crochet capelet

I finished this capelet last night, and I think I've gotten over some of the doubt I expressed about it the other day.  It looks pretty cool!  I'll probably even wear it from time to time.  The free pattern from Lion Brand was super easy to follow, but next time I would go down a pattern size.  I had already reduced my hook size after making the initial guage swatch from J to H; that could have been necessary because I substituted Loops & Threads Impeccable for the Vanna's Choice the pattern suggests.  I went back to J to finish it off by adding a row of single crochet around all sides except for the bottom.  The edges don't quite reach my elbows, which is exactly what I was going for with the length.

I mostly crocheted this capelet just to have an excuse to use this awesome rhinestone pin that my mom gave me.  It must be meant for shawls and the like because it has two prongs that you lift up to catch the layers and then press back down. 

I hope you had a great Valentine's Day!  Ours was low key, spent at our favorite Mexican place, Birrieria Diaz.

 

peanut butter sandwich cookies

I finally found the perfect recipe to use with these cute little cookie cutters I found at the Asian grocery store the other week.  These peanut butter sandwich cookies were super easy to make, and they held the impressions from the stamps really well.

The dough definitely needs to be chilled for a while before use.  For the second batch I made, I left very little room between cookies, and it wasn't a problem.  As long as I rolled the dough out pretty thin, the cookies didn't spread much while baking.  The recipe says to keep them in the oven for 20 minutes, but I found about 15 minutes to be enough.  I'm chalking that up to these little cookie cutters.  They're about 1.5" in diameter.  I didn't need to use the cream in the filling, and it was way less messy to spread when I broke out my frosting gun (I think it is technically called a decorator press).  I'm thinking of making another batch of hearts to take to work for Valentine's day!

Psst!  My all time favorite peanut butter cookie recipe can be found here!  The results aren't as cute but they are way faster to make.

pancakes!

pancakes on the griddle

I really wish I had a better pancake picture to share.  I have this one recipe in my recipe box that always comes out just perfectly every time.  I normally make them plain, but the ones above were made with a cinnamon roll inspired topping.  You can try them either way.


awesome pancakes

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
3/4 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons sugar
1 1/4 cups milk
2 large eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
3 tablespoons melted butter

Stir together the flour, baking powder, salt, and sugar.  In a separate bowl, beat the milk, eggs, vanilla, and butter.  When the mixture becomes frothy, blend in the dry ingredients. 

Preheat the griddle to about 350°F.  Pour 1/4* cupfuls of batter onto the hot surface, leaving plenty of space for them to spread out.  (I tend to forget this part!)  Add any extra ingredients at this time (like the cinnamon roll topping or blueberries).  Once the bubbles that form start making it to the surface, flip them over and cook for another minute or two. 

yield: about a dozen 5" pancakes

cinnamon roll topping

1/4 cup melted butter
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
1/4 cup chopped pecans


*I use a 1/2 cup measuring spoon to pour the batter, but I only pour out half.  It is kind of thick and sticky, and I'm too lazy to use a bowl scraper when I don't have to.

I looked around the web to see if anyone else made cinnamon roll pancakes, and I found these adorable mini ones.  What a great idea!

stuff i love sunday #43

At the moment I am searching for the perfect recipe to use for these super cute cookie cutters I bought at the Asian grocery store yesterday. Do you have a go-to recipe that holds it's shape and doesn't require icing to taste good? I want the details of the little stamps to show up in the baked cookie. I am leaning towards a couple of cream cheese sugar cookie recipes, but I'm open to anything.

 

It seems like most of my pins on pinterest are related to crafts or food.  One of our plans for the new year around my house is to make more food at home, and it is not hard to get motivated to do so with all of the great recipes all over the blog world.  Here are five I plan to make soon!

lasagna soup from a farmgirl's dabbles (via casey plusthree)

red velvet fudge from i am baker (via kristen smith)

cheesy quinoa bites from so very blessed (via susan sobon)

baked eggs with feta and prosciutto from i will not eat oysters (via sherilee coffey)

peanut butter and jelly pie sticks from spoon fork bacon (via melissa villadiego)

it's my birthday! & more photo pages

Hey! Today's my birthday! I hate it when it falls on a weekday, but what can you do? Since I was super busy with work related stuff last night in hopes of getting out on time today, I didn't get a chance to post a new granny square. Maybe these photo pages I made will suffice until next time (hopefully later tonight)!

I blogged about the first page I made a couple of weeks ago, and I've been on a roll since then. I still hesitate to call this "scrapbooking" because I guess I feel like there must be some kind of minimum criteria for that classification. I'm probably overthinking it! The page above is my favorite so far. I cut what felt like a billion little scraps of paper into teardrop shapes by hand and glued them down one by one. Aren't Gerty and Jim the cutest when they are on the couch together?

This one features a bunch of photos from our recent trip to La Costa, a Mexican seafood restaurant here in Oklahoma City. Our food was amazing! Junior had some kind of big fish, and I had tacos (not pictured because they were not as impressive-looking). This place is so cute and tiny. I wish I had gotten a picture of the dining area. It was just two rows of booths all the way down with a narrow walkway in between. It felt like a school bus. In a good way.

Jim is in love with Hello Kitty. Above he is pictured dreaming about her.

The page above was more of an experiment than the others, and I wish I had put a couple more photos on it. It may not be finished. These pictures are from one of our favorite Mexican grocery stores. Weird, right? I just love how colorful it is there compared to the bland beige and dingy white of most grocery stores around here. (I'm looking at you, Homeland.)

This one has a bunch of random photos all taken in the living room. I'm not sure what I'm doing with that label-y sticker there. I feel like it is a brand new notebook, and I don't want to mess it up by writing anything other than exactly the perfect thing there.

This is another random pictures one. Let's see, there are a couple of photos of the afghan I'm currently working on, my favorite necklace, the dinosaur vs. robot tattoo, and a pendant that I embroidered. You can kind of see my awesome flower nails in that last one. The little paper dinosaurs are from a Martha Stewart craft punch I just couldn't pass up. Most of them are made from scraps of the photos I had printed at Walgreens last week.

Tons of my pictures are square, and 4 x 6 photos are always on sale, so for most of my prints, I photoshopped pretty backgrounds and two 2.5" square pictures onto a 4 x 6 template for each one that I had printed. On the page below, you can see more photos that had been printed with patterned borders.

This photos above were all taken at Birrieria Dias, our new favorite Mexican place. They don't mess around when it comes to condiments. You get about 10 little bowls of stuff to add to your food, depending on what you order!

And last but not least, here are Gerty and Jim again!

stuff i love sunday #19

1. collection_011_2011_07_24, 2. It Won't Be Long (Below the Soil Floor), 3. Five cameo pins and one necklace, 4. Step by step, 5. Germanese - German notebook goodness from Japanese dollar store (Daiso)., 6. DQS11 - more progress, 7. Because it's that friggin awesome, 8. Mug Rug!, 9. Raining Rainbows, 10. Wednesday WIP, 11. giveaway02, 12. Untitled, 13. thrifted goodies, 14. Bits and bobs - new crochet wip & colourful crafty things, 15. Sophie..., 16. detail from vintage AAA road map, 17. Pork tacos, 18. Untitled, 19. Granny Flats in the making..., 20. mt tape fun, 21. 020, 22. 183/365 - Square #5, 23. home is, 24. IMG_2689

Leslie at crochetbug shows how she added polymer clay handles to her crochet hooks to get a better grip. I really want to do this to my smaller hooks because I get hand cramps after using them for very long every single time.

Some pretty free crochet patterns: picot flower change purse, quick and easy flowers, fanciful flowers potholders, posey throw, and yet another type of flower potholders (this one is a Ravelry download only, I think).

Granny square cookies from Sugar & Meringue are the cutest thing ever! I really want to get these Star Wars cookie cutters from Williams Sonoma.

Fresh spring rolls with peanut sauce...and this sauce. Yum.

I have to make avocado fries soon. And avocado toast. I wish avocados were less expensive! I'd eat them every day!

***colorful ricrac ribbons, felt textures, & blog labels from pugly pixel

golda's butterscotch pie

One of the things that I can't seem to stop collecting is other people's recipes. I scour thrift stores for what I like to think of as "potluck cookbooks". You know, the spiral bound collections of recipes from members of a church or women's organization. If I'm really lucky, I'll score someone's actual recipe box with actual personal recipes, like Golda's Butterscotch Pie. Usually they are handwritten, but this recipe was actually typed! I love it, typos and everything (unless that is a proper spelling of butterscotch I've just never encountered!). It reminds me of when I was a kid and would use just about any excuse to use the typewriter. I can't be the only one who did this, right? I love that a little bit of the recipe's history is included, though complete instructions would have been nice. I assume you're supposed to pour this into some kind of pie crust...! The cut off part at the bottom is what I assume to be the typist's name followed by 1987 in case you're wondering.

1. Ohio Arts Metal Recipe Box, 2. Flower Recipe Box , 3. Vintage Recipe Box, 4. Recipes

These metal types of recipe boxes are my favorite. I actually have two like the one on the upper right and one like the one on the lower left!

I have a hard time passing up a cute recipe box (and I'd buy an ugly one if it is full of recipes!), so this means that I have way more boxes than recipes to put in them. To justify my collection, I use the extras to store spices, odds & ends, and craft supplies like the vintage trims & bias tape in this large box with a clear lid below. The green one underneath it contains greeting card blanks.

stuff i love sunday #1

I am going to begin featuring a couple of mosaics each Sunday. One will be photos I have taken that I haven't featured on my blog for various reasons and the other will be photos by other people from my Flickr favorites.

Since some of the photos in the mosaic of mine are private on Flickr, I'm not including the legend because lots of the links would be broken. As you can see, in the past week or two I have taken pictures of crochet (of course!), food, my pets, and Gerty's "playdates" with her friends. The cute little guy in the first picture is Koda, our friends' new puppy, and the Corgi on row two is Georgie, another friend's dog. See those giant granny squares on row 2? That's a secret long term project I'm slowly working on in between other stuff. The cookies are my favorite peanut butter cookies ever!

Now take a look at these lovey photos from my Flickr friends!

1. truffle party, 2. "Heirloom" necklace, 3. Ringo Pie - Spring for Lucinda, 4. Untitled, 5. Untitled, 6. Happy Macaron Day!, 7. Victorian Garden Handmade Necklace, 8. YIP 365.331 :: Twinkle twin, 9. Bottle Cap Pincushions #585-596, 10. Star Wars hat, 11. Reversed mushroom girl, 12. handkerchief invitation pillow, 13. acid trip tea party, 14. Cupcakes!!!, 15. Wooden Embroidered Raspberry Toast, 16. Yummy!, 17. Hello SunShine, 18. the best, 19. vintage jumble, 20. Ripple blanket

soup

If you have never had Tom Kha Gai, a Thai soup that is amazing, you're really missing out. This detailed tutorial from SheSimmers will tell you all you need to know to make it. My version that is pictured is basically the tutorial recipe minus the chicken. And I forgot to add the cilantro before I took the photo. I've make it with chicken, too. Delicious! The only changes I have made are decreasing the mushrooms and chicken to broth ratio. Maybe the Thai restaurants around Oklahoma City skimp on the "stuff" in their versions of this soup, but I would have to triple the broth from the tutorial to match the consistency of restaurant soup around here. And seriously, the broth is the best part. You can taste the herbs, coconut milk, lime juice, and salty fish sauce in every sip. It is so good! I was worried that I wouldn't be able to locate fresh kaffir lime leaves, but Super Cao Nguyen keeps them in the produce section in bags of a dozen or so for $1. I love that place!

On another note, happy new year! In 2011, I plan to blog a lot more often. I make something new at least once a day, so there is no reason why I can't find a minute to write about it. :)

humble pie

When we heard last year that there was a new pizza joint around town that offered Chicago style deep dish pizza, we immediately visited Humble Pie in Edmond, Oklahoma, and it has become one of our favorite places. They had a kitchen fire a little while back and had to close down for repairs, but they're open again, and the pizza is still amazing. To be honest, I am so in love with the Chicago style that I haven't even tried their New York style option. It is probably good, but I don't want to miss out on the tender and flaky goodness that is their Chicago style crust. You have to try this place.

The "bottomless pretzel basket" is humble pie's only appetizer. I love the way they season the pretzels.

We got the meat lovers and the 7 cheese pies this time. While both were good, the cheese one was to die for.

la baguette

The bakery in La Baguette Bistro (on N. May in Oklahoma City) is one of my favorite places to pick up dessert! I always get a chocolate mouse, and Junior is a big fan of the little individual pineapple upside down cakes. We've tried slices of several of their cakes, cookies, and lemon and pecan squares, and everything has been so delicious. The bistro part of the restaurant serves awesome French food, too, and I've heard their brunch is among the best in the city. Don't you just love looking at all of these desserts they have on display?

recipe cards

Last year at the annual library book sale, I picked up a small cookbook called "Festive Dessert Cookery" that was published in 1967. I was instantly drawn to the awesomely simple pink and orange illustrations throughout the book. So when a fellow swap-bot user contacted me to swap recipes, I knew I wanted to make some recipe cards with illustrations from the book. I love the way the turned out (and the recipes I used!), so I am including them here for you to download if you'd like. Print on cardstock, and you'll have 3" x 5" recipe cards in no time.

Download a PDF with six recipes and six blank cards for you to print out here. Recipes include my favorite peanut butter cookies, hot fudge cake, sandies (pecan shortbread-like cookies), pumpkin pecan pie squares, peanut butter balls, and cream cheese frosting. If it prints out funny, please let me know, as I currently have an empty color cartridge in my printer!

What is your favorite recipe? These peanut butter cookies are my absolute favorite!

vintage buttons candy

I blogged about the awesome vintage buttons candy mold from Bake It Pretty previously. Well, I bought it! I have to get some more colors of chocolate, but the blue ones came out pretty. I used a cheap valentine's day chocolates box and covered it with pretty papers. The candy cups are also from Bake It Pretty.

Lessons learned: Get a squeeze bottle if you do this. Work quickly, and do not overfill the cavities. Once they all have chocolate in them, whack the mold (gently) against the counter to level the chocolate.