Continuing ed

Last night I participated in a scrapbooking class at a local continuing education center. I picked scrapbooking because I figured it would be easier to understand a subject I was already familiar with -- but it didn't matter much since the teacher spoke to me in English the entire night. Oh well. I didn't get to practice German, but I did get to make a lovely page for a scrapbook.


I still need to add a title. I couldn't decide between "Man's Best Friend" or "Happiness is..." I think I'm going to go with "Happiness is..." because I listed some of the things that we love about Sharkdog.

Now I just have to find something other than Sharkdog to scrapbook about.

A quick fix

I've been meaning to post a link to this tutorial on hemming jeans for months, but I'm just now getting around to it.

My jeans are always too long, so they always get raggedy on the bottom. But I've never hemmed them because it just doesn't look the same as the original hem. But then I found this method of hemming jeans that kept the original hem. And it's so simple! The whole thing took about 10 minutes.

So, without further ado, here's the post: How to Hem Jeans.

Photo used by permission under the Creative Commons license.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/darling_clementine/ / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Refashioned

Last year I bought a shirt that I really liked until I saw myself wearing it in a photo. Not flattering. While it looked fine when i was standing in front of a mirror -- you know, standing straight and tall and trying to make it look good -- out in the real world it looked awful. So every since I saw that photo the shirt has stayed in my closet.

Until just recently. I've become very interested in the idea of refashioning clothing, so I decided to try my hand with this shirt. I was never going to wear the shirt again anyway, and if it didn't work out I could use the fabric for something else.

Against my better judgment, I'll include one of the photos that made me decide to never wear the shirt again. It's a photo my mother-in-law took while visiting last year. Obviously I had no idea she had her camera pointed my way or I would have stood up a bit straighter. :) But this is what refashioning is all about. You have to see the before to appreciate the after. So here are both a before and after photo.


before -- quite unflattering


after -- much better
I wasn't sure exactly what I wanted to do when I started, so I tried a few different options. I ended up removing the front seam under the bust, cutting that panel and sewing it back with an opening. I also removed the elastic from the back so the front seam was a little loser and shortened it by a few inches. Overall, I'm pretty happy with it. Of course, I haven't seen myself wearing it in any candid photos yet.

Stay tuned for some t-shirt reconstructions in the coming weeks (if they turn out wearable!).

I've got it covered

I love the pun. Brian says it's the lowest form of humor, but I don't care. I also enjoy slapstick. And I'm pretty sure that Brian likes it when I love the pun and enjoy the slapstick. But this is a pretty weak pun, so I'll just point out that the title is in reference to the window coverings. See? Isn't that fun?

I finally finished the roman shades for the office. It seems like I've been working on them forever. I started them sometime in March and it didn't take me long to realize that I don't like working with such large pieces of fabric. I made the first two (there are three windows) and decided they were too narrow.


Originally we planned to hang them so the shades were set inside the frame and only covered the glass. But that would require attaching hardware to the windows and I wasn't sure I wanted to do that since we're renting. So we found these brackets that attach at the top where the window opens so they won't cause any damage to the windows. (These windows have a hinge on the left side. If you turn the handle all the way up, the window tilts inward so that it's locked at the bottom and open at the top. If you turn the handle to the side, the window opens like a door. And if you turn the handle down, the window is locked. I remember taking photos of the windows a long time ago to show how they work, but I guess I never posted it.)


Oh look. You can see how the windows are open at the top here.
When we changed the way we were going to hang the shades, I should have remeasured. But I didn't. So they ended up too narrow. I left the shades up for about a week or two to see if I could get over their narrowness. I couldn't, so I decided to rip the stitching on the hems and decrease the hem from 1.5 inches to .5 inches. There are casings for dowel rods sewn to the back side , so I also had to rip the stitching about an inch on each side of the casings and sew on additional strips to accommodate for the thinner hems. It probably added 10 to 15 hours to the project, but it was definitely worth it. I'm quite pleased with how they turned out.

On a side note, the painting that is hanging between the windows was painted by one of my teammates, Kim. Another teammate Jake has photos on one of the walls. I think it's pretty swell that we're able to use our talents to complete the office.

Rockin' baby

A month ago Brian's sister Candace had a baby, so of course the proud aunt and uncle had to send her something. And it had to be cool. After all, we have an image to maintain. So I made a couple of pairs of babylegs and decorated onesies using freezer paper stencils.



This was my first experience using freezer paper stencils and it was so much fun and super easy. I found a free stencil for the electric guitar online and made the strawberry one myself based on a few different stencils. There are tons of tutorials out there, but since I took the photos, I decided to document the process in a Flickr set here. When I have a bit more time, I may try to decorate a t-shirt for myself.

Here are some more shots of the painted onesies since the photos with the babylegs were kind of an awkward angle.

Featured on Tip Junkie

My post on the magnet toy I made my niece for Christmas is featured on Tip Junkie today! My sister Christy got me hooked on Tip Junkie a while back and I've found a lot of inspiration on the site. If you're not familiar with the site, head on over there.

And while you're there, make sure to check out the current giveaway. Laurie is giving away two gifts from the Mom-preneur shops. If you're looking for handmade goodness, this is a good place to look.

He's got legs

Have you seen BabyLegs before? I think they're adorable and probably pretty functional. I ran across a tutorial for turning women's knee socks into BabyLegs knock-offs and knew I had to give it a try -- especially considering the number of expecting mothers I know. I bought a pair of inexpensive knee socks and then let them sit around for weeks. I finally got around to trying the tutorial a few days ago and it in less than 15 minutes I had made these cuties.


You're supposed to use women's knee socks, but when I bought the socks I thought I was supposed to get toddler knee socks. So these are a little small. But that's ok since this was just for practice and the socks were only 50 cents.

I don't have a cute little baby laying around to show them off, but Sharkdog was happy to model them for me.


Ok, maybe "happy" isn't exactly the right word. But doesn't he look cute.


Work it, Sharkdog! Work it!

I used this tutorial, but there are several others out there. Now I just need to find some cute knee socks so I can start making gifts. :)

Tooting my own horn

My sister sent me a couple of photos of a project I helped her with recently and it turned out so cute I just had to share. But first, I just want to say how much fun it is to work with my sisters on projects. Who would have thought that moving overseas would help us stay better connected!

On to show and tell. Remember the magnet toy I made for my niece for Christmas? Apparently it was a big hit with one of my niece's friends who recently had a birthday. So my sister asked me if I could use some photos of the girl and her family and photoshop them into photos of Disney princesses (and princes, for the guys). Thanks to Flickr and the generous folks who use a Creative Commons license on their photos, I was able to find some great photos of Disney characters. And while it looks a little unusual to have a kid's face on a grown-up's body, I think they turned out really cute. My sister found the background photos (also on Flickr and licensed under Creative Commons licenses) and printed the images on magnetic paper.

Without further ado, here are the photos:




The magnets were created from altering the following photos:

• Aladdin and Jasmine - flickr.com/photos/truello/2843750009/ by truello
• Aurora - flickr.com/photos/jeffchristiansen/2620465785/ by JeffChristiansen
• Cinderella and Prince Charming - flickr.com/photos/thomwatson/3199625483/ by thomwatson
• Snow White - flickr.com/photos/armadillo444/2056683114/ by armadillo444
• Belle - flickr.com/photos/armadillo444/2060325911/ by armadillo444
• Ariel - flickr.com/photos/armadillo444/2055976939/ by armadillo444
• Cinderella Castle - www.flickr.com/photos/expressmonorail/2689632910/ by Express Monorail (Joe)

And while I'm showing off some of the stuff I've made, here are some links to photos of the gifts I made for family for Christmas. I didn't posted them earlier because half of my side of the family just received their gifts today. (And I can't blame the postal service for this -- it was all my fault.)

• After a long wait, my younger sister received pajama pants and an applique shirt. Her husband received a magnetic poetry-style magnet set with LOLCats words. Both he and his friend love LOLCats, so I decorated an extra container and sent my sister the file of words so she could make a magnet set for his friend. I hear it was a big hit, but I forgot to take a photo.
• I also made a magnetic poetry-style set for my dad. It's hard to come up with good handmade gifts for guys, but I thought this would be good to keep at the office. Everyone likes little distractions at the office, right? For all of the magnet sets, I bought candy tins and found an appropriate CC photo on Flickr to create a label.
• My mom and older sister both received purses. (Mom's purse - Amber's purse.) I sent matching purses to my nieces as well, even though they received their Christmas gifts on time.
• I asked my sister for gift ideas for her husband and she said that all he has time to do is sleep and work, so he got a pillowcase. I used iron transfers to create blocks with photos of the family and then sewed it together.
  

Somehow I managed to ship the gifts to my in-laws without taking any photos. I was trying to get them to the U.S. as close to Christmas as possible (they arrived a few days late). I made my MIL an apron that I loved so much I was tempted to keep for myself. (I have since bought fabric to make one for myself.) And both of my SILs received the hippo pj pants (one red, one green). I planned on making them matching shorty robes, but ran out of time. I think I still have enough fabric though, so maybe one day. My BIL received a journal made from an old German book I bought at the Naschmarkt. I gutted the book and added hand-torn blank pages. My FIL received permission to give me a hard time the entire year. :) Like I said, finding handmade gift ideas for guys is difficult.

That's it for show and tell. At least for today.

Personalized magnet toy

I've really been looking forward to showing off all of the gifts I made for Christmas. But I forgot to take photos of the gifts we sent to Brian's family and I haven't sent all of the ones to my family, so I don't have a lot of photos to show. But I did want to show off one of my favorite gifts.


When my first niece was born, my family all lived fairly close to one another, so we saw each other often. But by the time Emmy was born, Brian and I were in Austria and her other aunt and uncle were half way across the U.S. So I wanted to make Emmy a gift with our photos. You know, so she'll know who we are.


I tried to get my family to send me photos of themselves, but I just got a lot of excuses. Maybe it's because I told them I wanted farm-themed photos. I did get photos of my nieces, which I decided to photoshop a bit. My favorite is the photo of Emmy riding a sheep.


This toy was easy to make and very well received. As soon as she opened it, Emmy started moving the magnets around laughing. When her mom asked if she wanted to open another present, Emmy said no. That's the sign of a good gift -- you don't need to open any more!

The project is pretty self-explanatory. I used a metal pencil case as the holder, but I think you can find empty metal cases of various sizes at craft stores. Of course, I couldn't find anything like that in Vienna, so I had to make do. I covered the case with a label I designed with a farmhouse and added the same image on the inside of the case. Next, I found the photos and printed them on magnet paper. I used Gimp to crop around the images and then added them to a Word document to print them. Since I was planning to cut out the magnets, I didn't waste a lot of time getting the crop just right. The animals are from a book I purchased, which I had planned to incorporate into the gift before I found the metal pencil case.

I had a lot of fun making the toy and it seems like Emmy really enjoyed receiving it. And hopefully now she'll recognize us when we see her later this year!

Edited March 4, 2009: Welcome Tip Junkie Readers! For more magnet toy inspiration, visit this post where I show off a personalized Disney Princess magnet set.

Picture pages, picture pages

Do you remember Picture Pages? You know, Picture pages, picture pages. Time to get your picture pages. Time to get your crayons and your pencils... Sometimes my family accuses me of making up memories and my memories of Picture Pages is so vague that I thought perhaps I had made it up. But thanks to Google and YouTube, I was able to assure myself that I hadn't made up this classy little ditty.

I read a tutorial a while back about how to turn photos into coloring pages. Basically, you use Photoshop or something similar and use the "photocopy" tool to turn a color photo into a black and white line drawing. But I didn't really like the results so I've been trying different methods. I've finally found a method that works pretty well, so I thought I would pass it along.

First of all, you'll need some kind of photo manipulation software. I use GIMP because it's free. If you've never used software like it, it can be a little intimidating. At least it was for me. When you open GIMP, there are several windows. This is what mine looks like when I have a file open:
Of course, when you start Gimp, you probably won't have a file open. To open the photo file, go to File > Open. Viola! Now you should have a photo and the two other windows open. If for some reason the Layers window isn't open, you can open it from File > Dialogs > Layers in the Gimp window. But you don't really need the Layers window for this exercise, so it doesn't matter.

I'm going to use this photo of my family posing at the Riesenrad at the Prater.


When I convert the photo using the Photocopy filter (Filters > Artistic > Photocopy), this is the result.


It's not completely awful, but it's not a good coloring page. So instead of using the Photocopy filter, I tried the Edge-Detect filter (Filters > Edge-Detect > Difference of Gaussians). And here's the result.


I like this one much better, but the lines are too light. So after using the Edge-Detect filter, I tried some of the features under the Colors menu to see if I could make the lines darker. Now a word of warning. I don't really know what I'm doing. I understand how some of the features work, but mainly I just play around.

The first thing I do is make the photo black and white. Even though it looks black and white after you add the Edge-Detect filter, there may be a little color still in the photo. So select Colors > Desaturate and then click "Desaturate" on the popup menu. Now you can play with some of the other options in the Colors menu and see what you like best. This is what I came up with.

Colors > Colorize. I increased the Hue and Saturation. Since this changes the color, once again I made the photo black and white by using Colors > Desaturate.


Colors > Threshold. I slid the bar to the right until the lines were darker, but the entire photo wasn't dark.


Colors > Levels. I moved the bar on both the Input Levels and Output Levels towards the right. I honestly have no idea how you're supposed to use Levels, so I just played with it until I found the levels I liked.


Colors > Curves. I use this feature a lot to lighten dark photos, but today I used it to make the lines darker. Just grab the line and pull it downwards.


I haven't decided which style I like best. What do you think?

You, too, can be a winner

I'm a winner. Maybe not in any of the giveaways I've participated in, but when it really counts, I'm a winner. At least, that's what I like to tell myself. And I'm not giving up on the giveaways.

Tomorrow starts the 12 Days of Junkie, where Laurie from Tip Junkie is hosting a giveaway for, you guessed it, the next 12 days. Each morning, two winners will be selected from the previous day's giveaway. And up for grabs are handmade goods from Tip Junkie's Mom-preneur Shop-a-thon. Check out the links below for more information on how to sign up.

Relax! More handmade gift ideas

Friday I passed the Rathaus and noticed they were preparing for the Christmas markets. I think they open on Saturday! Why would I go to the Christmas markets when I'm making all of my Christmas gifts, you may ask. The food, of course. Last year they had a stand with a huge chocolate fountain and you could get little waffle bowls filled with fruit and covered in chocolate. Yum!

Speaking of making gifts... I have three gifts finished and plan to finish three more this week. Three in one week! I'm very optimistic. But for now I have some more ideas to share. I would definitely make some of these products if they were more conclusive to mailing, but since they're not, I'll pass them along to you.

Today's theme: relaxation.

Angry Chicken is one of my favorite blogs. Amy's Bend-the-Rules Sewing was my first sewing book and some of the patterns are sure to be use once again during this year's gift-making extravaganza. If you like sewing or baking or making your own personal hygiene products, I'd recommend checking her blog out. For gifts, take a look at her posts on making sugar scrubs and bath melts. She provides links to recipes and tips based on her own experience. One of those posts links to Recipezaar's Bath/Beauty list, which has a lot of bath product recipes. I think I may make a sugar scrub for myself. :)

If you're not into the bath products, check out the rice heat therapy bag from Sew, Mama, Sew's Handmade Holidays 2007 list. Or if you're ambitious, take a look at the wellness bag which includes a heat therapy bag, a cold therapy pack, and a cold therapy eye pillow.

Here's an awful photo of a rice bag I made earlier this year. I made it long so it could be draped over the shoulder or around the neck and segmented it so the rice wouldn't bunch in the ends. It was a pain to sew, but it turned out quite well.

Are you up for a challenge?

I did it. I took the pledge. The pledge to buy handmade this holiday season. Actually, my plan is to give gifts made by my hands. But there may be a little buying involved as well. And I'm really excited. I've already completed a few gifts and have a few more in progress. Mostly sewing, but I have some other things in the hopper as well.

For me, giving handmade gifts isn't about saving money. In fact, it would probably be cheaper to buy gifts. It's about spending time and energy creating something. I've been thinking about this all year. Honestly, Ive been bookmarking tutorials and gift ideas since last Christmas. I've found a lot of great ideas that I won't be able to use because they're not very suitable for mailing or some other reason. So I'm going share some of those ideas during the month of November. Not every day. I don't want to scare off the male readership. But hopefully once a week.

First up, gift ideas for children.

Homemade playdough. I made playdough about two months ago and it has held up very well. Buy a few small plaster containers, print cute labels from the computer, and voila! A cute, inexpensive handmade gift.

Tutu. I used this tutorial from Plumtickled to make a tutu for a birthday gift. It was easy, but it took a bit longer than the half hour suggested in the tutorial.


And finally, a fishing game. I haven't found a reason to make this yet, but it's really cute. I'm sure I'll find an excuse to make it sooner or later.

I know it's early to talk about Christmas, but...

Earlier this year I had these crazy plans of making all of my Christmas gifts this year. The part about making everything wasn't really the crazy part -- the crazy part was thinking that I could have everything finished well before Christmas. I still have hopes of a handmade Christmas, but I'm a little behind schedule. Since I have to mail everything, I only have about 7 weeks, maybe 8, to get everything in the mail. Eek! I'd better get on the ball.

I won't be able to show off my Christmas sewing prowess for several months, but I've been waiting for my sister to upload these photos so I could show off my cute nieces and the matching shirt and dress I made for them this summer.




I used this tutorial from House on Hill Road. If you're thinking about making some of your Christmas gifts this year, I recommend checking out Sew, Mama, Sew blog. Next month is Handmade Holidays with 30 days of gift ideas and tutorials. I hope they have some good suggestions for guys because I could use some help in that area.

Sewing advice

I found this quote while perusing the blog of my Sassy Apron Swap partner a few weeks ago.

This is an actual quote from the Singer Sewing Guild: A Complete Reference Guild to Sewing first published in 1949)

"When you sew, make yourself as attractive as possible. Go through a beauty ritual of orderliness. Have on a clean dress. Be sure your hands are clean, fingernails smooth --a nail file and pumice will help. Always avoid hangnails. Keep a little bag full of French chalk near your sewing machine where you can pick it up and dust your fingers at intervals. This not only absorbs the moisture on your fingers, but helps to keep your work clean. Have your hair in order, powder and lipstick put on with care. Looking attractive is a very important part of sewing, because if you are making something for yourself, you will try it on at intervals in front of your mirror, and you can hope for better results when you look your best.

Again, sewing must be approached with the idea that you are going to enjoy it, and if you are constantly fearful that a visitor will drop in or your husband come home and you will not look neatly put together, you will not enjoy your sewing as you should. Therefore, “spruce up” at the beginning so that you are free to enjoy every part of any sewing you do. "

I think it's great advice. It fits perfectly into my daily schedule: wake up early so that I can make myself presentable before my husband wakes up; prepare my husband a breakfast of eggs, bacon, toast and orange juice; clean the house and bake a cake; sew a new dress for myself so I'll look pretty when my husband returns from work; prepare dinner; greet my husband at the door with a kiss; enjoy a quiet dinner together while discussing the day's events; watch the news; then turn in early so I can get up the next day and do it all over again.

An alternative disposal method

It happened again. I found a moth in my bag of flour. I'm convinced that the moth was in the bag when I bought it, but I guess there's no way to be sure. I used to keep my flour in the freezer, but there's just no room. And just for the record, this is a different brand of flour from a different store than the last time this happened. But instead of throwing the flour out, I decided to use it. And now I'm going to share the recipe, PW style.

Homemade Playdough, or How to Use Moth-Infested Flour

This is a fun and simple recipe. Let's take a look at the cast of characters: Flour, salt, cream of tartar, water, vegetable oil, and food coloring.

Oops! There should be some food coloring there as well. Unless you want to make beige playdough.

Toss 1 cup of flour, 1/2 cup of salt, 1 tablespoon of cream of tartar, 1 cup of water and 2 teaspoons of vegetable oil into a pot.


Stir and then place pot on the stove over low heat.


Keep stirring. I stirred for about 10 minutes. Eventually it went from this:


... to this:


You want to heat it a little more. It shouldn't stick to your fingers when it's done.

Now set the dough aside to cool. Once cool, divide the dough and add food coloring. The food coloring may get all over your hands when you're first working it into the dough, but it shouldn't be messy once it's all worked into the dough.


Now play to your hearts content. Store in an airtight container.




Homemade Playdough

• 1 cup of all-purpose flour
• ½ cup of salt
• 1 tablespoon of cream of tartar
• 1 cup of water
  
• 2 teaspoons of vegetable oil
• food coloring

1. Mix all ingredients except food color in a pot over low heat. Continuing stirring until a dough forms.

2. Remove dough from the pot and set aside to cool. Once cool, divide and add food coloring.

3. Store playdough in an airtight container.

Apron swap -- Halloween edition

This has been quite the domestic week here on the blog. Baking, gardening and today, sewing. I'm participating in a fall-themed apron swap over at Sassy Apron Swap. And you know how I've mentioned that the fabric selection in Vienna is not so grand? Have I mentioned this? I think so. There's just not a lot of selection. Or, if there is, I haven't found it. Maybe that's why no one my age sews. Every time I mention sewing to someone my age they're all like, Sewing? Oh yeah, my grandmother does that. But I'm starting the revolution, baby. Sewing is going to sweep across the city like... like something that sweeps across something else.

Uh, where was I? That's right -- fabric selection. I wasn't able to find anything remotely fall-ish. I bought something I thought was fall colors, but when I started sewing it up it turned out to look not fall-like at all. So I went back and in the three or four days since my previous visit, they (meaning the Ikea fabric folks) had added some orange and black solids. My partner said she was up for a Halloween themed apron, so the ideas started churning. And this is what happened.


It's a rather simple design, but I really like it. I probably tried the applique two or three different ways before I settled on this method. I wasn't working from a pattern, so it took a lot longer than it should have.

The swap also included a potholder. I had originally planned on making a pumpkin applique for the potholder, but then I decided to cut strips from my three fabrics and piece them together. I think it turned out way cuter than a pumpkin applique.


I don't know what I'm doing with that ridiculous look on my face. The sun was really shiny and even though it was behind me there was some major glare coming off the window in front of me. Plus, I didn't think my head was actually in the shot. I guess I could have cropped the photo.

The potholder, by the way, nearly sent me over the edge. The actual potholder part was easy to make and my sewing machine handled the layers quite nicely. But when I tried to add the binding, my machine wasn't cutting it. I tried several methods and while I was able to get the binding on, it never looked good on the back side. And since there really isn't a back side to a potholder, that just wouldn't do. I finally decided to hand sew the binding in place and it turned out great.

I think this will be my last apron swap for a while. I enjoy it, but I'm ready to get started on Christmas sewing. I'm determined to make something other than coasters this year.

Jammen

For those of you trying to keep up, here's something else to add to your list of things to learn in order to be like Alisha: how to make jam. In all fairness, I think it's significantly easier in Austria because they have this lovely sugar that contains pectin, so that takes a lot of the scariness out of canning.

Let's start at the beginning. Last week, one of Amanda's neighbors invited her over to show her how to make jam. Now, this woman called it marmalade, but when I looked up the difference between "marmalade" and "jam", I realized what they made was actually jam. After a little more research, I discovered that the English word "marmalade" is translated to "Orangenmarmelade" in German. And the German word "Marmelade" is translated to "jam" in English. I also learned that "jammen" is the German verb "to jam". That's not really related to the food jam, but I found it amusing.

So, Amanda learned to make jam from her neighbor last week and she taught me how to make jam this week. Now I must teach someone how to make the jam within the next week. It's the David Watson method of jam-making. (I know that only a handful of people are going to get that joke, so don't worry if the last sentence didn't make any sense.)

Here goes... How to make strawberry jam.

Start with fresh strawberries. I bought some of these from the Naschmarkt and the rest from the grocery store. The ones from the Naschmarkt were definitely better (looking and tasting), so next time I'll make sure to get enough from there. And while I was at the Naschmarkt, I took a few photos for Almost Daily Vienna. They'll show up over the next few days.

Let's get started. (Have I said that already?) Wash the berries.


Next, hull and slice the strawberries.


Then, add a little water to a large pot (enough to cover the bottom) and toss in the strawberries. Bring to a boil over a medium high heat while occasionally stirring and mashing the fruit. The juices will be released as it heats up. When it becomes juicy, add gelling sugar.

I had never heard of gelling sugar before and I don't know if it's available in the U.S. It's sugar that contains pectin (to gel) and citric acid (to preserve). When I googled it, the first site returned was a store in the U.S. (German Deli) selling the imported German brand, so it may be hard to come by in the U.S.


After it cooks a bit more, pour the hot jam into sterilized jars. I washed my jars in the dishwasher and then popped them in the oven for a few minutes to sterilize them. Put the lid on, then let them set overnight. Amanda's neighbor's grandmother used to always wrap her warm jars in a blanket so they would take longer to cool down. Neither Amanda nor I knew the reason for this, but we did it anyways.


My 7 cups of sliced strawberries made 5 jars of jam. I think I may try to make jam with other fruits

This dog's got style

Tomorrow we're all heading to the mountains for a few days. We've heard that there's quite a bit of snow, so we've been getting prepared. Brian bought some boots and we both bought gaiters. We even decided to get a coat for Sharkdog. We hope he'll be able to spend some time outside, but he doesn't have enough fur to keep him warm for long. Unfortunately, the pet store has already moved on to their spring collection and there were no coats to be found. (Actually, we didn't find any clothes at the pet store. But I know they had coats at the beginning of winter.)

That's when I decided to make Sharkdog a coat. I set aside the 10 other things I was supposed to be doing to get ready for the weekend and got to work on the coat. After multiple measurements and fittings, Sharkdog was pretty tired and I couldn't convince him to stand up for the photos. And there was no way he was going to do a cute pose like the dog on the cover of this book. But I got a few nice photos.

The coat is reversible. I used green fleece on one side and the green cotton hippo fabric on the other side. There's a buttonhole on the back so that his leash can attach to his collar under the coat. That was Brian's idea. He's a clever one.





Sharkdog seems to like the coat. And I think Brian is a fan of the coat as well.