diamond in the rough?

Apparently, word has gotten out that I like cast off items. My neighbor Abbey rescued this rocker for me. I don't know. It's close. Diamond in the rough or too much work? It sure is pink!

I'm thinking I can strip and sand most of it. But, I'm thinking that paint isn't going to come off the cane bottom seat. What a shame. I think I'll refinish the body of it and then paint the seat black. It's really comfortable and hasn't left our living room since I carried it home. I am reserving the right to keep it, but I think after I finish it, I know the perfect person to give it a new home- or rather classroom (luckily I have a few months).

it's a trade

I've never done a trade on etsy before, but last week another seller contacted me to see if I was interested in doing a trade. She makes the cutest hats- I was game. Bee received this adorable fleece hat from My Kids Lids. It's pink to match her winter coat. She couldn't be bothered to stop eating her snack to pose for a picture.

Here is her silly response when I told her I needed a picture from the front. She pulled the hat down over her eyes. The hats come in 3 sizes and Bee has the largest, which is to fit a 4 year old up to a tween.

The flowers are so fun. I love that they are 3D. Lou will be needing a boy hat before next winter. They have some really cute boy hats! I wonder if she wants to do another trade.

spring snack

Bee had leader day at school last week (except she ended up being sick that day and we traded days with a friend). We sent our snack anyway. We made up these butterflies with all kinds of healthy goodies inside. The idea was from Family Fun magazine. Snacks are placed in those mini sized sandwich bags. Then clothes pins are used to gather the bag and create a 'wing' on each side. The clothes pins can be decorated. The ones in the magazine were decorated with glitter paint. That's a good idea if you aren't making them the night before. A pipe cleaner pieces is added for the little guys antennae.

Lou did a lot of helping getting the butterflies ready.

Bee really took her time on hers.

Team work is always a good idea.

treasures dispalyed

My treasures from yesterday are too good to just sit on a shelf. I have plans to display several things. Here first, is the button display. I picked up a 12x12 shadow box frame from Joann's for 50% off. I tried out several different papers from my scrapbook stash.


I ended up going with the red paper.

Here are my favorite old button cards glued to the paper. It looks super cute on the wall in my sewing room.... well as good as something can look on wood colored paneling.

Thinking of ways to display old patterns.... Any ideas?

treasures

A friend from Bee's preschool let me go through her boxes of sewing stuff and take what I like. Good friend, huh? These things were her Grandma's and my friend doesn't sew. She hated that they had been in the closet unused for the past 10 years.

There were snaps and buttons- some on really cool old cards:


A whole box of patterns. I don't have a way to display patterns yet, so I just grabbed 4 I thought were neat.

A whole box of rick rack and bias tape. I have a hate hate relationship with bias tape, so I just took a few.

Elastic and elastic cording. Some of it was rotten, but I found a good bit still usable.

Thread and thimbles.

We though we'd been through all of it, but the next week at preschool she brought me another box. This whole box was full of zippers! I'm seeing some zipper projects in my future.

I am working on a display project for the buttons. I think it's going to be cute in my sewing room. That's tomorrow.

book review

Sorry if you read my blog through google reader, you got to read the notes for this blog this weekend- which were probably confusing. In blogger when you accidentally publish (which is really easy to do) you just re save as a draft and no one is the wiser. Apparently in google reader, it still shows that post even though it was publish for less than 10 seconds. It just goes to show that once you put something on the Internet.... it's there. Anyway, here's the full post.

Sorry for the length- feel free to skim. Regular, much shorter posts returning this week.

At Christmas time, my crazy reader of a sister in law got like 1000 books as gifts. She left this book with me since it was something I wanted to read as well. It was Robyn O'Brien's book, The Unhealthy Truth: How our food is making us sick and what we can do about it.

This was a really interesting book. As I mentioned yesterday, we have made some food changes at our house because of it (milk). Many of the ideas in the book were not new ones to me, but sometimes it takes being presented with facts repeatedly to 1. believe it, and 2. do something about it. As far as the topics it included, it was a little all over the map. The prologue and first chapters made me think it was more about food allergies, but then it covered other health issues related to food. Once I got past this, there was a lot of good information to be read. O'Brien has really done her research. She is just a mom, a mom with kids with food allergies- both diagnosed and previously undiagnosed. She started researching food issues and uncovered some big cover ups and little known food industry secrets all Erin Brockovich style.



I'm going to have to purchase a new copy of this book for my sister in law because I've already lent this one out! That being said, I only have the info from my notes to reference for the rest of this. I wish I would have written this up before I shared the book.



One of the stats that O'Brien shared that I find startling is that the peanut allergy rate doubled between 1997 and 2002. 2002 is the most recent count, so imagine what it is now. 97-02, that's just 5 years. What changed in that time? What was different? Our food is different. The additives, the colorings, the preservatives, but especially the grains of wheat, corn and soy are different. They are genetically modified. Using genetically modified food products just haven't been researched. There haven't been any long term studies. Here's where she has started uncovering all kinds of big pharmaceutical and big agriculture and FDA interplay. Real sketchy shading interplay. Our food industry is allowed to do and use things that other countries (Europe, Japan, Australia, Russia, and some 40 developing countries) have forbidden in the use in their food products.

I also found it interesting that some manufactures (kraft, coca cola, walmart, etc) voluntarily removed certain preservatives, sweeteners, and chemicals from their products in other countries. Why not in the United States? There was a study done somewhere in Europe about chemical additives effecting children's behavior and the public became all riled up about it. Before the additives could become banned, the companies voluntarily removed the ingredients from their food items just to please public demand. Because it was a foreign study, people here in the US haven't really head of it and thus we still have the ingredients.

One last super interesting thing is that there is little funding for testing of new food additives and food practices through the FDA. The 'testing' that is happening is from the companies creating the food items themselves. The doctors and scientist used in the testing are on staff with the companies themselves. Often times these are doctors and scientist that are or have been on staff with the FDA too. It all seems so shady.

This book sure made me think about trusting the government to protect our food. I'm sure not a 'conspiracy theory' kind of gal, but some of the research presented by O'Brien had me pretty fired up.


The section at the end where she shared some things you can do or changes you can make at home was a little disappointing. I was hoping to get some tips on taking healthy eating to the next level. She started from a different place than we are as far as food choices. She was feeding her kids dinosaur shaped chicken nuggets, mac and cheese from a box and blue yogurt in a tube. She says that she doesn't cook much and this was her go-to meal for the kids. The changes she made have taken them to food that is healthier, but since she doesn't cook much- they still involve to much processed food for my liking.

tomorrow- back to regular posts!

agave nectar, yogurt news, dutch baby recipe

We are constantly striving to eat better- to eat real, whole foods. Because of the book I will tell you about tomorrow, we recently switched to organic milk. I had been dragging my feet. We don't drink much milk here so I didn't think it was a huge deal. When I made the switch, the kids and hubby said the milk actually tasted better. My main concern in the milk was rBST (recombinant bovine somatotropin), a synthetic hormone that has been approved and declared safe for use by the FDA (but as I read in the book I'll write about tomorrow- it is a pretty nasty thing.) It's not in organic milk, but other than that, it is actually illegal for companies to advertise that their product does not contain rBST milk. How silly is that. It's because the FDA has not found rBST unsafe. This despite the fact that cows given rBST almost always have mastitis ('breast' infection) and are on antibiotics most of their lives. It does increase the milk output, but it shortens their milk producing lifetime and the general quality of life for the cows. FYI- If you've ever had mastitis, you know there's infected puss involved.... do you want that in your milk?

The next logical step for us was going organic with our yogurt. We eat a lot more yogurt than we drink milk. I had been buying Dannon natural vanilla in the large tub. It doesn't have high fructose corn syrup. It does have some sugar (not much), but I'd rather have that than HFCS. The organic Stoney Fields Farms yogurt (also has some sugar in it) was our only organic option for our grocery store. It is considerably more than the Dannon. Neither has the coloring and additives that many colored and flavored yogurts have. I contacted Dannon asking if they had any products that used 100% rBST free milk (since it can't be advertised on their products). It took almost 2 months- but I received a reply this week.

Here is part of it:

Thank you for your recent inquiry regarding Dannon's use of milk from cows treated with hormones.The Dannon Company has been working towards its goal of using only milk from cows not treated with rBST (recombinant bovine somatotropin), a synthetic hormone that has been approved and declared safe for use by the FDA.We are pleased to inform you that we have achieved this goal. All Dannon products are now made with milk from cows that are not treated with rBST. Although no safety issue is involved, as the FDA had confirmed that no significant difference has been shown between milk derived from rBST-treated cows and cows not treated with rBST, Dannon has been taking steps to use only milk from cows not treated with rBST in response to growing consumer preference for so-called 'rBST-free' dairy products. Dannon always listens carefully to the preferences expressed by consumers.Dannon's products will continue to meet FDA requirements for safety as well as continue to be great-tasting and a nutritious part of a healthy diet....

So, good news for the yogurt (and cows).... bad news recently though for agave nectar. I recently stumbled across some blogs discussing natural sweeteners and alternative sweeteners. Apparently Agave isn't all the greatness that I had heard it was. It's disappointing to say the least. Here's the agave nectar article a few people linked to.

I realize that I'm doing this all backwards. I am going to share a recipe from this book I read.. a book that I'm not going to talk about until tomorrow. It's become a favorite breakfast at our house.

Dutch Baby 3/4 c milk, 1/2 c flour, 1/4 t salt, 2 eggs. mix all ingredients and pour into a greased pie pan. Bake at 450 degrees for 10 minutes. It puffs up large and then after about 30 seconds it deflates. Kiddos will want to watch! We served it with some maple syrup.

The above picture is it all puffed up..... then below it's all shriveled up....

She's not a pretty gal, but she makes up for it in taste.

St.Patty's day shirt- applique tutorial

I get asked sometimes about how to make applique shirts. My kids have several and I always tell people how easy they are and how anybody can make it. You don't even have to know how to sew or have a sewing machine. I was getting ready to make the kids St. Patty's Day shirts so I thought I'd take more pictures than normal along the way. I've written about different appliques before and described the process, but here it is all laid out- perhaps easier to follow. Here are some past applique projects: anchor, tie shirt, lion shirt, loopy leaf shirt, dinosaur and giraffe shirts.

First, you need some iron on wonder under material. It comes from the fabric store, for about 1.99 a yard. It's in the interfacing section. It's paper on one side and a slightly rough, slightly tacky on the other side. It's an iron on material. When in doubt, ask the fabric cutter gal. It's sold by the yard, so you'll need to have them cut it for you anyway. This is one brand. I don't think it's the brand I usually use. The plastic wrap looks different than normal.


You'll also need a piece of clothing. We prefer to use stained up shirts. I don't know what is on here- but we get oil like stains on our clothes from time to time. I'd love to know why!
1. Draw on the paper side of the iron on paper. You can trace easily with this, or freehand. I freehand.... no body's gonna tell me what to do. 2. Then, place tacky side of the paper onto the backside of the material you are going to use for the applique. You can use about any fabric you like. Felt, fleece, jersey knit, or cotton will work best. 3. iron- no steam. The paper will stick to the fabric. Don't put your iron on the sticky side of the paper- you'll regret it, you'll curse, you'll cry. Try not to get it on your ironing board cover either.

4. Cut along the lines you drew. Peel off the paper backing. There should be a slightly tacky layer on the fabric you are uncovering.

5. Position on shirt and iron again.

Now it's time to sew on the applique. You have some options here. It used to be very popular to use puffy paint at this point and go over the edges with that. I might have had more than a few sweatshirts like that! I prefer to sew. You can do a simple straight stitch or zig zag on the edge. If you wan to zig zag- you can do a loose wide zaig zag with no other steps. If you want a tight zig zag that looks like embroidery you would find on a work polo, there are other steps involved. I'll have to show that another time. (Here's a project , and another, where I did that)

Here is a picture of sewing a straight stitch close to the edge. Will the very edges fray? Well, a little. I think it adds a nice look. It doesn't fray a lot. 6. Slowly, with a a slightly small stitch length, sew along the edge, on the applique fabric. Reverse to lock your stitches when necessary. You can certainly hand sew this part too. Just sew a little line by hand around the shape.

As you can see if you look closely at the stitches, it's tricky to go around curved edges smoothly. The light sure picked up the stitches, because you can not see them nearly as well in person.

7. Put it on the little one you love.... Mine insists her shirt can not be worn until next week. We'll share a picture then.