Curve ball? Sounds great!

So you ever notice how you have this nice plan all laid out and you are going to get stuff ACCOMPLISHED!  (yes, in caps even)  Well that was what I had going for me last week and what I was going to try to get back on track this week.  Needless to say, the universe conspired against me and it didn't happen.

Last week's trauma was finding out that my wonderful dog, Bailey, has very serious cancer.  We're talking maybe two weeks before we would have to make that hard call that all dog owners eventually have to make.  I've had him since I rescued him from the pound at 6 weeks old and he's now 14, so he's my first kid and the oldest.  He has been crazy and wonderful depending on the day and what he decided to eat (he's part lab).  He has been wonderful with M'Lou since she was little and has not turned into a grumpy old man even knowing that he's not feeling well.  He's still wagging his tail and sniffing for treats.  We're hoping he'll let us know when he's ready.

Needless to say, this threw my whole week out of whack and I just haven't been able to get past the spontaneous bursting into tears.  However, I decided to enjoy having him here as long as we can and try to keep moving and distracting myself.

So last night I made my list for the week.  You know the one - you write it each week and never cross anything off of it because it's things like:

• Laundry
• Vacuum
• Dishes
• Other miscellaneous projects that if something better comes along you'll gladly put on hold rather than tackle.

THAT list!

Then M'Lou was up sick last night so I took her to the doctor this morning.  We found out that she has strep so she'll be joining me for most of this week rather than going to daycare.  So we'll be doing a lot of follow the leader (with her as the leader), playing the 'why is it so quiet?' game, and other fun things like the 'NO, NO don't color that!' game.

I do have some great posts planned including tell you about the great class I took at MAKE with pics of the shirt I made.  My first real piece of clothing for myself!

I'm also SERIOUSLY tempted to join this quilt along over at Oh, Fransson!  Seriously cute stuff, just need to figure out if I have the patience to deal with that many small squares.

I keep vowing that I'm going to get better at keeping this blog updated.  Maybe it needs to go to the top of my list ...

TTFN!

Life and Cobbler

I realized that I've gotten consumed with my classes again and have neglected my posting.  I'm really hopeful that after this week it will all slow down since my classes will be pretty much over.

So let's see I have been working on a new website for M'Lou Designs as part of my class for web design.  Here's a sneak peek:

I'm still working out some of the kinks in the code and the content, but I'm hoping to have it up and active in the next couple of weeks.

Let me know if you have any requests or suggestions for the website!

So other projects that I've been working on:

Fabric infant activity balls
I've made two now, but I'm working on refining my technique and not directly copying what other people have done ... not an easy task.  I'll try to get some images up soon (I know, promises, promises).

Kids Clothing
I'm working on altering a couple of flower girl dresses for a friend.  Thankfully, it's pretty straightforward and all I have to do is shorten the straps, but it's my challenge for the week :)

Cooking
We bought an ice cream maker from Target for like $13, so we have experimented with a gelato recipe.  We need more practice is all I'll say about that ;) I'm hoping that I'll have some time next week to try out some fruit ice cream/gelato recipes.  I'll let you know if I find anything good!

I did have some success this week with a recipe from Real Simple.  If you haven't seen their shortcut recipes, you need to check them out.  They provide some great recipes that don't take much time especially when compared to what you spend on it if you made it from scratch.

The recipe was for fruit cobbler.  See the full recipe here. 

The only issue I had was that I wanted to make cherry cobbler and didn't want to use fresh fruit and my grocery store didn't have frozen cherries.  So I improvised by using canned cherries.

This is a 21 oz can (and surprisingly was one without high fructose corn syrup) - my recommendation, and something I'm going to try next time, is to use two cans and layer the fruit and the breading from the cobbler (fruit, bread mixture, fruit, bread mixture).  Just keep in mind that the breading is going to rise so if you have a deeper dish 8x8 casserole dish or a slightly bigger dish, it will keep it from overflowing in your oven.

I'm thinking there's a peach cobbler in our future so I can try out the frozen fruit version.

Regardless, it was still really good and SUPER easy!

Okay, back to my class work so that I can wrap things up and get back to my crafting :)

TTFN!