Maybe it was a BOGO that someone got for the "Buy One" but wasn't really too into the "Get One". Or maybe it was a WowWee Singing Elvis Head that her husband won and she was all, "Oh. Mah. Gawd! You can not keep that THING in MY house! I just know that it's going to come to life and kill me with its robotic mouth!"

I wonder how many of the prizes are from someone's "gift" closet. You know what I'm talking about. You totally have one. Don't try to deny it. It's where the fondue set and crystal ashtray you got as wedding presents are kept in the event that a) you meet someone who really, really, really wants a fondue set or a crystal ashtray or b) the person who gave those gifts to you just happens to drop by and you hastily set them out on the coffee table and rave about how much you love to throw smokers-only fondue parties.

I've contemplated having a give away on my blog but I feel like it would just be pandering to my readership, and I'm pretty sure that 80% of my readers would know that the give away prize was in my "gift" closet and was something they probably gave me. Though if I come across another singing robotic bust of a dead rock star, I might have a give away after all.

So Much Cake!

So yesterday I decided that I needed to do something fun. Not that the multitude of things that I do daily aren't fun, it's just that, well, they're not that fun. Anyway, I was at JoANN Fabrics looking at stuff (mostly for a laminating machine and then I found one and it was really too expensive and I thought, "Meh. I've got some clear packing tape. That should do the trick.") and noticed that the *Wilton Cake Decorating Class I was starting tonight.

I headed up to the store and was so excited to start my first class. There are four of us. One student is a baker with a great cupcake store where she does nothing but decorate a bazillion cupcakes a day. The other two students are a mother-daughter team where the daughter became totally inspired and actually learned something on the so-called Learning Channel by watching this guy. And then there was me. Front of the class-too-many-questions-boring-everyone-with-her-know-it-all-attitude Me.

It was so much fun! Today was learning how to level a cake, tort fill (where you use a bead of frosting around the cake perimeter as a little wall to keep all the delicious filling from oozing down the sides of the cake), and frost the cake. Next week we'll have to bring in our own cakes to decorate and this will continue for the next three weeks. So three more weeks with three cakes. I'm sensing a need to buy bigger pants.

*I'll try to remember to take photos of my work.

Fifty Books in 2010

I've committed myself to reading fifty book in 2010. I'm going to try to list them on the side bar as I complete the books. I was determined to choose books that were meaningful and could be described truly as literature but when I discovered that most of those kinds of books were about the length of a Bible (and God knows I haven't read one of those in...well, ever, actually), I decided to go a different route.

Rather than just reading fifty books of questionable quality, I decided that every book that I read to count towards my 50/2010 challenge must a) come from the library and b) written for adults (so that pretty much leaves out any of that vampire teen-angst nonsense and the revival of the Babysitters Club series.)

Please do leave your suggestions of what to read in the comment box, because no doubt I'll be tempted to just blow through all of John Grisham's books or vintage BSC.

What's the Haps? (Part 1)

So before I did a drive-by post about death and loss, there wasn't a whole lot to really tell about life going on in the ATX. That's not totally true and I'm sure if I tried really hard, I could pull out some interesting tidbits to share. So working from July 2009 until now, here's how I think everything was going down.

July 2009 -

• Ben turned 18 months on the 28th. He had been walking for about 4 months and was getting really good at it. I mean really good. And fast! Why is it that all toddlers are born with some Houdini-like disappearing ability? I needed some kind of sixth sense and super agility training just to make sure he wasn't dashing into six lanes of raging traffic or the open jaws of a rabid Rottweiler.

• Ben started to use his words. Lots of words. This was such an exciting milestone for me! I was really becoming tired of the grunting and pointing and throwing things because of his terrible frustration that I just wasn't getting it and, "WOMAN, ARE YOU DEAF OR JUST FROM ANOTHER COUNTRY WHICH WOULD EXPLAIN WHY YOU CAN'T UNDERSTAND ME!?!?!" Except...the words he was speaking with this new confidence sounding exactly like the words I was speaking - only to him. I was still just a dumb, deaf, foreigner and we were back to grunts, points, and throwing.
  

• My husband turned 32 on July 31st. He's old. I remind him daily.

August 2009 -

• Ben turned 19 months on August 28th. He was still grunting and pointing. I was beginning to decipher his words a little it better and then one day, like magic, he said, "Mommy, may I have a sippy cup with milk, please, if you would be so kind." I couldn't believe it! Not only was my child speaking in full, comprehensible sentences, he had also developed an English accent and sounded, quite surprisingly, like Colin Firth (okay, not really. That was a dream I had one night and yes, I, too, am creeped out that a grown man, nearing 50, would call a strange woman "Mommy.")

• Ben started a twice-a-week Mother's Day Out program. I'm only mildly embarrassed to admit that Tuesdays and Thursdays can't get here fast enough sometimes.
  

Stay tuned for "What's the Haps? (Part 1) - September & October or How I've Learned To Accept That Sometimes All The Love a Toddler Can Give Is The Swift Pitch of A Block To Your Head"

Buyer's Remorse Already!?

I am a finicky girl! I'm already feeling like my move to Bloggerville was a big mistake. Sure, the decor is far better than Wordpress but maybe I'm taking a step down instead of up in the world of blog sophistication?

Does it even matter? I should be hearing a resounding, "NO!" and "You have got to get more of a life, lady!" *sigh* I know.

I'm so tempted to fill up this naked front page with five more posts just so it doesn't feel so empty and have that just-moved-in look. I know I have so much to tell you. I mean I hadn't posted in months on AoSML only to drop in two posts of questionable quality (one being a total downer and the other being kind of...well, blah.)

I guess since it isn't quite my witching hour yet and I haven't really got the patience for any scrapbooking activities (now there's a time suck-money eater is there ever was one!), I guess I could fill you in one life around the A-town for the last few months.

A New Year - A New Home

On the interwebz, that is. Welcome to the new home of what was formerly "Adventures of Sadie, Married Lady." I've decided to make a little change up as well as get a new, cutesy face lift and hang out over here at Blogger. You'll still be able to read the archives over at AoSML, but I won't be posting anything new (however, I can't imagine deleting it and if I could find a convenient way to do a Wordpress-to-Blogger export, I would. But alas, I can't. So there.)

I promise to be as infrequent a poster as I was at AoSML, just with a sillier look and name. See you soon!