Butterfly Napkin Rings

It's April! ... And Maddie is still making beaded snowflakes. It's time to shake things around here.



Butterfly Napkin Rings: Bring on the springtime!




This is just two pipecleaners, with about 16 beads each (we used floral beads from Michael's which are a little bigger than a regular pony bead). I put a little gap of space in the middle of the pipecleaners to allow some twisting room.




Twist each pipecleaner into an oval and twist off the ends, about a quarter inch from the end. (The untwisted ends serve as antennae.)




Once you have two ovals, put one on top of the other, with the antennae lining up. And twist in a full circle for both sets of wings.




Then gently shape your wings the way you want them. To add a napkin ring, just take a third piper (that's what Maddie calls them!) and wrap it around the center of the butterfly, tying off the loop behind.

Easy though a little more time consuming than the snowflakes. I think beads are to Maddie what felt is to me... Hmm, scary thought!

E-A-S-T-E-R

Maddie's writing skills are coming right along. See?




That's my Easter card, apparently.

While making Easter, I wanted to add some letter play. So we stenciled the word Easter onto a banner.


I cut out each letter and taped it down over a piece of construction paper. Maddie then used watercolor to paint our letters. We also did two Easter eggs to go with it. The letters are taped to a piece of fishing line that is draped across our wall.



Welcome Easter!

Taco Salad

I've been trying the Blood Sugar Solution diet in an attempt to kick my bad sugar habit. This diet bears a nice one-two punch by requiring you to give up wheat and dairy, too. It's been a challenge, but I've also made up some nice recipes out of necessity. This is one of them and we've had it twice this week!

Taco Salad

Ingredients:

1 pound ground beef
1 medium onion, diced
1 jalapeño, minced
1 orange pepper, diced
1 tomato, seeded and diced
1 mango, diced
1 avocado, diced
1 head of romaine lettuce, chopped
Cumin
Onion powder
Garlic powder
Ancho Chili powder
Mexican oregano
Cayenne pepper
Cilantro

Instructions:

1. Brown 1 lb. of ground meat and season with one teaspoon cumin, 1/2 tsp onion powder, 1/2 tsp garlic powder, 1/4 tsp ancho chili pepper and 1/2 tsp salt. (You can add some cayenne if you like a kick.) As meat is nearing done, toss in 1/2 a diced onion, and 1/2 of jalapeño pepper and cook for five minutes or until onions are translucent. Set meat mixture aside.

2. In a bowl, combine 1 diced tomato, the other halves of your diced onion and jalapeño, 1/2 diced mango, 1 diced orange pepper, 1 diced avocado, a handful of chopped cilantro. Season with a bit of salt (it helps everything juice) and toss.

3. Chopped a head of romaine lettuce and drizzle with olive oil, Mexican oregano and a dash of cayenne. Add a heaping spoonful of the ground meat mixture. And toss. Top with salsa/veggie mixture and serve.

For the picture above, I skipped the avocado and used some of my salsa mixture to make roasted avocado.

Peep-a-boo!

Easter's on its way! And that is cheering me up with all the snrain (TM) outside.

Confession: I don't really love peeps. But I love how they look and all the cute sugary glitter of them. So I wanted to bring them into our Easter decorations this year.

Hence my peep pillows, made in a very simple way... Using felt (bet you never guessed!)




For this one, I used two 24" squares of pink and one square of the same size in yellow. On the back side of one pink square, I used soap to free hand a bunny peep. Then I cut it out, and layered the yellow behind it, so the front sides were both facing the same way.


I pinned around the bunny and sewed around the shape about a 1/4 inch from the edge. Then I sewed the two squares around the outside edges on all four sides.

Next I added my eyes and whiskers in black thread by hand. Then I matched the yellow-pink square to my last pink square, face to face and machine sewed them on three sides, turning them right-side-out when done.



I like to leave the top side open for my buttons. And this is the reason why I am obsessed with felt... You don't need to hem the top edge or sew a buttonhole. Just sew on the button and snip a hole that matches the size.

Seriously, this was an easy one. For the chick pillow I followed the same procedure and just used a pattern I found online here. The chick pillow proved a challenge for two reasons. First sewing around the chick edge was a lot more curvy! Second, of course, my bobbin went out and my thread snagged and well, sewing machine catastrophe! Luckily all my sewing snafus are pretty unnoticeable, so I have two bright cheery pillows!