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It will be tricky to display because it needs to be backlit in order to clearly see the image (I photographed it here resting against a white piece of paper and a window pane with daylight on the other side).Saturday, May 29, 2010
Girl and Snake on Glass
Monday, May 24, 2010
Over the Weekend
Thursday, May 20, 2010
Homemade Homemade-Peanut-Butter Cookies
In my peanut butter cookie recipe Google-ings, just prior to making these, I kept coming across mentions of the Fannie Farmer peanut butter cookie recipe, so that's the one I went with (or, tried to, anyway--the recipe's lack of specifics plus the mispelling of "Fannie" did have me questioning its authenticity, but no matter, cause the cookies turned out really well). I was very nearly deterred from making them when I discovered the peanut butter jar was almost empty, but I did happen to have plenty of dry roasted peanuts on hand and realized I could probably just make my own PB in the food processor. So that's what I did and it was super easy. I did need to add a tiny bit of oil (I used coconut, melted) to keep things moving as it was grinding, but aside from that I just dumped in the peanuts, pressed the button, and, voila! Peanut butter!
Not perfectly smooth, but that was okay with me and the texture worked fine in the cookies. I should mention that the peanuts I used were labeled as "salted," however they were only very lightly salted. I think next time I will try using unsalted peanuts and then figuring out a measurement of extra salt to add in, just for the sake of exacting the recipe. Aside from using homemade peanut butter, here are the other changes I made: 1) Subbing both the white and brown sugars for sucanat (which I ground in a coffee grinder to get it nice and fine, and which I am now back to calling sucanat after realizing that the term "evaporated cane juice" can actually apply to almost-white—like,off-white—sugar). 2) Forgetting Leaving out the vanilla (which I will add next time). 3) Subbing regular white flour for white whole wheat flour. Also, I doubled the recipe, so now I have like fifty cookies. Yay! This recipe is definitely a keeper. One more note about it: I found the batter to be far too sticky for fork marks, so I skipped that part.
Monday, May 17, 2010
Mermaid Pocket (Toddler Dress #2)
I'm really loving this fabric combination. The yellow is cut from a giant linen tablecloth I got last year at a yard sale for next to nothing, and the other is from Heather Ross's Mendocino collection (which I finally bought some of upon noticing that it was way marked down now that she has a newer collection out).
Friday, May 14, 2010
First Sewn Dress (for Zoë)
I just noticed the fabric I chose is very similar to the one pictured with the pattern.
But as I was making the dress it was turning out to be too big up top, so I adjusted the pattern for a better fit around the chest but neglected to change the placement of the straps, so they wound up too far out to the sides, and thus fall off the shoulders if worn as intended. (Yes, those are hands full of mud—thank goodness for OxyClean!)
Really they should be re-sewn because they are a little goofy, but I don't think I'll go back and make any changes to this dress at this point. Using this pattern as a guide, I've already started on two others that incorporate more changes than just the strap placement.
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
Bowl of Baby's Hair Not Gross to Mom
Here's the new shorter do.
Looks like this blog is just going to be all about Zoë!
Saturday, May 8, 2010
Monday, May 3, 2010
Homemade Deodorant—At Last!
Saturday, May 1, 2010
Buried Treasure
Most of these are from the first time I went, which resulted in a much larger yield. I think I probably spent more time on the first trip, but also I'm sure the area has been further looted countless times in the past ten years. We still turned up plenty, though, without too much effort.
I guess it used to be a trash dump site but now it's just an anonymous patch of the greenbelt, set apart only by all the broken glass pieces littering the ground's surface. The uneven terrain and uncleared growth made it pretty awkward digging around, but it was so fun. Each good find renewed the desire to dig more, and made it easy to ignore itching mosquito bites and stinging scratches.
Update: Another photo: