Weekend Accomplishments

I made a strawberry rhubarb pie! Pies are fun to make and I seem to be getting better at them. Pies themselves are pretty easy, all you basically need is water, flour, butter, sugar and fruit. The fillings usually can't go wrong. The crust however, is tricky. In the past I've overworked the dough and it was tough instead of flaky. But this time I've discovered the trick! All it is is frozen butter and a food processor. Cut up your butter into cubes and freeze them. When they are good and cold put them in a food processor with the dry ingredients and pulse, adding ice water as necessary. Keep the dough cold until you put it in the oven. Pretty much just make sure those butter chunks don't melt into the dough and you'll be good.

Yum!

My second weekend accomplishment is a finished baby coat for my friends daughter...

If I don't send it quick she'll grow out of it!

The Week in Instagram

Last night I had a girls night with my friend who just moved up to Alaska. She'll be deploying pretty soon. We had sushi take out, drank cold saki and talked about our boyfriends :) Nothing like a good girls night!

Another week is over for me, and here's what it looked like according to my iPhone...

Lopez came back from Puerto Rico and brought candy with him. I loved the coconut ones!!!

I made some bread this week! I got the recipe from 101 Cookbooks, Easy Little Bread recipe.

Just a silly random photo!

My weekend plans are to bake a strawberry rhubarb pie, finish up my friends baby coat, and use up as much of my cilantro as possible before it wilts! The same goes for the bunch of spinach I picked up. I'll be posting some photos and some recipes this weekend as well!

The Knitting Basket - Baby Goodies

I love to knit/crochet baby things for my friends. I especially love it when they give me a picture of the little one wearing or using the item. It makes me so happy! Luckily, everyone seems to be having babies around here! My friend and his wife just had a baby while I was on leave. A few months ago I crocheted a 7 legged octopus (heptapus, technically...) for the little guy before he was born. Now the baby is here!

How CUTE is he?? (The baby, of course!)

Here's the original guy.

I'm working on another baby project for a friend way down in the lower 48. It's the Lino's Coat pattern I found on Ravelry. I'm almost done! It's coming out a lot bigger than I thought. She's looks like a tiny girl according to the pictures. I guess she'll grow into it.

Labor of Love

Cheesy title huh? Because it's Labor Day and my post is about my altered book titled, "Love"... Get it? Haha ha ha   h  a. Yea.

ANYWAY... I worked on an altered book this weekend to put all of my Instax photos from leave into. I kept it simple. I love the Tim Holtz Ideology paper stash! It's very industrial and fairly gender-neutral. I wanted to keep the embellishing to a minimum, but I may add a book marker with some of my Tim Holtz trinket pins and Marion Smith bird cages. I'm hording my Marion Smith stuff... but I NEED to use it! I will make "practice" scrapbooks - the kind where I don't have photos for it or any idea in mind for it's purpose - but this one has a purpose and it deserves to have some trinkets!

I heat-embossed a book plate die cut I got in a 99 cent package from Target. I embellished with a Prima flower, Prima flower trim and K & Company fabric flower die cut.

I inked the edges with Tea Dye and Vintage Photo Distress Ink.

I sewed each signature together with embroidery thread.

signature (ˈsɪɡnɪtʃə)
a. a sheet of paper printed with several pages that upon folding will become a section or sections of a book
b. such a sheet so folded
c. a mark, esp a letter, printed on the first page of a signature

Some scraps from the cafes we ate at...

I also used my stamp edge punch from EK Success. It's so cute!

I didn't get to fill up the whole thing because I made so many pages. More room for the next time I visit home!

I really find book making to be interesting. My aunt's friend Esther published a book called, "How to Make Books" that I've been meaning to pick up. I have one called "Expressive Hand Made Books" that I really enjoy. I noticed when I first started scrapping I HAD to have the book structure in place first, rather than working on individual pages. What good is a pretty mini album page if it's not bound together nicely?

The Week in Instagram

This week was pretty busy! Today I went to the Alaska State Fair and had a great time. My friend and I went shopping and visited every tent with alcohol the fair had :) I intended to only eat terrible unhealthy fair food (like fried twinkies) but I ended up having a vegan boca burger! Don't worry though, I got a square of peanut butter banana fudge too. My friends tried the doughnut burger, but I wasn't interested. I probably should have tried it. I like trying out weird foods. My top three strange foods I've eaten are (1)Freeze dried larvae, (2)Squid innards, and (3)Jellyfish tentacles. The jellyfish were the most delicious.

My Birthday flowers

My Birthday lemon tart

I was bored in the office... This is a shot of the drawing of the airfield we surveyed back in June.

Bored in the office again... a safety brief from the General for the long weekend.

At the bowling ally. A farewell party for Maxwell, who is shipping off to Japan.

Organizing my Instax photos from when I was on leave. Scrapbooking, here I come!

We dressed as zombies for the Mud Run on Thursday.

A view of the mountains on Steward Highway.

Cutest puppy EVER at the State Fair!!!

Sweet goats!

Wine Bar at the Fair. I'm wearing my ADORABLE necklace my friend gave me for my birthday.

A beer tent at the Fair. Gotta find the drinks! Lol

I have a love for Ferris Wheels... It's the only ride I'll go on besides the Carousel. I get sick too easily!

Wedding Album Sneak Peek

Here they are! A couple of pages from the scrapbook I put together for my brothers wedding. I don't want to show all of them because if they happen to see this post it would ruin the surprise! But a sneak peek is just fine :)

That's all for now! I'm still deciding on how to do my next tutorial. I may be doing my first YouTube video and posting it that way. I'm scared of filming so it's a tough decision!

Mud Run!

Today was the annual Mud Run. It's a 5k trail run through the woods, up dirt piles and through huge pools of mud water. I was originally not going to go, but then someone got the idea to have the team dress as zombies. I was totally in! I'll take any opportunity to dress like a zombie.

All of us before the race started.

My BFF, Kyla, and her husband eating Burger King for breakfast.

Calloway, after a blood application. He kept licking the blood off his face because it tasted good (chocolate syrup was an ingredient) LOL

Sersha just poured the fake blood into his mouth and drooled it out for a realistic effect.

Some guy on post has a truck with "Zombie Outbreak Response" and "Heavy Drop" stenciled on it. I was so excited to see it in the parking lot so we could have a photo op.

The finish line!

We had a great time and got really muddy!

I've got some sneak peek photos of my brothers wedding scrapbook I put together. I already posted the album a few weeks ago, but the inside was empty. Now I've added the Instax photos from the wedding and embellished the inside. I'm only posting a few photo's because I haven't sent it out to them yet. I'm still a beginner scrapper, but I like how it turned out! I'll get that online tomorrow.

I've also got a neat little tutorial for a scrapbook technique that I'm working on.

I've been having a ton of fun with this blog so far! I should work on getting some readers ;) The idea of other people reading this makes me nervous, but whatever. I'm excited to interact with other bloggers with the same interests as me. Either way, I'm having a great time with or without readers!

xoxo