January Calendar

Here is the new January 2011 calendar. You can find it on my Flickr. Feel free to use it!

Those Fish Have Teeth!

I did some good work on All You Can Eat this week. All that's left is the border then on to framing. My plan is to put this in the galley of the teardrop permanently. I'd like to shrink wrap it before I frame it. You know, like a piece of meat? Nice and tight. I think that might be better than contact paper. I think the glue in the contact paper might eat the piece over time.

Any ideas?

Also, I just wanted to give an update on the magnet menu that I posted two weeks ago. In the time we've been using the menu to plan out our weekly dinners, we've saved about $40-50 a week on groceries!! I can't believe how much overspending we were doing before. You just buy what you plan to eat. No impulse spending, no wasted food at the end of the week! Tough Economic Times, I think I just kicked your butt :)

Monthly Calendar

Ooooo, look what I made! It's a nifty calendar for the month of December. I used Big Huge Labs mosaic maker. I wanted to have a header row with the days of the week but the maximum number of photos you can use is 36 - I needed 42. So I decided to go with just the numbers, in a 7x5 grid. I used "white" images for the blanks. Most of the images just came from Flickr searches like "letter M" or "number 8".

You can find my calendar here.

How-To: Magnetic Menu

Jeremy and I have been talking about planning out weekly menus for a few weeks now. Taking pencil to paper just never seemed to work out - either we'd forget to make the list before the grocery store or we'd sit at the kitchen table thinking about what we knew how to make over and over every week. I decided it was time to simplify and here you have it, Ladies and Gentlemen - the Magnetic Menu!

Materials: printer, contact paper, scissors, and magnetic tape.

First, pick a font for your menu items. DaFont is a great place to go for free ones. I chose Stinky Kitty and Lullaby. Type a list of all of the meals you make - fancy, basic, for special occasions, whatever! Don't forget to also type out the days of the week.

Next, cut out all of the meals.

Cut a piece of contact paper large enough to fit all of your items. Peel the backing off the contact paper, lay it sticky side up on the table, and stick your menu to it, either face up or down. I arranged the items in rows so they are easy to cut out.

Next, cut another piece of contact paper the same size as the first, pull off the backing, and stick it - sticky side down - to the first piece so that the menu is now between the two sheets of contact paper.

After running your finger over and around all items to make sure that the contact paper is good and stuck, cut everything out.

Lastly, cut strips of magnetic tape wide enough to cover the back of each item but not wide enough to be seen around the edges. For longer items I used two magnets, for shorter ones I cut the strips in half. Remove the tape from the magnet and stick it to the back side of each item.

Now you have a magnetic menu that helps you plan out your meals for the week! Don't buy excess at the grocery store - don't get in a food rut - eat healthier - save time - save money. What's not to love??

O, Christmas Tree

Our tree is a little different this year. We used to have a beach theme, living in Myrtle Beach. Most of our decorations were ocean or tropical looking. Jeremy used to hang seashells all over instead of Christmas balls. We've tamed it down this year and really LOVE how the tree looks.

Jeremy even got crafty this Christmas and made us a new garland. He took a big, circular hole punch and punched a boatload of circles. He took the circles and put two back to back (white side to white side) and fed them through the sewing machine, pair after pair. It only took him an evening to make and it looks great on the tree. It's so low-cost that if you don't like it when next Christmas rolls around you can ditch it and start again!

Here are a few close-ups. I love my sock monkey and clip-on birds!

A snowboarding dog and Scuba Santa!

Did you know he can also do the hula?

Stay tuned for more Christmas fun!

Taking the needles out for a spin...

Here is what I've been working on. She's bound off and everything. It's a bit messy but it's just my "test strip" :)

Here are a few up-close shots - a knit, a purl, and rib.

I think I'm making pretty good progress. I even bought some yarn and hope to get started on a scarf. Oooo, my first knitted creation. I can hardly wait!

Fishing and Knitting

I worked on All You Can Eat a little bit more this weekend.

For some reason my camera isn't taking the greatest pictures lately. Maybe I should ask Santa for a new one :)

I also learned some knitting basics this weekend - my aunt and cousin taught me. Right now I'm just fooling around a little. I'm figuring out how to purl. Cyberseams on YouTube has helped me get through some problems. When most instructions are geared towards right-handed people its hard to be left-handed and follow along. Cyberseams has a ton of tutorials for lefties.

Learn to knit with me!

A Night of Awesome x3

First, here is the progress on "All You Can Eat". Whoop whoop! A fish and a half to go :)

Second, I'm going to make a door mat for the teardrop. Possibly out of climbing rope, possibly awesome. I searched the internet for rope rugs and found this plait knot rug on About.com.

I found a big piece of "shoelace" rope leftover from some drawstring bags I made. I followed the how-to on About.com and came up with this mini-rug. I didn't have enough rope to do another run around the rug so I left it like this (I still think its pretty darn awesome) :

Yeah, it has some gaps in it but after looking at the same rug on Martha Stewart I have an idea of how to set up the "bones" of the rug so the shape works out better in the end. (*Hint: make the loops at each end large.)

And may I present the third wonderful of the evening...

Homemade Reese's Pieces sundaes!!!

We had the vanilla ice cream, chocolate sauce, and whipped cream, the store across the street had the Reese's Pieces, and I found an awesome recipe for Friendly's peanut butter sauce on Chow.com. Drool....

I am thoroughly satisfied. I also apologize for my excessive use of the word "awesome".

Eat More Fish

I worked on All You Can Eat a bit this weekend. This is my progress as of Sunday night. We almost have a fish, ladies and gentlemen!

Delicious!

Triple chocolate cupcakes...

Now, I'm not the hugest chocolate cake fan but when I saw these Itsy Bitsy Spiderweb Cupcakes online I had to attempt making them. Plus, I needed something to take to book club - we were reading ghost stories... spooooky.

I got the recipe on Delish.com and did one of the modifications mentioned in the recipe. Instead of using the 1/2 cup oil, as called for, I used 1/2 cup pumpkin pie filling. OH MY GOODNESS - so good (I figured the maple syrup would be overkill).

When I tried to make the spider web cake toppers there was a major disaster, not to mention a major mess :) I put the melted chocolate in a zip-loc and cut a tiny little tip off to make a pastry bag... yeah, not so much. I couldn't get a consistent rope of chocolate to come out so I squeezed harder. Eventually chocolate just began oozing out all over the bag. I gave up on the spider webs and just squirted strings of chocolate all over my parchment paper. I put that in the fridge to harden up and when the cupcakes we done just crumbled up the crunchies all over the top. I couldn't let all that beautiful white chocolate go to waste.

So, in the end it worked out. Maybe next time I'll invest in a frosting bag - yikes!

I also got some more stitching done on All You Can Eat - it's not just a phantom mouth anymore :) It's been a long time since I've worked on Aida so it's a nice change not having to count 2 every time I lay down a stitch.

Well, I hope you all had a great weekend. Talk soon!