Avocado Yogurt Dip

Ok, so as part of a "diet renovation" in my house, I picked up some Greek Yogurt at the food store & decided I would try to substitute it into as many dishes as I could. It has a pretty close similarity in taste and texture to sour cream. I picked a tub of 0% Plain Chobani, which has a pretty pretty nutrition facts panel. You can't get that from a tub of sour cream!

So anyway, tonight I made some grilled chicken cobb salads for G & I. I made some Avocado Dressing to go with it. I made it pretty thick, & we discovered it would be a fabulous veggie dip for a party. There is a bit leftover that I'm already dreaming about for lunch tomorrow! Anyway, here's how I made it:

1 Avocado

3/4 Cup Greek Yogurt

2 tablespoon skim milk

1/8 cup finely chopped green onions

1 tablespoon fresh squeezed lemon juice

2 tablespoon white wine vinegar

2 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce

1 clove garlic

1/8 tsp dried parsley

1/8 tsp cilantro

Season salt & Pepper to taste

I just threw it all in the blender & pureed! Don't let the list of ingredients scare you. I just used what I had on hand - could easily substitute herbs & seasonings, the vinegar, etc. to your taste! The moral of the story is that it makes for basically guilt free snacking, dining, eating. Yum, yum, yum!

Happy Sewing Month!

September is national sewing month! To celebrate a month of sewing, I have a few sewing projects I've been wanting to try out. Posts soon to follow, but first I'd like to pay homage to where my love of sewing began.

I'm fairly new to the sewing world myself, but I've always been a part of it. My mom is an excellent seamstress, and has always inspired me to create. She was always sewing me clothes, matching doll clothes, bedding, curtains, you name it - she can sew it. When I go to the store and see a curtain panel for $30, it's her voice in the back of my mind saying, "You could make that for half the cost!" It's great.

So when I moved away & could no longer just pop in to use her's, I decided that it was time for me to invest in a sewing machine of my own.  And so has begun my own sewing journey. The apple doesn't fall far from the tree. And I love that it didn't with me!

Happy Sewing Month to all the seamstresses out there!

Monogrammed Appliqué

I love appliqué! I don't think I have tried it since maybe I was 10 years old? My niece & nephew are turning 5 & 6 next week, so I thought I'd make them some monogrammed tee's to mail to them. It was SO easy that I now want to appliqué everything in sight!

A for Annabelle & a matching flowered skirt & ruffled headband. I added some silver sequins because what little girl doesn't like a little sparkle? I didn't make the tee or skirt, but they were $5 each at target, so still a win for me! She's getting some cute orange leggings too.

Z is for Zackary in a skull pattern & a little skull on the sleeve. He's also getting some sweats with his, but not exciting enough for a picture.

Happy Birthday to my favorite kiddos!!

Table Runner Refashion

Ahhh, I'm a sucker for seer sucker. (Haha, sorry.) It's just so casual & coastal & beachy...all things I love. My Mom made these beautiful seer sucker table runners for my wedding. 

So after all was said & done, my mom had a stack of 15 of these bad boys. What to do with them all? I took a few home with me & the other day I got inspired to try my luck at a dress for my sweet niece Annabelle. I used the pillowcase dress tutorial found on Freshly Picked. The instructions were super easy, even a novice sewer such as myself didn't do too bad. I only had to sew the sides of my runner together, because of course I wasn't starting with a pillow case.

Not great pictures - our apartment is like a cave without sunlight, but you get the idea. 

I added the ruffle on the bottom as an afterthought. I actually sewed one panel on backwards, so my hem was showing. Oh well, necessity is the mother of invention. And added this sweet little flower for fun, which I made in about 5 minutes out of material from an old white t shirt.

Now who else wants one? There are 14 more up for grabs!

A Wedding to Remember

A lot goes into planning a wedding. This I now know. I wasn't really expecting anything else...I'm a sucker for details. My design belief is that when someone walks into your event or party or even home, you want them to look around and think - WOW! Without really being able to tell you why. 

We got married on the coast of Maine - possibly my favorite place in the world to be. I didn't want a theme wedding with shells or anchors or boats or starfish or lobsters or sand dollars...I wanted it to be subtle. So that people would kind of think oceany - but not feel smacked in the face. 

Nearly everything in our wedding was handmade. I wouldn't have wanted it any other way. My angel mother is to thank for just about everything that went into the day. 

Our table scape...seer sucker runners, light & airy babies breath center pieces, white linens, lots of candle light.

Homemade strawberry Jam - made by Mom. I ordered the stickers on the top from Etsy.

Programs which I made - they are actually stitched together. I loved this detail so much!

The escort cards I made with the left over paper from the invitations for $0!

Flowergirl dresses - my mom made all 4! They couldn't have been more perfect. And how stinkin' adorable are these nieces of ours?

And here is one of my beautiful bridesmaids - the pink shoes were totally their idea - but I looooved that they chose to do it!

And last but not least - my sweet groom & I. Doesn't he look so handsome in his dress blues? I'm so thrilled he went along with that idea. And this is a shot of the veil that my mom made for me - and I sewed 18 feet of beading along the edge. A labor of love - literally!

So there's a taste of our sun shined filled wedding by the ocean in Maine. It turned out more beautiful than I had imagined! Now, if I can figure out how to do it all over again...siiigh. 


Oh - like the pics? Check out www.gwynethcolleen.com & www.kristinaobrien.com for more!

The Peony Experiment

These gorgeous pink peonies are the end result of what I like to call, "The Peony Experiment."  First, a little background info.

Peonies are my FAVORITE flower. And I mean favorite. They are gorgeous. They smell divine. I wanted them for my bride bouquet from the start. I can't tell you how many pictures I oogled & oogled over. I decided from the beginning that I would nix a florist, and do my own flower arrangements (more blogging on that to come). So here came my problem.

Peonies bloom in June. My wedding was in July. So I checked out my beloved flower wholesale website. Bigger problem: wholesale peonies cost about $500 for 20 stems. Are you KIDDING me? That was more than I wanted to spend on all my bouquet flowers combined! I almost gave up hope.

But, my dear MIL Alice learned from our dear friend Martha Stewart that if you cut them while in their bud, you can preserve peonies in the fridge for up to 3 months. So this is what we did. We found peonies everywhere! My aunts house, my coworkers mothers house, even the gardens of a friend of a friend that my MIL met at the food store.


Oh, and a perk was that sometimes there were big awesome blooms to take home too. Like this one, which was as big as my head!

After all was said & done, I think I had about 100 buds stashed in refrigerators from Bangor to Boston. So anyway, 2 days before the wedding we took all the buds out of the fridge & waited. Many didn't make it through the experience, but about 20 beauties turned out perfect, and that's what you see in my bouquet!

For more detailed instructions, click here for a great tutorial.

Pretty tricky, no?

Uprooting & Downsizing

So here we are again! I have been a negligent blogger. I've been a teensy bit busy planning that whole wedding thing...getting married (most beautiful day, um, EVER. recap on that to follow)...going on a fabulous honeymoon, and most recently, packing up our 6 month old (to us) home.

We're headed to Hershey, Pennsylvania. I've never been there, but people tell me that it's nice & smells like chocolate. How bad can a place be that produces 1 million pounds of chocolate a DAY?

We'll be moving out of our 2000 square foot house into a 1000 square foot apartment while we sell our house & decide on where our next one should be. Not just downsizing. Halfsizing. We'll have a lot in storage, but I'm kind of excited. When G and I first moved to NH, we rented a tiny 1.5 bedroom apartment. I could clean it top to bottom in less than an hour. I could vacuum the entire place without unplugging the vacuum cleaner! It was a life of leisure with free time for weekend adventures & projects. I'm not looking forward to leaving my beloved NH home behind, but as most big houses, she was a needy thing, and I am excited to get acquainted with her new, low maintenance, temporary replacement.

Pictures & stories are promised to follow! Stay tuned...

Pillow love

Do you have any idea how much a ring bearer pillow costs these days? For anything remotely interesting, it's upwards of $60! Absurd, I know. And clearly I am not willing to pay a dime for something that I think I can do myself. So I whipped up this little cutie this weekend for a total cost of about $3.

Ruffles, as delicious and intricate that they appear, are super easy to make. There are a hundred tutorials about how to do them, so I'll assume you all know how to Google & be brief. But basically you sew a single stitch down a long piece of fabric. Then, holding one end of the thread (only the top stitch side, not both) you scrunch down the fabric.

I whipped up 5 rows of ruffles & pinned them onto my pillow fabric.

Then, sew your ruffles on. I love little details, so I decided to use contrasting thread (navy thread, pink fabric) This made it nearly impossible to sew them on with the machine without two lines of thread showing; so I sewed mine on by hand. If you use the same color thread as the fabric, I think machine sewing would look fine. Then, just sew together, stuff, done. I also tacked a ribbon on the top of mine, you know...to tie those ever important fake rings to. (2 year olds should never be in charge of fine jewelry.)

My cutie pitutie nephew-to-be Brycie will be carrying this down the aisle...lets hope he's feeling in touch with his feminine side that day!

Good finds

So today I found two great cooking related finds, that made me happy enough that I had to share them with my web followers...
1. Homemade taco seasoning mix. I am a big fan of anytime I can make dinner without the help of processed foods. I guess I just like the thought that I know exactly every ingredient that goes into my food. Anyway, I found this great recipe tonight to make homemade taco seasoning, to use instead of those store bought packets. I made some up tonight & got rave reviews from G...score! I had to agree. here's the link.

2. My fellow female coworkers & I like to refer to our crock pots as our "wives." You know, because they cook dinner for us while we're at work! We'll say to each other, "So Jessi...what is your wife cooking for you tonight?" Clever, no? Anyway, today I found this blog with a new crockpot recipe posted for every day of the year! Need I say more?

No turning back now!

The moment I have been waiting for has arrived. The three magical words every DIY bride wants to hear. After weeks of research, designing, printing, cuting, gluing, stamping (& of course, bedazzling), the invitations are...wait for it...IN THE MAIL!

I have to say that even though I significantly underestimated the time it took to me to put 80 invitations together from scratch, I loved that I handmade each one. As cheesy as it sounds, as I did my final "quality control check" (as G called it) & placed each one in its envelope, I couldn't help but feel like I was sending something extra to all of our guests. Something you can't buy in a store. And that's what I hope our wedding turns out to be; handmade, and something that couldn't possibly be bought in a store.

On a lighter note: Nothing says "there's no turning back now" than inviting 150 people to watch you get married. (Grin)