Salsa & When Mahm Comes to Town

Goodness! Time has just flown by since my last post! So much to tell!

I've slowed down on my sewing, but I have actually been cooking and baking a lot more than usual. I did, however, make another pair of shoes a while back. These baby shoes have become my favorite that I've made so far. And I absolutely love how this pair turned out! You can find the tutorial here.

Now, back to the cooking thing. A couple of weeks ago I spent what seemed like an entire day in the kitchen. For those of you who know me very well, that in itself is quite the miracle. But, I would definitely say it was worth the effort, because I got to use my stand mixer, try a new recipe, make my favorite salsa, and bake a cake. (The clean up efforts weren't quite so fun.)

                

Now, I consider myself a connoisseur of chips and salsa. Okay, maybe I really don't, but I do believe there are very few people that love chips and salsa as much as I do. And while a lot of Mexican food restaurants have great salsa, I can never find any bottled salsa at the store that tastes good. Too chunky and mild. So, as all of these stories tend to go, I found a recipe on Pinterest for some salsa. The caption on the pin said that it was the best salsa ever...so I decided it was worth a shot. Let me tell you, it may not be the BEST salsa I have ever tasted, but I think it's pretty great. Every time we run out, I make some more. It's so worth the fuss of making it rather than buying some less than mediocre salsa at the store.

You can find the original recipe here, but I could never justify making THAT much salsa at a time, so I modify the recipe.

     Roja Salsa

       Ingredients:

                  6-8 Roma tomatoes 
       1 white onion 
       6-8 Serrano peppers *these peppers are decently hot, so  
      this number depends on your taste. 
       4-6 cloves of garlic
       1 Tbsp salt 
       A few leaves of cilantro *I don't really like cilantro, 
     but the typical recipe calls for about a bundle in 
     comparison to the rest of the ingredients.

       Directions:
       Remove tops from peppers. Halve the tomatoes and onions 
     and lay cut-side up on a cookie sheet along with the 
     peppers and garlic. 
       Roast at 375 until the onions look nice and translucent, 
     tomatoes look soft, and peppers are getting a nice char on 
     them. 
       Let it all cool a bit, then run through the food processor 
     with salt and cilantro. I usually don't put all of the 
     ingredients in at once. I will start off with half of all 
     the ingredients, and then add serrano peppers, garlic, salt, 
     etc and keep doing a taste test until I get what I'm looking 
     for.  (That's why the ingredients aren't perfect numbers.)

But all in all, I really like this salsa and it's pretty simple. In fact, I am probably going to have to make some more once I am done with this post. Just talking about it has my mouth watering.

 

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On another note, my mom came to visit last week! We had a lot of fun (at least I think so...right, mom? haha.) Well, apart from the fact that she wasn't so much a fan of the traffic and my driving...but hey! that's California! 

The first few days, I mostly took her places that I go to often so that she would have a mental picture of them when I talk about them later. We went to a couple of beaches on Monday. I snapped a few photos of the beach where Scott and I go to surf. 

 

Quite the vacation destination, huh?

When Scott and I first started dating my mom always talked about the San Diego Zoo. So of course we had to visit while she was here. She took a lot of pictures with Scott's camera, but unfortunately, the camera obviously has some problems and all of the pictures came out blurry. (Which reinforces the fact that my next investment should probably be a camera!) I did manage to take a few pictures with my phone. 

 

 

 That's a baby jaguar on the lower left. We spent a lot of our time at their exhibit. They were a lot of fun, acted just like regular kittens. And the zookeeper talked to us for a while and gave us a lot of great information. There were also some baby giraffes, as you can see in the picture. Who doesn't love baby animals!? There was a baby panda there as well, but he was so little that he isn't on exhibit yet, so we didn't get to see him. Over all, we had a good time at the zoo, but our bodies were hurting at the end of the day...and the next day.

Every Thursday they have what's called the Sunset Market in downtown Oceanside. Scott has told me about it, but I hadn't actually made it down there yet. So my mom and I went on Thursday evening. Basically, a lot of vendors set up booths in the middle of the street and sell anything from crafts, clothing, pillows, artwork, and more than anything food. I didn't manage to take a picture of this one. But it was pretty cool to check out.

On Friday, we went whale watching. Unfortunately, we didn't actually see any whales...but we did see a pod of about 60 or so dolphins. Which made the entire trip worth it. They were so fun and there were a lot of babies as well. They looked like little footballs with fins. Once again, we had Scott's camera, and even though I took a lot of video of the dolphins, they are all blurry. But here is a picture of the boat we went on.

Overall, a pretty great week. I always enjoy seeing my Mahm!

More Onesie Sets

So I have this problem.

I've started making onesie sets and now I can't stop! 

My first attempt was successful enough that I wanted to try it again. And again. And again. And I think there are probably more to come. 

I decided that it was time to ditch the ruffles and try something for a baby boy. The problem was, I like colorful and pretty things, aka girly things. So I only had a couple of fabrics that could be used. At least it made my decision easy. (I'm not good with those.)

So I mixed and matched a couple of things I had seen, and this is what I came up with.

I think it's pretty cute, in spite of its lack of ruffles.

I couldn't stay away from the ruffles for long though, so I made another set for one of my friends who has a baby girl on the way. 

I went back to the Mila baby shoes for this one. I think they turned out better than the others I've made. 

And then of course, I decided I just HAD to spoil our little "niece" with a set of her own, too! I LOVE how this one turned out. Probably my favorite so far.

I made a different flower this time. Can't remember where I found this tutorial. But maybe I'll do one of my own sometime. It's pretty simple.

Well, that's all for now. Hopefully tomorrow I will post a little update on our life!

So long from the West coast! ;)

Baby Onesie!

After painting only three pairs of Rangers shoes, I was pretty tired of painting. Period. So I decided I would go back to the sewing machine.

Not that I'll be having babies anytime soon, but I have gotten hooked on making things for babies!  And I had seen this really great idea--once again, on Pinterest (no surprise there!)--so I decided I would try it out. It turned out to be extremely simple. Especially since I just used one of her templates for the giraffe instead of drawing something myself.  

I decided that I would make it match some of the shoes I had already made. 

These Kimono shoes:

Here's the onesie:

I liked the look, but it seemed too plain to me. I wanted to at least add a ribbon bow to it, but wasn't sure if it would get ruined when washed. (If any of you know, please tell me.)

So I set out to find something else I could do to the onesie. I remembered seeing things with ruffles on the little baby bottom and thought it was adorable, so I found this tutorial. I had to modify it some, because I didn't have a serger...but the idea is the same.

And well, what little girl's outfit is complete without a large bow/flower of some sort? I can't remember where I found a tutorial for this fabric flower because I started making them several years ago. 

I like putting flowers/bows on clips so that they can either be interchanged on a headband or clipped right onto the head. I had bought some stretchy headbands at Hobby Lobby (they're only like 79-99 cents) a while back, so I made the flower and just put the flower on one I already had. 

And all together:

Oh and did I mention I recently discovered they now have Instagram for Android? So you will probably be seeing a lot of these mini collages from me. :)

And that's my craft of the day!

If you have any suggestions about what I should make next or even blog about next feel free to let me know!

So long from the West Coast.

(Hubby makes fun of my little catch phrase. What can I say? I love cheesy sayings!)

Baby Shoes

I was planning on pacing myself. Because, well, I honestly can't keep this up...this blogging every day thing. But I went to good ol' Michael's (the store) today, so I figure now that I have some more craft projects to start and hopefully finish at some point, I will be able to at least post about them. Here's hopin'!

A funny thing happened today. I was talking to Scott, telling him my dilemma of feeling like I hadn't finished the UT wreath, but not wanting to add anything to it to make it look girly. And guess what that punk said? Basically the same thing I said yesterday...wreaths in themselves are already girly. I couldn't help but laugh. SO true. So so true.

Oh well.

So back to the promised topic: baby shoes. Some of our precious friends recently had their little baby girl! As luck would have it, I had seen some adorable baby shoes on Pinterest (of course) that had a tutorial. And naturally, since I love making gifts, I decided that's what I was going to do. Make baby Avery some frilly little shoes! Surprisingly enough, they were a little harder than I expected and making the ruffles for the shoe--cute as they may be--was quite the tedious task. The turned out far less than perfect, but they are shoes for tiny little feet! So that in itself makes them pretty adorable. These are called the "Mila" shoe.

Don't look too closely at them. I'm telling you...not so perfect. And I'm taking pictures with my camera phone, so that's not a great start in itself.

In case you are feeling ambitious and want to make some baby shoes, then you can check out the tutorial here. She did a much better job with hers!

And well, once I get started on something, I continue it until I've beaten it to death. So I tried out yet another type of baby shoes.

They're called "Kimono" baby shoes. They're not perfect either. But they didn't have tedious ruffles to turn inside out.

I also found these shoes on Pinterest. You can check out this tutorial here.

Maybe one of these days I'll be a master seamstress. I'll make my own patterns. Cut straight. Sew straight. Be perfect. But for now, I'm learning and I'll get better.

That's all for tonight. So long from the West Coast.