Beth's shirt--Christmas gift

I got the idea for this project from MyMamaMadeIt, specifically the ruffled jersey rosette project. I'm quite pleased with it, I think it is my most successful refashion to-date (apologies to Michelle, recipient of the tranny-top) I found the base shirt at the thrift store a couple of blocks from our house. It is some kind of cotton blend or another. A nice enough shirt, but kind of ho-hum if you ask me.The gathers/ruffles are not jersey in this case, but a polyester type shirt of a slightly brighter red that I cut into strips, sewed up, ruffled, then tacked onto the shirt and (full of frets) sewed onto the complete shirt. It looks really rumpled here because I wrapped it up after I finished but before I remembered that I wanted to take pictures. I get overly excited sometimes.

And here's a close-up of the ruffle once it was sewn on.

Chris voted (and I agreed) to keep the shirt asymetrical and only apply the ruffle to one side. Now I can only hope that Beth wears it!

Baking Day (a little late, part 2)

And, everyone's favorite, the sugar cookies.

Why is it that the confection on which we spend the most time only yields about 8 cookies? How does that happen? Anyhow, the meringue powder yielded another beautiful batch of frosting even if we did forget to mix a yellow. Oops.

And the final product. Looking at this, maybe we should just use clear saran wrap, the green is doing weird things to our vibrant cookies.

Another year of sisters baking, and another year I did not take a nap! Mark THAT on your calendars!

Baking Day (a little late, part 1)

Baking day! It actually occurred a little over two weeks ago, but I was quite busy with Christmas things so I didn't get around to posting the pictures from it.

All (most) of our materials for the day.

Jenn's crinkles. Which ones met the floor? Can you tell?

Fudge and magic bars, easy peasy.

Evil truffles, of course. Possibly my favorite item on the plate, and not just because of the cocoa powder I blow everywhere

Christmas decor! (part 2)

Ooh, there are pine bits alllll over the house!

Our weaselly swag

Our rascally wreath (it looks kind of like any Stephens girl in the morning)

Our tree before the ornaments found it (is there a skillful way to put lights on a sparse tree?)

Our tree after the ornaments hung themselves in joy. Another year of tinsel, yes!

I think it all turned out pretty well. The only downer is that it is kind of too cold to hang out in the room with the Christmas tree, but that hasn't stopped me in the past.

Alameda flea market

By the way, the monthly Alameda flea market is awesome!

Christmas decor! (part 1)

We have our tree! It isn't decorated yet, but it is standing. Plus, we cut many boughs off of the trunk bottom and the man at the tree farm was kind enough to let me take home some extra boughs. From that point, it was the natural action to bunch them together with found ribbon and hang them on people's doors.

Extra boughs=extra swags!

The work table.

Bryce's swag of terror.

I'll take some pictures of our swag and other stuff tomorrow, hopefully the tree too!

Macarons REQUIRE parchment paper

This is sad, possibly the saddest thing in the world. I wanted to try my hand at good looking macarons. I've made some ugly ones in my time (twice) but I was really going to step it up this time. But after the last bits of powder sugar were sifted and stirred, I realized, "Oh snap, we're out of parchment paper! How did this happen?" Well, surely there must be a way around this.

You might notice how I tried to compensate for the lack of parchment paper by adding another French item to the mix, the silpat sheets. The cookies did look pretty well formed on the sheet, but the sheet was not about to let those cookies go without a fight.

Macarons require parchment paper. There is no way around it.