Straight Stitches

Monday, December 03, 2012

Family Portraits!

Heather December 03, 2012 1 Comments

Do you know that its been two years since we had family portraits? I know. I'm terrible.

I did rectify that this year though! One of my friends is a absolutely wonderfully talented photographer and she did our portraits this year! Thank you so much Leilani! Leilani's site is Leilani Photography and if you're in the Northern Virginia area then you should definitely give her a call!

I love how all of our pictures came out, and what's better we got to visit my old stomping grounds. So here are some of the wonderful shots! Some of these shots Leilani added artistic touches to and some of them I did. The shots I added some photoshop actions to are the first 4.

These pictures are all now hanging on my gallery wall. I have the 3 of the boys in a collage, and I love that they're all against that old wooden door.

I love this picture of the hubs and I. We don't have many pictures of us together, and being as how this month (actually Dec. 4th) is the 10th anniversary of when we got engaged, I figured having more than 4 shots of us together is probably something that needs to be rectified.

There are so many train tracks around where we live, and the boys absolutely love when the trains come through, so its pretty awesome that we were able to get this shot.

Because Harrison was done. Here's what he thought was more fun than having pictures taken with his family.

Thanks again to Leilani for taking our pictures!

Heather

Sunday, December 02, 2012

Blousing over...

Heather December 02, 2012 0 Comments

So apparently I forgot to post this up back at the beginning of December. I am happy to brag that now I'm 218 and that's almost 80 pounds lost!!

Well I don't know how many of you read my other blog, Muffin Top in VA, but I'm going to brag a bit today.

I'm back down to my wedding weight! Yep, 9 years have come and gone for the hubs and I and I'm back where I started.

That's 70 pounds lost! I'm back into a size 16. I can shop at reasonably priced stores again! Yay!

But (there's always a but isn't there?) I am on a budget. In order to replace all of the clothes I just recently donated, I'd need several hundred dollars to spare, and since my car decided that after 160,000 miles she just needed a new engine, I don't have several hundred dollars. What I do have is a crap load of fabric. Probably several hundred dollars worth of fabric.

So its time to bust into it!

You guys have seen the skirt before, but the blouse is new! I have another one in fuchsia just like it. Its a great blouse, maybe a little large in the waist (I'm creeping closer to that 14 size there!), but otherwise a very wonderfully versatile top!

Its a 3/4 sleeve which is great, because I don't typically like my sleeves sitting right at my wrists. Its also got an interfaced button placket in front and decorative top stitching.

Heather

Saturday, December 01, 2012

I Might Have to Change My Tune

Dana December 01, 2012 0 Comments

I've always said I'm not a baker. That's because...well...I've never really been good at it. You all remember my Baker's Quest, parts one, two three, and four. That had mixed results, to put it kindly. Of course, when Mike was diagnosed with Celiac, I made a few ~~epic failures~~ valiant attempts before deciding to pack it in and give up. Grainy, inedible, dense, and tough enough to snap in half were the nature of some of my failures. My sweet, patient Mike has gone without certain items because of my inability to bake, however, because the either GF versions are simply not available or what is available is just foul. Now, many of you don't know me, so let me just tell you I'm a fighter. I attack problems with a honey badger-like determination. Thus began a new quest to master baked goods, which, I'm pleased to say, has gone better than the original Baker's Quest.

It started with a simple boxed bread mix. I have a cheap-as-free bread machine from my parents (thanks, Mum and Dad!), so it was just a matter of tossing the mix into the machine with the liquid ingredients. Success! This was a great confidence booster for me. Next came a recipe from Pinterest for a GF cinnamon roll. I have learned enough to know, when it comes to baking, I'm too much of a noob to deviate from the recipe, so here's the guide I used.

Here's the lineup. Not a terribly complicated list, but there are some items here that you may not readily have in your pantry.

Like gelatin. Now, I did because I made pounds and pounds of marshmallows last year for Christmas. Speaking of which, isn't it that season again? :-) Oh, and that gross looking stuff is the yeast. Don't worry, it ends up looking even grosser later.

PS: The bread mix comes with the yeast packet, so no need to buy that separately.

The recipe calls for three cups of flour, which is apparently the entire package. How convenient!

See, I told you the yeast ends up looking grosser.

Quite possibly the best thing about GF baking: No gluten means you can't over mix and make the dough tough! This may be perfect for me, as over mixing was one of my biggest issues with traditional baking.

I'm so glad the recipe mentioned about eight times that the dough would be really sticky. I knew I must be doing everything right when my hands were getting covered with it. Also, see how I floured the sil-mat there? Not enough. Make sure to spread the flour over the whole thing and beyond. Working with this dough is a little like working with marshmallow cream, but the extreme stickiness in this case can be alleviated with proper flouring.

There's the dough all rolled out a trimmed. FYI, I saved the trimmings, which will make an incredible appearance later.

Add cinnamon-butter-brown sugar mixture...

And begin to roll. After making the initial folds, I found it was much easier to just lift the sil-mat and scrape the dough that stuck with my fingers back onto the roll while moving the sil-mat forward to roll the whole thing up. I did use a bit of the dough trimmings from earlier to fix any exterior holes as best I could, but it wasn't too much of an issue.

Also, absolutely follow the instructions about the dental floss. This trick worked phenomenally! Just slip it under your roll and go. I cut six big rolls because I wanted them to be the size of the ones you buy in the mall.

Prepare the pan or burn in regret later. No really, butter that sucker up like a greased pig.

Cover with plastic and let rise, Now, it was late by this time, so I just went to bed for about seven hours, This may have caused some over-proofing, but, if so, it wasn't enough to notice. Oh, and notice that I've covered the trimmings over there to rise as well.

Good morning! Oh, look how puffy our rolls got!

And what about our leftover dough trimmings? Well, donuts are on my list of things to make GF as well, so I decided to make cinnamon sugar donut holes. Best, Decision. Ever. Just take you leftover dough and gently roll into one-inch balls.

Now melt a little butter with a splash of milk and mix. The cinnamon sugar can be as cinnamon-y or not as you like. Play with it and see what you like. Then I just dipped the dough balls into the butter-milk mixture before rolling in the cinnamon sugar mixture.

Here is everything all ready to be baked. Extra bonus, my donut holes are baked, not fried. Oh, and take note of the casserole dish of water to keep everything moist. I put that in there before I started preheating.

Now, while everything is baking, it was time to mix up my icing. I tried to make some vanilla icing a while back, but ran out of powdered sugar, so I had tried to pulverize some regular sugar in my food processor. That didn't work so well, so my icing ended up delicious but grainy. I froze it, though, knowing I could redeem it one day. This was that day. I spooned a bit into my ninja with the rest of the butter-milk mixture and let 'er rip for a little while. Aw yeah, now we're talking.

And this is where the pictures end because my parents arrived and things got crazy, as they are wont to do when family comes over. Let me just tell you, though, that the icing turned out great, the cinnamon rolls turned out great, and the donut holes turned out great. Later on that day, while I was out shopping with the parents, Mike sent me this text:

"How many more of the cinnamon rolls can I have? There are three."

Which is, of course, a polite way of saying "I want all of these, but I know that's rude to ask". That's okay, I'll take it. :-) Personally, I like the wee donut holes because I can one or two or twelve, but the cinnamon rolls are delicious, the monsters that they are. Anyway, give these a go even if your household isn't gluten-free because they are incredible. As for me, I might have to change my tune and stop saying I'm not a baker, especially after you see what I have in store for next week. ;-)