Heather Ann Melzer

Going bananas

  

 

If I had seen the DVD cover before we watched the movie, I might have remembered that this movie was WAY too scary for the little ones. I think Tom took me to see it on my 21st birthday, so it's been awhile - lol.  We fast forwarded through the scary parts and it still lasted over 2 hours. We finally went to bed after 11pm before the planes had a chance to shoot King Kong down (not something we needed to see). They liked the big monkey, though, and knew he was a good guy, so all was well in the end.

They also loved the monkey treats we put together. After Tom picked up the movie that morning, I did a quick search on Flickr for monkey face treats and found this. Tom was on his way to the grocery store, so I called him and told him to grab some Vanilla Wafers, mini Nutter Butters, and M&M's and we were good to go. I used mini gel tubes for the eyes/nose/mouth. We're planning to make some cupcakes like this for Kenzie's last day of school in a few weeks, although I need an M&M substitute (peanut allergy no-no at school).

Kenzie's so excited about starting 1st grade, and about spending the week before with Grandma & Grandpa. She's changing her backpack requests daily and I still need to get her school supplies. I also need to get all new tires for my car since one is leaking air and is about to explode. On top of working on jewelry, kits, calendars, and sewing every chance I get, I feel like I'm going totally bananas this week. It's all good, though - it's FRIDAY!!!

Artista Crayon Tote

I was so excited to try this pattern out. I've been having so much fun making clothes, but I thought the girls would really like this - and boy, was I right. I made 3 of them and gave one to Kenzie, Katie, and Mary-Kate on the train ride downtown last Friday.

Each tote was filled with a pad of paper, 8 crayons, some Tinkerbell stickers, and a map of the plans for our day. They colored pretty much the entire train ride and at lunch as well. They called them their "purses" and wore them on their shoulders just like a real purse. (I definitely reached my satisfaction quotient on this one.)

The pattern is by Mindy at Frog Legs and Ponytails and I'm afraid she explains things so well that I'm getting spoiled. Other patterns seem to be written in a foreign language to me! This one was very easy to follow. My pieces didn't seem to be matching up as nicely as I would have liked, but the 1/2" inseams took care of that.

The fabric is Wendy Slotbloom's Lily Pond - darling, right? Picking fabric is half the fun with these projects. I'm afraid my husband is quickly catching on to that fact (eek).

Here are some pics of the Artista totes in action...

 

Please disregard my daughter in that last pic. She learned last weekend that she can burp on command, so she was probably practicing her new-found talent. Yes, she is quite the charmer. LOL!

Here's the map that I included with the totes, which the girls got a real kick out of...

Cake Pops

When your daughter comes home from school crying that EVERYone else in class brings in donuts except her and it's unfair and the world is falling down, what do you do? You torture yourself making Bakerella's infamous Cake Pops. They are seriously adorable, and even though my cupcake bottoms did not turn out as they should have and the cookie cutter I used was way too big for the job, I'm hoping the kids' classmates still enjoy them.

I'll share some tips I picked up along the way.

First you start with the cake ball. Pioneer Woman's instructions are pretty easy to follow here.

I baked the cake in the morning and let it cool for the entire day. Then I crumbled the cake in a bowl and mixed in almost a full can of chocolate frosting. Then I formed them into balls and placed them in the freezer. Bakerella suggests putting them in the fridge for a few hours or the freezer for a little bit. I did not chill mine long enough, which made the next step a tad bit difficult. Ok, a LOT bit difficult :(

This step involved rolling the balls out into ovals and pushing them through cookie cutters to form the cupcake shape. Instructions here. I used the 1.5" cookie cutter, which made things a little more difficult. I'll have to try to find one of the 1.25" ones that Bakerella recommends.

This is where things went pretty horribly wrong. First mistake was using Ghirardelli milk chocolate chips. No matter how much I warmed/stirred them, they never got thin enough to coat the cupcake bottoms and show the cute little crimps that I worked so hard to get. The chocolate was just way too thick. I'll try bark or the chocolate discs next time. My cake balls also weren't chilled long enough, so it was hard to pull them out of the thick chocolate and we had a few casualties, which the kids were really broken up about - lol.

PS - That goop of chocolate on the wax paper was Tom's contribution. He tried to help me as I was losing my mind - how he puts up with me I will never know.

Moving on! After all were chocolate-dipped, I put them in the fridge to set. After a 1/2 hour or so, I started melting white chocolate discs from Michael's. I then added 1 drop of pastel pink icing color and stirred to make it pink (since Michael's was out of pink chocolate discs). 1 drop was plenty! Then I dipped the tops in the pink chocolate, added a red M&M on top, threw on some sprinkles, and stuck them in styrofoam. I let them chill in the fridge overnight and wrapped them in bags this morning.

Katie must have said 20 times that they were "SOOOOOO cute!"

Jack seemed to like them, too...

And as a bonus we had some chocolate leftover that they could dip bananas in for dessert...

So, not a perfect first try, but lots of lessons learned. They're way too cute not to try again....

New friends

It was so fun watching these girls become friends last weekend. Mary-Kate is such a doll. You can tell she has an older brother - she's tough and totally no-nonsense. Whenever I'd joke around with her she'd matter-of-factly correct me like she was 10 yrs older than her actual age. She's also super silly, just like my girls, so they got along perfectly.

Jack loved having guests over, too. He kept chasing Mary-Kate around with his little pointer finger saying, "Is May-Kate! Is May-Kate!"

The girls were very hung up on the fact that it was a "girls weekend" and Jack melted down in tears a few times at their "no boys" policy, but they did let him join in on some fun.

Here they are hanging out watching cartoons on Saturday morning...

 

After breakfast, the kids put their swimsuits on and had some fun with the waterslide...

Then we let them decorate/eat some brownies that I made earlier that day...

Then everyone took a much needed nap before Tom put the kids to work making dinner. Katie and Mary-Kate were on salad duty. Who knew making salad could be this much fun??

Then he put gloves on them and had them help with de-husking the grilled corn. I think Tom might have been a teacher in a past life - he loves to teach the kids how to do all kinds of things.

Nice of us to put our guests to work when they comeover, huh?  LOL!  The kids actually loved it.

Finally, we sat down for a nice lowfat dinner - ha!! That baked potato was as big as my plate and the kabobs were dee-licious.

We ended the night with a Movie Night, which I'll share tomorrow. Mary-Kate said the treat was the best part of the day :)

Girls weekend

What a weekend! Raven and Mary-Kate flew in last Thursday night for a fun-filled girls weekend, and it was just that and then some. The girls had been dying to meet Mary-Kate for weeks and they almost burst waiting for their flight to arrive...

Once they arrived, we loaded the girls in the backseat with Mary-Kate in the middle (because the girls were fighting over who would get to sit next to her). Within minutes, my girls were screaming and acting like total maniacs, while Mary-Kate sat in silence looking completely terrified. I thought for sure they'd scared her off, but then about 20 minutes into the ride home, they all started screaming and acting like maniacs, and that lasted pretty much until Sunday morning when we sadly had to drop them off at the airport.

Friday we had a whirl-wind day downtown. It started with a train ride...

After a quick look at the Sears Tower, we had our first of many cab rides that day...

The girls were beyond excited about the taxi, and Raven and I were beyond excited about our first stop (weee!)...

The girls needed a potty break and were starrrrrving, so we rushed through as quickly as possible and headed out to lunch...

The girls LOVED Ed Debevics. They were dancing in their seats and bantering with the waiter as much as he was with them. Crazies!  Dessert was up next (naturally), so we cabbed it to Lincoln Park...

 

We're at a cupcake shop and what do my girls order? Ice cream! Goodness me. I've heard my friend, Joy, rave about Molly's so we had to try it out. Raven said it was the best she's ever had. My chocolate was good, but I wasn't crazy about the French Buttercream. The shop was so adorable, though - so glad we did it. Next stop was all the girls had been talking about for weeks. Oh yes, you know it...

They had been prepped beforehand that they would not be leaving the store with a full-size doll (can't take Santa's thunder away), but they did get 2 ridiculously expensive mini dolls. I was seriously sick to my stomach over how much we paid for those. Ugh. After a lot of oohing and aahing, we jumped in our last cab of the day and headed to Navy Pier...

 

I finally got my Starbucks and the girls rode a couple of rides before we headed out to the water taxi...

   

We lucked out and ended up hitching a ride on an architectural tour boat, which was really neat. Mary-Kate fell asleep on the boat and then we raced to catch a train back home. Whew! We were wiped, so we picked up some deep dish pizza on the way home and had an impromptu movie night for the kids. I'll post more tomorrow on the rest of our weekend. So sad it's over :(

Reversible Pleated Dress Top

If the only way to improve is by challenging yourself, then I think I made some serious strides on this project. It almost makes me think I'm close to trying my first zipper (yikes!). Ok, ok - I'm not going to get too far ahead of myself.

Seriously, though, this one was challenging. The toughest part were the pleats, which have to be ironed precisely in order for it to come out looking halfway decent. The first top I made has some very interesting pleats on it, which give it an extremely charming handmade look (ha!). This one turned out much better (although it took 3 rounds of ironing 4 different top pieces, since it's reversible). My pleats were so tight on this one that it made the top much narrower - so it went to Katie, and thankfully fits her just fine.

The printable pattern is by Sew Sensible, and she makes coordinating pants to go with it as well (which I hear are a great, easy pattern to try). The pink fabric was a $2 clearance find at Hobby Lobby and the green was about $4 on sale there as well. The top is fully reversible, which is actually pretty neat (get a stain mid-day - just turn it inside out!). I was SO confused making them, but I just followed each step (re-reading them at least 3 times before sewing) and it worked out with no issues. It involves leaving a 4" opening in the side and then turning it inside out to sew the bottom, which was a whole new concept for me, but one that I can now grasp (yeay!).

Katie humored me with a little photo shoot last night to show it off. I think it's so sweet with cuffed jeans...

 

I have another set of coordinating fabric to make a couple more of these, but I have to finish up a couple more projects I'm working on for this weekend and then I have 2 sundress patterns/fabric that I'd like to complete before summer is over. It's not almost over, is it???

Serious cuteness

piggies mini cheese burgers
Originally uploaded by LoveBones

I was all set to make a recipe page this morning for some mini cheeseburgers we made a few weeks ago. But, the first 2 batches ended up being hard as a rock because I forgot to wrap them in foil before cooking (grrr), so I was too frustrated to take a pic of the third batch, which turned out pretty yummy. Tom was thoughtful enough to take a pic for me, but it didn't come out so well, so my recipe page will have to wait for round 2 - waah.

While I was searching for the recipe link, however, I came across the cutest mini cheeseburgers I've ever seen. And then I stumbled upon the creators Flickr gallery and scrolled the page with my chin on my desk. Prepare to be inspired!

What is a "bento" anyway? All I know is that you'd be guaranteed to be the coolest mom (or dad) in town if you made school lunches that looked like this or this. Makes me want to invest in some new cookie cutters!

The only thing better than pastry

... is FREE pastry :)

Tomorrow is Free Pastry Day at Starbucks. Print this and bring it to your local store tomorrow morning before 10:30am for a free pastry with drink purchase. Chocolate chip banana bread, here I come!

So much for getting back on the calorie counting wagon - man! Tom's been down and out for the past few days so I've been on kid duty solo, which means we've been eating a lot of fast food and I have the daily increasing scale output to prove it. And then I hit rock bottom on Saturday night with 2 cheese dogs and a hot fudge waffle sundae from DQ - eek!  I'll try to be better today.  I have to be burning calories chasing our 3 monkeys, though... and cleaning, cutting the grass, weed wacking, carrying propane tanks. Not enough to burn cheese dogs and sundaes obviously.

I have a couple new sewing projects to share, but I haven't had time to take pics of them - hopefully tonight. I'm in the middle of a new one, too.  Cutting the pieces for this one is taking awhile, but it should be worth it.

And with that, I'm off for my daily dose of happy.

Tomato talk

Tom's been wanting to start a garden for as long as I can remember. But, for some reason our spring/early summers are so jam-packed that we never get around to doing it and by midsummer we're pining after every garden we see, wishing we'd made the time to plant one. This year, however, we did manage to pick up 2 small tomato plants and pot them on the deck with the rest of the flowers. The first one was for full-size tomatoes and was recently destroyed in a very raucous game of bags being played on the deck. That leaves this cherry tomato plant that appeared to be doing well, but now looks like it's in need of a serious watering.

So, we have lots of questions and I'm hoping my green-thumbed readers might be able to help us keep this thing alive.  Questions like how do you know when to pick them?  And how much water do they need?  I have this one in full sun and it seems to like it.  Also, the stem is leaning up against the house, so I think it's time to invest in a trellis of some kind (is that what they're called?).  Any advice you can give would be most appreciated. 

The kids have been so excited watching them grow, and as long as we can keep Jack from picking them before they're ready, we might actually have some to eat!

Double feature

I interrupt the slew of sewing posts that have taken over this blog for a double feature starring Mr. Jack, who finally started expressing himself verbally a few short weeks ago. 

This one is of Jack hand feeding Sebastian his lunch (something all of the kids have done at this age for some reason).  No wonder why he follows the kids around everywhere they go!

The next is of our "baby taco" after his nightly bath.  The "kiss me/'nudder one/bye" ritual is something we go through every night before we lay him in bed.  Funny little dude.

He's actually talking up a storm lately, so Tom now has 3 chatty Cathy's in the backseat of his car for the rides to and from work.  Jack is very camera shy (actually shy in general), so it's hard to catch him on film.  I'll keep trying, though, cuz it's too darn cute (and won't last long, I'm sure - wahhh).