A Pair of Pink Sparkle Purses

Say that ten times fast.

Recently I've had trouble finding bags that are exactly, precisely what I want (I'm picky.)  But I have a sewing machine and infinite amounts of time, so I figured the answer was probably to just make my own travel bags, purses, and messenger bags.  I'm working up to messenger bags, but I recently made a few purses that I'm pretty proud of!

The first one I made has an exterior of light pink sparkles.  Because sparkles.

You can't use pins with vinyl, so until I get a fancy set of clips for this sort of project, this hodge-podge bunch will have to do.

It has my little label inside.

It's just a simple little bag, but I'm pretty happy with the way it turned out.

As if one pink sparkle clutch wasn't enough, I figured I probably needed another. You know. For different purposes. I started from this pattern. But I altered and redrew all of the pattern pieces because I saw some flaws in their final product that I wanted to avoid. Here are a few of the pieces.

Here's the finished bag!

With the label, obviously.

Here's one fancy pin on the front.

And here's the one I think I like better.

One cannot ever have enough pink sparkle clutches. Maybe I could use a few more.

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Dirty Dogs

Our dogs lay in the dirt.

A lot.

They are, therefore, sometimes dirty.

They've trampled the grass out there until it's little more than a giant dust bowl.  We figured they (and our house!) might stay a bit cleaner if we gave them a dog bed or two to lounge on when they're outside.  We found this tutorial online and decided to try our and at making our own beds.

Toward the end of the assembly process Norman got pretty interested.

He couldn't even wait until we got the thing outside to give it a try.

We added caps to the ends of the pipes (not included in the tutorial). Because, you know, fancy PVC bed.

Norman was the first to give it a go outside.

But Molly was watching and she eventually tried it out herself.

It's already a popular site from which to launch oneself at top speed. Also, on which to destroy tennis balls.

Also, on which to wrestle.

Also, on which to do some sort of weird, non-stop scratching behavior.

Also, on which to recline majestically.

We'll see how long it holds up.

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Scraps

This may or may not surprise you, but I have piles of half-square triangles just laying around my quilt room.  There are a few methods for creating HSTs and some of those methods create a byproduct of smaller HSTs.   Recently I did just a couple of quick projects to use them up.

The first quilt was a byproduct of this little quilt top.

I played around with my HSTs trying to find a layout that I like.

Here's what I finally went with, all quilted up.

That quilt is teeny! The second one I made is more of a table runner size and it's a byproduct of the Suburbs quilt I made for my Uncle Wayne. Lots of leftover HSTs again.

All pieced and quilted up with a nice backing.

Also, sweet binding.

Pretty nice, the stuff you can make from just scraps sometimes.

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Care Bear Stare!

Halloween is one of our favorite holidays and this year we did what has become our CA Halloween tradition.  We dressed in costumes and hung out at our neighborhood's block party before heading home to greet trick-or-treaters while enjoying a Halloween themed meal.

This year we decided to be Grumpy Bear and Cheer Bear from The Care Bears.

I decided to make our costumes using some fabric and yarn I had around the house.

I even made fluffy little tails for us (which Norman enjoyed immensely.)

Here we are as Care Bears!

(with Care Bear butts)

And here are just a few shots of this year's eyeball themed dinner. For the record, we had Dark and Stormy Death Punch, Spooky Stuffed Mushroom Eyeballs,

Halloween Spaghetti (though I used a different recipe for the Bolognese), and Creamy Pumpkin Caramel Panna Cotta (to which I added Marshmallow Fluff + chocolate chip eyeball decorations.)

Hope everyone had an amazing Halloween!

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Hometown Food Weekend

Being a transplant is an amazing life. You leave your hometown and you can go literally wherever life takes you.  There are things you miss though like family, friends, and favorite haunts.

What I also really miss from Springfield, MO is the food--the trashy, faux ethnic food that I grew up eating.  That's why I decided that one weekend in September, I would recreate my three most favorite dishes, the ones I miss the most, here in CA.

1.  The Mexican Villa Burrito Enchilada Style (including the complimentary MV chips and dip):

Mexican Villa is a Springfield chain, not authentic by any stretch of the imagination (which I completely came to terms with when I looked over the copy cat recipes I found online) but hearty and yummy all the same.



Now, the burrito enchilada style is a mammoth burrito stuffed with refried beans, seasoned ground beef, and cheese served drowning in MV signature enchilada sauce and topped with shredded iceberg lettuce, diced tomatoes, and (you guessed it) more cheese.  Here's the recipe I started from (though I never use low-fat cheese and I adjusted the seasoning until I felt I had it just right.)  Here's what we served on the first evening of SGF Food Weekend!

It's much more appealing than it might look in this picture, though the original would be served with approximately 8 zillion more cups of sauce.

For the chips, we used the sauces that you can buy online (eep!) and basically turned a blind eye to the alarming amounts of sugar and preservatives in them.

You basically create your own mix from Sweet, Mild, and Hot.  Sweet and Mild are both Sweet and even Eddy agrees that Hot is freaking hot.  Then insert chips.

2.  Springfield Style Cashew Chicken:

Night two was Springfield style cashew chicken, which was invented at Leong's Asian Diner, and which is beginning to have a national reputation (odd as that may seem.)  It's arguably the most Americanized Chinese food available and it's a total phenomenon.  This is the recipe we worked from, though there really isn't much variation among the recipes you can find online.  Eddy helped this time.

And here it is all plated up.

As you can see, one of the advantages of making your own cashew chicken at home is that you can have as many green onions and cashews as you please (we prefer LOTS!)

3.  Andy's Frozen Custard Pretzel Caramel Crunch:

We saved one of my favorites for the finale of our weekend of Springfield eats--the pretzel caramel crunch from Andy's Frozen Custard.

Now, I'm going to be real about frozen custard that is not from Andy's.  I've never found one that is quite as thick or flavorful.  Even though I will always have a soft spot for my beloved Ted Drewe's in St. Louis, there's just nothing like Andy's.

The pretzel caramel crunch is simple, but ingenious.  It's just vanilla custard, caramel, and pretzels.  That's it.  But it's salty and sweet and cold and crunchy and it's basically heaven.

The good news is that we do have a favorite custard place here in CA called Campbell's Creamery.  Now, of course they have caramel, but no custard joint I've ever experienced has pretzels, so we just brought our own.

Rumor has it that a just a couple of days after this photo was taken we returned to the scene of the crime to polish off the second half of the bag of pretzels we bought along with some more caramel and vanilla custard.  Allegedly.

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