Cooking Class in Style

Our neighbor's tween daughter signed up for a cooking course this summer. As a surprise for her first day of class, her mother asked me to whip up an apron. I had free reign on the fabric choice, and wouldn't you know, my sister brought over her "remnants" today, and she had the perfect coordinates for miss A's apron.

miss A is a tad bit shorter and skinnier than I am ( yes, I am 33 years old and stand barely 5' tall) so I had to do a hybrid style of the two apron patterns I had on hand. For the skirt part of her apron, I followed instructions from Prudent Baby's fat Quarter apron, but added about 4 inches in length so that it would tie just under the bust instead of at the waist.

I made the top bib without a pattern, by cutting out a square to cover my bust,

then cutting it to make it a bit narrower and shorter. I also made rounded corners by tracing a CD and cutting around the edge. I edged the bib with small ric-rac before attaching it to the top hem of the skirt (which coordinated with the sash ties).

I made 2 sash ties by cutting out (2) 4"x 24" strips, sewing them and turning them inside out. The neckline ties were made by cutting (2) 2"x 24" strips and foll

owing the same guidelines as before.

And lastly, I added a little chic-style to it by ironing on a felt floral applique to the spot where the bib meets the neck tie..I found a ton of felt appliques on clearance at Joann's last week and snapped them up...25 cents a packet, and about 4-5 flowers came in each. SCORE!

She will be the most stylish little cook this side of the 101..looking forward to her reaction to her mom's sweet surprise!

Sobrino de Botin

NZ was recently in Madrid for work, and had the opportunity to eat at the oldest restaurant in the world. Word has it, Sobrino de Botin has been in business since 1725 and was even around when Napolean was invading the city...

And in his very own Nick-ish way, he had to write to tell me how good baby pig tastes...along with a visual. The roasted suckling pig is Sobrino de Botin's most notable dish.

Yes, sunshine, I'm jealous of your baby pig. It looked delish.

Phrase-tastic

With Father's day on the horizon, I sat down at my computer today to whip up a few cards for the dad's in our life. My silhouette die cutting machine has been a godsend, but I am also a sucker for anything I find at the Paper Source, and etsy.

Trolling for good phrases and funny dad-isms, I ran across a few of these and couldn't resist re-posting...

This would be perfect for my pop, an avid hunter, if I knew that he'd catch onto the Sir-Mix-Alot reference..But, I am not so sure that my dad, as hip as he is, knows the "I like Big Butts" song. He's more of a Jack Johnson or Donovan Frankenreiter fan..but rap?? Not so much. I can

hear him from here.."Put a 'c' on front of it, and there you go..C-R-A-P." Lol. Love him.

[visit www.bargainjack.com to buy this as a shirt]

I love you more than....what dad doesn't like bacon? I found this card here on etsy in The Inkling Shop.

[Macknz103 on etsy]

And my final favorite card....socks with sandals, or shall I clarify, socks with mandals...yes, my love goes deep, cause I'd even look past those fashion faux paux's to love my pop, socks and all.

DIY Matchbox city

As I do on almost every Sunday, I had my oldest nephew over for a few hours yesterday. We normally go for walks ( who am I kidding, he runs, I walk..), but with yesterday's indecisive weather, we stayed around the house. Nothing like getting stuck in a downpour with no umbrellas! We've done that before, and although it is a funny story to look back on, we were miserably wet by the time we got home..So, lesson learned..no more walks without umbrella when it looks like there is the slightest chance it might rain.

Armed with sidewalk chalk and matchbox cars, we drew ourselves a city...complete with what he deems "My-semite" instead of "Yosemite", full of trees and lakes. We also had a McDonalds, VONS, barbershop, gas station, school, houses and of course, a race track.

[The trees of "Mysemite"]

So, anyone looking for an idea to eat up some of your summer outside time, this little city on the sidewalk was at least an hour of outside entertainment, and easy to boot!

Best part..it washes off so a new city can be created the next day!

DIY Twix bars

A recent discovery of pinterest has officially taken all of my blogging time away from me..instead of spending evenings posting about the haps around here, I have been "pinning" away like a mad woman, creating my own collection over there..If you don't already know about pinterest, you should really, really, really, check it out..but beware, it is more of a time zapper than facebook...but good Lord does it have some cool ideas and inspiration to learn from.

Among them, is the recipe for homemade twix bars, courtesy of this link from King Arthur Flour. I hit up Fresh & Easy, bought myself some Werther's chewy caramels, some nestle milk chocolate chips and got to baking!

The recipe was super straight forward, and although the recipe calls for these to be served more as a cookie bar would be, you can tweak the cutting process to create "sticks" and then dip them in chocolate to create twix bars, rather than pouring the chocolate over the top of the cookie bars only.

Mine won't be winning Miss America anytime soon (they were a bit homely, actually), but the text I received from my husband the day he took them into work said,

" They didn't stand a chance. Smoked within the first hour today".

That's how I measure my recipe success...if he brings back stragglers, I know the recipe tanked..If I get a text by 9 a.m. stating that they're gone... I know it's definitely something to make again.

I'm happy to proclaim that the Twix bars earned a home in my recipe book!

Saturday Project: for the boys

My Saturday project is complete!
Thanks to the help of NZ, his drill press, and sander...
3/4" holes all drilled out, 6 " from the end
3/4" dowel measuring 48" long inserted through all 4 uprights (also measuring 48"L each)

Full size sheet, folded in half with elastic loops sewn to each corner....

A perfect hide-away for our nephews.. Indoors or outdoors...

And easy enough to store! All pieces fit in a storage bag I made (by re-purposing the full size fitted sheet that came with t

his sheet set), measuring 50" long, and 6" wide with a drawstring top.

Must make: A frame tent

[photo from Cakies]

One of my college besties sent me a link saying that this project over on Cakies looked like something I would be into making for my super awesome nephews to play in...and boy was she ever right! I have been dreaming of making an A-frame tent similar to this ever since that link showed up in my inbox on Wednesday.

Although it will require me to manage a power drill ( I have a better idea, I'll enlist NZ's help on this one..C'mon it'd be fun to do a project together, right?) and make a trip to Home Depot (What's that she said? "Home Depot?" He's sold...definitely helping me now), I think it will be relatively easy to make. The instructions state that a twin size sheet will work well for the cover, and wouldn't ya know, I don't own a single twin sheet, and to buy the yardage of fabric at Joann's

would be spendy..I'm all for CHEAP projects, not "costs-more-to-make-it-yourself-than-to-buy-it" projects..

I found myself at Marshall's and Ross this week, and perused their housewares sections. Sheets were only sold as sets at Marshall's, and still about $30 for any that I liked for a little boy's tent..Went to Ross expecting to find nothing, and something caught my eye as I was about to leave. I spied little blue, orange and green mod guitars on a white backdrop. But oh man....just my luck, it's a sheet set...bet it's more than I want to spend...

$8.99

Serious? I looked again...

Yep, $8.99, said so on the tag.

To the checkout, we go..me, my sheet set and I.

So, now I am armed with the "cute" part of the project and am anxiously awaiting this weekend to schlep my ol man into Home Depot to help me buy & cut the right lengths of baseboards and dowel rods necessary to make this thing a reality. I think tent building makes a wonderful Friday night activity, don't you? Okay, okay, I'll hold my horses till Saturday, but I am so dang excited about my next project!

And oh yeah--double bonus is that it's a double sheet set, so I have 2 pillowcases and a fitted sheet's worth of extra fabric to play with once the tent is constructed!