The Nifty Foodie's Life

Remember when I mentioned that I used to cross-stitch?

I busted out the collection for ornament making. I was a bit of a fanatic, no?

A couple of weeks ago, my dear sewing machine broke. I was working on a shopping cart cover (avoid this pattern for dear life…it’s written TERRIBLY and the steps just made no sense), and in the finishing steps, the nylon webbing decided that it didn’t like my needle and took it out on my beloved machine. According to the repair guy, the timing was off and some needle hook thing broke. Erg…never working with nylon webbing on a machine again….

This lovely repair costs $99. $99?! Totally not cool, but since I’ve been trying to open my Etsy shop a while, I really had no choice but to get this taken care of ASAP. Good news: My machine will be back on the table tonight, sewing Etsy things like it’s nobody’s business.

Anyway, the past couple of weeks involved no sewing. It kind of blows, but stupid me realized that while my machine is out, I can still cut fabric, which is SO not fun, but needs to get done.

So, I cut patterns and fabrics for Christmas gifts.

Don’t you just LOVE this? It’s going to be made into a laptop bag (this pattern/this fabric). Delightful.

I also decided that my dog should dress up for Halloween. I’m that puppy mom, and I think she’d have a blast at the costume contest that Petsmart is hosting. She loves that store! So, she’s going to be a sea monster…check out the fabric to the left. It’s a shimmery looking fabric with fish scale print. I’m sort of winging it with a simple dog jacket pattern, because they don’t make costume patterns for 40 lbs. dogs. Go figure.

To the right is a handbag that will be made with this fabric. The pattern looks simple enough, but we’ll see how this one goes. My first lined handbag…whoa!

Oh, and packages have started to come in for the quilt block swap! From what I’ve looked at so far, the fabrics are awesome, but I’ve only received 2 packages. I’m hoping the other 3 come in soon! ::hint hint to the participants:: I can’t wait to bundle these up and send them out. Since my sewing machine broke, I didn’t get to finish all of my blocks, but I’m pretty sure I can hammer those out this weekend too.

And, new project, of course. Instead of trashing the pillows we have in the house, I’m pretty sure Millie is getting a new dog bed and our sofas will be adequately decorated as well. I want to reuse this crazy amount of pillow fluff…I’d feel terrible trashing it all now, and the gears in my head would never forgive me . I think I have about 10 pillows total to tear into….whoa.

I’m sure most of you are thinking that I’m just plainly wacky for all of these projects looming around, but I told myself that I really need to use up some fabric. I really have too much in my basket, and don’t really have room to sprawl out with a huge stash, sadly.

I’ve had a blog since 2005. That’s a long time in the Internet world, y’all.

I remember my first blog, which was on a LiveJournal-like platform, and I really can’t even remember the name. I used to blog about things that no one cared about: college classes, boys, discovering my independence, etc. I moved over to LiveJournal, because my friends were there. My LiveJournal is still online with a Christmas looking theme and an avatar with Will Ferrell from Elf, but I’m too embarrassed to share the link. I look back on it from time to time and laugh at the things I used to care about in the college days.

I wonder if I’ll ever look back on this blog and laugh at what I cared about in my 20s.

One thing I’ve noticed through the years, is that I carefully plan/care about my posts more. No more posts about the professor who embarrassed me in class or the fact that I had a faceplant in front of the student union. It’s rare that I post about a day in the life here, because, well, I doubt that readers would care about that.

When I started my food blog in 2008, all I cared about was finding good recipes and keeping a record of them, so when I was married, I could totally cook something up for us. My food adventures took place in my parents’ house for a good year or so. The pictures didn’t matter to me…it was the recipes that I cared about, obviously.

Example: One of my pictures from my first ever food blog post. I thought it was an excellent picture of bowtie pasta and meatballs, but I didn’t care to take 20 pictures of the food…I just wanted to eat.

A year later, at what would be my husband and I’s house (his house at the time), this is what I took a picture of. Oh yeah, Italian again. At least this time, I focused in on the food. At this point, I was getting a little better, and had a good steady following, so I wanted to give my readers fairly decent pictures of recipes.

Then, around April 2010, I bought a dSLR and moved to my own domain. I really started developing a passion for food blogging and decided my own URL was the next step, along with a fancy camera for great pictures.  

When I got my camera, ultimately, I wanted to be able to play with settings and make my photos eventually drool-worthy. Right when I took it out of the box, I immediately put it in “manual” mode and got to work. It took me a while, but check out one of my favorite photos (which was taken in July 2010).

It’s funny how much I care now about blogging. It’s an everyday thing for me, and I love networking/talking with other bloggers about what works for them. I know I will never be Bakerella or Pioneer Woman, but it always gives me confidence when I see my hits rise and my readership increase.

Now, I know this is a post about my food blog, mainly, but I will say that this blog has also become important to me. I know this blog will never be as popular as the food blog, since there’s no real theme here (and themes usually mean a stronger readership), but I still love posting here about hobbies, housewife-ness and other topics that pop in my mind. I’m not sure if this blog will ever have a theme, like food, sewing or gardening. I like that it’s fairly random in its own way, and it offers me the freedom to blog about whatever.

When I called in sick to work one day, I was basically bound to the bed watching daytime talk shows. I happened to come across the Bonnie Hunt show, and 5 minutes into the show, I got inspired by a color palette on there (pictured below).

A few days later, I got an email from Paper Source. New colors…at first all I could sulk about was the fact that Paper Source came out with a teal AFTER the wedding (our colors were teal/brown) and how helpful it would have been had this color been around, say, 2 years ago in the planning days. (oh my gosh, planning was two years ago?)

A week later, I found myself stalking the site and noticed that the Bonnie Hunt show inspiration was VERY close to Paper Source’s new colors. My brain started cranking.

Wouldn’t it be pretty to somehow bring that palette into a quilt…no…better yet, a blanket with soft plushy YARN? Knitting, I know how to knit….I can search for a blanket. Well, that search came up empty handed, and as I was ready to click out of my go-to site for patterns, I stumbled across this. Crochet…oh cruds…I can’t crochet! Or can I?

In my inspired moment, I made a little inspiration board. Not sure if I like grey or beige with the colors, but I’d do the three colors (in either pale or brights) with beige or grey and a white. Yeah, a little obsessive with projects, aren’t I?

1. www.paper-source.com/cgi-bin/paper/new/new-colors.html
2. www.lionbrand.com/patterns/90699AD.html
3. sophiabush.net/gallery/albums/tvappearances/2009/oct13_bo…

Anyway, I’ve tried crocheting before, but was discouraged by the teacher who could only show me right-handed techniques. (yep, I’m a lefty..did I mention that?) However, I REALLY like that blanket and I REALLY like those colors. I want to make it a reality. Am I crazy? Wouldn’t this be so fun to cuddle up in this winter?

So, I need some encouragement. If I can knit, I can crochet, right? Please tell me I can. Please?

My first quilt has been quite a great experience. I learned a lot about sewing straight lines and really feel proud that it all started with this. I now have a fun blanket that will keep me warm, and I’ll cherish it even more since it all started from a few yards of Hobby Lobby fabric. Amazing, no?

This quilt is a tied quilt with some funky green yarn that I had in my knitting stash. Yeah, I have a stash of yarn too…eep!

I found this to be an excellent quilt for a beginner and it gave me much confidence to try this again! I can’t recommend this book enough to people. I’ve learned the most from this book, as well as sewing blogs.

Without further ado, here is the quilt. Isn’t it just so much fun? It’s now hanging over a loveseat in our living room until I can figure out a permanent place for it.

Oh, and another thing? I finally hung up our fleur de lis from the painting class we took last week. Hubs is embarrassed of his painting, but hey, I think they look great in our room!

By the way, feel free to leave lots of comments with painting love for the hubs. He thinks his painting is terrible…he needs a boost.