Handmade Baby Gift

Here's a baby gift I made for a friend of a friend. I guess you could say I was "commissioned" to make it, as my friend saw Peanut's tag blankie and me using a handmade nursing cover and she asked me to make her friend one of each. My first paid project! :) It includes a nursing cover, burp cloth, and tag blankie.

I've made several nursing covers just by using an existing cover I have as a guide, but there are several good tutorials out there like this one by made by the mama monster and this one by Sew Much Ado, so I won't bore you with another tutorial full of my blather. The burp cloth is just an inexpensive Gerber cloth diaper with two little strips of material sewn on. I bought a big pack of the diapers (maybe 10 or 12) and have doled them out one or two at a time for baby gifts. I've also appliqued on the diapers when the material has cute little scenes, but this particular crabby fabric was just little squares and wouldn't have looked quite right.

All in all, I spent under $20 (including several inexpensive spools of ribbon for the blankie, the cost of the diaper, and a few bucks to mail it to my friend) for a practical handmade gift that any nursing mom-to-be will love!

Thai Container Garden

I'm SO geeked about this container! Seriously, could I be any more of a garden nerd?? I loooooooooooooooooooooooove Thai food, but I don't like the 20 minute drive each way to the Asian market every time I want to make it. So I started thinking about what I could grow at home and began the hunt for what would grow well in my climate and how easy it would be to find.

I decided on Thai Basil (yummy anise flavored basil), Thai chilis, and Lemongrass. They all require full sun, which they will happily drink up out on our deck. All of these plants would grow well inside your home if you have a nice sunny spot, but I have the kidlets and the wieners, both of which are not conducive to growing plants indoors without spilled containers and/or plucked leaves and/or chewed up plants which results in a very angry Mommy...

Thai Basil, also known as Siam Queen Basil, is easy to find. I saw seeds at Lowe's, but you can also buy it online at amazon and burpee. You can start it easily from seed, but I took the easy way out and bought two plants.

Thai Chili seeds are also fairly easy to find, but for many of us, it is getting to be a bit late to start peppers from seed. Your best bet is to find plants. You can order them on amazon or burpee, but you can also just go to your closest asian market and pick up some dried Thai chilis and use the seeds from those! You'll want to sow your pepper plants indoors, unless you live in the Southern United States. My container has four thai dragon chili plants in it right now, but I will most likely remove one plant (and maybe even two) depending on how they fill out.

In searching online, I found that you can actually propagate lemongrass at home! Just buy some lemongrass and cut off most of the top woody portion and plop it in some water. Mine didn't quite grow as fast as was shown on the link, but I suspect the lemongrass I bought wasn't very fresh. It still isn't ready to transplant after three weeks, so I was thrilled to find a plant at a local store!

Stay tuned for delicious Thai recipes in 45-70 days! " )

Midget and Peanut

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACK!! Can someone please slow time down a little bit for me? These kids are growing too, too fast!! Here's a few pictures from a recent photoshoot. I know everyone thinks their kids are cute, and I'm no exception! I think Peanut looks especially dapper in his little old man hat... Love that sweet boy!