Sharing the cuteness, baby shower version.

This past weekend, I got to go to a baby shower. I LOVE baby showers. All the sweet clothes and adorable hand crocheted blankets, burp clothes, cool gadgets....gah! Plus there's something to be said for being around a group of people who are as excited for a new baby in the family as you are. :) This will be the 3rd new little baby out of my cousins and I couldn't be happier. For a long time now, I've been the only one with kiddos, and now there's been three additions in the past year! Yay!

So usually I make baby toys for gifts. You can see some of my baby toys here and here. As I woke up the morning of the shower realizing I didn't yet have a gift, I decided to try and throw together a pair of baby flip flops. Not so lucky, I couldn't find any free patterns that I liked and felt like I could get done in the measly hour I had available. 

They turned out pretty cute for being created as I went along. I just made a simple oval shape and then added the straps and border. Could be improved on, but for a first try that took an hour, I am totally content. They were a hit and I got to talk crochet with other mamas, something I always love doing!!

The sisters of the mama-to-be made some super sweet cupcakes. I bow to their cupcake skills. The baby is a boy and dad's an outdoors man, so they made fish themed cupcakes!

CUTE RIGHT??? This was a banana cupcake with a fondant fishie on the top. Lily and I got in a bet over whether it was fondant (me) or modeling chocolate (her). One of her favorite TV shows in the world is DC Cupcakes. 

These were vanilla cupcakes with fishing poles and gummy shark catches. Clever!!

Finally, my crafty awe was complete when I saw the gift made by the hostess.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen. That is a diaper cake. A FROG RIDING A MOTORCYCLE DIAPER CAKE. How adorbable is that? The headlight was a bottle, the fenders were bibs... it was priceless. Mama and Dad of baby-to-be ride dirt bikes. This was perfect. Much squee-sounds were made. I didn't get any other pictures and I was bummed because there was super cute stuff everywhere! I hope you've enjoyed the cuteness as much as I did!!!!

Congrats cousins! You know who you are!

Project Deconstruction... it's painful.

If you remember, I was working on the ugly awesome granny square blanket several months ago. School happened and it got thrown in my yarn box where it sat until two days ago. After finishing the giant granny lapghan and begrudgingly happily giving it as a wedding gift, I realized I wanted my own granny to snuggle. So I pulled out the ugly awesome granny. Whoa. If you ever want to realize just how much progress happens when you actually practice and improve a skill, forget about a crochet project for a few weeks.

The ugly awesome granny wasn't awesome. Well, the colors were. And the patterns. But I digress. It was horribly discombobulated. It was a not-so-happy granny.

If you notice my feet at the bottom, you'll realize just how far I had gotten on this project. Boo. If I had been attempting to make a ripple granny, I would have been spot on. Are there such things as ripple grannies? I think I just didn't pay as close attention to the joining as I should have. This attempt was done with the "join as you go" method. Easy in theory, but apparently it was not working out for me. I think  I'll try it again in the future with a smaller project. 

I've mentioned Attic 24 in the past and I'm going to do so again.

Lucy at Attic 24 is an amazing crochet lady. She has many fab tutorials. I'm currently working on a blind your eyes bright version of her crochet bag. Anyway, back on topic, she has a fantastic tutorial on how to join squares with single crochet after you have created all of them. (tutorial is here.) I think that's the method I'm going to try for this granny. That way if I screw it up, I can cut one string rather than a billion. One more side note: You should also read her non-crochet posts. She's an excellent writer.

So after huffing and puffing and asking my husband, "Do you think I should start over?" for the millionth time, I decided I couldn't go further. It was demo time. I wanted to save as many of the squares as I could because, hey, there's a lot of damn work and awesome ugliness there!

It took hours. Hours. I was trying to save squares and yarn. It was a painstaking process. I grumped at myself throughout the whole process. 

All that work wasted. But it was going to be better. It was going to be ugly awesome amazing. I managed to save most of my squares and quite a bit of the yarn for the rows I had to cut. 

Today, I spent quite a bit of time re-crocheting the rows I had to cut free. Now all but two grannies are five rows each. The other two are ten rows. I still like the idea of different sized squares, but I'm going to go at it less haphazardly this time. 

I still have about a gazillion ends to sew in as I didn't do that I as I went along either. Oh well. I'll get to it eventually. We really need to develop the technology to make ends sew in themselves. That's my least favorite part of this hobby. 

I WILL FINISH THIS AFGHAN THIS SUMMER. It will happen. After tearing it apart, I absolutely have to see it done again. The yarn demands it. Haha. Time also demands it, since I have several other projects promised to friends and family. I also want to finish my bag before too much longer. More about that later. 

Wish me luck! Here's to hoping round two does not end as painfully as round  one!

Not Your Mama's Stroganoff Recipe.

I have actually have some time to play with recipes again!! Woot!

This was a huge hit with three out of four of us in the house... (keep in mind Lily's a bird eater.) We love mushroom stroganoff, but it was time to try something new. This recipe also has the distinction of being my first gluten-free recipe! 

Now one of my ingredients comes from Mom's Place at www.momsplaceglutenfree.com. I'm not shamelessly plugging them or anything, but if you have gluten intolerance, they're a good place to find flours, bread mixes, and in this case, cream of whatever soups. Also, the lemon bars rock. I have a family member who has celiac disease, so it's fun to try and use new ingredients to make recipes that are safe for her to eat.

Anyhoo. This is great for getting veggies into your family's tummy. It has 3 types of veggies. Well, four if you count onions. It doesn't look very pretty... but it tastes SO good. I promise. On to the recipe!!

Not Your Mama's Stroganoff

Ingredients:

1 pound hamburger (I use 97/3% lean so there's no need to drain grease)

1 onion, chopped

2 cloves garlic, minced

1/2 head cauliflower, chopped (about 2 cups)

1 red pepper, chopped

1 small can sliced mushrooms (or chopped fresh button mushrooms)

1 package Mom's Place gluten-free cream of mushroom soup mix (or equivalent)

1 small 8 oz. container sour cream

salt and pepper to taste

steamed rice (if desired)

Saute the onion, garlic, peppers, and cauliflower until onions are translucent. Add the hamburger to brown. Season with salt and pepper. Add mushrooms. 

Once hamburger is browned, add cream of mushroom soup mix. I also added the water called for on the package. 

Once you've got things heated to bubbling, turn heat down to a simmer or off if you plan to serve right away. Add the sour cream. It's going to get soup-like, but that's what you want for serving over the rice. If you want to reduce any liquid, let it heat through a bit more before turning the temp down. 

You're ready to serve this yummy stuff over rice or eat as is! We were out of rice so we just threw it on a plate and went to down. It was really tasty and pretty quick. Only took about 20 minutes to make. Some options for changing this up could be different soup mix flavors, different veggies, or perhaps a ground turkey rather than hamburger. This is really easy to personalize to what you need!

I hope you enjoy it! If you try my recipe, I would love to hear your experiences in the comments! 

Happy eating!