Breakfast

It's always a good day when I have time (and energy!) to make a real breakfast to enjoy with Mark, and in this case my sis. Blueberry pancakes with apricot maple syrup...mmm:)

Button Bib Necklace

One of the gifts I made this Christmas was a bib-necklace. Statement necklaces were all the rage this year, big and chunky or in layers and layers. I realized that I had a bunch of really great buttons laying around and they were either no longer associated with clothing I still owned or I'd completely forgotten what they'd belonged to at one point. It was super simple to do and a cute, fun idea for yourself or a gift.

Start by choosing a base fabric. With bib necklaces, more substantial fabric is better, as it will hold it's shape.

Next, lay out the buttons in the shape you'd prefer. It's called a bib necklace because of the half moon shape, so try to generally keep that idea in mind to create a good lay on your neck. Once I found the layout I liked, I snapped a quick photo to help as I moved and replaced the buttons while sewing.

Cut the fabric around your button layout leaving about a 1/4-1/2 inch selvage edge. Sew the buttons on in your desired pattern. At this point, I added a second fabric on the back, a swiss dot lace, with the edges peeking out. Finally, I used sewing tape for the tie, but you can use whatever you have around. The fun of this is that within the basic shape, you can kind of just let your imagination go, and embellish to your heart's content. Feathers, sequins, beading, tassels, buttons, other reused pieces of old jewelry...the bolder the combination, the bolder the statement necklace.

Rainbow food

Dane's started to work on solids, and hence, I've started to make baby food for him. I was daunted at first, but it turned out to be incredibly simple. We have an amazing restaurant-grade blender, and so it turned out be just a matter of cooking then pureeing the foods. After putting them into ice cube trays and freezing them, I have bags of delicious pure fruits and veggies at my finger tips. Freezing them allows me to keep a wider variety of foods available, as I don't have to worry about timing the ripening correctly or keeping watch for food getting old. Below is a current list of great fruits and veggies to work with.

Veggies - Sweet potato, snow peas, squash, carrots and Dane's personal favorite, avocado

Fruits - Mango, banana, blueberries (although this one stains things so badly that I've stopped making it recently), strawberries

We've also recently added tofu, which was kind of a challenge to make in a form that Dane liked. I ended up making a smoothie out of tofu, mango, passion fruit and strawberries that he loves. This is runny when thawed, so I just add a bit of oatmeal and it becomes the perfect consistency.

If you like the idea of making baby food but don't have time to cook everything, you can also use high-quality frozen fruits, or steam in the bag veggies.