
For lunches this week, I’ll do turkey, ham and cheese, and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. I’ll also eat leftovers from dinner.
Dinners for this week:
- Cheeseburger rolls
- Spaghetti
- Salmon
- Chicken fajitas
- Chicken noodle soup
Posted in Sewing Saturday on February 23, 2008| 1 Comment »
Out of the ten patterns that I purchased for $1 each at JoAnn Fabrics, here is the first one that I made. It’s Simplicity 3887.
I chose a blue jersey fabric to make the white, short-sleaved shirt on the pattern above.
Here is where I’m laying out most of the pattern pieces. I also needed to refold the blue fabric a different way for the sleeves (1 piece used to cut 2 sleeves), as well as the two curved neck pieces shown above on the upper and lower left. In addition, I had to cut out the two curved pieces with fusable interfacing as well.
Here, I’m sewing the side seams of the shirt. I reinforced each seam by sewing them again 1/8 from the original 5/8 seam. Then, I trimmed the second closely.
In this picture, I’m attaching the neck to the shirt. Before this, I had to gather the top of the shirt. As you can see, I’ve already added the sleeves and put in elastic so that they are puffy.
This is the completed shirt. I’ll now show pictures of the sash I made, but I want you to know that I ended up wearing the shirt without the sash. Also, I’m petite across the shoulders, so this one was too wide. I had to pin my bra straps to it. Maybe, I’ll attach some strings or ribbons with snaps to save myself from pinning it each time. If I make another shirt with this pattern, I might try to cut the neck pieces smaller to try and fix the problem of it being too wide.
This is the sash as I was in the process of ironing it flat. I hadn’t purchased extra fabric to make it, so I had pieced it together with scraps from cutting out the top.
This is the sash after I ironed it flat. I also sewed along the edge, so that it would be easy to iron after washes.
The top and sash look great together when flat on the table. On me, it looks much better with the top alone.
In all, it took me two days to cut out and sew the top and sash. It took a while to put the elastic in the sleeves, gather the top of the shirt, and to make the layered neckline. It’s too wide across the shoulders on me, but when it is pinned in place, it is a very comfortable shirt to wear.
Posted in Frugal Friday on February 23, 2008| Leave a Comment »
Last weekend, I took advantage of the President’s Day sale at JoAnn Fabrics. Normally, Simplicity patterns sell for about $16 each. JoAnn’s was selling them 5 for $5 with a limit of ten patterns.
It was all I could do to hold off for the two weeks I had been waiting for the sale. I even went in the week before to write down each pattern that I would purchase. On the first day of the sale, I went to JoAnn’s after work and rapidly filled my basket with the patterns on my list. It was so wonderful to finally have my patterns!
I bought ten patterns. Normally, that would be about $16o. I got them for $10!!! What a sale!
Posted in Cooking on February 22, 2008| Leave a Comment »
I knew this week was going to be a busy one. Since I knew I wouldn’t have time to cook on Wednesday or Thursday, I decided to do several days worth of cooking on Tuesday. Here’s a picture of my efforts.
As you can see, things got a bit crowded. It began Tuesday morning before work. Very quickly, I hand-washed all of my pots and pans. My husband had already been taken care of all of the dishes that could go in the dishwasher.
That evening when I got home (after swimming!), I began cooking like crazy. My stove has three burners that work. One is large and two are small. By rotating my pots and pans as things on the larger burner cooked quicker, I was able to handle several pots at once. I also used the oven.
Here’s what I prepared:
It definitely was a good cooking adventure. We have had food to cover lunches and dinners for at least 3-4 days. Plus, my husband helped me clean up!
Posted in Books - Fiction on February 12, 2008| Leave a Comment »