Book Club Treats

I hosted book club at my house last night.  It’s always fun getting together but as of yesterday morning I had no idea what I was going to make.  I also knew that I wanted it to be quick to make but still yummy because I would have to do the grocery shopping and cooking with my two boys in tow.  I ended up googling Book Club Appetizers and a ton of recipes popped up. I decided on some fun fall recipes. 

(Please excuse the picture quality as one of my girlfriends had to remind me last minute that I should take some so I snapped a few real quick with my IPhone.  Recipe credits are at the bottom of this post.)

Here’s what I made:

Pumpkin Pie Bites

2 refrigerated ready-to roll pie crusts

8 oz. cream cheese, room temperature
1/2 cup sugar
1 cup canned pumpkin
3 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice
Pumpkin-shaped cookie cutter

Optional
1/2 cup chocolate morsels
vegetable oil
re-sealable plastic bags

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Use a circle cookie cutter or small glass to cut  shapes for each pie crust.
Press dough shapes into a 24 cup mini muffin tray. Apply egg whites from one egg to the top edges of each pie. (I skipped this step)
Mix cream cheese, sugar, canned pumpkin, remaining 2 eggs, vanilla and pumpkin pie spice together until thoroughly combined.
Spoon mixture into each pumpkin-shaped pie crust.
Bake for 12-15 minutes.
Remove pies to cool.

Makes 24 pies. Keep refrigerated.

To decorate, melt chocolate in a heat-proof bowl in the microwave on medium. Heat in 30 second intervals, stirring in between until melted. Add a little vegetable oil to make the chocolate more fluid. Transfer to a re-sealable plastic bag and cut the corner off. Drizzle or draw jack-o-lantern faces on pies.

 

Cream Cheese Toffee Apple Dip

8oz cream cheese

1/2 cup brown sugar

1/4 cup white sugar

2 tsp vanilla (Please not that the original recipe says 2Tbs That is way too much!)

1/2 bag of toffee bits

Whip softened cream cheese until smooth. Mix in sugars, vanilla, and toffee bits.  Chill. Serve up with apple slices.

 

Cranberry and White Chocolate Cookies

This is actually a recipe that I have had for a while.  I love it!  I usually makes these at Christmas because of the white and red.

Makes: 30 Cookies Time: 30 minutes

1 cup all-purpose flour

½ tsp. baking powder

½ tsp. salt

1 cup quick-cooking oats

9 Tbs. soft butter

½ cup soft dark brown sugar

½ cup sugar

1 egg

1 tsp. vanilla extract

½ cup dried cranberries

½ cup roughly chopped pecans

¾ cup white chocolate chips

1. Preheat oven to 350°. Measure flour, baking powder, salt and oats into a bowl. Put butter and sugars into another bowl and beat together until creamy. Then beat in egg and vanilla extract.

2. Beat in the flour mixture, then cranberries, pecans and chocolate chips.

3. Roll tablespoonfuls of dough into balls, then place them on your cookie sheet and squish down with a fork. Bake for 15 minutes until cookies are tinged a pale gold. Remove to cool.

Happy Baking!

Recipe Credits are linked with the names below.

Pumpkin Pie Bites

Cream Cheese Toffee Apple Dip

Cranberry and White Chocolate Cookies

Happy Home by Jennifer Paganelli

 

So I was having one of those days.  Nothing major, just a bunch of little things that kept adding up.

* Potty training accidents with both of my boys.

* I took 6 kids to the last free movie of the summer and it was a madhouse.

* I broke off half of one of my molars during the movie.

* It took me 3 hours to finally get through to my dentist and when I did they told me they couldn’t “squeeze” me in until next week!

* Had great plans for trying to get a bunch of laundry done and was getting nowhere.

Ya know all the typical mom stuff and I was feeling bleck!

Then… this arrived in the mail!

Happy Home by Jennifer Paganelli, creator of Sis Boom Fabrics.

I won it a couple of weeks ago in a giveaway on Living with Punks.

Jennifer was even kind enough to sign it to me.  Bonus, she also sent along some of this lovely fabric!  Yippee!!!!

My kids wanted to play in the yard so I sat right down in the grass and flipped through all of the gorgeous pages in this book.

I want to live in this house and I think I need this quilt like right now!

Now to decide what to make with the lovey fabric that Jennifer sent me.

At first I thought maybe a cute ruffle pillow.

Then I saw these great totes and I knew that I wanted to make one.  I’m a sucker for a new bag.

Go check out this lovely book and happy sewing!

P.S. Then to lighten up my mood a little bit more, I looked up to see this!

Donut Dresses

O.K. so I’m sure you’re wondering, “What the heck is a donut dress?”  Let me explain. 

My mom lives on an island off the coast of Rhode Island and among other things, she owns a donut shop.  My grandmother started making the donuts 59 years ago and we’re still making them.  

As they say in these parts… they are “WICKED”  good! 

They’re called Payne’s Killer Donuts and the logo is this little scary looking donut guy.

I grabbed a killer donut shirt and some knit fabric scraps and started planning a dress.

I was inspired by Ashley’s lovely knit dresses over at Lil Blue Boo. Any of you that read her blog also now that she loves donuts so I figured that this was a good match.

I love the exposed serger seams and now that I finally have a serger I was psyched to give it a go.

I also lucked out because I found an old cover-up with a lettuce hem around the bottom and I was able to use that for the sleeves.  I know that I should be able to make this myself with my serger but I haven’t tried it yet.

The girls love the dresses because they are colorful and the knit fabric makes them super comfy too. 

Check out my other posts about sewing with knits HERE and HERE.

Happy Sewing!

P.S. Here is my mom acting like a nut while I’m trying to take donuts pictures!

Boys’ Knit Tanks

I found this real nice tank top pattern from Fish Sticks.  It is really simple and easy to follow and best of all, it’s FREE!  The tank pattern ranges in size from 12 months to 5t so you can get a lot of use out of it too.  Along with their blog, Fish Sticks has a nice pattern shop full of things I want to try.  Go check them out.

Review: If you have never sewn with knits before, this would be a great pattern to start with.  It is very straightforward and not to “wordy”.  Since there are no sleeves it makes it very easy to sew up.

I’m having a hard time judging the sizing on the pattern.  My boys are three but typically wear a size 5.  I printed out the pattern for the size 5 and could tell that it was going to be way too long so I just cut off a bit.  I think that next time I might make it a little wider too. 

Overall, I am very happy with the end results and my boys were happy that I made something for them as I sew things for their sisters more often.  They even ask me for their striped shirt.  It’s nice when they actually like what you make for them!

Thanks to Fish Sticks for the free pattern and I plan to try out some of their for purchase patterns soon.

 

If you would like to give knits a try here are a few project suggestions:

Free Tutorials:

Fish Sticks Blog

Made

I Am Momma Hear Me Roar

From An Igloo

Patterns for Sale:

Fish Sticks

Lil Blue Boo

Carla C

Mod Kid

Train to Crazy

Lille Skapet

Happy Sewing!

P. S. You’ve got to love photo shoots with boys.

Hey we’re pretty funny!

 

Word!

Seriously?!!!

And this would be why I don't sew when the kids are awake!

My stepmother asked me to hem some pants for her. Easy enough right? So I trimmed off some of the length, serged the bottoms, and folded up and sewed the hem. One problem, I never turned the pants inside out so the cuffs are folded up to the outside!  Ughhh!

Looks like I have a date with the seam ripper!

At least I get to sit outside and look at this cuteness while I seam rip!

 P.S. I'm posting from my phone so we'll see how this post turns out.

P.P.S. I ended up needing to go on my computer to move the photos around because they were all jumbled up.  They are still blurry for some reason.  Final verdict on posting from your phone: good in a pinch but not the best way to go! :)

Bucket Hats and Boys Shorts

I wanted to share a couple of cute beginner patterns/tutorials with you that are great for the summer season.  Truth be told, I actually made these last year but never got around to posting about them.  So here goes…

Bucket Hats

and Boys Shorts.  (Actually both of these patterns are great for girls or boys!)

The bucket hats were made using a pattern from You Can Make This.

They are reversible with patchwork on one side and a solid print on the other.  The pattern gives a really cool step by step technique for making the patchwork.  Even a beginner could do it!  In fact when my friend Caryn was learning to sew last year this was one of the first patterns that she tried.

The shorts were made using a free tutorial from Dana at Made.  Dana’s original tutorial was for pants and then she gives some simple steps for modifying them to be shorts.  How nice is that?!!!

Happy Sewing!