Sugar Baby Date Nights

My husband and I are very different people.  He likes Star Trek, air-soft, and four wheeling and I like Downton Abbey, sewing and reading.  I watch his nerdy shows with him (while browsing Pinterest) and he lets me spend money on fabric.  But for the longest time I've been trying to find something that we can both enjoy together that doesn't involve the television set.  Finally, we hit upon the perfect idea. I suggested we go through a pastry cookbook together, sort of like Julie and Julia and Michael mentioned that he's always wanted to learn about candy making.  Bingo!  I then go to the internet and look around till I find a candy making cookbook that looks interesting.  I remembered one I had seen a while back that had a super pretty cover.  It was Sugar Baby by Gesine Bullock-Prado.  

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Once a week, my husband and I are going to try a recipe together.  Starting from the beginning and hopefully do all them, from rock candy to spun sugar.  I'm going to try to document our creations and share them here.  

I'm super excited!  I just hope I don't gain too much weight doing this, but what's a few pounds in the name of love.

Bear in the Backyard!

I thought I should share this morning's excitement.  We had a bear visitor for most of the morning.  Michael and I saw it in the trash around midnight last night and I guess it liked it so much it came back today.  This is the most I've gotten to see bears around camp and I'm glad the girls got to see it too.  It is really exciting and a bit nerve wrecking too.

I hope you enjoyed our black bear excitement!

Elysium Pattern Underwear Style Training Pants

Recently, I bought a pattern in preparation for potty training (again).  We've tried Pull-ups and hated them.  We've tried panties only 3 day methods and had a huge breakdown.  So now that the girls are having tantrums wanting to use the potty, we are going to try again.  I wanted to try training pants so that it is a little less stressful than just panties and less messy, but it had to be reusable and inexpensive. I searched for hours upon hours for a free pattern online that I liked the look of and that I thought would meet my needs.  I gave up on that.  Finally, after more hours of searching on Etsy, I decided to give this pattern a try.

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I liked the look of Elysium's Underwear Style Training Pants and loved that it could be used to make regular panties later.  So I gave it a try.  It was so easy, which was great, since I needed to make twenty pairs.  I never had a chance to time how long it takes from start to finish (thank you my darlings), but they felt very speedy when I had a chance to work on them.  The directions are very easy to follow with lots of pictures.  I would say even a beginner at sewing could make these.  The only problem I had was knowing which size to do was really unclear.  I ended up making a test pair that I was pretty sure would fit at least one of the girls and then try it on them.  After that I had a much better idea of which sizes I needed.

For the most part I used what I had on hand to make them.  I used a bunch of old t-shirts and out grown/ holey/ stained baby sleepers.  For the soaker part, I used three layers of scrap cotton batting.  The only part I paid for  (besides the pattern) was elastic.  I did change one thing in the pattern which was that I changed the soaker part by adding a water proof section that I cut from an old jacket to help keep down messes.  In whole, this was a very inexpensive way to get a bunch of training pants.  

My opinion is that this is a great pattern and the girls love how they look.  The girls have worn them a little in a very casual go at potty training and they do help prevent big puddles on the floor.

Ice Cream Kit

Thanks to camp cancelling that last week, we got to go to a wedding!  So I needed to come up with a wedding gift.  A while ago, I came across this great link on Pinterest and knew that it would be so fun to make and give.

Family Bites

After buying a bunch of fun ice cream toppings and repackaging everything but the bottles, I arranged them in a basket with some crinkled shredded paper filler.  I repackaged the waffle cones in some clear plastic wrapping paper and tied them with baker's twine.  The candy and nuts I put in resealable sandwich bags and rolled down the tops and taped them.

I thought about taking the labels off the hot fudge and cherries and put new ones on them and everything else like in the original pin, but I got too lazy.  But I did print some great gift tags I also found on Pinterest.

Eat Drink Chic

After printing them, I trimmed them a little and then used a glue stick to glue them to the inside of a pretty blank card.  You could also print on the blank side of some pretty paper or glue on scrapbook paper.  Once dry, I cut them out and used a hole punch for where the twine would go.

 I also used the other half of the blank card to write a note to the happy couple, folded it in half, put two holes on the open side, and tied it closed with more twine (unfortunately I forgot to take a picture).  The last thing I did was wrap in more plastic and tied it closed with more twine.

Before making a bow I slide the tag on.

I think it turned out pretty cute.  Hopefully, the bride and groom agree.