Sew God's Grace

Sometimes the best recipes happen a little by accident.  In my family, my grandma was legendary for having to make substitutions in recipes because she was out of something.  Once when making jam, she didn't have enough wild grape juice or sand hill plum juice left to make a batch of jelly.  She and my brother decided to combine the remaining juices together to make one last batch.  They called it "grum," and it was a family favorite. Another time, when making a chocolate pie, she had to improvise.  She always said that it was the best pie she ever made.  The problem was, she couldn't remember what she had done differently, so she was never able to recreate it. Fast forward several years to my kitchen. . . My husband was getting ready to take my older kids in to the high school basketball games one night.  My oldest son, ever the sweets connoisseur, happened to mention, "They have the best scotcheroos there.  And they're really big!" My...

So the day is fast approaching for our new little guy to be born.  Which means that I am frantically nesting.  For me, that includes cleaning every nook and cranny and sewing madly on different projects that I think I will never finish once the baby comes!  It's probably a good thing we are having another baby, because I'm pretty sure I hadn't cleaned out our bathroom cabinets since I was pregnant with Grant! I finished up this onesie and pj pants set yesterday.  The pattern for the pants is found here and is really quite simple.  I do cut the front of the pants a little lower than the back--about one inch or less.  Tip:  when you do this,  put the legs pieces right sides together to make sure you are cutting a mirror image (ask me how I know this!) To applique the powercat, I followed my usual steps as outlined in this post .  I also ironed this product on the back so that it won't irritate baby's skin.  His Christmas present ...

So I had pieced Grant's quilt top together and had it finished when he was just a few months old.  Then it sat and sat in a bag until I finally got it to my friend Kristy to machine quilt it for me.  She returned it me around January of 2014.  She did an amazing job with it.  If you live in the Cheyenne Wells, CO area, you should really check out The Rambling Rose Quilt Shop .  Matt's aunt Sarah helped me to machine sew the binding around the edge of the quilt, and then it sat again in my closet, waiting for me to finish it up. About a week before Grant's birthday this June, I got a burst of energy and decided to do the hand sewing on the back of the binding to finish up Grant's quilt for his birthday. Being two, he was not that impressed with the quilt, but I think it will be something he enjoys over the years. I'm not sure why, but this morning I decided to try to get a picture of Grant--my wiggly, busy boy--sitting on his quilt.  This is the bes...

We were excited to be done with harvest and able to celebrate Maddie's tenth and Grant's second birthday on July sixth (Maddie's actual birthday!) I say this every year, but I can't believe how quickly time has flown and how much these two have grown!  With Maddie hitting double digits, I am starting to realize anew how important it is to enjoy every moment. Maddie is into horses, so I wanted to make her a horse-themed cake.  I really like cupcakes because they are easy to serve.  For instructions on how to make this cake, see this post. Grant loves Elmo (or "Mo-Mo," as he calls him), and I knew if would be easy to make Elmo cupcakes.  I simply used black decorator gel to make the mouths, then piped red stars on with a #16 Wilton tip to make the fur.  The nose is an orange pretzel M & M, and the eyes are candy eyes bought at Walmart . One note:  I made these ahead of time and froze them.  When they thawed, the black on the eyes ble...

In the interest of staying sane, we have started combining some of the kids' birthday parties.  So this year, Anna and Lyla had their party together.  We had a great time celebrating Anna's sixth birthday (coming soon in May) and Lyla's fourth birthday (in April.)  Time has sure flown--I can't believe how big my girls are getting. Anna requested rainbows, and Lyla wanted Hello Kitty again for themes for their cakes.  I decided to make cupcakes.  That way I could decorate half with each girl's theme.  What better way to have a Rainbow Hello Kitty party? We made rainbow cupcakes by dividing the cake batter and using food coloring to make the cupcakes themselves in a rainbow pattern.  My son Evan and I spent quite a while one morning scooping small amounts of colored batter into cupcake pans.  We used two boxes of 15.4 ounce white cake mix, and we made 28 cupcakes.  I think we could have made 30 so that the cupcakes would not have bee...

I think I say something like this every time one of my kids has a birthday, but I can't believe my Evan is eight already!  This little guy with a tender heart has grown so much (both physically and spiritually) in the last year, and I am so blessed to be his mom. We celebrated Evan's birthday with family on March 23rd.  It seems like we start brainstorming ideas for birthday cakes right after Christmas, and Evan had decided he wanted a tractor and grain cart for his cake.  (He has a lot of confidence in my cake decorating abilities!)  I looked online and found inspiration for the tractor and decided carve a grain cart to go with it. I didn't take pictures as I was decorating the cake, but I hope to get another post with some details on the cake soon!  Let's just say that this was my first experience with modeling chocolate, and I really had fun with it! Happy birthday, sweet boy!  May the next year be filled with blessings!  Love, Mom

I have always enjoyed learning new things from other women.  When I was little, it seemed like my Great Aunt Connie was usually working on something crafty when she and Great Uncle Keith would come visit.  Under Connie's tutelage, I learned how to do counted cross-stitch and latch hook.  I would sit beside her and watch her hands busily move over a project.  Noticing my interest, she would take the time to show me how to do it, too. When I got married, I got to know Matt's Aunt Sarah, who introduced me to the joy of quilting.  Over the years, she has helped me with many tips and helpful advice.  When Matt and I have visited her in Salina, she and I have laid out many a quilt design on her ping pong table downstairs. So, when she offered to come out to sew during a recent visit, I jumped at the chance.  I had cut the squares and laid out the pattern of a baby quilt recently, so it was a great morning project for us. Lyla was anxious to help, an...

This weekend we celebrated Christmas with my side of the family. When I was growing up, my mom and Grandma had a tradition of making cookie plates for family, friends, neighbors, and, well, a lot of people. Apparently, at 19 years of age, Grandma began taking cookie plates as Christmas gifts to the neighbors when she and Grandpa moved out the family farm. Over the years, making cookie plates snowballed into this large task of preparing over forty different cookies and candies and delivering seventy (yes, seventy!) cookie plates every Christmas. I can remember helping mix up and bake a quadruple batch of two different kinds of cookies in one day. Mom and Grandma had the preparation down to a science. We would begin baking the day after Thanksgiving with peppernuts--a tiny, spicy German cookie whose flavor actually improves with age. Then we would go down the list of cookies that we could freeze and store. One of the last things we would make were the frosted sugar cookies. ...

Recently, I was visiting with a friend and her daughter about what they had been doing the day before.  With a sigh, her daughter told me that they had been working outside.  She seemed to think that whenever her dad was home on a Saturday, all they did was "work."  I told her that it may seem tough now, but those times will be good memories for her later. This led me to start thinking about some of my own memories of childhood--when the "work" we did as a family seemed never-ending.  Things like painting the house, shingling the garage roof, and canning jam came to mind.  However, I think one of my favorite family work traditions would be "walking the beans." I grew up on a small farm in south-central Kansas.  (Read:  more rain than what we get here in western Kansas!)  I prided myself on knowing a little bit about farming when I was dating and later married to my husband.  However, I learned that what ...