Adventures in housewifery: Cooking, crafting, and not a lot of cleaning
Come this way, kids, don’t be shy! Many magical things await! Don’t worry…. you might come back… eventually.
Now, you’re going to have to be real mature about this one. I don’t want to hear ridiculous chortles. 😉
Ready for some magic? I had a fairy garden party with some girlfriends a month or so ago and it went rather well, I think. I may have gone overboard with plants and containers, but that just meant that people could have more than one garden if they wanted to! Some of the plants were indoor plants and others were outdoor plants and I tried to get ones that I hadn’t been able to kill yet, or were marked as easy care or good for terrariums. Here’s what the table looked like. I apologize for the cut off end. I was attempting to take a pic and it was super duper sunny, so I couldn’t totally see.
For supplies, we had rocks, glass bead fillers, moss, gravel, and sand. We had just all purpose potting soil too for the actual dirt. I went to the thrift store to find containers and bought a few at other stores as well. I even got a mini bathtub from one of the craft stores that I love and I’m probably going to go back and get another one for me. The teapot is my friend’s that she brought. I used my tiered treat stand to display all the accessories and it made me so happy!
For accessories, I found little fairy garden items like bridges and tiny yoga frogs, mini furniture, and some mini fairy houses too. We had shells, rhinestones, and mirrors, and shiny rocks galore. We had some houses you could paint too, but I don’t think anyone painted one.
I found a variety of containers. The thrift store must have gotten a set of wedding table centerpieces in because they had about 6 of these really big glass vases that matched. You’ll see some of the other ones throughout the post. I only had the little ones on the table. We had a bunny yard ornament, left by the prior owners, and it had a broken bit in it. My friend T made the cutest and most charming terrarium with it! Some of the other odder containers were a lamp shade (far left, white round dish,) a mini bathtub, and a chipped mixing bowl.
My friend donated a bunch of aloe starts and I had a couple of philodendron and spiderwort plants that I had started in my office. I bought a couple of succulents, a pepperomia, a mini nerve plant, a croton, and a purple thing that looked super fun! There were some others just marked “Terrarium assortment.” Basically anything I thought I might not kill. Outdoor plants included vistas, marigolds, alyssum, lobelia, something named “Gnome Pink,” and a coleus.
I also made snacks, but tried to keep it under control, so we only had two homemade things- lemon ginger muffins, and Cathedral bars/fantasy bars. Recipes for those are here: https://www.momontimeout.com/5-minute-fantasy-bars-just-4-ingredients/
Muffins- https://www.tasteofhome.com/recipes/lemon-yogurt-muffins/
I did switch out butter for oil because it was 7:30 AM and I didn’t have thawed butter or the will to go find it in the freezer. The muffins were a little overbaked, but they tasted good! The Cathedral bars were the stuff of dreams and now I want to make a pan again. I might get mobbed at work for it though, if I was nice enough to share. I did not take a picture of the snacks!
Here are some close ups of the terrariums. Some of these are from friends, as my phone overheated and got cranky. I hope you enjoy seeing them!
(I swear this isn’t a sponsored post!) I’ve had my Accuquilt machine for a while and it’s been super useful and fun, so I wanted to share some things about it. The Accuquilt is a die cut machine for fabric. Here’s the machine when it’s ready to go:
I was introduced to it through my MIL when we used to cut our jellyroll strip pieces for our Jellyroll Quilt class. (She’s fond of getting me hooked on “sewing game changers” that happen to be expensive. Not that I mind, obviously!) I finally got one of my own after a really bad tendinitis flare made it impossible to quilt or sew. I just can’t cut fabric for that long without hurting myself. Cutting fabric is my least favorite part of sewing, only shortly after ironing in levels of “eww.” Since it’s more accurate than rotary cutting as well, it makes my quilts look much more professional. Sadly, it does not iron my quilt squares for me, so it’s not quite perfect, but you can’t expect everything I guess.
On to how it works! It has dies that are plastic on the bottom and foam on the top with some mysterious heavy thing, probably metal or wood, I would guess, in the middle. It has blades hiding deep in the foam that form the pattern you are trying to cut. Here’s a picture of what the die looks like. This particular die is a Block on Board one, which means you can make a whole block with just these pieces. They are turned to make sure your fabric is cut on grain, as a lot of quilt fabric can be slightly off grain.
This particular block is a Bear’s Paw block. Isn’t it cute? I’m going to make a Scandinavian Christmas gnome quilt with it.
To use it, you make a sandwich with the die on the bottom, up to 6 layers of fabric, and then a special cutting mat. Then you put it on the flat part of the machine and gently guide it through. The machine compresses the sandwich/foam and allows the blades to come out and cut the fabric. It comes out the other side, as you can see. but you have some time to get around the machine and support it on the other side.
After it comes out of the machine, you can pull off the extra fabric and you’re left with the cut out pieces for the quilt square. Then you can do the fun part and actually sew!
This quilt will be a Scandinavian Christmas Tomte quilt. I have this fabric in a bunch of different color ways and I think it will be super cute!
I’ve been enjoying collecting all my die cutters for it and have used it to make a bunch of quilts without hurting my hand. This was the first one I made, although I used my MIL’s Accuquilt. We took a jellyroll quilt class together and decided to make our own rolls instead of buying one. The borders weren’t cut with it, but the strips for the blocks were. I have this quilt in my office currently for naps and times when people might need a comforting blanket.
This quilt is one I made for my boss for her wedding. It’s the same pattern, I just had forgotten the sashing in my office quilt. I really liked how sunshiny it is!
This is probably my favorite quilt I have made and I gave it to a friend of mine because I thought it belonged to her after I made it. It uses two Accuquilt dies- the Gnomies and the Snail’s Trail die. The Snail’s Trail is one of the block patterns that I really wanted to make, but I was intimidated by the smaller pieces. I didn’t think I could get the pieces cut accurately enough, so I was super pleased with how it turned out.
The latest quilt I’ve finished is this one for my friend above’s mom. It did get a little wonky. I think I forgot to flip the rows as I was sewing them together.
I can’t find the picture of this quilt finished, but it had another row of hexagons and then also another big black border on the top. I made it for my Secret Garak swap in one of my craft groups. I was pretty pleased with it.
I have three more quilts cut out so far: one hexagon with gnomes, one similar to the quilt above with really pretty florals, and one made of strips to be a bookshelf quilt! Won’t these two be super pretty?
I hope you enjoyed seeing what’s been helping me with doing more quilting lately. I’m excited to start using more of my die cuts once my sewing area is more set up. Wish me good, quilty luck, smooth thread, and never empty bobbins!
We went to see this exhibit at the Henry Ford forever ago, but I kept having other pictures up instead of these. It was so long ago in fact, that I’m not even going to try to write about it, just show you some of the pictures. I hope you enjoy them!
I said I was keeping some pictures in reserve for a wintery day and since our driveway is currently a sheet of ice in most places, I thought this might be a good refresher of what summer feels like. Enjoy!
These are all the amazing close up details at Meadowbrook Hall. I believe all of them were hand work, carved, etc.
