If you follow my instagram feed, you can see that I’ve started doing a LOT of sewing. Mikayla’s wardrobe is almost 100% jenmade and she regularly asks me to “get some fabric” to make whatever her heart desired. Today alone, she asked for spider jammies and a Mickey Mouse shirt. While I have a huge stash of fabric, none of it has spiders or Mickey Mouse on it. Obviously.

Another thing that started a few months ago is sewing for her doll, Jesse. These days, I use my scraps so there is always a matching dolly-and-me set. She doesn’t know how good she has it!

For those of you who aren’t into sewing and fabric buying (let’s not kid ourselves, that’s a hobby in and of itself!), there are tons of fabrics out there to choose from. Many fabrics are custom, meaning a designer comes up with the design and orders a limited quantity of that fabric. It’s always cuter than what you can buy at a store.

Now, before the designer places their big order for the fabric, a couple things happen. First, they get strikeoffs from their fabric printer. These are basically samples so the designer can see the colors on the actual fabric, check the scale, look for flaws, etc. Then the designer will open the order for preorders, offered at a discounted rate. Once they place their big order, anything in surplus of the preorders is sold at a retail price.

It’s a fun process, but also means that I order holiday fabric in July to get the preorder price and then have to wait for the printer to print the fabric, ship it to the designer, they cut it, package and ship it to me. So sometimes fabric appears on the porch that I almost forgot I ordered, because it was 3+ months ago!

So remember the strikeoffs I mentioned? Those are the samples that the printer sends to the designer. Most designers then send those strikeoffs to seamstresses who make things out of the fabric to help advertise that the fabric is available (because there is a LOT of fabric out there). I was always intimidated that my sewing skills weren’t up to snuff enough to get chosen to be a strikeoff seamstress, so I never even applied. I was content just sewing along on my own. Then, I found a group who was running specific fabric for dolly-and-me sets. This designer sells fabric and has coordinating doll panels where the design is scaled down for a doll.

I decided to give it a shot and volunteered to be a strikeoff seamstress, and the results are what you see here. And that’s why I am sewing a holiday fabric at the end of September. The Holiday Round over at K’s Closet Fabrics is open for preorder open from today until October 21 so there’s time for fabric to get to people before the holidays.

This cotton lycra is a nice thick base for a holiday dress for Mikayla. I love the colors and design that scream holidays without being green and red. And I love that the scale of the stars on Jesse’s peplum top and leggings is appropriate for her size. If I had used scraps from Mikayla’s dress to make them, it would have looked weird.

The doll panel comes in a set with multiple prints. I used “Starry Night” and this portion of the doll panel was 8″x38″. It included two panels along with the coordinating fabric. All of Jesse’s clothes don’t have a specific front or back so that Mikayla has an easier time dressing her. This was great to have two panels to use on each side of the shirt. Unfortunately, this doll panel got cut from the round! But there are quite a few other doll panels that match fabric in there.

Full disclosure, this fabric was provided free for me (I paid shipping) in exchange for me to create something and advertise. For those of you who also have a hobby of collecting fabric, here are the details about where you can get it.

Fabric: from K’s Closet open for preorder TODAY until the 22nd. There are some other really cute holiday fabrics in this round as well!
Patterns: Jesse’s top is scaled from the Doll Rozzlyn (included with purchase of Rozzlyn pattern) from Max & Meena
Mikayla’s dress is a mashup of the Liana tunic with the skirt from the Penelope dress, both from Ellidactyl

Obviously, I haven’t been active on here in the past couple of years, but that doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate this blog, my readers, and the food. Obviously, the food. I grew SO MUCH in the kitchen thanks to this blog. We come back here regularly to reuse old recipes and get inspiration for new ones.

If you still follow me on instagram, you’ll notice I’m not posting food pics much more. I’ve moved on to spending my free time with Hubby and Mikayla. And, I’ve started sewing for her. It’s actually very similar to baking for me.

But this blog will always be my first baby. I may not be adding new content going forward, but I love everything about this little corner of the internet that I can call my own.

Thanks for reading!

Garlic is one of Hubby’s all-time-favorite ingredients. Most times when it comes up in a recipe, we will double the amount called for in said recipe. We’re those people. While neither of us have tried anything crazy like garlic ice cream (although I’m intrigued at the thought), we are those people who always get garlic fries if they’re on the menu.

So it’s no surprise that shortly after I made my first batch of homemade Cheez-Its a couple years ago, I decided to whip up a batch with some garlic in it. I didn’t want to just use garlic salt or anything like that, so I threw a couple cloves of raw minced garlic right in to the dough. The resulting cracker is a garlicy-cheesey-crunchy cracker that’s as addictive as you would imagine.

I tossed in a little bit of rosemary just for good measure. I’ve also made this recipe without the rosemary and we like it just as much, if not more. Feel free to adapt to your tastes.

Continue reading: Garlic Parmesan Cheez Its

After I had been sewing for a few months (mostly oneside dresses), I realized that I needed to learn how to sew knits. Babies live in stretchy knit fabric and using quilting cottons just wasn’t cutting it. I signed up for a class at a local sewing shop, Sewn Studio (which has recently closed ) to make a knit dress.

I learned some great basics about how to use a sewing machine to sew knits. There were only two of us in the class, so I got a lot of one-on-one attention from the teacher. The pattern used in the class was from Brindille & Twig and I instantly fell in love.

Made these for my nephew and M to wear on 4th of July. The red & blue fabric is a cotton woven fabric. I used white knit for the back, sleeves, and neckband.

The B&T patterns are written in a tutorial format with photos along side each step. Since that first class just about 15 months ago, I have bought quite a few B&T patterns and they make up a lot of M’s wardrobe these days.

Fabric from Joann Fabrics

I do find that the Brindille & Twig patterns tend to run a little large. I always size up the neckband at least 2 sizes because M has a huge head (90+ percentile). That first dress I made for her didn’t have a sized up neckband and I couldn’t get it over her head! So I just ripped off the neckband and sewed on the bigger one.

Flowered fabric is from Art Gallery Fabrics

The Raglan T-shirt has the option to make a 3/4 length sleeve or a short sleeve. I’m getting ready to make 3-4 of these for her fall wardrobe with the longer sleeve option. These pictures are some of the ones she wore throughout the summer.

Flowered fabric is from Art Gallery Fabrics

Check out the Brindille & Twig website, with my referral link, you can get 15% off your first purchase (and I get points!). You can also get this hoodie for free (which I have made a couple times). Here is the Raglan T-shirt pattern.

Flamingo fabric is Charley Harper by Birch Organics

The only tweak I make to this pattern is to add some extra length to the bodice. M is a tall little girl with a longer torso and extra long legs! T-shirts fit her best with a little extra length added to them.

It’s November. So in theory, it’s time for fall food. Stews, soups, chili. Fall really is my favorite food season of the year (don’t even get me started on how much I love Thanksgiving!)

This year has been a weird year though. Hubby and I spent last weekend soaking up as much sunshine as we could. The highs both days were in the upper 70s and we even hit the low 80s. And even yesterday, we went downtown to vote early and it was 81 out. On November 2. Unreal.

But today we’re back to more seasonal temperatures, which makes me want all those delicious, stick-to-your-ribs kind of foods. Enter this crockpot chicken chili. It really is easy. And tasty. What more could you want?

I topped ours with some fresh avocado and cilantro – two of my favorite ingredients. Speaking of cilantro, I’m sure you’re all aware that there are people who HATE it. We all know someone like that. In fact, my sister hates cilantro.

For some reason, I was recently parusing the website ihatecilantro.com and came across their haiku page. Now, I hated writing haikus in high school english class, but I found these haikus about hatred towards cilantro pretty freaking hilarious. Check them out if you need a chuckle.

Continue reading: Easy Crockpot Chicken Chili

I bought a sewing machine while my sister was visiting during my maternity leave. Just a little over a year later, I’m obsessed. Sewing is a lot like baking, so it’s no surprise that I love it. I even sometimes refer to the patterns and recipes.

So instead of spending hours pouring over recipes and thinking about ingredients, I’m now reading patterns and gawking at fabric (and buying way too much!)

When I started this blog back in 2007(!), it was primarily to catalog the recipes that Hubby and I were making in our tiny Boston kitchen. While we don’t live in Boston anymore and I’m not baking as much, I decided to take a stab at using this blog for a similar purpose, to catalog my sewing adventures.

I’ll have to go back and post other patterns that I’ve made, but this Oliver + S pattern is a recent project that I completed for M’s school pictures (which are Wednesday). I had this Art Gallery fabric in my stash for a while, waiting for the perfect project. M has recently become obsessed with flowers and as a result has asked to wear this dress every day since I finished it.

This isn’t my first Oliver+S pattern, and like the others I’ve made before, I found some of the steps difficult to understand. I have become accustomed to the tutorial style patterns that include photos for each step of the way. I was able to work through it by reading the difficult steps a couple times before proceeding, but if I had started with this pattern, I think I’d be discouraged. It is rated as an advanced beginner, so I would say that’s accurate.

The only modification I made to the dress was to add some length to the skirt since M is in the 93 percentile in height for her age. And she’s all legs. She was right between two sizes and I went with the smaller size since I wanted her to wear it for pics this week. As a result, it’s a little snug when pulling her arms in to the sleeves, but nothing unmanageable.

I found the details of the pattern worth the extra effort. Since my fabric was so dark, I did go over the topstitching twice with my pink thread so you can see it. Oh, and I also used snaps instead of buttons because I hate buttons. And I have a ton of snaps.

I hope this is the first of many posts about my sewing adventures. And I hope those of you who are still reading are doing well! I’m sure I’ll get around to great photos of M modeling everything, but for now, the phone pics will have to do

You can purchase the Oliver+S Playtime Dress pattern here. It also includes a tunic option as well as a leggings pattern (that I’ve used multiple times and love!)

The fabric is called Floral Asphalt from Art Gallery Fabrics, which can be purchased here. As you will see, I use Art Gallery fabric a LOT!

This recipe is fitting since I’m writing to you from Italy. Hubby and I are here for 5 weeks while he tackles a special project for work. While he’s off saving the day, baby M and I get to explore our new city and just hang out again. In all of those months since my last post, I’ve been busy. If you follow me on instagram, you’ve seen the pics of my daughter Mikayla and some of the adventures we’ve had. Here’s one for you, in case you missed it. She just started eating food and has really enjoyed it so far!

Life is good and I’m not going to lie, there are weeks and even months that have passed and I haven’t missed writing a blog. I have transitioned to telling people that I used to write a blog, instead of saying I write a blog as a hobby. I’ve come to terms with it. But recently, I’ve been having an itch to come back. To share some of these draft posts that have been sitting in the queue forever. So we’ll see where the wind takes us and what happens next with this little blog.

In addition to taking on the new role of working mom, I also picked up sewing during maternity leave. I find it easier to sew at home with a newborn than to bake. If I’m sewing and she needs my attention, I can stop what I’m doing. Baking doesn’t always afford that luxury. So you might see some sewing posts on here. Who knows!

This jelly is tasty. Be sure to use a bold red wine so the flavor shines through. And don’t be afraid to skimp on the honey a bit. I found that if I used the full amount listed in the recipe, the jelly tasted mostly like honey. I like honey, but making jelly that tastes like honey is just silly. Who has time for that… If you make this jelly, I highly recommend eating it over some crusty bread with a smooth creamy cheese.

And if you’re reading, leave a comment. I’m grossly behind on responding to comments, but I’d love to hear from you!

Continue reading: Red Wine Jelly

Check out the January 26 edition and turn to page 109. The article features football shaped foods, including my Ultimate Whoopie Pies. I’m planning to make these for the Superbowl party I’ll be heading to. Check out my Football Foods category for more ideas.

The frame around my mom’s front door stayed standing.

November 17 started like any other Sunday in the Beantown Baker household. Hubby and I were up to our eyeballs in Thanksgiving preparations, but we slept in and then made breakfast together. I had a massage scheduled for 2pm. I went to my massage for an hour of blissfully relaxing ignorance.

When I got home, I didn’t catch on right away that something was wrong. Hubby met me at the door, which was rare, and once I got close enough to him, I could tell something was wrong. He spoke very deliberately and calmly telling me there had been a tornado in Washington and my mom’s house was flattened. Then he said “Andrew was at her house and he’s in the hospital”. My heart sank as a million horrible things raced through my mind about my baby brother.

This was the second day after going through rubble. Believe it or not, we had made a lot of progress.

I instantly called my sister to get the scoop and she was a mess too. Come to find out, I really had enjoyed pure ignorance during my hour long massage. During that time, various members of my family had gone through agonizing minutes of terror in various forms.

My dad, who lives 45 minutes away from my mom’s house, had driven frantically to her house since Andrew wasn’t answering his phone. My mom had been out of town and missed the whole ordeal. When my dad, stepmom and step siblings got close to mom’s neighborhood, many of the roads were closed. They parked about a mile away and ran through a field. The field had clothes, furniture, and other debris scattered throughout and it was muddy. It was a tough run. There was more confusion once they got to my mom’s house because Andrew was no where to be found, even though his car was parked in mom’s garage.

While this was going on, my other siblings were in contact trying to figure out how to help. They posted on Facebook in hopes that one of Andrew’s friends knew where he was.

The bathroom where Andrew took cover. Nothing was left of it…

And of course there’s Andrew’s side of this story. He had been sleeping on my mom’s couch in the living room after a night out. He doesn’t remember all the details and it all happened so fast. For whatever reason, when Andrew woke up to the sounds of a tornado, looking outside to see a tree flying straight towards him snapped him in to motion. He ran to the bathroom to take cover. Everything around him was blown away. The bathroom vanity and sink literally rolled right over him, leaving deep cuts in his back on their way. I’m not at all a religious person but it’s a pure miracle he survived that tornado.

The diagrams posted later on the news showed that the center of the tornado went right through my mom’s kitchen, about fifteen feet from the bathroom where Andrew took cover. All of this happened while I was getting my massage. Once I got caught up on what had happened from my family, my instinct was to jump in the car and get there as soon as possible.

But, of course, the tornados were moving our way and it wouldn’t have been safe to leave. Waiting the 5 hours for our tornado warnings and watches to go away so we could leave was agonizing. Then we had a 5 hour drive to get there.

Looking across the street from the front door.

The next week was a blur to me, as I’m sure it was to my mom and Andrew and everyone else touched by any sort of disaster like this. We went through as much of the rubble as we could at my mom’s. Some of the things from her basement were salvageable, but due to a broken pipe, a lot of it got ruined anyways.

Today is the anniversary of the tornado that ripped through my mom’s neighborhood. We were very lucky that Andrew survived with only some cuts and bruises. A year later, my mom has moved in to a new house with her new husband. Andrew has some pretty gnarly scars. I haven’t been back to Washington since last year but many of the houses have been rebuilt.

My dad helped to organize the Tree Recovery Washington Facebook page and a tree planting day a couple weeks ago. Hundreds of trees were donated by nurseries and volunteers planted them for anyone who lost trees due to the tornado (insurance doesn’t cover landscaping costs). The town of Washington is moving on. I think people are dealing with it in their own ways. While my sister Lindsey wasn’t there when the tornado hit, she did lose her home too. She got a tattoo of the key to the house to help cope with her pain. My entire family is completely changed because of this tornado and the aftermath. Some relationships are stronger than ever.

Lindsey’s new tattoo

As for me, I decided to write and post this as a sort of therapy. This is one of those things you never think will happen to your family until it does. And somehow, someway, you get through it. Thanks for listening and thanks again to everyone who donated to my mom last year right after the tornado.

Here’s a video that shows some footage of the tornado, recovering, and Washington today.

Last year, Hubbby and I had a great time hosting our family for Thanksgiving. All 23 of them! I spent the weeks and months leading up to Thanksgiving choosing recipes for the menu, testing them out, making freezer meals to feed the family throughout the week, and just in general talking about Thanksgiving food.

Of course, this isn’t much different from other years. Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday! Nothing beats a week off of work to just hang out with family, sleep in late, play games until the early morning hours, and of course, the food!

Most of the recipes that I used for our menu were posted last year, but there are still a few that didn’t get posted. This Cranberry Ice Cream is one of those recipes.

This ice cream is sweet and just a bit tart from the cranberries. It has a great soft/smooth texture. And, of course, I love that it’s PINK! Just perfect for the month of October and my Power of Pink Challenge.

Don’t forget to enter in my Power of Pink Challenge for your chance to win a $100 donation to the charity of your choice.

One Year Ago: Roasted Beet and Garlic Pasta and Strawberry Blonde Cookies-n-Cream Ice Cream
Two Years Ago: Cranberry Ginger Fizz Cocktail and Easy Chicken and Sausage Cassoulet
Three Years Ago: Raspberry Cream Cheese Stuffed French Toast and Shrimp Fritters with Blackberry Dipping Sauce
Four Years Ago: Cranberry White Chocolate Cupcakes and White Chocolate Cranberry Mousse
Five Years Ago: Pumpkin Cranberry Muffins and Pumpkin Pecan Pie Candy
Six Years Ago: Pumpkin Pie Dip and Halloween M&M Treats
Seven Years Ago: Lemon Berry Muffins

Continue reading: Cranberry Ice Cream