Crossover Pinafore Dress and Barefoot Sandals

 

I thought I will never get around to posting any of the dresses I made for my little Miss M. This is the first dress I had sewn for her, right before she was born, and so its size was a little off. It did not fit her until now. So I could get her to model for me only recently.

 

The pattern and tutorial of this dress is from smashedpeasandcarrots. As its a reversible dress, here is the other side.

 

 

 

We were visiting our friends for Kentucky Derby, and I thought, even though she won’t be able to keep a hat on, she still needed to dress up a bit. So, from the fabric left from the dress, I made matching barefoot sandals for her using fold over elastic. Check out the tutorial for the sandals here.

 

 

Now, I need to pull my old pictures for all the other dresses I had sewn and find time to post it. Maybe I need to wait until Miss I (my niece) can wear the same dresses and so I will have 2 beauties modeling for me.

Happy Sewing!

Yummiest Chocolate Cake Ever!

For my hubby's birthday last week, I baked this chocolate cake, which as per him and my kiddo, is the best chocolate cake I have ever baked. And I I totally agree with him. This is going to be my go-to recipe for a dense chocolate cake.

The recipe for this cake is from one of my favorite cake blogs Call me cupcake. The ingredients at her blog are in dl(decilitre). 1 dl = 0.42 cup. Below is the approximate conversion of ingredients in cups:

Chocolate cake Ingredients

•1 3/4 cup all purpose flour
•2 cup sugar
•1/2 cup cocoa powder
•1 tsp baking powder
•2 tsp baking soda
•2 large eggs
•1cup dl strong coffee
•1 cup buttermilk
•1/2 cup vegetable oil
•1 tablespoon vanilla extract

Chocolate fudge frosting

•300 grams butter at room temperature
•2 cup powdered sugar
•1/2 cocoa powder
•200 grams dark chocolate, chips or chopped
•1/2 cup heavy whipping cream
•1 vanilla bean or 1 tsp vanilla extract

Hop over to her blog here, to get the entire recipe. I cannot wait to make this cake again. The thick and creamy chocolate fudge frosting goes very well with the cake.

Happy Baking!

Playful Stripes Cardigan

I have finally managed to finish this stripes cardigan I started for Maya/Inaya, before this winter season ended. So, Maya will get to wear it few times before it gets packed and shipped to my sister for her new baby(Inaya) which is on the way. Its made from a Alana Dakos pattern : Playful Stripes Cardigan. 

As soon as I started knitting it, and got stuck forever on the picot edge, I realized I would be lucky if I could  finish in time for Maya to wear it even once before the winters were over. But then my sister's baby girl is on the way, and this project quickly turned from just Maya's to Maya/Inaya project. This does not mean that Inaya won't get her share of sweaters knitted just for her. Can't wait to start using more of the pink wool from my stash. 

As soon as I got all the infinite loose threads in and the buttons were sewn, I did not want to waste even a single winter day, and put it on Ms. Maya immediately. She did not want to smile much for the camera that day.

The buttons are from lotsofbuttons website. 

I like the fitting of the sweater. It looked a bit on the smaller side, when I was knitting it. My husband was convinced that Maya won't get to wear it even once because of the size. But it turned out just fine, and I like the fact that it does not have a loose fitting. 

Happy Knitting!

Vintage High Tea Baby Shower

This past weekend, me and my sister's friends threw her a High Tea Baby Shower. I am so excited to post all the details of this shower. It was great to work on a non children party theme finally. The invites for this shower can be found here.

What would a tea party be without pretty tea cups. I bought few of these vintage styled tea cups online. I was not lucky enough to find any at the thrift store, however I did find other stuff like decorative tea pots for the shower, which I used as flower vases.

On each cup, a 'drink me' label was added with a ribbon. 

As you can see, the doilies were used extensively. On the main table, doilies were used as placemats. 

My sister's friend took the task of making these beautiful pink and blue mason jars which we used all over in the room.

For the table cloth, I bought flowery fabric by the yard. Now plan to re-purpose it to make some baby dresses.

Paper hanging decorations were made from doilies and the shabby chic paper that has been used all over the party. I got this idea from Fete a Fete blog.

I made these doilies banner with different sized and styled doilies. I found the plane ones at Michaels, and the ones with pattern all over, at amazon.  Colored these in different shades of pink using food color and stained few with tea water.

The cookies were a big hit. I used the same vintage design that was used as envelope liner, printed it on edible paper and transferred it onto the cookies. The valentine cookies I made last month was a trial for these shower cookies. Unlike the valentine cookies, I did frost these cookies with royal icing before adding the edible paper using cornstarch liquid. Here is the recipe for the cookies I used.

For the tea, we had 3 varieties of tea : Earl Grey Cream from Teevana, mix of Wild Orange Wulong & Youth Berry from Teevana, and Indian Chai. As the teas' from Teevana were loose leaves, we made muslin tea bags. This is the tutorial I followed for the tea bags. Displayed the tea bags in this vintage briefcase type cardboard box I picked up at Michaels.

For keeping the water hot for tea, I used Electro Thermopot(found at walmart). Got the one that could hold 3 liter water hot at 190 degrees, which is about the temperature to brew tea.

For the sugar, I made these heart shaped pink sugar cubes. 

The tutorial  for the making these sugar cubes is here.

Cake Table

For the cake, it was my sister's request that she wanted a chocolate cake, so I made chocolate Devil's cake. I ordered the sleeping baby cake topper from etsy.

To counter all the sweetness, I made these cucumber tea sandwiches. Here is the recipe. I made these sandwiches 4-5 hours in advance, and the trick to doing that is to salt the cut slices of cucumber for ten minutes. Then rinse and pat dry prior to adding it in the sandwich. This would prevent the cucumber slices from causing any sogginess. 

There were more Indian snacks like samosas and pakoras. Missed taking its pictures.

I found the molds for making these chocolate cups at Michaels. For some cups, I used chocolate bark, and for others I used semi sweet chocolate chips. The latter ones were more delicate to handle. The chocolate and the berries tasted so good together. I am not sure if many guests got a chance too taste these, as any time I saw my son, he had one in his hand. 

This is the baby wreath that my daughter's Nanny Emily made for baby's room. She has too much patience to painstakingly wound this yarn around a wreath so neatly.

I made this burlap pillow cover for mama-to-be's chair. For transferring the image onto the pillow, I used freezer paper. The result was not as dark as I hoped. 

Another project with burlap: printed the image directly on it using freezer paper. I love the clarity of this image.  Next to the framed burlap are the return favors. Its chocolate fudge wrapped it in wax paper, and some pink tissue.

Here is the chocolate fudge recipe I posted earlier. Added a label with a ribbon.

Mommy and Daddy cutting the cake.

Game Time...My sister playing the game of making a baby with putty. We played many more games and I think the game most enjoyed was ' Daddy Knows Best'. We asked around 10 questions to 'Dad-to-be' before the party, and made a video of it. And then in the party my sister had to guess what Dad must have answered. In the end we played Dad's video.  

And here is my little one waiting to meet her cousin Inaya in less than a month now, and to have her own tea party with her.

Valentine Cookies

I decided to take on the cookie project again, after more than 3 years. Last time I baked, it was on my son’s first birthday. And I have this vague memory of baking,  rebaking, and decorating cookies for over a month. In the end, I had so many cookies as a result of multiple trials.

This time was little different. I felt more confident baking, and my little chef was there to help me. We were baking cookies to give out at his school for friends and teachers for Valentine’s Day. These cookies were accompanied by an airplane card which I guess would be another post after valentine’s.

 I followed the Land O'Lakes Butter Cookies recipe. Its simple, quick and tasty.

Here is our cookie dough ready and divided into 3 parts.

 First batch ready. Hot and crispy cookies.

Poof! First batch gone. Dad and son were only tasting the cookies. Well, there was nothing left to decorate for Valentine’s.

So, out came the next 2 lots of cookie dough and baked few more batches.

I bought this vintage valentine image from etsy. And got it printed on edible paper from a bakery close by. Pasted the edible paper using cornstarch liquid. 

I skipped the step of frosting the cookie with royal icing, and directly pasted the image to the cookie. Added a border using royal icing.

I am sure the image would have looked brighter if I had frosted the cookie, but really, are the kids ever going to notice it? And it saved me 5 hours of work and 2 days of drying time.

Couple of decorated cookies also vanished every time I had my back towards them. But thankfully, I had extra J

Happy Baking and a Very Happy Valentine’s Day!