(more) fabric flowers

As promised. Here's a little tutorial for the hair clips Ry-pie had in her hair for this post.

Start off with your fabric. I used knit fabric for the turquoise one but I made some out of regular cotton and they came out great too. Trace a circle onto your desired fabric.

Cut out circle.

Dot center of circle with glue. Fold outer edge of circle half way in, and glue onto center of circle.

Put another dot of glue in center (over the part you just folded). Take the "open" side that you just folded and bring to center on top of glue dot.
It should look like this.

Continue and repeat all the way around. Alternating glue dot, and folded fabric.

Until you get something that looks like this. You should end up with a total of 5 folds (depending on your size of fabric).

Glue a button or any other kind of embellishment your heart desires. ;)

Snap it onto a hair clip and you're done!

Easy right? Now go on, make a whole slew of them.

Thanks for visiting!

Ry-pie's Thanksgiving dress

I wanted to make Ry-pie a dress to wear on Thanksgiving. I had some cute brown with pink polka-dotted corduroy that I was going to use. I started her dress by just winging it. No pattern. No instructions. Just me, my scissors (rotary cutter) and imagination. Well my imagination went a little haywire. I think I got a little too "cutter" happy, and cut too much. I needed more fabric!

So what do I do? I head out - the night before Thanksgiving, to the fabric store to get more of that brown with pink polka-dotted corduroy. Guess what? They didn't have anymore of that corduroy! CRAP!

What to do now? I didn't really like any of the other corduroy they had, that is until I saw this adorable little owl printed corduroy!!! Jackpot!

I wasn't feeling as adventurous after getting home, so I decided to try and find a cute pattern online. The gals at Prudent Baby to the rescue! I used their snappy toddler top pattern, just adding length to make it a dress and using buttons in the place of snaps.

A little flower and some pom-pom trimming. A super cute dress for Thanksgiving....or any other time.

Come back tomorrow for the tutorial on the fabric hair flare!

Cal J's Thanks

This Thanksgiving I really wanted to make sure CalJ could express all the things he was thankful for. I had initially planned on starting November 1st and have him decorate one leaf or acorn everyday until Thanksgiving.

Did that happen?

Of course not! But he still was able to draw/write a lot of things he's thankful for.

I was happy that he took the time to really concentrate on things he was thankful for....

...even this...

Cake. I guess I'm thankful for cake too!

Turkey Dinner cupcakes

Photo by: Taste of Home

recipe found here

I will not be making these.

I repeat. I WILL NOT be making these.

They're just so cute though, I had to share...

4 days until Thanksgiving. Are you ready?

Pumpkin (pie) wontons

Have you ever found a recipe that just sounds so good and so interesting you can't wait to try it? I have. Actually I've been wanting to try this one out since mid October, and just barely got around to making it now.

The worst thing about it - after all my excitement and waiting, I DIDN'T love it! I'm sharing it anyways, because after a few little tweaks, it came out great.

Adapted from the Taste of Home Magazine

Original recipe found here

Here is how I made it, plus my changes.

1 cup pumpkin pie puree

1/4 cup ricotta cheese (or cream cheese would be great)

3-4 tablespoons brown sugar

1 teaspoon pie spice

wonton wrappers (I used about 20)

***just an after-thought, a little dash of vanilla would have been really good to add***

Start off with a cup of pumpkin puree (canned or homemade), 1/2 cup of ricotta cheese, and one teaspoon salt, (this is the beginning from the original recipe). I think the goal for the original recipe was to be a sweet and savory sort of snack. The savory from the filling, and the sweet from the sauce. It didn't quite cut it for me, so here I added 4 tablespoons of brown sugar and 1 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice. My goal being - pumpkin pie, in a wonton.

Mix together.

Take out one of your wonton wrappers. Keep the other wrappers covered with a damp paper towel so they don't dry out.

Place a spoonful of your mixture onto your wonton wrapper as shown.

Take a brush (or your finger, cleaned please) and wet all around the outer edges of your wrapper.

Take one corner and fold into center, followed by the opposite corner.

Do the same thing with the other two corners so you have a nice little package. Make sure you press down on the seams so it's sealed tightly.

Place in some hot vegetable oil to quickly fry up. About a minute on each side until they get golden, but not real browned.

Set on a paper towel lined plate to cool.

Now onto the dipping sauce. THIS WAS AMAZING.

1/2 cup powdered sugar

1/4 cup apricot preserves

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

1-2 tablespoons water (for thinning)

The original recipe called for sour cream which I didn't have, nor did I think sounded appetizing, so I omitted it. This was SO GOOD. It would be fantastic drizzled over a spice cake. And I'm putting that on the top of my what-to-bake-next list.

This whole pumpkin-pie wonton thing came out of no where. I would have loved to have had it with a little bit of whipped cream. But of course, this being an unexpected turn of events I didn't have any on and. Next time perhaps...

Tulle hair-clip

I've come to acquire a quite extensive fabric collection. Part of that collection is tulle. After making all the tu-tu's from Ry-pies Birthday party this past summer, I have a plethora of that pink fluffy stuff left over. What to do, what to do?

Make some hair accessories of course! That's what I do best! ;)

Start off with a pile of tulle.

Cut your tulle into 2" wide strips. I left mine about 6" long (I ended up trimming quite a bit off at the end so you'd be fine using a 3" long strip if you like).

Cut a small piece of felt, in a similar color. I used a square shape but it gets cut down later on anyway.

Take your tulle strip and twist the center.

Glue onto your felt piece.

Continue to twist and glue your tulle strips onto the felt piece. I'm not a fan of glue on my fingers, so I used a wooden dowel to stick the tulle into place. This of course, is totally optional.

Continue gluing all of your strips. In total, I used around 8 strips for the bottom layer.

Now for the next layer. Take another strip of tulle and fold in half lengthwise and twist at the folded part.

Glue on top of existing tulle layer.

Like a said before. I cut my strips WAY TOO LONG, so I went to town with my scissors and gave it a little haircut.

Here is the tulle with one side cut and the other side at the regular length. It's starting to take shape...

Nice and trimmed up. I felt a little like Edward Scissorhands during this process. Do I see self-cut-bangs in my future? I sure hope not.

Trim your felt so any unglued excess is trimmed off, attach to a hair clip or barrette. Glue a little jewel in the center and your finished.

I didn't love the pink color of tulle at first because I didn't think it was right for the season. But now that I look at it, it's sort of sugar-plum-fairy-ish. Totally Holiday-ish. Right?

Thanks for checking it out. I hope you make some too!