A few of my favorite things

On Sunday I made these whole grain morning glory muffins from Tosca Reno's Eat-Clean cookbook. I've been eating them for breakfast every morning. It contains lots of good things, including oat bran, dates, walnuts, banana, apple, etc. This is a muffin I don't feel guilty about eating.
For homework this weekend, I sew a collar and the facing on the dress. It was challenging, but it looks great.
Here is a side view of my awesome new collar.
I felt so inspired, I went and added a few fabrics to my collection. Can't wait to see what these will turn into.
And of course, I could not neglect my first love - knitting. I enhanced my stash with Rowan calmer yarn which I am using to knit a cozy ascot. Can't wait to show it off.
So there... it's been a rough winter, but I am keeping busy with my creative hobbies.

Stuff on a Donnerstag

Spomi came over tonight and together with Jeff and Wally we watched "The Hurt Locker". The movie was fantastic, albeit sad. My heart was pounding throughout the entire movie.
While we were watching, I managed to finish knitting my husband's "seaman's cap".
I managed to take a picture while he was watching the movie. He is not the easiest model to work with. It fits well and looks good. I made exactly what he requested.
The hat was one of the gifts for our 3-year anniversary (which is tomorrow). I also bought him a cot for when he goes on fishing trips. And I made a scrapbook of our honeymoon in Mexico. Below are a few of the excerpts from it. I am not really into scrap-booking, but I thought it would be a nice and meaningful gesture.
We had a Mayan wedding ceremony and a dinner just for us.
The resort where we stayed, Le Blanc, was pretty much my piece of heaven. The beach, the waves, the infinity pool were all unbelievable.
You can't really see on these photos, but the room we had was better than anything we could have imagined. The bed was facing the beach (upper right hand corner), and we woke up each morning to a beautiful sunrise.
We also went out to see Mayan ruins (Tulum).
The food and the restaurants in the hotel were just like from a 1950s movie.
I would love to visit there again sometime soon. Every moment on our honeymoon took my breath away. I never regretted not having a wedding and having a honeymoon of our dreams instead.

And then there were sleeves

It is just my luck that on the day we were taught how to do the hardest thing - capped sleeves - my trusty little Crofton sewing machine started NOT working. I struggled with it the entire time, and finally the instructor came to check up on me. She tinkered with it herself, and finally said: "This is a piece of crap (ouch!) - you need to buy another machine."

I left the class since there was nothing I could do, and headed over to Joann Fabric store to see what they had. Unfortunately, the rep selling the beautiful and mighty Swedish Viking machines was not there, so I would have to return to the store tomorrow.

Once at home, I decided to play with my good old Crofton and I got it to work. It is a little hesitant, but it does things after some pleading and petting.

Luckily, I have a photographic memory of the demonstration the instructor did in class, so I was able to recreate her steps and make my own capped sleeves - unassisted.
And I thought the zipper was hard. This was not easy at all. I struggled and struggled, but I finally got a hang of it. Feast your eyes on my unfinished little baby dress bodice with brand new sleeves.
Being anal that I am, I must admit that it REALLY bothers me that one of the sleeves is slightly more scrunched than the other. Grrr! I am afraid I might tear it apart till I get symmetrical pleats on both sides. I'll try to live with it... for now. Actually, I am going to go and try to fix it.

This is what I call hedonism

Maybe it was a food show on TV, maybe it was my sweet tooth cravings, but I decided that from now on, I would like to make a new dessert every weekend - from scratch. I started out with an Apple Crisp recipe from the Williams-Sonoma Fruit Dessert cookbook.
I made a trip to the grocery store to get all the ingredients, and 50 minutes and six Granny Smiths later, the scent of this delicious treat was permeating my kitchen. "Divine" is not even the word to describe how good this turned out. I served it warm with sugar-free vanilla ice cream. Yum!

This weekend was productive in another way, too. I turned this...
...into this. A soft, warm, colorful headband.
The ends are held together by a sweet little button in the back.
You can have a ponytail and a warm scalp, too. And you can have an apple crisp and eat it, too.
Love! <3

Triple date

I wish I'd taken more pictures last night, but we had so much fun, I kept forgetting to. First, the Foxes, Simons and us had drinks and dinner at the Star Bar. The food was pretty good, and the wine and beer kept flowing.

I managed to take one picture there. Despite the serious faces, I can assure you these folks were laughing most of the time. I caught them unprepared.

After dinner, we went to the Des Moines Social Club, where the boys played ping-pong while the girls shared another bottle of wine. That's where we met hubby's friend Ben and his wife Robin. The place also had an improv group performing on the stage, but we were too engrossed in our table conversation to really watch.
It was a warm and fuzzy evening, and I hope we do it all over again soon.

Why, yes! A magazine for nerds!

Last night I picked up a copy of Mental Floss magazine for my hubby (he wanted me to get him a magazine so he has something to read that is NOT a law school book). The bit "where knowledge junkies get their fix" spoke to me. Let's just say I devoured this publication cover to cover last night. My poor husband didn't even get a chance to look at it. After I was done, I went online and subscribed to it immediately. If you are a nerd like me, you are going to love this! Highly recommended. I could try to summarize the content, but I would not even know where to begin. It is something you truly have to experience yourself.

Zipping through the sewing class

Taking a sewing class is one of the best things I could do for myself this year. Tonight's lesson was to sew in a zipper. It is one of the hardest things to do as a beginner, and our instructor wanted to get the hard stuff out of the way. After many tries, I finally got it perfect (I am little bit of a perfectionist). The zipper is straight, centered, and tight. I am so proud!
And it's totally functional. I zipped it up and down many times, and it hasn't broken yet. :)
Next week, we are setting in sleeves on this baby (dress).