birdy mobile for maureen's baby!

ok folks, stop with the babies already! maureen, a former colleague from my teaching days, is having her baby shower tomorrow. i'm going to take the chance that she doesn't see this post, because i do not believe she is an apothecary follower. yet. elizabeth, another former colleague and sidekick whom i never see anymore (!!!!), kindly informed me that maureen is decorating the baby's room in a jungle theme. even though i had already decided on making her this mobile once i heard she was preggers, the birdy theme was perfect. having sworn that i would never make birdies again, here i was, making 11 more. all birdies have striped bellies this time and coordinating solid-colored backs. you think mobile making is easy? well, if the mobile maker sucks at physics (physics and math are not related!!), things get a little complicated. look out below!!! erin, my crafty durham friend, had to talk me through fulcrums and torque before i finally straightened out this chirpy number. the branches are made from burned bamboo stalks that i got from michaels (note: same bamboo as from around the mirror of the guest bedroom, just darker!) and the twine is actually what came wrapped around the bundle of bamboo stalks! once i got my balance together, i hot glued the twine steady. the birdies were sewed onto the bamboo. here's the baby's view from below: it's a good thing a package came from anthropologie for me today because the box fit the mobile perfectly! since the box came in the mail, i found it appropriate to rewrap it with brown craft paper and then address the front as if i really were mailing it to maureen's baby. it'll be her first care package, that cost 562c in postage!! hehe. my address is in the upper left. the blank after "mini" is her last name and the blank between "1" and "lane" is maureen's maiden name. virginia land is made up, because i can't remember which city is hers. hehe, admit it: i'm clever.

apple pie and rugalach

last weekend, mom and dad visited. both are fruit lovers, so we loaded up on apples from the korean store and i baked them an apple pie! the recipe called for sprinkled cinnamon on top, before going in the oven. however, the oven burned the cinnamon, so note: do not put cinnamon on before placing a pie in the oven. with the leftover dough, i made rugalach, but without the cream cheese that is usually used in rugalach dough. both aesthetically unappealing, yet tasty.

baby kimono and bloomers for madeleine's baby

i am having blogger upload this post at 3 pm while i attend the baby shower of a colleague because i am so excited about what i made but didn't want madeleine (an occasional follower of this blog) to see it before the shower!

madeleine, a crafty lady indeed, is pregnant with a baby girl and seeing as i had half a yard of pink and red striped fabric (for the purpose of making christmas birdies, although i never ended up using it), i figured this would be the perfect use of this cute print! i just ran out of enough pink to do the sleeves, so i used one of my red pillowcases from ikea's clearance section (2 for $.99) that i never used. (while these pillowcases do not match anything in the house, i figured they'd make good fabric!) to make the trim of the neckline and the ties, i had to make about a yard of 1/2 inch bias tape, which is a nightmare to make without the fancy bias tape tool. however, with my new trusty iron, nothing is impossible!! (with my old iron from the 80's, nothing was possible because there were only 2 settings that still worked: luke warm and extremely hot)

the bloomers were the most thrilling part to make because the legs were shirred with elastic thread (my first attempt at shirring)!! so easy, as all you have to do is use the elastic in the bobbin instead of regular thread. i contemplated making a drawstring, but time ran out (chinese new year is in 4 weeks and i have 7 gifts to make! ahhhh), so i just made a bow with some leftover bias tape and sewed it on to the middle.i'd definitely make these again as they were so small and cute (i love small things)!! both patterns were from heather ross' "weekend sewing" book: lucy's kimono and ruby's bloomers.congrats madeleine!

welcome back, sewphie!

my dear little sewing machine has been healed (!!!) for the small sum of $106 (boo!) from a timing/timeliness issue. i prefer to call it the swine flu, to be honest. because of her near-death experience, i've decided to christen her: sewphie. hahahaha, i'm a dork! and to celebrate, i baked another loaf of banana bread with chocolate chips and walnuts! (i spared you all from yet another picture, since i bake this a lot.)

ignore the current mess on my desk. i'm trying to find a new one that's shallower (my arms aren't exactly long) with a hutch on top (for sundry items) and desk drawers (for my plethora of office supplies). this is my dream armoire desk from pbteen.com. i love that the doors can close away the messiness! wouldn't it be grand if life were like that too?or this one, also from pbteen, which comes bunny-proofed with a socket built into the desk drawer! ($1398!!!!!)however, i'd settle for this desk (in all white) from ikea for only $109. i only wish it had more drawers. hopefully i will find it on craigslist before i buckle and get it from the store.dear readers: please start saving for a pbteen armoire desk for me. it's only $1299 and my bday is in august. you've got time!

coconut pecan topping, finally!

while the cream cheese frosting provided a tasty stand-in for the devil's food cake, i was dying to make the coconut pecan topping that "the joy of cooking" recommends (remember it from the german chocolate cake?!?!). so, yesterday after work, i trekked to giant in dc's 2 degree weather and 12093102 mph wind and got 2 cans of evaporated milk (just to make sure that i'm not lacking evaporated milk ever again). must say, i hate cooking. even making this topping was fairly detestable. it's the state of idly standing over a stove and stirring that drives me nuts. anyhoo, i took no short cuts (ie. i premixed everything before cooking this time, unlike last time when the egg yolks cooked prematurely and left clumps everywhere) and ended up with a nice small pot of topping!!so tasty with the cake! (and alone!!!)

God's greatest gift to mankind:

a hand mixer!!! (yes lori, note the caps hehe. Godmother would be horrified if i didn't!)

for christmas, lan graciously gifted me a spiffy kitchenaid architect series hand mixer! wahoo! she pitied me for all of my old school hand beating, hehe. last night, i put said hand mixer to work. (note: this is the first time i have ever used a hand mixer. it was thrilling!) on devil's food cake. recipe said to mix butter and sugar on medium high speed for 2 minutes until fluffy. well hello, fluffy! that's what it means to look fluffy? i never knew!

i'm pretty ocd, so prep time was still longer than for a normal person. however, i do have to say, it was much shorter than my usual prep time. oh, and might i add that i actually read the section on greasing a cake pan and it said to only use solid vegetable shortening and not butter, cooking spray, margarine, vaseline, hair grease, etc. well what do ya know? the cake didn't stick to the pan at all!
this is what's left! haha, no i didn't eat it all by myself! it was very moist and light! frosting was supposed to be coconut pecan topping, the same as for german chocolate cake. of course, i ran out of evaporated milk. so i made a quicky batch of cream cheese frosting. the coconut pecan topping will be made tonight!i hurried my butt up and finished lan's bookmark sunday night. finally. christmas presents are done. on january 3rd. (last year i finished in march!!! late of course!)

the fruits of elfy's sleepless labor

sorry, fans, for leaving you in the dark on what i was doing on all those late nights i spent before christmas! i left my camera's docking station at home and thus couldn't upload pics while i was on vaca in ct!

first up: the rest of lan's family's gifts. lan and robert's joint gift was a framed cross stitch of baby elephants, like the one in the rents' kitchen, along with a picture of ryan and long. in the middle i cross stitched "gege didi," or "big brother little brother" in chinese. (admittedly, i 1st wrote out the characters on the mat with a sharpie. however, my chinese writing is so sketchy that it wrecked the look of the whole project and thus i cut out the writing and cross stitched the characters because, from previous attempts, i have learned that my stitched chinese is better than my written chinese. what kind of chinese person am i?) i cut my own mat from a "classic columns" posterboard, since the photo mats that michael's sold were gigantic. since the frame was huge and i didn't have much holiday wrapping paper, i wrapped the gift in the holiday comics from the washington post! applause for my cleverness! everyone got a cross stitched bookmark as well. an impala for ryan (to continue with the running theme), a killer whale for long (to continue with the swimming theme), and a koala for robert (not sure what theme this was... hehe). lan's is currently still under production. sorry, but this elf ran out of sleep! i also baked some chocolate chip, walnut, banana bread for the whole family. it came out so beautifully for once!next, i made mom a second pair of pjs, this time in flannel for the winter. the print was super cute and had snowmen and penguins! here's a close up of the ribbon detail on the draw string of the pants: for the top, i used a matching cotton shirt i bought from the gap ages ago and wore maybe twice (don't worry, i don't always gift old clothes to people!) and added a kangaroo pocket again (my mom is a huge fan! she says they're perfect for storing her glasses!). up top i "freezer paper stenciled" a cute penguin icon that erin, my friend from durham (!), helped me find online, but with my own edits. i am the biggest fan of freezer paper stenciling these days!barb, jimmy's gf, also got a pj set. now barb loves pigs. according to jimmy, she hopes to one day own a bunch of pigs and be a crazy pig lady. during my black friday joann's trip, i found 2/3's of a yard of flannel that had pigs, farmhouses, and oink! all over. just enough to make a pair of pj shorts! i had a hard time figuring out how long to make the inseam since barb is far leggier than i am, so i chose 4". (i would have chosen 3" for myself, as i am short and less modest. hehe)for the top, i used another of the $1.99 target tshirts mentioned here and again ripped off all the sequins. using the scraps from the shorts, i added pleats down the middle of the tshirt to make a faux button placket and ruffles on both sides. jimmy found the top to be too bib-like, but HELLO! has he not seen the plethora of bib necklaces and bib-styled tops that have flooded the market these days? at least barb and mom were fans!and now, for the big guns project of the season! i stole one of dad's old dress shirts on my trip home at thanksgiving and ripped out all the seams so i could use it as a pattern. i kept a list of the order in which each seam was ripped and then sewed the new fabric together in the opposite order. all the ends of the fabric were tucked into each other and hidden, thus making my replication of it more complicated than andrew's ducky shirt. however, it fit dad perfectly!! (note: he refused to change into dress pants for the modeling picture and thus the sweatpants that he was sporting made him look like he has the middle-aged bulge! ha!)on the back, i had to add 2 long darts just like the ones my mom put into his old shirt (he's super skinny). i felt that the shirt was a bit long on him, but he claims that the longer length helps keep the shirt tucked in better. i think i'm going to make him more for his bday in march... shhhh!and finally, mom begged me to bake something for dessert for new years, so after scavenging around the kitchen for ingredients, i made some oatmeal fruit cookies with vanilla chips. there was minimal sugar, of course, since dad is a health nut. they were shockingly tasty and i ate my fair share before i left ct! unfortunately, the holidays weren't all good news. my sewing machine has pooped out on me and won't sew zig zags anymore. right-justified sewing doesn't work either. i'm going to take it in for repairs tomorrow, so cross your fingers that it won't cost too much!

stop by the actual blog to check out the layout (for all of you who get my email updates)! i ditched the lighthouse background, since lighthouses have nothing to do with crafting or bunnies. i'd love to put a cool banner up top, but that's just too techy for me. if someone wants to create one for me (ahem, jimmy!), i'd be thrilled! happy new year, everyone!

current mood:

elf-like...

mom called last night at 10:30 and greeted me with "hi helen, are you up late tonight being an elf again?"

wow, am i that predictable? hehe

les sports

oh don't laugh. les sports really is translated as sports in french! (just drop the t and s in your pronunciation.) and this, my friends, is the theme for ryan's and long's christmas gifts this year! doesn't everything sound fancier and more festive in french?

the boys are at the age where they start to specialize in a sport, as opposed to doing just general p.e. all the time: ryan has joined the cross country team and will continue to do track and field in the spring, while long has joined swimming! note: i didn't say that long joined the swim "team" because he refuses to compete! that's alright, we'll be having a little talkie talkie soon. since kids wouldn't be happy with just handmade gifts (sorry, but it's true! been there!), i got long a spiffy speedo deluxe sports towel (think shamwow, but towel sized) and ryan a pedometer. i remember desperately wanting one of those speedo sports towels when i did swimming as a kid, but my mom never got it for me because she had no clue to what i was referring! sigh. and a pedometer?? so cool! always wanted one when i was on the track team! (ok maybe i'm living vicariously through them. hopefully they'll be better at both sports than i was!)

for the homemade part of their gifts, i made ryan a sports bag for his sneakers (he's very particular about keeping his school shoes and running shoes separate) and long got a sports bag for his new speedo towel and swim trunks. on the fronts, i freezer paper stenciled a sports icon, their names (r. "last name" and l. "last name"! how french, non?) and their sports in le français. i blotted out their last names so you'll never be able to kidnap them (they are insanely cute)! the interior of the bag is made from the blue parachute fabric i got at the scrap exchange in durham, nc!! thus, it is relatively waterproof and just that much cooler! the straps of both bags are braided from this natural cotton string of which i had oodles. it was from my attempts in high school to weave myself a macramé belt (that failed!). i must say, creating a long strand of braiding is difficult because i had to wind the ends around spools and then braid by manipulating the spools rather than just the ends of the string (since they were sooo long). the grommets were leftover from when i made a new slipcover for my futon. i hammered my thumb while grommetting long's bag!! the fabric for the exterior of ryan's bag is actually from jimmy's high school graduation gown! here is ryan's bag, cinched: joyeux noël, mes amis!!

more baking and a buffet/sideboard

so the spiced chocolate raspberry and nut cupcakes were not a hit with anyone. since i was meeting up with avé last friday for her bday and wanted to give her some, i had to make some alterations and quick. since everyone loves a good batch of cream cheese frosting, i knew that it would be the remedy here. thus, the cupcakes became spiced chocolate and nut cupcakes with cream cheese frosting. hehe, or how about spicy chocolate nuts cupcakes? since mom and dad were coming to town this weekend to help me grout my shower, i saved them some of these improved cupcakes as well. dad's is the unfrosted one since he "HATES frosting" (note the rare usage of caps for emphasis)!mom and dad arrived with 2 apples in tow, to add to my other 2 aging apples, so i had to bake something to use them up. apple almond crisp! not sure why some of the sugar did not get moist, but it was tasty despite how it looks. but the coolest feature of the weekend was this sweet buffet/sideboard that i scored from craigslist for 75 bones. it's currently chilling under the mirror in the dining room that has the black wrought iron trim. should i paint or not? i was thinking of painting it black and sanding some of the edges of the whole thing and of the square details in order to highlight the details and lines. yes? no?

christmas birdies!

finally! the birdy post! so when thinking back to my childhood, i always remember our sad christmas tree. all the ornaments were the same and were store bought in bulk, and the tree just looked blah. then as my mom started working at my school, she started getting ornaments each year from her coworkers. to this day, whenever i go home and help put up the tree, i love to think back to when we got each ornament and what was the story behind them.

so, i decided that i would put matters into my own hands and i would make different ornaments for my friends and family each year. it would be a way for them to remember me, and and and and, slowly but surely i would have total domination over their tree! muhahahhaah! this year's ornament: a christmas birdy! i decided each would have a patterned back and a coordinating solid colored belly. i got the pattern from the spool sewing blog and shrank it to 75% so that each ornament would not drag down the branch. total birdies made: 27! yes, i do have more than 27 friends. however, i decided that couples had to share an ornament, so that i wasn't making 40 or more of these suckers. here are the 6 different kinds:bottoms up!i made a gift tag for each with the gift tag craft punch i scored from joann's during thanksgiving break! the little angel is from another craft punch i got a while back at the dollar store. and the tags themselves are made from sample paint chips from hardware stores. hehe. i was helping my parents select colors for their bedroom and dining room and helped myself to many many extras in a wide variety of colors!and last night, in keeping with the holiday spirit, i made spiced chocolate raspberry and nut cupcakes! they were way more spiced than anticipated (cloves will do that to ya), but i like the chocolatey flavor. here they are frosted (sorry, still suck at spreading the frosting)...

sniff sniff

bunks, up to no good as usual. thanks, julia, for the pic!

do you hear what i hear?

said the night wind to the little lamb. do you see what i see?

christmas is in the air! last night, julia (my new roommate! welcome to dc, julia!) and i put up the christmas tree! it's but 1 foot shorter than me. however, we used the hallway mini table as a tree stand so that bunkins could not get to it. so, in the end, the tree towers over me like most trees do. the base of the tree was rather sketchy-looking because we couldn't get the stump to reach the bottom of its metal foot. instead of a tree skirt, julia cleverly used an old cloth christmas present bag that i had to wrap around the base of the tree! it looks like santa brought us a christmas tree in his sack of presents!!! i still crack up whenever i walk by the tree. hehehe even though we only have 4 ornaments on it so far, the tree does have a cute glass angel as a tree topper. i snagged it from my fav dollar store next to h mart, the korean store i frequent. growing up, our trees at home always were topped by angels who my mom believed would protect us. this little angel is a little risque- her dress is transparent! gasp!

here's one of our 4 ornaments: it's the birdie ornament i made for julia and marcus, her bf. so i lied earlier when i said that the birdies post would be next because i still haven't finished my last batch of them... so i'm going to wait until then (hopefully tonight!) before i take pics of the whole set.i finished the first of my christmas presents last night. mommy has the most ridiculous flannel pj sets from hong kong, so a while back she asked me to make her a summery pair. i found this really pretty raspberry and light blue striped thin cotton cloth from g street fabrics in the clearance section (!!!), and using the pj bottoms pattern from the weekend sewing book, i conjured up these:

the shirt was actually this $1.99 target sequined christmas tree tshirt that i found from a discount store in ct during thanksgiving break. the material was nice and the fit was femininely trim, so i snagged 3 to make summery pj tops. i ripped off the sequins and cut off the embroidery that was the tree stump and made a little faux button placket to cover up the residual glue from the sequins. the extra bold raspberry stripe was actually this ribbon that i found at home that mommy had bought in a big packet of ribbons. it was just what i needed for a background so that the buttons stood out more and were not lost in the light blue of the cloth. mommy tends to forget her belongings all over the house, so i made a kangaroo pocket to store her goods. and for the collar, i made my own bias tape from the leftover fabric. i hear there's this little tool that helps you fold bias tape easily. it looks quite like a seam ripper. everyone keep your eyes out for it for me, because it would make my life so much easier. bias tape is such a pain to make on your own. and for the bottoms, even though there was an elastic, i wanted to add a drawstring just in case the pants didn't fit mommy quite right. so, i made my own drawstring from leftover fabric and used the raspberry ribbon to cover up the seams. i love how well the ribbon goes with the fabric!as mentioned earlier, mommy gets my blog updates in her email, so i'm sure you're all wondering how i could be posting this! i was so thrilled with the results of the project that i temporarily took her off the email list just so i could make this blog post! yes, call me a dork, but i know you're wishing you had a pair of these pjs!