no worries, i'm still alive. 2 weeks ago i was in boston visiting the sarah. THE sarah. and last week i was chilling in good ole weston with the momski.
in beantown, sarah put me to work. 1st she demanded chicken pot pie. dough was made from scratch, although with her whole wheat flour, so the consistency was dry and a little grainy. thankfully, the flavor of the chicken filling was tasty. i used small ramekins to make us personal sized pot pies:
next up, she wanted a pizza for dinner. i didn't take pics of it, since i've made a million pizzas by now, and it was really nothing special. just spinach, broccoli, and chicken on top, with her mom's red pasta sauce (the best feature of the whole pizza) and some shredded 4 cheese mix. then, she wanted red velvet cupcakes, STAT. her local supermarket ran out of the red food coloring, so really i ended up making brown velvet cupcakes. however, to make up for the lack of red, i used sarah's pink cupcake wrappers. so perhaps we shall call these the pink velvet cupcakes! 1 of the 2 trays filled with cupcakes:
and finally, on my last last night, sarah had the nerve to request another batch of chicken pot pie! she bought regular unbleached flour, so this time the dough came out nice and flaky. this time i made a big pie and carved her initials into the top for steam vents, hehe:
however, when the "joy of cooking" (my present to sarah for her bday!!!) said to use 2 cans of cream of chicken soup, i learned the hard way that this doesn't mean 2 cans of condensed cream of chicken soup. hehe. the filling was rather thick this time, although still tasty!
and no worries, sarah isn't all that bossy and didn't demand any of these food items. well maybe just the pink velvet cupcakes. usually she asks and bats her long curly eyelashes at me and i'm a sucker. see, we're still friends:
at home, mom suggested i make food for our road trip back to dc. i had successfully avoided preparing food at home all week until the very last morning. she suggested i use all the leftovers and concoct a meal. note: i hate cooking and really am useless unless an oven is involved. so, i did what my people do best: i took out the wok and stirred everything together. it tasted just ok but looked horrendous.
and while in weston, i dug up the 2nd beaded project i made, 5 years ago, to snap pics. (the 1st was a cardigan i made for my grandma, but i have since lost the pics.) i used a black long sleeve shirt and beaded the front in the style of those victorian bib shirts (way before the bib shirt trend of 2 years ago). the 3 swirly chains have a gold eagle button in the middle and are meant to resemble necklaces, in a way. this was a mother's day gift for my mom that year.
the back has a continuation of the scalloped trim from the front. you'll have to look closely, as the black beads on the black shirt are hard to see.
i used a light blue stretchy cotton on the top, so that the dress wouldn't be all yellow. the inside was completely lined, which was no small feat! notice how in the picture below the lining in the skirt part was inside out! so yes, i had to snip the skirt lining out and reattach it by hand. sigh. i'm not so great with spatial reasoning. 
then, i ran into my next problem: the dipping pockets in the front puckered along the curves and corners! also, the yellow fabric was so thin that you could see the seams along the pockets. after digging around in my trim box for a bit, i pulled out this fancy vintage rickrack that a former student had donated to my sewing club back when i taught. it was perfect! here the left side has trim already sewed on, but not the right. 
isn't it so much better with the trim? 
here is a final picture of the whole dress. in the back, there is an invisible zipper. i'm quite pleased with how i turned out. it kind of reminds me of heidi, the little swiss girl who lived with her grandpa! 
and for dessert, i baked lan red velvet cupcakes! these were the first that i had ever made with the red food coloring. they were delicious! here's a pic of the last one, with shredded coconut on top! the poor thing was smooshed into a tupperware with the other 5 that i had saved for my parents this weekend. 
and this is after i ate half! 
happy bday dear friend!
until monday morning, when instead of helping mom and dad pack the car for the trip back to ct for the week, i decided that my bed lacked throw pillows and that i needed one in a neutral color to go with the new vintage white bedspread (is that an oxymoron?) that i got for my bed for philly! grey is neutral! so, i took a cheapy ikea pillow that was too big for how little stuffing it had (and thus it was super flat and lumpy) and sewed the pillow shut down the middle. 
then, i sewed the sweater shut across the armpits and zigzag-stitched right next to that to prevent fraying. along the bottom ribbing of the sweater i sewed an invisible grey zipper leftover from one of my numerous ambitious sewing projects that never got started (since my list of MUST SEW items is longer than my list of completed to-do items)! i stuffed the newly poofy ikea pillow into my new sweater pillowcase, and voila, one pretty scalloped throw pillow for the bed! it's still a little lumpy. mom claims that after some tossing around, it'll be flatter... we'll see about that. ikea pillows suck. never buy pillows from ikea unless they're of the memory foam kind! 
note: this is not my new old white bedspread. i'm saving it for philly. oh, and did i mention that i painted this bedframe from ikea? i decided i NEEDED a bedframe and it came in natural untreated pine. however, i decided it should be white. HAD to be white. so now it's white. add that to my list of random apt crafts and completed to-do items! 
no worries, i didn't spill any "soft scrub" into the muffins. mom was cleaning my stovetop. apparently i'm a "filthy filthy girl," in mom's own words! *blush*
