Angel Wings Photo Prop

Hello again! Here's another post about a friend who recently had a baby. Actually she had two... Twins!  (All my friends seem to be pregnant or just recently had babies)

I was looking for something to make that would be cute for twins for baby pictures. I happened to stumble upon this darling angel wings pattern and decided I'd give it a try. Here's the results:

                                               

The babies are identical twin girls, but I decided to make the wings different colors to give them some individuality.

If you want to make these wings too, you can find the pattern here. You will need some experience reading crochet patterns and know your basic crochet stitches. 

Happy stitching! :)

Blog Makeover!

If you stopped by the blog and thought you made a mistake and typed the wrong URL, don't worry!! No mistake made, this is the fresh face of "Addicted To Turquoise". I just wasn't totally loving the look of the blog, so decided I would change things up a bit. I'm not completely settled on this either, there is just something missing, but for now it will do. I'm liking the simplistic and clean look of plane old white. :)

Pumpkin hat

A couple of my closest friends are pregnant and due around the same time! Must have been something in the water.  ;)

I got a request for a pumpkin hat for newborn pictures. The baby should be here sometime in October. A pumpkin hat will be a perfect fall photo prop.

This hat was quick to work up and turned out fantastic.

The pattern for this hat can be found here.

Swedish meatballs

Want a quick and simple recipe for a delishious sauce for meatballs? Try this one out. It's perfect to pour over mashed potatoes as a gravy too!

1 cup beef stock
1 cup heavy cream (milk works just fine)
3 Tbsp flour
1 tsp soy sauce
1 tsp pepper
1/2 tsp dried rosemary

Whisk together all the ingredients in a medium sized pot. Cook and stir over low-medium heat until thickened (about 10 minutes), stirring occasionally. Poor over your favourite meatballs and mashed potatoes.



For this recipe I use a half of a beef stock cube dissolved in a cup of water. I don't like opening a box of beef stock if I don't have a use for the leftovers. I also use 1% milk because that's what I always have on hand.

Upholstery project!

My friend is expecting her 2nd baby, and wanted to redo the rocker chair she has in her nursery. It was an old brown rocker with orange cushions. I volunteered to help her out and primed the chair for her and took on the task of recovering the cushions. I have never tried upholstery before but was excited to give it a shot. She picked out a lovely light grey fabric with polka dots on it.

I didn't get a before picture but thought to snap a shot of the cushions after I already ripped out the stitches. 

 It gives you an idea of the color at least.

I washed the fabric, ironed out the wrinkles, used the old material as a pattern to trace on the new fabric and started cutting!

Once the fabric was pinned I started sewing and it took no time at all to finish!

My friend did not want to replace the buttons on the cushions and with this being my first upholstery job, I didn't think to compensate for the extra room this would make in the stretch of the fabric. So the top cushion ended up being a bit looser than I would have liked, but for my first attempt, I'm happy with how it turned out. Most importantly, my friend loves it, so I'm glad she is happy with the results!

 This is the finished chair. 

First Read Through...

My friend won a writing contest, his prize... Having his very own book published!!!! How cool is that!

I was so honored when he asked me to be one of his first read throughs of his novel!

I had a late start getting to work on it, but I've started now and am loving it. It's funny how much longer it takes to read through a book when you are reading it with an editing frame of mind. You have to stop and re-read parts. Search back through the story to make sure facts line up. Make little notes along the way. 

It's called "The Tournament of Hearts: The Librarian Gladiator" and it's a fantasy novel. I love fantasy books! 

You can't tell by the picture but that is a huge stack of papers... So I better get back to work!  :)

Happy Father's Day!

For Father's Day this year, I put together a year of Daddy-Daughter Dates for my husband and oldest daughter. Little Monkey is now two and a half years old! She is at such a fun age that I figured it was the perfect time for her and daddy to start having one on one outings together.

I found this super cute matchbook notepad at the dollar store. On each page I wrote the month, then what the date for that month was. My husband will pick which day of the month he wants to do the date. 

Each date has an estimated price of how much that date will cost. Some are free and some cost money. I taped the last two pages of the book together to make an envelope to put money into so all the dates are "paid" for ahead of time. I called this the Daddy-Daughter Date Bank.

If one date costs less than what I estimated, the change can go back into the bank in case another date costs more than what I budgeted for.

I also added some Swap Out ideas. If one or two of the dates don't spark my husbands interest, there are some alternative date ideas that he could do in place of the one he doesn't like.

I think this will be a special tradition that my husband and daughters can do as they grow older. Plus, when daddy is out with one of the girls on a date, the other daughter and mommy can have one on one time too! :)

Happy Father's Day to all the Daddy's out there!