Newborn Gowns

I found this free pattern online and fell so in love with it I had to make 3 in two days. The one on the right I made from a thrift store T-shirt that I bought specially and the other two are Kevin's old ones that had holes. The yellow one especially will be cute to see baby in because Kevin used to wear that shirt all the time.
This is where I got the pattern:
http://thismamamakesstuff.blogspot.com/2008/08/tutorial-t-shirt-to-newborn-gown.html

Homemade Lemonade

We had some lemon juice lying around after a project for a Christmas present and decided to make lemonade. We added sugar and fizzy water to the juice and it tastes perfect.

Apple Fritters

Last night Kevin and I made apple fritters just like the ones you get from the St. Jacob's Market. They were very good and we ate them all last night. We followed this guy's recipe
http://www.duhlicious.com/2009/05/apple-fritters.html

More DIY - Vanity

We've always wanted to replace the upstairs plain old wall mounted sink with a proper vanity. And we did it today. From our previous plumbing adventures in this house we were expecting it not to go perfectly but we had loads of unexpected extra work come up.
We had to replace the drain like we expected but the part attaching to the wall crumbled away a bit and was all gunky anyway so we had to use a rubber thing we found in the basement to attach it to the drain.
And a bit of unpainted wall shows now. We don't have the matching paint in the basement but Kevin managed to mix up two other paints that we had to make a paint that matches well enough.
And we had to cut away the baseboard.
And we had to return the faucet that we originally bought because it splashed a bit too much and the pop up drain cover didn't work.
But it's all done now.

Mache from the cold frame

Haven't been eating salads recently so we finally got around to trying some of our mache. The stuff I picked had gotten quite big. I mixed it with some grocery store romaine and seeds and some garden carrot. It tasted just like lettuce.

Saloon Doors

We've been talking about them for years it seems, sometimes seriously, sometimes not. But we finally did it. The saloon doors are up and working perfectly. It is not as easy as walking through a doorway without saloon doors but with our new nicely finished basement I didn't like having an open doorway. And these still allow ventilation which is especially good with our dehumidifier being in that room.

I used regular 2X4s, some leftover 2x10 for the top, and bought some small plywood boards that fit on my bike basket for the panels. And I got to use my table saw, router, and biscuit joiner. Kevin did all the wood finishing which is what makes them look so nice.

Chili in a Bread Bowl

Kevin had the idea to make some bread bowls to go with our chili on Sunday night. It was pretty fun.

Christmas Soap Making

Kevin has been helping me make some soaps for Christmas gifts. First we made some peppermint soap. We used peppermint oil to give it a strong peppermint smell and I opened up a mint medley tea bag to give it some specs of dried mint leaves too which I think look really cool especially since they came out kind of different colours after the soap making.


I also wanted to use the dried marigold flowers that I had saved from our garden this summer. I matched it with some lavender essential oil. Marigold and calendula I think are the only two flower petals that don't turn black in the soapmaking process so it was nice we happened to have loads of marigolds.


I hung them up in the study closet to dry months ago. Then we pulled out all the dry petals (along with the seeds).


And I think the soap turned out really nicely. I already bought some nice ribbon from the thrift store to tie it up with.

Saving Seeds

Kevin and I pulled apart some marigold flowers that I had been drying for a while to use the petals in our Christmas Gift soaps and of course at the same time the seeds came out. It hadn't occurred to me at all that that would happen but it was really easy to get the seeds, they just came out with the petals. So I have put the seeds in a jar to save for spring so we can have loads of marigolds next year.


While I was discovering seed saving I decided to finally try to extract the seeds from some bolted romaine lettuce plants that I had been saving in the study closet for months. With these I put the plant heads in a paper bag and shook to get the seeds to separate. This worked but lots of fluff and leaves came out too and I can't even imagine taking the time to separate them. So I've just put the whole mix in a jar. I can at least scatter the whole lot somewhere and see if lettuce comes up if I don't pick out the individual seeds.

Dolls

I went to a doll making workshop (http://littlecityfarm.blogspot.com/2009/11/workshop-making-waldorf-inspired-dolls.html) on the weekend and made this Waldorf style doll. I am saving doing the hair till I know whether I want it to be a boy doll or a girl doll, that's why right now it's wearing that hat that I knit for the baby.



And these are three dolls I made a couple of weeks ago but only just gave faces to. This is my new family: me, Kev, and baby.