One Week Old

 

A week ago today one of my dear friends gave birth to a beautiful little boy. You may recall last month when I threw a baby shower for Brandon, well she's the new mom!! Congratulations!

Ages ago I made a tiny Yoda hat; it was for Brandon's little guy. I thought it would be funny to make matching green Yoda mittens and booties. I was mental before the baby shower and only ended up getting the mittens done with the promise of booties at "some point."

The mittens looked tiny to me. I compared them to some mittens K had when he was a baby that were massive on him. These were a tad smaller, but I just couldn't imagine them being much tinier and actually fitting.

I found a pattern online (although I can't seem to find it anymore - if I come across it again, I will link it here) and thought that the design was nice and simple. A lot of the crochet patterns I was finding were quite lacy. Cute perhaps, but not quite suited for Yoda-inspired wear. These work up super quickly. In fact, I started and finished them while waiting for a doctor's appointment to see my baby.

After the baby shower I had a bit more time, but as I've mentioned, I've been exhausted. I figured I would get the booties done between the party and the due date, but they just kept getting put on the back burner.

I'd started them ages ago on a Shinkansen ride home fromYokohama, but there they sat, half finished for a few weeks.

Brandon and I had plans to meet for lunch last Wednesday, so that was my new deadline. I got to work and finished the final bootie on Saturday.

Again, they look so tiny to me that I can't actually imagine that they would fit the little man, but it was too late to make new ones.

Once I'd made the Yoda hat, mittens and booties, I thought about what I would dress my kid in to wear all this. Everything would just look a tad silly. Separately the items are fine, but all together it would look fairly ridiculous. I decided that just to be a bit over the top, I would dye a kimono-style baby outfit grey to match all of the other Yoda-inspired pieces. I took a look through K's old baby clothes and found a long, pale yellow one that he probably never wore since it was too hot when he was born to be dressing him in the long version.

I really did not want to dye the outfit using Rit dye or something with chemicals, so I looked online for natural ways to dye and found that grape juice is supposed to dye things grey. Perfect!

I let the outfit sit for an hour or two and then finally took it out and gave it a good rinse.

It was hardly grey. Definitely purple (and a bit tie-dyed - whoops!). I was so bummed. I looked through the closet again, but this was the only long version I could find. I decided that maybe the color would be better if I dyed it in tea. So I made SUPER strong jasmine tea and soaked the outfit again.

When I washed it out and then put it through the laundry, I found it had turned a nice shade of tan. It's not grey, but definitely better than purple.

As it turns out, Brandon and I (obviously) never met on Wednesday. We talked on Sunday and she told me that she might not make it until then. Alas, she went into full-on labor and the baby was born on Monday. We weren't able to go see the little guy in the hospital, but we stopped by on Saturday bearing the gifts above, and a baked treat as well (stay tuned). OMG is the little dude adorable!!! He's just so tiny (yet really not tiny at all for a 6 day old), and of course the mittens and booties are massive.

Congratulations again, Brandon and Shin! I am so excited to see more of the three of you!!

My Valentine

Yesterday's post came about because I was making a shopping list for my Valentine to Y - a chocolate turtle cheesecake, one of his favorites. I've made an extremely similar cake before, only totally blew it (and then fixed what parts of it I could). I basically used the same chocolate cheesecake recipe that I have linked to a number of times, but with one minor twist. This recipe is delicious.

I started with the crust - crushed up Oreos. No added butter or sugar as the recipe suggests.

Just crush about 12 or 15 of those bad boys up, put them in the tin and then press them into the base.

Then you get cracking on the cake. It starts with creaming the cream cheese, sugar, and vanilla - I don't use the vanilla bean because frankly it seems unnecessary with all of the other flavors I have going on - after that, you add the flour.

 

Next add in some melted chocolate. Yum. Melted chocolate.

 



 

 

Once that is nice and creamy, you move to the eggs.

 

 

Once those were mixed in, things got a little bit crazy around here! I thought that a turtle cheesecake might be nice with some crushed pecans thrown into the cake itself. I also considered putting in some caramel, but I got nervous and didn't want to blow Y's only Valentine's gift. That would have been really lame. One day, however, one day I plan on putting caramel into the actual cake, instead of just putting it on top. I want more of a caramel flavor and I think that would make this cake even better. Anyway, I threw a few handfuls of pecans into a bag and had K go at it with a rolling pin. He was stoked. 

 

 

Then I mixed about 2/3rds of the crushed pecans into the batter, making sure to break up any whole ones that escaped K's wrath.

 





 

Finally I poured the batter into the pan and we were ready for the oven.

 

 

When I got it out of the oven, there was a tiny crack, but K was in desperate need of something or the other and I didn't run my knife around the edge of the cake - sorry cake, but the kid comes first. Then I forgot about it. I came back an hour or so later to find the crack had gotten HUGE!

 

Although I am not 100% sure on this, I am going to assume that the crack would not have gotten so gnarly had I just run the knife around it straight out of the oven instead of hour(s) later. Honestly, however, I have no idea why this happened.

It's not that big of a deal since it is a cake just for us (and a friend or two), so I just carried on like it wasn't there. I drizzled some leftover caramel over the top. I am still not quite sure why that caramel had not been eaten, but alas it made my life a bit easier. 

Then I sprinkled on the remaning crushed pecans.

Melted a few squares of chocolate.

Drizzled that on top and stuck this guy into the fridge!

I made it the night before Valentine's because I knew I was going to be mental busy on the actual day. It was awesome to just pull a cake out of the fridge and have nothing to do for it to be ready to eat. And eat we did!

And it was good.

I hope you all had a wonderful Valentine's day!!!

K's Valentines

Yesterday I was making a shopping list for the necessary groceries for Y's Valentine's dessert when K came up to me and asked what I was doing. I explained that soon it would be Valentine's Day. On that day we give treats or notes to people we love and our friends, so I was planning a special treat for Y.

K asked if he could make a treat for his friends. My heart nearly exploded - K wants to bake and do crafts with me! "Yes!! Of course you can!" I showed him a photo of both cupcakes and brownies, and asked him what he'd like to make. Brownies won.

The next step was to decide who to give his Valentines to. He started by naming my parents, T (my younger brother), and "Ankle" (my older brother). I told him that since we were baking something, we should try to keep our Valentines to those who live near us. Then as he started naming his best friends, I wrote down each of their names.

We started yesterday morning by making the notes. I cut out 20 little hearts - 10 red and and 10 pink. Then I gave K the pink hearts to color on. He colored in his signature style of scribbles.

I wrote each person's name on a smaller red heart and also wrote, "Happy Valentine's Day." Once K was done with the coloring, together we signed his name on each one. I put a little glue on the small heart and let him stick it to the big heart. Some are definitely placed better than others. What can you do? The kid is two.

This morning, while still in our jammies, we got to work on the brownies. I wanted them to be a bit more festive, so I got out a pack of holiday M&Ms that a friend sent to me. The M&Ms are mint flavored and red, white and green. I pulled out all of the red and white ones (and by "all" I mean the ones I hadn't yet eaten) and chopped them up. The chopped up M&Ms didn't quite make up a cup and a half, so I chopped up some chocolate bars too.

Then I called K over and we got the first set of ingredients out - eggs, cocoa powder, vanilla, salt and baking powder.

I helped K crack the eggs, we measured together, and he did the pouring. Then he whisked it up as good as he could and handed it over to me to finish.

Next was the melted butter and sugar. He stirred and then handed it to me.

The last addition was the flour, M&Ms, and chocolate.

Finally the batter was ready!

We poured it all in to the pan (and a couple of little baking cups) and popped it in the oven.

I ended up baking a tad too long and the very edge got a bit crispier than I like. Ah well.

I had K help me cut the ribbon and punch a hole into each heart.

I cut up the brownies (first cutting a square around the not so crispy part) and then wrapped up each one.

K put each one into a bag, I attached a heart to the outside, and tied the bag shut.

K is so super excited to give his Valentines to his friends tomorrow. I'm afraid he may be a tad confused, however, as he keeps saying that all of his friends will come over tomorrow to get their treats. That's not happening. I keep telling him that instead we will put each bag into our friends' mailboxes. Let's hope there's no major Valentine's Day freak out when no one comes over ;)

Maternity Shirt

This past weekend was a three-day weekend for us, as there was a public holiday on Monday. We decided that Y needed some new shirts for work; his were getting a tad ratty. So we went shopping at Uniqlo, a store I love, but with my new, gigantic stomach it was a tad senseless to buy new clothes for me.

Until I remembered a few posts I saw about making maternity shirts from men's shirts. I took a look around the men's section for some sale items and found a simple long-sleeved T-shirt, as well as a patterned button up that I quite liked. I bought them both.

I started with the T-shirt for the sole reason that it seemed a bit less daunting. I used this tutorial and followed it pretty closely.

The first step was to cut off the neckline. I understand the tutorial's point about cutting a large neckline and then cinching it up with elastic (to help pull the shoulder seams in), but I don't like elastic necklines on me, so instead I ended up cutting about as close to the original neck band as possible. Next I drew my pin tuck lines on, each 2 cm apart from one another.

I started with the middle pin tuck and then worked my way towards the outside. I tried it on after the first three were done and then each time after sewing two more. I ended up with 7 pin tucks.

The next step was to fix the sleeves as they were really big! You can kind of see in the photo below that I sewed a line a few centimeters in from the original seam. To make sure I didn't get the sleeves too tight, I traced the sleeve of a shirt that I like and then sewed along that line. The tricky bit was getting the sides perfectly even - or let's be honest, even enough. I ended up having to sew a second line into one of the armpit areas of one of the sleeves, but I think it ended up fine.

Next up was to finish the neckline. As before, I knew I didn't want to use elastic to finish it, but I was undecided as to what I did want to do. I first started pinning the raw edge in, but as it's a circle, it soon got messy. I looked through what sewing notions I had in my sewing boxes and found some single fold bias tape. It's orange, so I was a bit worried that it would show too much and be weird. It was really my only option, however, unless I wanted to head to the sewing shop. I sewed it on and much to my surprise, it hardly shows once the shirt is on - what luck!

The final step was the sleeves. Eeek. They were really long. I originally wanted to rouch them, but it was proving a bit difficult to sew the elastic onto the skinniest part of the shirt without totally ruining it. I ditched that idea fast.

I don't think it turned out as cute as it would have with rouched sleeves, but I ended up doing it the easy way and just cut the sleeves and attached the same bias tape as I did in the neckline.

The sleeve bits end up folding up every so often, so the tape is a bit more noticeable here. I don't really mind it though. In fact, I kind of like the little pop of color.

The shirt was super easy to make. In fact, as soon as we got home from shopping I put K down for his nap and got started on the shirt. By the time he was up, all I had left to do were the sleeves. Simple! I imagine once Spring comes, I will get a few more short-sleeved T-shirts and do up a few more of these. Or maybe I could do a few more long-sleeved shirts and then just cut and re-finish the sleeves once it gets warm out. Hmmm...