The announcement dress

This is the dress I made to announce my engagement at Thanksgiving to some extended family. It was my first Burda Style pattern (09/10 #109B), and it turned out great! Unfortunately, the September patterns aren't posted on the website, so I can't link to it. The only thing I changed from the pattern were two strips coming out the sides to tie in the back for shape/decoration.

It's a simple tunic look dress made from crepe-backed satin. I didn't actually use crepe-backed satin, I used a thicker regular satin and the reverse side of that fabric. And the best part of the fabric is that it has some stretch to it!

Yes, I do realize my face looks ridiculous in this picture, but I thought it was the best one of the dress.

The remainder of pumpkins

Remember those pumpkins from before? The ones I put in the freezer after making pumpkin butter, pumpkin chocolate chip bread, and pumpkin seeds? Well I pulled them out and made something AWESOME! 

Pumpkin and black bean stew (with chicken):
Olive oil to coat pan

1/2 diced onion

2 cloves garlic

1 small can V8 juice
3 cups chicken broth

2 hot chili de arbol peppers

 ~2 cups chopped pumpkin

5-6 chicken tenders

1 can rinsed black beans

1/2 cup greek yogurt 

Salt and pepper to taste

Embracing fall: step 2--Plaid!

Sorry this took so long. This fabric was way more difficult to work with than I expected! I don't remember ever wearing a jumper, though I'm guessing my mom must have put me in some when I was little. I decided there could be no better way to embrace fall than to make a plaid jumper!

Though this was a simple pattern, it was the first piece of clothing I designed myself. I was inspired by the Zoe dress from Burda Style, and I used the Coffee Date Dress as a starting point for the bodice. I made the front darts smaller and added side bust darts, and I lengthened it/curved it out. Then, the bottom was just a really wide rectangle that I pleated the width of the plaid at each dart.

Embracing fall: step 1--Pumpkins

Fall is my second to least favorite season for a few reasons: summer ends, it gets cold, it gets darker, the days get shorter, and worst of all, it means winter is coming. I typically hole up during fall and dread the winter to come, but I decided to enjoy fall for its positive traits this year as much as I can.

This, of course, started with apple picking.... leading to a ton of apple butter, which I successfully (I hope) canned for the first time ever. Then, I bought two pumpkins which I tackled Friday night.

I stuck the pumpkins in the oven for 10-15 minutes to make them soft enough to cut. I cut off the tops, removed the seeds and stringy stuff,  cut them into about 8 pieces each, and put them back in the oven to soften some more. Then I removed the skin with a knife and chopped up the pumpkin. I washed the seeds and left them to dry overnight. This took about two hours total and left me with a sore wrist. So, question one to my limited readers (maybe more in the future): is there a better way to do this!? 

My collection of pumpkin goods
(well, just the pumpkin seeds and bread)

After chopping the pumpkins, I saved some of the cubes in the fridge for later (soup maybe?) and put the rest of them in the crock pot in a decent amount of water with one secret ingredient (a chai tea bag). I let them "cook" on warm overnight before pureeing them with my hand blender. 1/3 of the puree went toward pumpkin chocolate chip bread, and 2/3 went toward pumpkin butter. Sadly, canning pumpkin butter is not an option unless you have industrial canning equipment (is that just an autoclave? not that I'm going to use an autoclave on my pumpkin butter, I'm just curious), so I can't share any, but I have a nice stash in my freezer. I tossed the dry pumpkin seeds in olive oil, added a dash of cayenne pepper and a dash of garlic salt, and then I thoroughly salted them with sea salt before putting them in the oven. Luckily, I didn't burn them this year like I did last year!

Here are the recipes I used (please note that especially the pumpkin butter is more of a guessing game than a recipe):

Blog is up and running!

After about six months of brainstorming a name for my blog, and about eight hours making the banner out of individual pictures (a bobbin, basil, and a pot of sauce). Anyway, I'll document my domestic pursuits (sewing, cooking, gardening, and more) here.