sock polar bear christmas ornaments.

Why, hello there!

I wasn't planning on making another sock related ornament this year. Actually, I was looking forward to doing something different but then I came up with this little dude and it was hard to resist. Sewing them took no time. What took forever was knitting bitty scarves. I used the bits of leftover yarn from other knitting projects.

Jingle bears~ Jingle bears~ Jingle all the way~!

Helen's furoshiki.

I love when things are well presented. Helen's birthday was coming up and I had run out of wrapping paper to wrap her gift. I recently learned about Japanese furoshiki where people use beautifully printed fabric as an eco friendly way to wrap gifts. There's a similar Korean tradition called pojagi. I found some pretty pink fabric from my stash, cut, hemmed, and trimmed with cotton lace. The end result was a small handkerchief sized square of finished fabric which I used to wrap Helen's birthday present:

Helen's tree costume.

I helped my friend, Helen, shop for a Halloween costume one day after work. She was telling me how she got invited to a costume party and the girls attending would most likely be dressed in sexy costumes. Given the price, the quality of store bought costumes aren't great at all. The cuts are unflattering even if you have the body of a super model. I don't like how Halloween is an excuse for girls to dress as their sluttiest. Costume companies have even managed to sexify The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Ew.

After an unsatisfying session of trying on costumes, I told Helen I hardly ever buy costumes. I usually use what I have at home and make accessories. It ends up costing much less and the costume is guaranteed to fit. Plus, you get a costume that's 100% original and customized for you. We walked back to her car where she showed me a couple dresses she had. She pulled out a brown J.Crew halter dress with texture throughout.

"Do you think this could be anything?" she asked.
"I dunno... " I said, "A tree?"

I wasn't being serious but she thought it was a great idea! We went to the craft store the next day to gather supplies. Helen decided she'd like to be an autumn tree, much more colorful and interesting. This was great because all of the fall foliage items in the floral section of Michael's was on sale for 50% off.

The mask:

The head piece:

Hot glue, hot glue, hot glue! My favorite part of the head piece is the bird's nest with bird hanging out in it.

I make Helen look good.

Susan's produce bags.

Happy produce! :D

I ordered this fun fabric on Spoonflower.com:

I had plans on making produce bags for friends as Christmas gifts. These are for Susan's birthday this week. A super foodie needs good produce bags for grocery shopping.

Jam filled buttermilk biscuits.

My co-worker and I went to Williamsburg last Saturday to graze upon the food stands of Smorgasburg. We stopped by a jam booth by Anarchy in a Jar and sampled their selection of handmade jams. Their most interesting flavor they featured was spiced beer and jelly. It tasted very much like beer with an apple base. I purchased a jar of strawberry balsamic jam and a jar of apricot jam with thyme and vanilla.

Was very excited to use them to make jam filled buttermilk biscuits.

I ate three of them right out of the oven :|

Patchwork Quilt for So Yun.

The camera hides the flaws.

So my cousin's toddler, Shiho, is expecting a little sister next month. Since I've already taken a crack at making a blanket for him, I saw this as a great opportunity to try making a patchwork quilt for the baby on the way.

I started with a specific fabric I liked:

And then I chose other fabric based on the colors in the first fabric:

I scanned the patterns into my computer and made a layout to see how it would look together:

Looked pretty good so I continued to cut and sew away.

Betsy's mad I'm sewing instead of playing fetch with her.

When the patchwork part was done, I sandwiched a layer of batting in between and hand quilted with some bright pink embroidery thread.

 

Finally, I sewed the binding around the edge with a cotton lace trim. I didn't have the right sewing foot so it was difficult to feed all the layers of fabric and batting together into the sewing machine evenly. There was a lot of swearing involved.

A lot of swearing...

It is 80% perfect. You wouldn't be able to see the mistakes unless you picked up the blanket and really looked at it :| I just hope my future niece doesn't grow up swearing too much because of the negative juju I put into it.

Still, it is made with love.

--UPDATE--

Here is baby So Yun with her patchwork quilt:

peach tart.

I made a peach tart!

My co-worker and I went to Demerest Farms in Hillsdale, NJ for some lunch and more peaches yesterday. These peaches are delectable! So juicy and sweet! I sliced some up and made a peach tart using a recipe from the Food & Wine website. I'm a sucker for a yummy crust and this crust is bangin'!

*om nom nom*

peach crumble.

I had some leftover filling left from the hand pies so I made a peach crumble.

I made the crust out of gingersnap cookies.
 

The crumbly topping is made out of more pulverized gingersnap cookies, flour, butter, and brown sugar. It took me a while to figure out the spicy flavor was coming from the gingersnap cookies.

Peach hand pie.

I made peach hand pies!

My co-workers and I visited Demarest Farms in Hillsdale, NJ during our lunch hour. It was the perfect day to spend time eating outdoors on a farm. They had a great salad bar and made to order hot/cold sandwiches.

Peaches are in season now so visitors were welcome to pick peaches in their orchards. They had an abundance of picked peaches for sale.

There was no way all the peaches could be eaten before they went bad so I made little peach hand pies.

I used Smitten Kitchen's Bourbon Peach Hand Pie recipe. I cheated a little bit and used store bought pie dough. Didn't have the time to chill my dough and what not. I always found homemade pastry dough so time consuming to do. I used a biscuit cutter to cut out the dough. They sort of look like dumplings.

These turned out okay. I have the tendency to use less sugar than the recipe calls for but I think I shouldn't have skimped on the added sweetness. I also think next time I'll try to make my own pastry dough.
Looks pretty though, don't it?

Ve's Kona coffee in drawstring bag.

Another thing about drawstring bags is they make great gift bags. Instead of wrapping presents with gift wrap where the paper is thrown away, gift bags have further use.

After returning from Hawaii, I decided to take up the ukulele. Was glad Ve said she had a spare ukulele she could give me to get started. In exchange, I'm giving her some Kona coffee I bought from the big island of Hawaii.

I used floral patterned cotton fabric and cotton muslin. A few years ago, I once worked as a designer for a shoe company. The drawstring was made with laces from shoe samples that would've otherwise been thrown away. A JoAnn's Fabric store opened in my hometown and when I visited, I went bonkers over their cotton lace trim.