Superbowl Food

I wanted pizza last night for the big game, but I knew that ordering from a shop would take forever, and be pretty wasteful, since I didn’t finish the last pizza I bought myself. So, I decided to more or less make my own with what I had in the fridge!

Even though the snopocalypse didn’t hit the Rochester area much, (just some light snowfall) I didn’t want to venture out, so I used some whole wheat tortillas and some left over spaghetti sauce as my base. Then I just added cheese, folded my creation in half, and cooked in my George Forman until the cheese melted! Easy peasy!

I accented it with a glass of milk, some celery sticks, some dried cranberries, and some M&Ms, and I was ready to watch the commercials Saints go to victory!

Inspiration from the Library: Scrapbooking

One more blog about inspiration I found from a book in the library. This time, it was “501 Great Scrapbook Page Ideas” (ISBN: 1892127520) and the pages above are my favorites from it. I numbers them so I could say why.

1. I liked the way that the creator used the little teeny pictures to kind of frame the larger, main picture.  Since I know how to make little teeny pictures, there’s no reason why I couldn’t do this too!

2. I liked how they used vintagy-papers to fill up the page.  I see vintage papers on etsy all the time, but never really understood how they could be useful until now.  (Silly, I know.)

3. The circle/ring made of paper with the little circle pictures just kills me!

4. This is so girly I love it.  Their use of ribbon and butterflies is just perfect.

Other notes I took while looking through this book:

• Use stencils & marker to write out title of page right on the background paper.  It creates a cool, kind of see-through effect on the letters.  Paint is neat too, but might weight down paper?
• Tear the bottom edge of your photo border, and make border a little taller than needed to you can fit journaling above the tear.  (Does this one make sense to you readers, or just me?)

And again, a larger photo and one of the cover are over in my new Flickr account.

PS: Oh crap, I forgot a page in my collage, and I’m too lazy to go back and add it. (lol) I like this one because of the way it uses smaller pictures and cool paper.

Inspiration from the Library: Plush

I went to the library last week and got out some books, so I thought I would share a couple of them with you. I think I want to try out these patterns this weekend, but we’ll see. I always get nervous about plush toys. They just seem so difficult!

The first is “The Cute Book” by Aranzi Aronzo. (ISBN: 9781932234688) This looks like it won’t be hard since the arms and legs are just flat pieces of felt. I could make one of these little guys pretty easily, I think.

The second is “Sewing Tiny Toys” by Carolyn Vosburg Hall. (ISBN: 0873417879) This one looks like it would be more challenging, and makes me a little nervous. Were you surprised that I chose pandas to try and make? You shouldn’t have been!

I scanned in the covers of the books and the pattern pages, and uploaded them over to my new Flickr account that I made just for this blog. I don’t have many friends over there, and I’d love it if you added me!

Happy weekend!

Lunch Talk

With my being pregnant, I’ve begun to eat A LOT healthier. Which means I can’t go down to Sweet Dawn’s anymore, and that I have to bring my own food from home. For the first trimester, I brought all pre-packaged stuff, and it made me so sad that I was creating so much waste! When I ate at Sweet Dawn’s, I would bring my own plate, so they didn’t have to use a Styrofoam container, but when I stopped going I had all kinds of containers to throw away:

• plastic milk bottle a day
• orange juice carton a day
• protein drink bottle
• yogurt containers
• cottage cheese containers
• apple sauce containers
• plastic bags for my sandwiches
• plastic bags for my carrot sticks
• plastic bags for my celery sticks

I would look for containers to reuse, but I could only find the big “typical” Tupperware containers. That’s not what I wanted! I wanted something I could put cottage cheese and yogurt into! Truth be told, I have had a sandwich container for a while now, but I really should have bought more than one because I’m not all that great at washing it every day.  I also bought a snack container that I could put my carrots into, but again… issue with the lack of washing it.  :-/

When I was at Wegmans earlier this week though, I had a genius thought! Why not check the BABY section and see what they have??? And sure enough, I got a six pack of containers in the “yogurt” size that I wanted for $2.99. That’s what the orange container is.  The regular Tupperware ones were like $3.99 each. Win! Next time I go, I have to buy another pack so I can buy a big container of cottage cheese and do the same thing.

The pink container is awesome too. I got it at the dollar store, and it has two compartments in it. I use the bigger bottom section for my salad, and the top section for salad toppings (dried cranberries, cheese, cucumbers, etc.) and then I mix them in a bowl that I keep in my office.  Sometimes I put other snacks in there though, like today; I just had dried fruit.

I also bought a travel mug to put my orange juice in. I need to buy a couple more though, as I still need something to hold my milk and I would like to start bringing V8 juice to work. I used to bring little cans of it, but I stopped because the amount of trash in my garbage can was just too much for me to bear! This particular travel mug is nice because it comes 100% apart, so it’s really easy to clean. Once I get the other travel mugs, this one will become my milk mug.

Geez I eat a lot.  It’s 5:00 now and I’ve only got my apple and carrots left…and I’m about to eat the carrots!

John’s Valentine’s Day Present

I’ve been spending all of my free time (when I have energy, anyway) working on John’s Valentine’s Day present! I bought a PDF kit from Corey Marie, that I can/could print out and make a mini album!

It’s sooo cute! I messed up on a couple pages though, so I guess it’s good that I can reprint and reprint to my heart’s desire. Well, only one page is really messed up… the other is a “mistake” that I might be the only one to notice.  I’m only posting close-ups now, but once John gets here, (he arrives on the 11th.) I’ll post better pictures, and I want to see if you guys can guess the “mistake.”  While I don’t think he reads my blog anyway, I’m almost positive he won’t read it once he’s home.  So no taking chances on ruining the surprise!  Even though he’s already guessed that he’s getting a scrap book.  *sigh*

I was looking at JoAnn’s during their winter sale, or something like that, and I noticed that the “Brights” mat stack (4.5″x6.5″) by DCWV matches this kit almost EXACTLY! Win!

Believe it or not, all of the pictures printed for this album were on the 4×6″ sheets (?) that you get for 41 cents or whatever from CVS. If you guys want, I can post a tutorial next week going over how I got the smaller pictures.

I guess that’s it for now!  Happy weekend everyone!

Birdie Earrings!

Kristi over at Spotted Octopus is having a no-shipping sale today, so if you’re in the market for jewelry, I would check it out. She makes really cute pieces, a lot with little characters, but other “serious” pieces as well.

I just bought the above earrings. The picture is by her, edited by me. I’m not sure if I’ll keep them or send them to my sister with her late Christmas present… I’ll have to decide when they get here. Aren’t they so cool though? I’m not really even a jewelry person (I usually wear the same pieces every day.) but I’ve always seen pieces I like in this shop.

How Cool is This???

How cool is this mirror? It’s like the ultimate hipster mirror; imagine all the MySpace pictures you’ll be able to take of yourself in the mirror w/o having to photoshop the Polaroid frame around it! LOL, and yet I want one. $20 isn’t bad, but I’m torn as to whether or not it’s too small to be practical… it’s the size of a real Polaroid. How do you see yourself?

(photo of mirror from site)

Scrapbooking

While John was in the hospital, I did a lot of scrapbook in his “Army – Year One” book. These aren’t all the pages, but they’re some of the finished (or more finished) ones. You can click on them to view a bigger picture.

(A group shot of my dad, brother, John, myself, and John’s mom is going to go on the blue square.)

The Only Sewing I’ve Been Doing…

…as of late has been fixing toys that Kipp has ripped apart.  XD Maybe I should use contrasting embroidery thread so you can actually SEE the stitches, huh?

Some toys are beyond saving. (Although she still likes to drag it around…)

And some get fixed…

…Only to need more fixing somewhere else later.  A never ending cycle.

The Coolest Thing I’ve Ever Made

Despite the fact that I spent my nine year anniversary with John and my two year blogeversary in the hospital, I’m trying to stay positive about 2010.  One thing that is helping the year to look better is the coolest thing I’ve ever made, with a little help, of course:

I’m pregnant! I wanted to tell you guys for so long now, but was waiting until I was in my 2nd trimester to announce it to the internet; afraid of miscarriage and all that. I’m in my 15th week, and we’ve heard the heartbeat a couple times and have pictures, so I’m feeling confident that I can share now!

I’m due July 1st, and I really hope the baby is on time or late because John doesn’t get back in NY until the end of June. I mean, he can leave SC if the baby does come, but it would just be nicer if he could hang around after and not have to get recycled back into his class during the next go-around.

Oh, my little Nacho Libre. I love you so already.

PS: Having a kid around will give John a chance to brush up on his Disney movies. He is TERRIBLE with them. While trying to come up with the main song from Pocahontas, he said “What was it, ‘A Whole New World?’ No, wait, that was ‘Lion King’ right?” FAIL OMG.