sugar coated transportation

I do love this whole grain baking book. Parker and I made transportation shaped cut out cookies as it rained a couple days ago and they turned out tasty. I usually don't have patience for cut-out cookies but this batch was alot easier to deal with - minimal sticking and no crumbling or breaking. Parker was nice enough to take most of them to school for his friends so I didn't eat them all up. Here's the easy recipe for thin & crispy wheat cookies:

3/4 cup unsalted butter
3/4 cup plus 2 Tablespoons sugar
3/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup orange juice
2 teaspoons vanilla (Parker did this part so there was a lot more and tasted great)
2 cups whole wheat flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder

beat butter, sugar and salt in medium bowl, then add orange juice, vanilla, flour and baking powder and mix.
divide the dough into 2 pieces, wrap each piece in plastic wrap and refrigerate for 30 minutes.
Pre-heat oven to 350*
line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper
working with one piece of dough at a time , roll into a circle in about 14 inches in diameter and use your favorite cookie cutters. re-roll and cutting the scraps too. place on cookie sheets and can be close together as they don't spread much.
we decorated ours with sugar sprinkles before they went into the oven.
bake the cookies till they are brown around the edges about 14-15 minutes. switch pans half way through cooking time (top to bottom, bottom to top)
yum!

Lotta Sewing

Another Lotta Jansdotter inspired tote. I love the bird sitting on the tree - so sweet and hopefully Aunt Kate will like it as a very belated b-day present!

Even though half of our dining table has been covered with all things sewing for the past month - it's great to have the sewing machine out to work on fun projects. I really need to come up with a way to have a craft area in our wonderful yet tiny NYC apartment or work on talking to the family to move to a house in the burbs! Until then, I will continue to wish I lived in the Posie studio here!

Blastoff

Finally the wee wonderfuls spaceman has landed in our home along with a homemade rocket ship! I've had the space boy pattern for over 3 months and finally took on the challenge! He was actually fun and painless to make! Parker helped choose the color scheme, spelled out his initials and thinks they are both pretty cool. It's my first attempt at a "softie".

whole lotta love

I took out my sewing machine from the depths of a storage trunk a few weeks ago to hem a pair of pants and it's been on the dining table ever since. Once I actually use the energy to retrieve it - I have a hard time packing it back up and storing it away again. So I was super happy that domesticali started a flickr group to share photos of items made from fellow Brooklynite Lotta Jansdotter's book simple sewing. I do have to admit that I am terrible at following/understanding directions - whether it's for sewing, crocheting, computer manuals or toy instructions...so this was inspired by the pictures in the book. I also visited Purl in Soho and picked out the adorable tree & squirrel fabric. Thank god that I am not a quilter or I would have dropped some mad cash in that store. Since I started making fun felt decorated shirts for Parker & his friends, I've wanted to make something for myself so I was finally able to add a little felt applique that actually looks age appropriate :)

life is a highway

The latest addition to Parker's wheeled out wardrobe - Conte's Camion! This is the official unveiling of Eric's freezer paper transfer shirt that I mentioned over president's day weekend! It's pretty cool and Parker is excited to be wearing it today.Good job Eric!
Enjoy your weekend!

rocket ship to the moon

We had a great 3 day weekend thanks to the celebration of Presidents Day. Parker loves the weekends when he can hang out with his Dad and an extra Monday off was a great treat for them...and me too. I got a little time to myself and looked at my Wee Wonderfuls space man pattern book. I've had it for a few weeks but haven't taken on the project yet - most likely because the sewing machine hasn't seen much but inside the dark corner of our storage trunk in the last few years. I couldn't dive in but just looking at it inspired Parker's new Rocket Ship to the Moon shirt.

I also made a funky felt butterfly for Parker's friend Chloe - who will be turning 2 this week. I just found out that she is having a Cars themed birthday party - had I known she was such a fan, I would have whipped up a pink "McQueen" shirt for her to wear.
Speaking of Cars, Parker was sporting his new "Mater" & "Lightening McQueen" socks last week and was slipping, sliding & falling all over the place. (by the way his pre-school teacher suggested the clumsiness was do to way too much Valentine's day sugar - and then she proceeded to feed his huge cookies covered with duncan hines jarred icing and sprinkled with full size hershey's kisses and about 20 million candy hearts - oh well) I did think that maybe his new socks were just too slick, so I used the trick I did on his socks when he was learning how to walk... Using puffy fabric paint - add dots or designs to

the bottom of the socks and it works like a charm.
Parker loves it when his Dad draws with him so I talked Eric into making a freezer paper stencil shirt for him. I can't unveil it yet, as he is putting the finishing touches on the 18 wheeler. He has a lot of time this week because Parker and I are visiting Grammy in Pittsburgh. Stay tuned...

S.W.A.K.

Parker's friend ZOE turned 3 yesterday and she threw a huge party in his class - pizza, cupcakes and he came home with a bag full of many surprises! He had a blast and was sugared up for the rest of the day - no nap for him! Zoe is a pretty sophisticated 3 year old so I made her some personalized stationery. A few different designs and wrapped up with a purple stuffed monkey & care bear crayons and she is set to scribble away a few love notes.
I can remember when I was a teenager, my Mom gave me my own monogrammed letter pressed stationery. It came in a flowered box and it was so cool. I was very selective as to who I would send one of the coveted notecards to because I never wanted to run out! As I typed this, I looked in the back of my desk drawer and here it is! The flowered box from "sir james printing" 20 cards remain...too bad that I didn't keep my maiden name. I probably never told you Mom how much I loved the stationery, so Thank you!
Is it still cool to give stationery as a gift in the age of e-mail?

hearts & flowers

Completely inspired by this tutorial at skip to my lou, Parker and I got out some old crayons, the pencil sharpener, sissors, wax paper and the "Iron Boat" and made some pretty cool Valentine's Day Hearts for our window.









Now he says a couple times a day "I want to shave with you Mommy"!



Our friend Francesca performed a little science experiment with flowers which Parker has been really into. Here are instructions. I didn't take a before photo but it started with bright white flowers which were put in a cup with water & a few drops of red food coloring and 17 hours later here they are. very cool!

Happy Valentines Day!

fly the friendly skies

"I want a big, red airplane with 3 propellers! One on the nose and the other two on the sides", Parker responded to the question 'what should we paint onto this shirt' and here it is! About a month ago I read something about freezer paper transfers and did a search and found this awesome Dino shirt on domesticali. I also entered the world of craft blogs and got motivated to start my own. It's taken a few weeks to actually make Parker's shirt, because I spend every free minute visiting cool blogs then checking out the links to other cool blogs and seeing a lot of really creative stuff. So thank you all for being so inventive and sharing.
For this little number, I followed a great freezer paper transfer tutorial here and at angry chicken and went to work. I finally unveiled it to the little man after adding a "P" on the tail and he loves it!

style mojo

I found a very pretty brown ball of yarn in my stash and decided to make a hat. I didn't use a pattern and I'm far from an expert crochet person but it looks pretty cool. I added a three shade blue flower which is attached with a vintage button. I kept going and whipped up a few for my first ever swap at swap-bot. I hope that my partners like them.

Thanks for the response to my previous post, Ali. I'm sure that I can unearth a shirt from the deep dark corner of my closet. I don't seem to wear much of anything fashionable these days and here are the top 3 reasons....

1) We packed and moved into a new home when I was 39 1/2 weeks pregnant. Thanks to Oprah, I followed the professional closet organizer mantra of "if you haven't worn in almost a year - toss it". NOT a good thing when you've got preggo brain and carrying around an extra 40 pounds. It was a lucky day for the charity thrift shop patron who wore a size 10!

2) The remaining few non-comfortable pant items moved to the back of the closet when Parker started walking at around 10 months old and then running soon after.

3) In my former life working at MTV - especially in the world of the now defunct series House of Style - I was pretty adventurous with my dress. Now my closet looks like the last chance sale rack at Old Navy. I seem to gravitate to clothes that are cheap, wearable and won't make you cry if it's used as a toddler tissue.

Maybe a fresh embellished skirt will help me get my style mojo back.
I'll keep you posted.