Baby Tunic and Leggings

One of my neighborhood friends had a baby girl about three months after T was born. The baby girl was still in her mama's tummy at our Halloween party, but at the party, we talked about T's costume and the fact that he will never wear those black leggings again.

I asked her if maybe she would like them for her baby girl when the time comes. She was all for it. The time came, but it seemed weird to give her just an old pair of black leggings, so I decided that I would just make a little outfit of it.

Using the same peasant dress pattern that I have used before, I made this little one. I changed it slightly to add long sleeves since it would be Spring when the little girl would likely fit into the leggings. I intended to still keep the sleeves a tad poofy and close them around the wrist with elastic, but I had a little mishap and had to rethink the situation. I pared down the sleeve and now it is just a regular old sleeve. I also made the length a little shorter since I wanted it more of a tunic than a dress. I didn't know how long to make the tunic, since I don't have one just sitting about, so I used one of T's onesies to kind of guess the length. Hopefully it's not too short!

The dress is so simple to do up. Cut out the pieces, sew on the sleeves to the front.

Then sew them to the back piece. Do up the hems and add elastic to the neck. Done! (Note that this photo is pre-neck elastic.)

Next up were the leggings. I figured I could just leave them black, but why not add something cute!? I was considering ruffling the bum with the same fabric, but decided against it. I settled, instead, on little bows. They were super simple to make.

Then using T's old leggings, I just sewed them to the lower, outside seams. Another friend and I went over to meet the little one a few weeks back and she is just adorable. Hopefully this little outfit fits her soon - Spring is on the way! Hopefully!!

Banana Muffins

I'm not going to lie - at this point, I have made banana bread a few too many times on this blog. I just can't stop! It's so perfect when you have a whole bunch of bananas that are getting over-ripe since someone decided that this week he doesn't like bananas. I have used the same basic recipe every time, just switching it up with what I add in. So far, I have yet to find a combination that doesn't work.

This time I used all butter, and a half a cup of granulated sugar with half a cup of brown sugar (as that is what I had in the house). I didn't do any other changes when mixing it up.

Once the basic recipe was ready, it was time to get creative. I originally wanted to make two little loafs - one to eat here and one to take to Y's parents' house, but I didn't have any more of the mini loaf pans. Instead I made muffins. The only muffin liners I had, however, were really big - like Costco sized. I wasn't sure how many muffins it would make, but I did still want two different flavors.

After dividing the batter in half, I decided that one would have chocolate chips in it. I emptied out the last of the chocolate chip bag and this was all that was left. Uhhhh, lame. I scrambled around the kitchen, but couldn't find any other chocolate to put in aside from M&Ms. M&Ms and banana bread sounded weird to me for some reason. Then I remembered that I had some Mexican hot chocolate tablets in the cupboard. I had never baked with Abuelita before, but I figured it would be okay.

I chopped up half of a tablet and threw it in.

The other half of the batter got broken up pecans and dried cranberries.

Once they were all mixed up, I put them into the muffin liners. I only got three muffins for each batter. A tad bit disappointing, if I do say so myself. I'm not sure why, but it seems I forgot to take photos of the finished product. You'll just have to believe me - they looked beautiful and holy moly were they delicious. The Abuelita and chocolate chip one was surprisingly good. It had a slight cinnamon taste to it and a few grains of crunchy sugar here and there, which totally reminded me of being little and sneaking a little piece while my mom made our hot chocolate.Yum!! These breads further my theory that it is impossible to make a bad banana bread using this recipe as the base. Try it!!

Stroller/Car Seat Blanket

Happy New Year!! Sorry for the lack of posts recently. We were at Y's parents' house all last week and it was glorious. I decided that rather than blog, I would catch up on my sleep. So I did. I slept a lot. It was perfect. Because of the holidays, I have a few posts about things that I have made that are really quite old at this point. But, while they are old to me, they are still new to you! So here we go!!

The weather turned a bit chilly here a few months ago. At that point, T was still tiny (look at him!!) and we didn't have a coat for him. I would just put him in my wrap and then wrap blankets or my jacket around us. This worked fine, but took a bit of time to deal with. Also, as soon as I wrapped him up like that, he would pass out - he was probably two or three months old at the time. The passing out bit wasn't too much of an issue, except on K's school days. I really wanted to keep him awake until the bus picked up K so that we could go home and nap together. I realized that if I put him in his stroller, he would stay awake, but he also tended to just kick the blankets off. So, I made him a little stroller blanket.

I started with a big square of fabric - about a meter on all sides. I used two fleeces (one for the outside and one for the inside) as well as a thick batting.

I layered them all together and then folded the whole thing into fourths.

Using a Sharpie, I drew a line so that the corner with all raw edges was rounded and then sides going out to either end were a bit curved. You can kind of see the line in the photo below if you look closely.

Then I cut along the line and it looked like this.

The batting was a tad small, so it didn't meet up perfectly at the corners, but I just chose to not worry about that bit. I did, however, baste it as well as I could to the inside fleece. I wanted the blanket to be hooded, so I folded one of the rounded edges together so that the blanket was folded diagonally and drew a line across horizontally, then sewed it up. I did the same for the outside piece of fabric as well.

 

Then I sewed it up, right sides together, making sure to line up the seams from the hooded part and leaving a bit of a gap for turning. I turned it right side out and then top stiched all the way around. Since it was to be a blanket for a stroller, I needed to cut slits into it so the straps would fit through. I kind of guessed on this bit, but luckily it worked out well (at the beginning at least).

I cut the slits and then pinned the cut edges together.

Thinking I was all smart since fleece won't unravel, I just zig zagged around the slits. It made a huge mess. :(

The slits ended up super wavy and not nice looking at all. After all the work, I totally ruined it!! Good thing this was in the back, so no one would see it until I took T out. Still, I hated what I had just done and figured there had to be a solution.

I kept thinking for a few days, all the while using it.

T loved it, but eventually he wanted his arms free. Luckily, a good friend of ours sent us a beautiful fleece jacket for T, so he would wear that and then I would wrap up his little body and legs in the blanket.

As soon as we got in to a shop or on the train, I would unwrap him and his little body would feel so toasty. As we both were loving the blanket, I decided that I would make two more - one for our new niece and one for a good friend's daughter, both born at the end of November.

 

I decided that the best way to fix the wavy slits were to use a bias tape of sorts. I didn't want to use real bias tape since the blanket was quite thick and I figured I would mess it up. Instead I settled on strips of the lining fleece. I also worked out a much better way to deal with it. I assembled the blankets the same way I did T's, but before cutting the slits, I drew them on and then sewed around them.

 

 

 

Then I cut them open. Since they were sewn together, I didn't have to deal with pinning that many layers of fabric together.

 

 

Next I cut super long strips of the lining fleece, each about 8 cm wide and sewed them around the slits, about 4 centimeters on either side of the blanket. This was not an easy task - the machine was working it's way through one layer of batting and four layers of fleece. As a result, it didn't turn out perfect, but looked way better than the wavy mess I had made of T's.

 

 

 

 

Not perfect, but better than the prototype. I ended up fixing T's as well and I like it much better now. I made these before each of the new babies were born and gave them away just before and just after their births. We saw our little niece (who was given the pink one) over the New Year and she was using her blanket for her car seat. She looked so sweet all snuggled up in it. Her parents said that it works really well - wahoo!!

 

 

Unfortunately T is over his at this point. We got a lot of use out of it, but he doesn't like being all wrapped up in it any more. Homie's on the move! Also, given that we wait for the K's bus for a good ten minutes and it is freezing, we use a different stroller bag that is down and super duper toasty. He still doesn't much care for it, but it is zipped like a sleeping bag, so he can't bust his way out of it. Too bad, little man!!



It's Rainy Season...

It's rainy season right now, which means (obviously) a lot of rain, heat and humidity, but also hydrangeas!! Due to their timing, many people here think of them as kind of sad flowers, but I always think they are so beautiful. Last week, a neighborhood friend invited me and another mom friend over for lunch on Monday and I said I would bring some dessert. I would have loved to do a big, beautiful cake, but a cake for three is kind of difficult to deal with - how are the leftovers split? So, I decided on either cupcakes or cookies. Then I came across these cupcakes and regardless of the fact that I don't have the right piping tip, I couldn't resist.

I started with the same vanilla cake recipe that I made for K's birthday cake. In that post, I decided that this would be my go-to vanilla cake recipe and this time solidified that for me. I think the cake is delicious and simple - perfect! I ended up halving the recipe, as the last thing I need in this house is a million cupcakes. And I baked them for about 18 minutes, if I remember correctly, and ended up getting 14 cupcakes out of the half recipe.

The cupcakes rose a bit higher than I was hoping for as I was pulling them out of the oven.

But, as they cooled, they shrank a bit, which I was pleased with.

Then I made up the cream cheese frosting that was listed in the original hydrandea cupcake post. It seemed a bit soft to me before even adding the heavy cream, but I ended up adding 1 tablespoon anyway. I'm not sure if the frosting was super soft due to the weather situation, or if we just have softer cream cheese and butter here. Who knows.

Once it was mixed up, I divided it into two bowls and dyed about 1/3 of it a lavender and the remaining 2/3 blue.

Into the piping bag it went. I added a bit of purple and then some blue to top it off. Mind you, I didn't have the proper piping tip, but one that was similar enough that I figured would work.

Then I got to piping. The first one (the top cupcake in the photo below) was a complete mess. It didn't look anything like those from the original post. I was so bummed. I figured part of the problem is that my tip is different - that I would just have to deal with. I also assumed, however, that maybe the frosting was too soft. I popped the piping bag into the freezer for about 10 minutes, pulled it out and piped a second one. This was much better. Not super hydrangea-y, but would have to do.

It was a really, really long process. After I finished a cupcake I rushed it to the refrigerator as the frosting would start to melt. Then I would pop the piping bag back into the freezer for about 10 minutes and finally move onto the next one. To decorate the 14 cupcakes took about 2 hours. It was ridiculous. Luckily, I was talking to my mom on the phone the whole time, so the time passed quickly. It was so late however, that by the time that I finished I was exhausted.

Boxed up, they looked pretty cute. My next worry was transporting them to the friend's house the next day. I knew it would be hot and it is about a 10 minute walk. I put tons of little icy pouches in a mini cooler and hoped for the best. Luckily, it ended up just fine.

And they were pretty tasty to boot! Happy rainy season, Japan!

Maternity Jeans - With Pockets!

I'm now 21 (almost 22) weeks pregnant and my stomach just keeps getting bigger. I suppose that is what is meant to happen, but it still surprises me. A while back, I posted about some jeans that I cut up and made into maternity jeans. I like them a lot still, but they don't have front pockets anymore since I cut them out. I found a tutorial online about how to just replace the pocket fabric with jersey and then you have maternity jeans with pockets! Ingenious!!

I started out with my favorite pair of Uniqlo jeans.

As per the tutorial, I cut out the pocket part.

At first I cut out only the top half of the pocket, but I ended up cutting all the way down to give myself some more space.

Then I took a ribbed, jersey tank top and got cutting.

I used the back of it and cut out two long rectangles, leaving the front intact in case I want to use it for something else one day.

Then I folded each rectangle in half and top-stitched the fold.

Finally I lined the jersey up with the cut-out pocket bit and got sewing. And...

Voila! Five minutes later I had pants that fit again.

 

Here is a photo of the pants inside out so you can kind of get the idea of the pockets. I love these pants even more than the original maternity jeans I made. I like having pockets; although I hardly ever use them it is nice to know they are there. The only minor issue is that when I made these (and took the photos) a week or two ago, the jersey streched out quite quickly so I needed a belt to help hold them up. The bigger I get, the less necessary a belt is. I am pretty sure that had I used better quality jersey, the stretch would have rebounded more making these perfect from the start. 

 

As above, these photos were taken last week, I think. Look at my big belly! We went to the doctor yesterday and everything seems great. We saw the baby's heart - all four ventricles, fingers, lips, legs, and such. As we did when I was pregnant with K, we are not going to find out the sex of the baby until the little one pops out, so the nether regions were not a focus. I am feeling the baby moving about a lot now, which is always kind of fun. The only problem is that the doctor said I have gained a bit too much weight - almost 9 pounds total. I looked online at the American standards and for my starting weight and height I am still under the recommended weight gain, so I don't feel so bad. According to my doctor, I am meant to be careful with my eating from here on out. Wish me luck!

Finally, here is a photo so you can see the top of the jeans in action - they look just like real ones. Wahoo!!