Come Join Me Over At Rhythm of the Home Today

I'm so excited! The new winter edition of Rhythm of the Home is out and I'm sharing how to carve your own rubber stamps over there today :)

So grab a cup of tea and enjoy all of the wonderful articles, recipes and crafts being shared and check out the giveaway over at the Rhythm of the Home blog that is going on today as well to kick off the new edition. See you there!

Hugs,

Rosina

Mini Heart Bunting Valentine Cards & One For You

Each year the kids and I have fun making valentine cards to give away to friends and family and in addition to this we decided that it would be fun to participate in a valentine card swap this year as well that will provide us with oodles of mail which is just plain fun anytime.

What I hadn't anticipated was making 38 cards! Yes, that was definitely more than I ever could have imagined but creating things with the kids is always fun :)

I love making bunting and my daughter always wants to use my sewing machine so I thought I'd combine the two together and so our little mini heart bunting cards came to life :)

We started by cutting out little rectangles of burlap fabric slightly smaller than the face of our cards and pulled out a few threads from each of the sides to give it a frayed appearance. Then between the two of us we traced over 120 miniature little hearts onto the paper side of some Heat n Bond paper that we would later iron onto an assortment of red fabrics.

With our hearts traced, ironed onto our fabrics, cut out and then permanently affixed to the top of our burlap rectangles in a semi circle formation it was time to get stitching!

Using a nice bright red thread my daughter stitched on the string for our bunting so that it no longer looked like our hearts were just floating all alone finishing the mini heart bunting...

And then she took each of the finished burlap rectangles and stitched each of them to the front side of each of our little note cards. So much more simpler than mucking around with glue and then waiting for everything to dry! Plus getting to use mama's sewing machine is always such a treat :)

I just love how they turned out with their little red stitching from the sewing machine and I was so happy that my daughter had so much fun sewing them. Originally I thought that she would maybe make it through half of the cards we had to make but she just wanted to keep sewing and sewing which actually turned out to be a good thing because we now have extras to share with you!

So if you or your children would like a little surprise Valentine card sent to you in the mail just let me now in the comments below and make sure you leave me a way to get in contact with you for your address :)

The first five commenters will have one personally sent to you by my happy heart stitcher *grin*.

All of the Valentine cards have now been spoken for :)

Hugs,
Rosina

White Washing

I think I speak for both my oldest son and myself when I say we are getting really excited that our chicken coop remodel is nearly finished *grin*. It was great when Hubby was home and he put in a brand new door so that we could get in and out of the house easily but since then it's just been me and the kids :)

The last couple of days we've been cutting, hammering, sweeping and scraping the walls using a wire brush to get any old paint and muck off of the walls in preparation for white washing the walls. With all of the dust and dirt that was flying around I thought it wouldn't hurt to wear some masks so that we didn't breathe to much of it in :)

There haven't been any chickens in this old house for quite a few years and we found numerous holes in the floor that needed to be covered to stop any mice or rats from coming in and then there were a few larger ones leading in from the old nesting area that required some larger boards to seal off the main room to keep any other animals out that might find their way in. We do have a really big problem with raccoons and mink so I want to make sure that our new little babies are going to be safe. Plus we don't have any need for nesting boxes until later this fall when the chicks mature enough to start laying some eggs :)

Thankfully I know my way around a skill saw *grin*. K and I scavenged through the old lumber pile by the wood shed looking for boards that didn't look to rotten and then dragged them up to the house where we could measure them and cut them to the right length for the wall we needed to cover. From there we took them back to the chicken house and started to close in the wall.

Oh boy did we have some good laughs!! K was having some trouble getting the nails started while holding the chicken wire tight behind the boards that we were nailing up so I held the wire all the while cringing as I hoped he wouldn't hammer my fingers LOL. He thought it was hilarious that I was so worried yet only minutes before he was eyeing me up skeptically as I balanced boards on the saw horses and he was worried that I wouldn't know how to use the saw :) Yup, we are quite the handyman duo *grin*.

So with all the wood work done it was time to give the insides a nice clean coat of paint with a lime white wash. It's good and cheap to make, brightens up dark and dingy barn rooms and as an added bonus it helps stop any bacteria from growing.

Just in case you're interested here's how I made it :) You will need a bag of Hydrated Lime. Make sure you get hydrated lime and NOT dolomite or garden lime. Dolomite is the greyer colored lime that you can find at grocery stores and garden centers and it is okay if you put your hands in it but Hydrated lime is a purer white and usually can be found at any building supply or farm and feed store and it has a big warning on the front of the bag that it is corrosive so when you handle it you want to make sure you wear gloves and preferably a mask when mixing because you don't want to breathe in the powder as it flies in the air.

Using a large plastic pail to hold the lime and a large coffee tin as my make do measuring cup I scooped out five full coffee tins of lime and put them into my plastic pail and then I added just under two gallons of water and stirred it well to combine the water and lime. Protective eye wear is a good idea at this point to keep it from accidentally splashing in your eyes. You want it to be a nice thick paste so don't add your water all at one time or you will have to add more lime :) Now you can tuck it away for the night. This makes what they call slaked lime and is actually the base of house plaster if I'm correct.

The next morning or whenever you get back to it, take your pail and pour off any excess water that is sitting on top of the lime paste. This is water that the lime couldn't absorb. The paste as it stands now is much to thick to paint with so you will want to thin it with some salt water. I used 2.5 pounds of pickling salt to one gallon of water mixed well together and then poured a little at a time into the lime paste. You want it to be like the consistency of pancake batter but make sure you don't add to much water! You can't add more lime anymore at this point. Once you have thinned your white wash to a spreadable consistency you are ready to paint :)

Wearing our rubber gloves and eye protection we got to work painting on the white wash. Oh my goodness this stuff is AMAZING!! It spreads on nice and thick so you get good coverage and even though it looks a little grey while it's wet it dries bright white! Our chicken coop has never ever looked so clean and good :)

Only a few more days and our babies arrives... just in time for Easter!!

Hugs,
Rosina

Making Homemade Pasta ~ Recipe

It's been a while since I've made some delicious homemade pasta noodles but lately a few of my bloggy friends have been making them and well you know the old saying... monkey see, monkey do! *grin*.



Plus I don't want one bit of the broccoli we picked from the garden yesterday to go to waste. So I thought I'd be adventurous and make some gloriously green fettucine noodles using our fresh broccoli as the colorant :)



I started by steaming just under 3/4 of a pound of broccoli. I weighed it on my kitchen scale and it was 11 ounces before it went into the steamer. As soon as it was just tender I removed it from the heat and let it cool completely before moving on to the next step of pureeing it along with 1 egg and 1 tablespoon of dried basil in my blender until it was nice and smooth.

To finish your pasta dough you will need:

2 eggs
3 cups of flour
3/4 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 tablespoon lukewarm water

Place your flour and salt in a large bowl or directly on your counter and make a nice big well in the center. In the well add your eggs, oil, water and broccoli puree.

With a fork slowly start to beat your eggs, mixing them into your broccoli puree and then start to gradually pull the surrounding flour into your wet ingredients until it has taken on a dough like consistency and you can start to work it with your hands.



This is probably the only part of making homemade noodles that really requires any elbow grease *grin*. Keep working your dough kneading in a little bit of flour at a time until you have a smooth and silky feeling dough. It took me about 10 minutes and around a 1/4 cup of extra flour to get my dough to a gorgeous soft green stage. Once you've finished kneading cover your dough with a greased bowl and let it rest for 20 minutes.

While your dough is resting you can bring out your pasta machine and clamp it to your counter so you are ready to start rolling :) Don't worry if you don't have a pasta machine. You can roll the dough by hand with your rolling pin and use your pizza cutter to make strips to!



This is my favorite part. I just love to see the dough work through the rollers into long sheets :) It helps to have a second set of hands but definitely not mandatory.

Cut off a chunk of dough a little bigger than a golf ball but not as big as a tennis ball. Does that work for mental imagery? *grin*. Dust your chunk of dough with flour so that it won't stick to the rollers and with your machine set to the widest width start cranking your dough through. Repeat this step 2 or 3 times at that width dusting with flour as necessary and then reduce the roller width one setting. Carry on rolling and dusting as necessary until you have a nice thin sheet of dough roughly 3 mm thick.



Next switch your handle to the noodle cutting rollers and feed your sheet of dough through the fettucine roller from start to finish. That's it! You now have a handful of fresh fettucine noodles to dry!



I don't have a fancy place to hang my fresh noodles so I use the railing of our stairs covered with tea towels that have been dusted with flour so the noodles won't stick as they dry. Let them dry completely if you want to store them or if you plan to eat them for dinner right away let them hang there about 15 minutes before cooking them. They cook up really quickly! I usually boil them 5-6 minutes but if you like yours a little more al dente I'd cut the cooking time by a couple of minutes :)

Everyone just raved over our noodles so I can't wait to make them again! If you have fussy eaters this is a fabulous way to get them to eat their broccoli without even knowing it as the noodle doesn't actually taste like broccoli at all. It just gives it the lovely green color and the basil that I added gave the noodles a deliciously sweet basil taste. Mmmm so good *grin*.

It makes roughly 1 pound of pasta and it was the perfect amount for all 6 of us with our garlic toast :)

Bon appetit!

~ Rosina

Tutorial ~ Make A Felt & Fabric Birthday Banner

I'm so pleased with how the Happy Birthday banner I made for my son's birthday last weekend turned out that I just had to share it with all of you :)

You will need:

Printed ABC's
an assortment of colored felt
coordinating cotton fabrics and thread
cookie cutter, mug or something else round to trace around

I started by tracing 3 inch circles on my felt using one of my water glasses as a tracing pattern :) Then I found a 4 inch scalloped cookie cutter that was just perfect for the white accent underneath the colored circles and traced around it, then cutting both styles of circles out. Don't worry if you don't have items that are the exact measurements that I used, check out your cookie cutters & glass cupboard and match up sizes that you have :)

Next using my word processor program on my computer I typed in 'happy birthday' and adjusted the size until the letters printed out at a suitable size to fit on the top circle comfortably without being to close to the edges. I used the 'Arial' font at 200 points for the size :)

With all of your circles and letters cut out, stack them together the way that you want them to look and start by sewing just your letters on through all 3 layers of felt. This is much quicker than hand sewing and I was in a bit of a time crunch *grin*.

With all of your letters attached it's time to get your flags cut. You'll have to excuse my hodge podge assortment of measuring tools! LOL. I only had one ruler that was long enough so I had to resort to fabric scraps for the other side *grin*. Not a big deal at this point though, all you want to do right now is visualize how big you want your flags to be so that your felt circles are going to fit nicely and jot down your measurements for when you are ready to actually start cutting!



Now that I knew exactly what size my flags we're going to have to be to look good, I started to cut. I used a 10 inch wide strip of cotton cut parallel to the selvage along the width of my fabric leaving me with a nice rectangular chunk.

With my flags planning to be 7 inches wide at the top, I lined one end of my ruler up at one of the corners on the narrow end of rectangle sized fabric and moved the other end of the ruler diagonally across the fabric so that it stopped 3.5 inches further up the fabric on the opposite side. This first cut was going to create one side of one flag. Once that was cut I repositioned my ruler so that it stayed on the 3.5 inch mark on the one side and slid the opposite end of the ruler up the fabric 7 inches and made my second cut which then created my 7 inch wide triangle like in the above photo.

To continue cutting your triangles out of your rectangular piece of fabric you just alternate what sides you count up your 7 & 3.5 inches. Hopefully my photo is worth a 1000 words and helps clarify my instructions *grin*.

With my assortment of colored flags all cut, I laid the entire banner out so that I could alternate flags & felt alphabet circles around until I had it looking just like I wanted :)

As soon as I had my line up decided I took them to the sewing machine, positioned each circle 3/4 of an inch below the top of each flag and then edge stitched inside the colored felt circles to attach them permanently to the flags.

Since I never turned under any of the raw edges on my cotton I was a bit concerned that with all of the handling it was going to start to fray. So I took my pinking sheers and quickly cut down each of the edges tidying up any stray threads and giving them a fun finish :)

The last and final step was to attach some pre-made bias tape along the top, connecting all of the flags together :) Now if you're really industrious you can actually make your own bias and the thought did actually crossed my mind but I opted for the easy way out and used the pre-made stuff *grin*.

That's it! One fun and super colorful birthday banner :) These could be used for anything to, not necessarily just birthdays. They'll gussy up any festivities and you could personalize it with your child's name to! The only thing that I would have changed was to put on the number 4 with velcro so that I would have been able to remove it every year and update how old he is. Alas, hindsight is 20/20 *grin*.

Have fun making one of your own and let me know when you've finished it. I'd love to see what you do to make yours special :)

~ Rosina