Mod Podge Photo Tray

By Victoria Nardone

My last post was about the card that I had made for my friend Tricia's wedding shower.  Today I wanted to share with you the gift I made to go with it.

Tricia's dad's side of the family is very Irish and proud of their Irish heritage so I wanted to try and incorporate that into the gift I made for her.  I knew I wanted to do some mod podge because I've been obsessed with it since I found it.  Check out my mod podge wedding photo plaque and my mod podge photo box if you haven't seen them.  I also have been hearing a lot about washi tape lately so I wanted to try and work that in especially since the shamrock scrapbook paper I found wasn't big enough to cover the whole tray.

My mom and I went shopping for the main gift we planned on getting Tricia last weekend and I mentioned to her that I wanted to try and make Tricia something a little more personalized as well so after Bed, Bath and Beyond we hit Michaels to see what we could find.  We found these wooden trays that we thought might be a cute accessory for their home.

Wedding Shower Card

By Victoria Nardone

My best friend from grammar school, Tricia is getting married this summer and today was her wedding shower.  I am about to head out for her bachelorette party in about twenty minutes but I thought I'd get a quick post in to show you the card I made to go with her present which I will be sharing sometime in the next couple days.

Tricia and I were both only children and I think half of our childhoods were spent over at each others houses.  We ended up going to different high schools and developing different groups of friends but we've still kept in touch and try to get together for dinner whenever we can fit it in.  I'm so excited for her and her fiancee, Dan and can't wait for their wedding this summer.  They're getting married on June 28th, 12 days after Matt and my one year anniversary.

Bananas Foster French Toast

By Vicky Nardone



Matt and I are all about Sunday morning breakfast.  On a normal day I have cereal for breakfast and he has oatmeal and of course we each have to have our morning cup of coffee.  On Sunday mornings though, we usually try to do something a little special.  One of our go-to Sunday breakfasts is bananas foster french toast.  It has bananas on it so it's gotta be healthy right?

Resources

By Vicky Nardone

Hi all!  Today I found out about two great events/resources for crafters that I wanted to share with you in case any of you wanted to take advantage of them.

The first one is a Google+ series for DIYers hosted by The NY Melrose Family, Oh My! Creative and The Smart Schoolhouse.  It's at 9:00 P.M. EST and you can RSVP by going here.  According to Jenny from The NY Melrose Family, "We will be discussing the "The Basics of Setting Up Your G+ Profile" with tips and tricks on how to maximize your profile as a DIYer.  We will also touch on the optimum way to approach G+ as it relates to our visual field."  I'll be there!

How Not to Make Pajama Pants

By Vicky Nardone

So after a couple successful purse sewing attempts I decided I was ready to more on to clothing.  Pajama pants are one of my favorite clothing items in the whole world so I thought they would make the perfect first item to start with.  How hard could it be, right?  Well, I think the above pajama pants speak for themselves.  I want to blame the pattern but I think a lot of it is just me and my inexperience at sewing.  Let me share the issues I ran into with you in case they might help someone else who's new at sewing to avoid making them in the future.

Made From Scratch Sloppy Joe Ravioli

By Vicky Nardone

Matt and I have been thinking of getting attachments for our kitchen aid that would let us cut our own ravioli for a while now and this past weekend we decided to take the plunge.  We have so many great ideas for ravioli recipes so be sure to stay tuned to see them all!  We ended up buying this kit that gave us a pasta sheet cutter, linguini cutter and spaghetti cutter.  Don't worry if you don't have a kitchen aid though - there are plenty of manual pasta rollers that you can get for between $25 and $70 depending on how fancy you want to go.

The pasta sheet cutter is the one we used to make ravioli.  It's the one all the way to the right.

Our friend +Bryan Patrick Stoyle gave us the best sloppy joe recipe ever and we thought it would make the perfect filling for our first round of ravioli.  To make this recipe, I doubled the sauce proportions so that it was a little more liquidy and I could also use it as a topping for the ravioli. Matt is a vegetarian so we made a vegetarian filling with soy crumbles and a regular version with ground beef.  And it was Dr. Who Sunday so +Bryan Patrick Stoyle came over for dinner and got to try the recipe inspired by his sloppy joes.  I highly recommend trying the sloppy joe recipe by itself too - just halve everything except the meat.

Crazy Weekend

By Vicky Nardone

This has been a crazy awesome weekend!  I hardly every stay up this late but for this weekend I ended up going to bed at 3am on both Friday and Saturday night. 

On Friday night I made my first ever wearable sewing pattern by myself.  I made a pair of pajama pants.  Look for my post coming soon on "How not to make pajama pants."  Lol, it was definitely a learning experiment.  They are wearable but I think my second attempt is going to be much better. What a party right- staying up till 3am on a Friday night sewing a pair of pajama pants?

On Saturday morning, I found a great thank you note in my e-mail box from Deb, the winner of the fleece-lined knitted hat I gave away.  I hope she doesn't mind if I share it.

Summer Purse

By Vicky Nardone

 

Only one more day until the weekend.  I can't wait, especially since I have a 12:30 am work call tonight.

Last weekend's project was another purse.  I used the same pattern:

Instead of making the smaller B View purse this time I made the A View purse.  See my first attempt at a purse here.  I made several adjustments to this pattern the second time around which I think made for a much better purse.  As you can see from the picture above, I used a simplicity 2830 pattern.  I saw this at JoAnns for like $2.00 and after not having sewn anything for the past 20 years, I decided it was time to get back into it.  I should probably do a little more research on my patterns in the future though because every single review on this pattern I found online said it was terrible and confusing.

Matt and Vicky's Sushi Tutorial

By Vicky Nardone

One of Matt and my favorite types of restaurants to go to is Sushi Places. When we find something we really like, we always try to reproduce it ourselves.  Now that we've got the general idea we are always experimenting to try and reproduce our favorites that we've found in restaurants.  Today I'm going to share all of our tips and tricks for making our favorite types of sushi.  Before we start, I'm going to warn you that we generally tend to go for the more mild types of sushi, but if you enjoy some of the more adventurous choices this will be a good beginners reference for how to make sushi and you can change the fillings.

A Very Doggy Thank You

By Vicky Nardone

You may have seen my post last week about the wonderful Easter Gifts we got last week.  Our puppies got some wonderful gifties (as did we!) from my parents-in-law and I wanted to send them a thank you card.  I decided to make it doggie themed. 

I had a set of animal print papers and I found one that looked like dalmatian spots and decided that one would be perfect!  I found a dalmatian cutout on my favorite "Create A Critter" cartridge and I also found a great paw print ribbon from my stash.  I did some accents on the collar and the letters with a silver gel pen and added a little rhinestone accent to the collar as well.

Purple Fleece-Lined Knitted Hat Giveaway Winner

By Vicky Nardone

Happy Saturday everyone!  I just wanted to announce that the winner of the purple fleece-lined knitted hat is Deb from Mountain Musings!  Deb I will be e-mailing you to find out what address you want the hat mailed to.