Super Easy Paper Bunting DIY

You have probably noticed by now that buntings/pennant banners are popular.  Weddings, stationary, home decor, they are everywhere!  Its pretty different from their original side of the highway used car dealership habitat.   They have evolved from their humble beginnings and can be found made of all sorts of materials in all sorts of designs.  This tutorial is for a super simple straightforward paper bunting.  You can customize the colors to match whatever look you are going for (mine was for a baby shower).  Here is what you will need: 

Materials: 

- 12"x12" scrapbook paper cut into 2" wide strips (each strip will make about 2 ft of banner, so cut as many as you will need for your finished project)

- embroidery floss - I prefer pearl cotton floss

Tools: 

-embroidery needle

-pencil

-ruler

-scissors

-stack of fabric/or a couple of folded up t-shirts    

Instructions: 

1. Mark your strips and cut your triangles

-On the back side of your 2" paper strip make a small tic mark every 2 inches on the right hand side of the strip.

-Going up the left hand side of the strip, make a tic mark 1" from the bottom.  Make another tic 2" from the first and continue to the end with each consecutive tic spaced 2" apart. 

-Now you have a zigzag pattern between the tics on the left and the right.

-If you are confident in your scissor skills place your scissors at a tic on the left and cut to the closest tic on the right side of the strip.  If you are a messy cutter or a perfectionist use your pencil and ruler to connect the tics left to right and then cut along the lines.

-Now you have a big mess of triangles!    

2. Poke holes at the two angles at the base of each triangle

-put your folded fabric, or t-shirts, or whatever soft thing you can think of on your work surface.

-Place a triangle face up on the soft surface and poke a hole at each of the 2 angles at the base of the triangle.  Make sure you don't poke your hole too close to the tip of the angle, this will tear the paper when you try to thread your triangles onto the floss.   

3. Thread your triangles onto the floss

-thread your needle with the embroidery floss.  I don't cut my floss, but leave it whole and cut it at the end. 

-you want to thread your triangles so the large stitch is on the wrong side of the paper.  Do this by pulling the thread through the hole on the patterned side of the triangle first and then through the back side. 

-work the triangles down the floss as you need more room

-thread each triangle on until you have reached your desired length.  

-cut the floss leaving long tails on both sides of the banner. 

4.  Hang up your pretty new decoration!  

 

Party Favor for Yourself

I know this idea isn't all that creative, and I'm sure you've thought about doing this before, but I'm writing this to inform you that you HAVE to pass around a disposable camera at your next party.

I threw my lady love Olivia a birthday party last month and as an afterthought I threw a disposable camera into the photo prop bucket and passed it around during the party.  The photos turned out so much better than I could have imagined!  They are a little grainy and dark, but I love the feel.  I know you are probably like me, and you've perused the cameras on the lomography website. Disposable cameras have the same sort of nostalgic feel as a lot of the trendy film cameras but disposable cameras are cheap!  Sure, they aren't as cute... and they are disposable, but you gotta give a little to get a little, and I've taken some pretty awesome pictures with cheapie disposable cameras from the grocery store over the years (disposable camera makeover in the future?? I'm thinking this is a good idea!).

The best part of all this disposable camera business was taking the film in to be developed.  I had no clue what I would find when I picked up the pictures, and with all this suspense I was super excited to flip through the pictures for the first time. I'm telling you, it may seem like a simple idea, and not worth the extra cash, but you will really be glad you did it the oldie fashioned way, you know, like how we did it back in high school!!

Super Easy Maple Vanilla Whipped Cream

There is a whole other world of whipped cream out there than the one you squirt out of a can from a grocery store.  You can dress it up with flavor extracts, make it super sweet with brown sugar, syrups, or plain o' granulated white sugar, or leave it a little less sweet.  Its all up to you!  There are all sorts of ways to make it into exactly what you want it to be!  PLUS, any desert you top off with a dollop of whipped cream is instantly transformed into something fancy.  No kidding, just put a little on a graham cracker and see the fanciness bloom in front of your very own eyes.    I can't get enough!!     I've been putting it on berries, pies, and using it in parfaits with homemade granola.  As you can see, whipped cream is a worthy thing to become obsessed with.  Here is my recipe for a lightly sweetened variety with maple syrup and vanilla.

What you will need: 

A Tool:  You can use just about any mixing tool to make whipped cream.  I prefer a stick blender, but I've had great luck with a hand mixer or a stand mixer too.  If you really want to get in touch with your whipped cream or exercise your forearms, you can use a whisk or a fork, but if you choose this tool please disregard the "Super Easy" in the title and replace with the words "Super Annoying".

Ingredients: 
-1c. heavy whipping cream
-2tbsp maple syrup
-1/2 tsp vanilla paste

Instructions:
-Put your heavy whipping cream in a bowl and use your tool of choice to mix on high.  Mix until your cream thickens into the consistency of your average whipped cream.  Add the maple syrup and vanilla.  Mix until incorporated.  For a thicker whipped cream refrigerate for about an hour.  For a thinner whipped cream, eat right away!

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Hatch Chile Pepper Guacamole

This time of year I hear a lot of  buzz about hatch chile peppers.  They are featured prominently in grocery store fliers and piled high in produce displays everywhere I look.  With all this hubbub, you would think everybody waits for hatch chile season so they can make some spectacular special dish.  Not the case.  Almost no body I've talked to has a clue of what to do with them! 

Now there are a lot of things you can do with peppers, but my favorite thing by far is roasting them!  They taste sweeter and who doesn't love a little char?!  Well, in honor of hatch chile peppers and figuring out how to cook with them, here is my recipe for roasted hatch chile pepper guacamole.  You can eat it with chips or be more adventurous and add it to tacos or salad.

Ingredients: 

-3 hatch peppers

-3 cloves garlic peeled
-large avocado

-juice from 1 lime

-1/2 roma tomato seeded and roughly chopped

-salt to taste (about 1/2 tsp)

Instructions:  

1. Preheat oven/toaster oven to 425.  Wash and dry the hatch peppers.  Cover each pepper with a thin coat of oil (I like to use a spray oil like pam), and place on a baking sheet. Put the peppers into the oven and roast for 20-30 minutes. 

2.  Remove peppers from oven once they have large burnt spots on the skin.  Allow peppers to cool until they reach a comfortable temperature to touch.  Once cool, cut the stems off the peppers and use a spoon to scoop out the seeds (you don't have to get all the seeds, do your best).

3.  Place the peppers along with the garlic cloves in a food processor.  Pulse until the peppers are diced up and no large pieces of garlic remain. 

4.  Cut avocado in half and remove seed.  Scoop out flesh with a spoon and add to food processor.  Add the lime juice and the tomato to the food processor.  Pulse until avocado is creamy and ingredients are well combined.  Add salt to taste and serve.  

Settling In

After almost a year of continuous chaos (mostly the good kind) and a good dose of stress, I'm finally making sense of things and settling back into some routines.  All of the changes (oh, and there have been a lot of changes) within the past year have led to a whole lot of soul searching and a maybe even a teeny tiny existential crisis.  Yeah, I may have read Siddhartha at one point.  Well, all of that pondering, and all of that stress boiled down to an acceptance of who I am and where I am at in my life.  I'm hoping to take my refreshed outlook and a little of my free time and put it to work blogging about my domestic day to day and other odds and ends that occupy my time.  Blogging tends to be the first thing to go for me when I'm experiencing any sort of stress, but I'm hoping that I can be more consistent now that things have settled down a little for me.  I guess I'm mostly writing this as a new introduction to the blog I've had an on again, off again relationship with since the beginning.  So here is to settling back in, and finally feeling some calm in what can be a very hectic world!