Change Is Good

 

One Painted Lady has started her metamorphosis and looks like two others are right behind her! I don't know who is more excited, me or my son.

Sock Bun Curls

Thanks to Pintrest I have recently been inspired to try new hair styles. I have found a bunch of cute styles that are fast and look like I made a bit of effort to be presentable.

Source: None via Sarah on Pinterest

Last night I attempted the sock curl. Basically you put your dry/damp hair in a high pony tail (kinda loose) and then using a sock you roll your hair up into one big curl. I tied the two ends of the sock together and went to bed.  When I woke up I just undid the whole thing and used a little shine spray to cut done on the frizz and we were done. Mine doesn't look as amazing as that chick but I am pleased with the results.

A little bit of effort and I am rewarded with feeling better about myself and think I have a better day. Next time I might try using thinner socks and adding one or two more to see what kind of curls that creates.

My son took these pictures and I think he did a pretty good job!

Simple Skirt

I attempted to make a modified circle skirt this morning using a wide piece of elastic and let's just say I had to move to Plan B. I have made this simple skirt for my daughter about three times now and each time I get faster and faster.

I found some gray fabric with little gray and lime green cars on it at Joann Fabrics and think with a coupon I paid a grand total of $8 for two yards.

It does look a tad little girlish but I expected that. It is comfortable and something easy to put on while we enjoy 90 + degrees here. The best part is when my son saw me in he told me how pretty I was!

Butterfly Garden Excitement

Insect Lore's Butterfly Garden has been my go-to birthday gift for the past year. I love that the gift teaches and the excitement lasts longer than one day. I finally bought one for my kiddos and its arrival was pretty exciting!

 M saw the box and knew immediately what was in it!

It was like Christmas morning. I told M that it would take a little while before they turned into butterflies to which he responded, "Yeah, it will take about 9 minutes."

This week's library books are all about butterflies in anticipation of their arrival.

Love the serious expression!

Godzilla baby wasn't so gentle and lost holding rights pretty quickly.

We are keeping a journal of their transformation and hope we can even get the butterflies to lay more eggs for us. If anyone has tried other Insect Lore products I would love to hear about them.

Items May Appear Smaller At The Store

On my last trip to Joann Fabrics I saw on the clearance rack a flower I had previously passed up, because it wasn't worth the $4.95! It was on sale for a buck and some change we were in business!

I cut the flower off and hot glued it to an alligator clip. It turned out exactly how I envisioned it except about twice as large as I had hoped. Don't get me wrong, I am still going to wear this baby out, but it is a much bigger statement piece then I expected. More of a hat/facinator than a simple hair accessory.

I swear I can't accurately gauge the size/quantity of an object at the store. This can also be applied to clothing I am buying myself and food I put in my shopping cart!

The Superhero Federation Wants You!

I recently made all my nephews and niece superhero capes. I am not going to go into detail on how to make them but if you Google "Superhero Cape Tutorial" you will come up with about 1,020,000 results. What I will share with you is how I made the arrival of the capes in the mail a little more exciting.

Rather than sending them from Aunt Sarah, I sent them from the Superhero Federation. Here is how I did it.

I whipped up a logo on Photoshop and then I wrote the following letter:

I also added the logo to the return address label. They were mailed out last week and I was please to see pictures of my nephews wearing them with pride, knowing that the were singled out by the Superhero Federation. I heard they even had an initiation ceremony!

Now you can send out your own Superhero Federation letter using the following links:
Superhero Letter (Word Format)
Superhero Federation Logo

Hope your little Superheros enjoy it as much as mine did!

My Crafting Space

If you read or follow craft blogs you might have noticed the trend to post about your awesome craft room and show how neat and tidy you keep it all the time. If that is the kind of inspiration you are looking for, I suggest you stop reading the rest of this post. If you are looking for ways to store all your craft/yarn/fabric stuff without your house being taken over by storage totes then you should continue to read.

While I didn't have the guts foresight to take a before picture, you will just have to take my word that it wasn't pretty.

So without further ado... my craft space.

Now I know what you might be thinking - "Wow, that looks just like a dining room!" And I would say, "Correct!" I do all my sewing and general crafting at my dining room table.  See my sewing machine against the wall in its hard case? So glad I got the case.

So that brings us to the storage part. Like I mentioned before, imagine a small walk-in closet filled with storage totes (and some clothes). I could never find anything and if I did find what I was looking for, getting it out was hard physical labor.

Enter the storage piece...

Isn't she beautiful? I picked her up for $30 at my neighbor's garage sale and decided I was tired of all the white, brown and green that makes up my home's decor. This is Behr's Starless Night in semi-gloss. I love it, my husband is not sold on the blue.

The top two drawers are for knitting, crochet and sewing notions. The first two large drawers are for yarn (good yarn in one and not so great yarn in the other) and the next to drawers are for fabric scraps and uncut yards.

I still have some random supplies around, like patterns, random craft tools I picked up for Cocktails and Crafts and stuff I have no idea what to do with but feels like a waste to throw it away. Right now that is all under my bed.

I am learning more and more that in a small space organization in key to keeping your sanity. While I do love my new blue beauty I can still dream about my ideal craft room (and third bedroom, playroom and basement).

                                                                                     Source: thenestuk.blogspot.com via Sarah on Pinterest

                                                                                  Source: onelittleword.typepad.com via Sarah on Pinterest

                                                                                                        Source: None via Sarah on Pinterest

                                                                                                Source: google.com via Sarah on Pinterest

Must Make These!

Source: coolmomtech.com via Sarah on Pinterest

Crochet Sausage Links Pattern

You made have heard (or read) that my family loves sausage! My kids wanted to help but clearly couldn't with raw pork involved so I came up with this solution. Now they can help make and cook sausage. 

Crochet Sausage Links Pattern
Hook: US F5/3.75mm
Yarn: Worsted weight. I used Red Heart Eco-Ways in Cinnabar.

 

Step 1:  Chain 5
Step 2:  6 Single Crochet (SC) in second stitch from the hook, join with slip stitch to create circle (6 stitches)
Step 3:  2 SC in each stitch  (12 stitches)
Step 4:  1 SC in next stitch, 2 SC in next stitch - repeat around (18 stitches)
Step 5:  SC each round until you get the desired length of sausage (18 stitches)
Step 6:  To start decrease: 1 SC in next stitch, Single Crochet 2 stitches together (SC2tog), repeat around (12 stitches)
Step 7:  SC2tog around (6 stitches)
Step 8:  SC2tog around (3 stitches)
Step 9: Chain 5

Repeat Steps 2 - 9 until you have the desired number of sausage links.
I took some stash yarn and tied little bows since in my mind that is how sausages look, even though we personally don't make sausage like that.

Sausage Links by Sarah Boccolucci is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Puff Daddy's Baby

I finished up a sweet little photo prop last night - Puff Daddy's Baby by Anna and Heidi Pickles.

I think I will make another that is fatter and shorter so I can make sure all newborns will fit on the cushion. The pattern calls for it to be knitted flat and then seamed but I wasn't up for that so I cast-on with smaller needles and more stitches (US 17 - 12.75 mm and somewhere around 40 stitches). 

To make this size took three skeins of Jiffy held together. I could even gotten away with using two since I created a gray pillow case to hold the polyfil - I hate seeing the white polyfil peak through. I also seamed one end using elastic so I could pull the pillowcase out for easy cleaning, newborns can be unpredictable like that.

 My son loves it and I think a whole set in rainbow colors would look great.

You can grab the pattern here: http://www.pickles.no/puff-daddys-baby-eng/
or
http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/puff-daddys-baby

Grandpa's Smoked Sausage

Over the weekend we made homemade elk sausage from a recipe my husband got from his Grandfather. Homemade smoked sausage is better than anything you can find in the store. We load it up with enough garlic to make our house stink for a couple days and we loooove it.

We are lucky enough to also have his old Stimpson meat grinder that has the sausage attachment. This thing weighs a ton but gets the job done.

We made about 45 pounds of sausage! Apparently, my husband and I don't believe in cooking small batches of things we love. A batch of homemade raviolis has been known to number in the 400s.

 

Here is the most important part - the smoker. We use hickory chips and smoke them for about 30 minutes. They aren't cooked through but have that delicious smokey taste. All of our windows were open yesterday so now everything in our house also smells like smoke... delicious smoke.

Here are the finished smoked sausages. Mark Zuckerberg would be proud. We got 31 meals (5-6 sausage) this go around. You know what we will be eating at least once a week.

The Recipe:
75% Pork
25% Elk
Casings (local butcher shop can get you how much you need)
For every 15 lbs of meat:
1 tablespoon black pepper
3 tablespoons salt
3 cloves of garlic (or 5-6 if you really like garlic)
2/3 cup warm water
Hickory chips

Cake Wreck

I made this super yummy white cake today and had visions of what the photograph would look like. Nicely frosted with chocolate frosting and fresh raspberries, placed outside on our patio set. That isn't what it looks like at all. It looks like my golden retriever tried her hand at cake decorating. I am pretty sure my three year old could have done a better job than this.

Don't be fooled by the picture, the cake tastes amazing. I failed to grease the pan enough or let them sit too long before getting them out of the pan. I tried some surgery with frosting but frosting couldn't save this disaster.

If you can get past the photo and take my word that it really does taste good then check out the recipe after the picture. It is my take on a white cake recipe from AllRecipe.com.

Ingredients:

2 cup white sugar 1/2 cup butter 1/2 cup shortening 4 eggs 4 teaspoons vanilla extract Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.  Grease and flour two 9 inch cake pans. Cream together sugar, butter and shortening. Beat in one egg at a time. Add vanilla, baking powder and flour Add milk. Bake for about 30 to 40 minutes

3 cups all-purpose flour 3.5 teaspoons baking powder 1 1/2 cup milk

Project Intervention

Do you ever feel like you project list is just getting longer and nothing is ever crossed off? I was taking stock of all the projects I have either started or bought the materials for but haven't started and it is slightly embarrassing.

1. Cathedral window quilt
2. Knitting photo prop
3. Two Tunisian crochet patterns I need to commit to paper
4. Refashioned t-shirt dress
5. Anchor t-shirts for pirate themed birthday (wow, one I can actually cross off)
6. Zig zag quilt
7. Refinished dresser to house all my craft supplies (in progress)
8. Bird fascinator - oh yeah.

I feel like every time I start a project it inspires another project, especially those involving yarn. Maybe I need a craft intervention?