Holiday Dresses

So here I am taking about the holiday dresses when it is almost February. Shameful I know but I just won't feel caught up unless I get these posted.

I originally posted about Hannah's Thanksgiving dress here but didn't have the pictures of her in it at the the time. Seems I am very behind in all things again. Sometime in this life time I hope to be more timely. I've been told once my kiddo's are in full time school I'll be able to reclaim some time. I sure hope they are right.

Over the holiday's I was discussing with a friend how difficult it is to find long sleeve dresses for the holiday's. Seems like an odd thing to me that there aren't more. Because of this I gravitate to the sweater dresses (that are surprisingly short sleeve too)  that can be layered. I'm a crazy Mom who thinks her daughter should be warm during winter even if it's a special occasion.

I would have loved to make a more formal dress with long sleeves but it just wasn't in the cards between the typical holiday bluster, sicknesses and completing orders for others. Maybe next year I can plan better

At the last minute I put together more yo yo's (something nice to do while relaxing on the couch in the evenings) and attached them to some FOE (fold over elastic) I had on hand for a matching headband. I have to say the FOE is perfect for headbands, it is soft and has a nice gentle give. Hannah calls it her princess crown.

I realized when I went to put together a quick Christmas dress for Hannah that I have never made a tiered dress for her. I've made gobs of  tiered dresses for others and a few circle skirt dresses for Hannah but never a tiered one. 

I thought it was time to give her one. I have been hording Christmas fabrics over the years only buying the ones I really like (which there is usually only one of each year). I hope to quilt together some for stockings and tree skirt some day but this year I felt that this dress was worthy of depleting some of my stock. 

In the end I really wasn't disappointed not the having the shiny satin or velvet dress this year. Hannah loved it in all it's simplicity and I loved that she could wear it all Christmas Day comfortably. 

By the end of Christmas day it was well worn, covered in chocolate and what ever else she got in to that day. I tossed it in the washer with all the other clothes, no added steps and it came out like new. I did make her a matching yo yo headband to go with this dress too. It however, didn't fair as well. Her brother was using it like a rubber band to get a rise out of her (successfully) and one of the yo yo came undone.  Ah, sibling love : )

Oh I forgot to mentioned, the middle layer is sparkly. That made it all the more princess-y in her eyes.

It's a bit late but I hope you all had a blessed Christmas!

Thanks for stopping by the nest.
Darla

Detox & Garlic Salad Dressing Recipe

Well I wasn't to far off with my recent lentil soup recipe post. It fit my qualifications for a detox recipe. According to the reading I've done it contains a few cleansing ingredients. Lentils for fiber and garlic and onions for cell development and protection. Plus I had always heard that garlic is great for fighting general illnesses and bacteria growth. The next time I think I will try using thyme instead of oregano since it to has healing powers too according to those who are experts. I also read here how (beef) bone broth is excellent for brain cell development and health. So maybe next time try bone broth in place of the box stock. The rest of the ingredients are at least benign and aren't on the experts avoid list. And I am happy to say my family ate the soup with out complaint (well at least most of us, my daughter is going through that picky eater toddler phase).

Let me be clear I am not an expert in these matters, I am just an every day Mom who need to expedite feeling better after a horrible eating jag. I figured why not share recipes for healthy meals my family will eat that, according to experts, contain detoxifying ingredients to speeds up healing. From the looks of it I already of a stash of healthy meals that may need a little tweaking but fit the bill. I have put together short list of good and avoid foods for detoxing (according to experts, ie. not me). 

Good
seaweed
onions
garlic
ginger
turmeric
beans & lentils
beets
pineapple
broccoli
lemons
avocados
cabbage
cinnamon
thyme
cranberries

Avoid
dairy
grains containing gluten 
nitrates (found in most sausage, bacon & lunch meats)
animal fats
sugars
alcohol
caffeine

At the bottom of this post I included links to my source information.

I'm happy to see that my family already has the top two avoids under control. The caffeine is going to be a killer. I live on coffee. Got to say I don't see my family embracing the seaweed so don't plan on seeing that in any of my ingredients lists. I have read a lot of detoxing with smoothies, tea's and consuming random things through out the day. These are not for me and I can't imagine most family households that struggle getting a meal on the table that appeals to everyone is hard enough than to add in these new routines with things they don't already have in stock. However, from my perspective, that makes the avoid list all that more important. Plus it may take longer to reap the detox effects, which is OK with me, Its better than wasting money and food.

I am sure there are a lot of beneficial foods that are not on my list, like olive oil and coconut. This list is the most common I found across many experts detox lists. That doesn't make those foods bad they may just not be as detoxifying. Perfect example is the Bone Broth. It's very healthy for brain development but does not help or prevent detox. 

Alright enough with that lets get on with today's recipe. I call this recipe "Stacy's" Garlic Dressing since my awesome friend Stacy shared this recipe with me a few years ago. It uses several cloves of raw garlic with very little oil or vinegar. Its a good thing I have friends that love garlic as much as I do cause after eating this salad dressing you smell of garlic for day's but it is so worth it. My grandmother use to eat a raw garlic clove every day which I thought was weird but really when I think about it now this dressing isn't much different from that.  

Stacy's Garlic Dressing

6 cloves of garlic (fresh not bottled!)
1/2 tsp sea salt
1/4 tsp black pepper
5 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
3 tbsp red wine vinegar

Mince garlic in a small bowl. Add salt and pepper. Whisk in oil and vinegar. Serve over your favorite greens. A little goes a long way.

I think this dressing would be great over shredded cabbage for a coleslaw or on steamed broccoli. If you try this recipe on any thing interesting, leave me a comment and let me know how it tastes.

Thanks for stopping by the nest!

Darla

Source information:
Dr. Oz
Alt medicine
BemBu
Care2
Eat Local Grown

Lentil Soup Recipe

In our house New Year's Day is the day where we get back to better eating after all our holiday indulgences. As I may have mentioned in the past for the most part our family is gluten and casein (dairy) free. However for Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's Eve celebrations I make exceptions. Well today I feel like crap and every aspect of my being reflects this: my energy, my mood and I feel like I am on the verge of a cold. It's a firm reminder of why we practice gluten and casein free eating. And for all you sceptics, no I did not drink alcohol at all this season, since I have a baby it just puts me to sleep.

You would think year after year of going through this I would remember and use better restraint. Since I am so stubborn I think I need to put together a new year's week long family friendly detox menu to use every year. Since I have not done my research yet I am going to start out with sharing my lentil soup recipe. It may not be detoxifying but it is pretty healthy so I will start there.

This recipe contains Worcestershire sauce which can contain gluten if the wrong brand is used. As with all gluten and casein free eating, read your labels to ensure they contain safe ingredients.

Lentil Soup

1 tbsp olive oil
1 cup onion, diced
1 cup celery, diced
1 cup carrots, diced
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp black pepper
3 cloves of garlic, minced
2 cups/16oz of dried brown lentils, sorted and rinsed
8 cups beef stock (vegetable or chicken stock work well too)
1 14.5 oz can of diced or crushed tomatoes
1 bay leaf
1/2 tsp dried oregano
1 tbsp dried parsley
1 tbsp Worcestershire sauce
2 tbsp apple cider vinegar

Heat olive oil in a large pot. Saute onion, celery, carrots and salt till translucent. Add black pepper and garlic and saute for 30 seconds. Add lentils, stock, tomatoes, bay leaf, oregano, parsley and Worcestershire sauce. Bring to a bubble then reduce to low. Covered and simmer for 2 hours. Stir in vinegar and serve.

Sausage variation (pictured above)
If you are not looking for an overly healthy but yummy lentil soup recipe I like to brown a pound of a good smoked sausage or kielbasa, diced, in the pot first. Then I remove it from the pot and drain off all but 1 tbsp of the fat to cook the vegetables in instead of the olive oil. Then continue with the rest of the above cooking instructions. Add sausage to the soup with the vinegar. Simmer for a few extra minutes to warm through the sausage again.

I hope your family is having a wonderful Christmas Season and a Happy New Year!

Thanks for stopping by the nest and God bless!
Darla

Thanksgiving Dress

I don't know about you guys but my family has been fighting off sicknesses left and right. I am just now getting over pneumonia. Nothing worse than a busy Mom being in bed for a week. Thank the heavens for a good husband. Sadly, it has put a delay on all things creative for a while. Fortunately, my family seems to be getting past everything so I have been able to start getting in the swing of things again. Just in time for the holidays.

Now that I am healthy again made Fall inspired paneled circle skirt dress. It's perfect for Thanksgiving. I have made this style before here. Like most sewist I have a bit of an addiction to fabrics and all of the glorious designs & patterns they come in. This dress uses four of those glorious fabrics. 

It's a full circle skirt so it has a lot a spin to it. Hannah has been pestering me to wear it every time she sees it. I am making her wait till Thanksgiving Day though.

As I pointed out in my last sewing post I have a new obsession with Yo-Yo's. I really liked how it worked out for the last dress I made for Hannah and it incorporates more of those fabrics I love so much so I couldn't resist.

I learned my lesson though, Yo-yo's don't wash well. This time I attached it to a hair clip so it can be removed for washing and bonus it can be clipped anywhere including her hair. 

I decided to add a little something extra this time. A simple zigzag stitch in contrasting thread on the skirt trim. When I think of Fall I think of zigzags for some reason. Must be jack-o-lantern mouths, scarecrows or something. I love how it turned out. I need to get familiar with my decorative stitches on my machine and start adding more accents like this to my projects.

Since we live in Ohio State Buckeye country I have been requested to make this dress in scarlet and grey for an OSU inspired dress. I have collected the fabrics and I'm looking forward to making it. I will post pictures when it is done.

Thanks for stopping by the nest.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Darla

Recipe - Oatmeal & Banana Magic Bullet Pancakes

I adapted this from two other recipes. This one here and here. The recipe only feeds 2 people (or two toddlers & one grown-up). I love that this is super easy, gluten & casein (dairy) free and does not produce leftovers. This is a perfect weekday breakfast for me and the kids. They do have more of a soft custard quality rather than the bread like quality since they are primarily banana and egg. Going gluten free I much prefer this over the gritty results that most gluten free flour blends produce, I think the kids do too.

Gather the ingredients

Add the oats to a clean dry blender.

Pulverize Oats in Magic Bullet until ground.

Add the remaining ingredients to the blender and blend till smooth.

This is how it should look. I typically have to scrape down the sides once.

This is the oil I use in the pan. I just love this stuff. It never leaves a gummy coating on my pans and it is healthier than other oils.

Heat coconut oil in the pan over medium heat and cook like a regular pancake.

Serve with syrup, fruit or whatever you like on your typical pancakes and enjoy!

Oatmeal & Banana Magic Bullet Pancakes

Serves 2 (makes 8 small pancakes)

Ingredients:

1/2 c G/F Rolled Oats

2 eggs 

1 large ripe bananas

1/4 c Apple Sauce

1/2 tsp Vanilla

1/4 tsp Cinnamon

1/8 tsp baking powder

Pinch of salt

coconut oil for the pan (I really like the coconut oil spray from Trader Joe's)

Instructions:

1.  Pulverize Oats in Magic Bullet until ground.

2.  add the other ingredients (all but the coconut oil) to the bullet cup & blend

3.  Heat coconut oil in the pan over medium heat and cook like a regular pancake.  

Serve topped with powdered sugar or syrup. 

Doubling the ingredients in 1 bullet cup would be too much and overflow or not blend properly (even in the biggest cup). I have doubled this recipe by using a second bullet cup (same blade). The key is to pulverize the 1/2 cup of oats in each of the cups before moving to on to step 2. Once the blade is wet or damp it makes it impossible to ground the oats.

I love the magic bullet I just wish you got more than one of the double blades or they made it possible to purchase a second/replacement one(s).

Another option is to use a large blender or food processor and double, triple or even quadruple the ingredients. I have not tried this however so I do not know how well it would work. 

Thanks for stopping by the nest!
Darla

Trick-Or-Treat Bags

I'm a little ridiculous for all things fall. So when an opportunity presents itself to combine the two things, crafting and fall, I get a little giddy and tend to go over board. A couple years ago I made Samuel and Hannah trick-or-treat bags that received rave reviews. This year I decided to make a ton and sell them. I did pretty good and enjoyed the process as well. Both bags were originally inspired by Pinterest but I added some special details that my original bags are lacking. 

The first and my favorite is the ruffle bag. Its built on basic canvas bag. I add a ton of ruffles, a lining and a coordinating yo yo or bow. 

I have become a little yo yo obsessed now that I know how easy they are to make and I love how they add that little something.

It took a little work but I figured out how to get the liner to work just right.



This a girly version of the simple boy bag I made for my son. I rather like the ruffle up, it has a tissue paper in a gift bag effect. The following two are a more basic ruffle.

These are what I call The Simple Boy Bag. They are sturdy bags. My son literally drug his around the neighborhood through puddles and mud. I have machine washed it twice and it still looks great.























I have a few bags left in a variety of different styles and fabrics. I figured I will add to my Etsy's shop for next year. If anyone is interested before the shop is open, send me an email at littlequailcreated@gmail.com.

Thanks for stopping by the nest!
Darla

Back on Track - Catalog of Creations

Wow that was quite the extended baby break. I was really hopeful that I would get to post something before now but life has been very busy. I won't bore you with the details just know everyone is happy and healthy.

I have been very busy creating and not given much time or thought to documenting hence no posts. I have really missed it. The other day I was pondering what all I have made over the past months and I can't remember everything. Since I haven't been blogging I don't even have the blog to refer to. So in effort to remedy that here is a list of the creations...

After winter KCW I got to work on some basics for the new baby. A baby blanket (shown in the picture below), a bunch of wash cloths and burp cloths. They are nothing fancy but are needed for every new baby and so much better than anything that you can buy at the store.

Then came Spring KCW. My daughter was in desperate need of clothes and PJ's for the upcoming warm weather season. KCW was exactly the excuse I needed to get some stuff done for her right before the baby got here. First was the Izzy Top and a pair of light denim Capri's from Butterick pattern B4176.

 I love both of these patterns and plan on making them both again for next year. And since Terri expanded her free pattern size to 6-12 I will probably be making this for years to come.

Isn't this floral fabric great? I was very lucky to win fabric from MissMatatabi during the winter KCW. I picked this and a couple other meters of triple gauze that I think I will be using for some winter PJ's for Hannah. 

Next up: the PJ's. I made a total of three of the matching peasant top with the cropped PJ pants. I used the free The Raglan Sleeve Night Dress pattern from iKat bag for the peasant top and the Simplicity 5382 pattern for the cropped pants I just reduced the length.

I wish I had a picture of Hannah in these, they truly were darling. Another do over for next summer and a night gown version of the peasant top. I think it was the little details added that made me love these so much.

These pants were just so easy to make since they are only two pieces so I just zipped through another three and paired them with white under shirts my son had grown out of. 

My husband says that these reminds him of an Easter egg but hey they're cute aren't they?

I figured for the really hot days my daughter needed some sleeping shorts so I made a couple using the same Simplicity pattern as the cropped pants. 

A friend of mine had a little girl a couple weeks before I had my baby. This is her first child so it was another awesome excuse to sew a bunch of stuff. I was able to make a bunch of the baby basics; baby blanket, wash cloths, burp cloths, a quilted taggy and some paci clips. I also made her a little Geranium top (size 3-6 month) with matching bloomers using the Made pattern. Isn't it cute? 

Once summer was here it was very obvious that Hannah's church dresses from last year were just not cutting it. I dug through my pile of patterns and came across the Absolutely A-line dress pattern book and decided to try out the wrap dress version. To be honest I didn't love this pattern or instructions. Next time I will just draft my own. With some tweaking though it still turned out. 

I love this fabric and love that it is fully lined. Hannah on the other hand did not like it. "It's not a twirly dress Mama!" She couldn't get it off fast enough. Oh well, you can't win them all.

Since I was informed that the dresses needed to twirl I got to work on the simple full circle skirt dress that I crafted before here. 

 

Needless to say, it's pink and purple and really can twirly, it was a hit.

Another addition to the church dresses is this pattern from McCall's M5835. I used some old quilting fabric from my stash that I thought fit this style pretty well. Hannah's Just OK with it. There is just enough gathering that it give it some twirl.

I used the suggestions found on this blog post to simplify the assembly of the bodice. On colder day's I find this pairs nicely with a long sleeve T and leggings.   

I spent my late summer making baby baskets for our church's Harvest Ball and Silent Auction. I was in baby mode and was loving the results of these handmade baby items so figured others would too. I did one boy and one girl basket since I just couldn't find a collection of gender neutral fabrics that I liked. The baskets consist of a minky baby blanket, a diaper changing clutch, burp clothes, wash clothes, bibs and quilted taggy. I even had a crafty friend of mine throw in baby thank you cards and made a shower card myself so the basket can easily be given as a gift.

I really should have taken better pictures of these but you can kinda see the baby items I have been making. I have a couple of orders for more these so I will take much better pictures and post them.

And last but not least, my most important creation...
Noah! 

I know this picture doesn't show it but he is such a happy baby. I didn't realize how much our family needed his little personality. Such a joy!

I have been sewing up a bunch of fall goodies too but I think I will save those for one of my next post.

I have the goal to establish an Etsy shop after the first of the year. My shop will have a mix of different things but all kid oriented. Until then if there is anything that you see on my blog that you would love for me to make for you to purchase (excluding items that are made from license restrictive patterns) send an email to littlequailcreated@gmail.com. 

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

Thanks for stopping by the nest!
Darla