Letting go...

When I was expecting my first baby, my mom came to visit me one day, bringing with her this HUGE bag of baby clothes. Cute, tiny newborn clothes me and all my sisters had worn more than three decades ago, a lot of them made by herself. We had moved at least six times during those years and she must have packed them carefully each time, not being able to part with them. I was filled with wonder and very moved when she gave them to me. Now I'm a mom myself I understand. Letting go is so hard. But: here's a cheerful way to recycle those cute baby socks no baby will ever wear again. Mini doll sweaters! When searching for the site where I originally got the idea from (I must reorganize my bookmarks, I truly must) I stumbled upon another too cute sock project: a dog sweater made from a sock. Drool.

Oreos? Not!

Why on earth I wanted to bake Oreo cookies in the first place I can't remember. Even my local health food store sells gluten free Oreo-like cookies that taste nice, so why bother? But one way or another, I had my mind set on them. Don't they look lovely in the photograph? That is an illusion, I tell ya. These (being my fifth try already) turned out very soft and crumbly, and although they taste quite good, they . are . definitely . not . it. Having tried three different recipes and messing up twice, once forgetting to add the sugar (those resembled leather) and once one of the flours (that one came out of the oven never firming up, hmmm, I think I'll crumble that into the fresh home made ice cream I'm planning to make) I declare I have given up on trying to bake gluten free Oreos :-(
That is unless some enlightened soul directs me to a recipe that works, without rice flour being the main ingredient (I strongly dislike the taste of too much rice flour).
What did work was the recipe for the filling, by the way. It is by LindseyKay on Recipezaar. I LOVE LOVE LOVE that site!!!
EDIT EDIT EDIT: Ooooh! How could I have overlooked this recipe?! I love Kate's blog!

New play dough!

This was a perfect activity for a cold and drizzly winter afternoon: making gluten free play dough! It kept two quarrelsome four year olds enthralled for at least one and a half hour :-))
The recipe is all over the Internet really, but I found it at: Coeliac UK.
Have fun!

So: gluten free it is now...

I had already been wondering for some time if Lucie had some kind of food sensitivity. She never yet managed to sleep through the night, and not because she didn't try, but because her intestines where troubling her (or that's what my observations where, she cannot tell yet, poor dear). The aftermath of her first birthday (she woke up screaming, at least 12 times that night) left me convinced. She had always been such an sweet and easy child, and her frequent colds nor her first four teeth coming through had influenced her cheerful mood. But something in her food had. Of late she had become increasingly irritable, her appetite dwindled and she had gotten so restless and hyperactive she resembled a human bouncing ball. I turned to my invaluable Mothering Dot Commune to look for clues, and the allergy board provided some enlightening information on the subject. What if Lucie's digestive system didn't agree with wheat/gluten, eggs or diary? She had hardly been interested in eating any solids until 10 months of age, and that exhausting night it finally dawned on me that her foul mood and colicky behaviour had also started -and gotten worse and worse- over those exact two months, just as her intake of solids had increased little by little. She still nursed a lot and wasn't eating anything fancy: some 'safe' fresh fruits and vegetables, potatoes, bread and occasionally a little plain yogurt. But at her first birthday she had enjoyed rather a large piece of her birthday cake, and when I came to think of it: all three suspicious foods were in there: wheat, eggs and diary. Obviously we needed to get to the bottom of this. I would keep her gluten free, egg free and diary free for some weeks and see what happened, and then one by one introduce them again. She improved quit a bit the first few days: night wakings were reduced by some 80%, and her mood cleared up immensely. After 4 days we experienced a setback that seemed to last and last, and I reckoned that since breast milk is still a major part of her diet, I'd better go gluten free too. Anything to resolve this, and get some sleep! And then the miracle happened. She only woke up once or twice a night to nurse, rolled over contentedly and slept on!!! When we cautiously re-introduced eggs: nothing happened. We also found out she can have hard cheese, plus lactose free milk. So: dairy is in, gluten is out. Over the past 6 months we've been busy getting used to our new gluten free life and although we had many a setback, once we got the hang of it gluten is no longer the party pooper at our house ;-)
Which has left me with a new challenge: gluten free baking! I'll be posting links to some real fabulous recipes I tried, but for now here's a pic of my first try at a flourless chocolate cake. This recipe is found at: thirtyfivebythirtyfive.blogspot.com Baking it, sad thoughts of a life-long diet made way for shiny new horizons: there are thousands of recipes out there, just waiting to be tried (and/or modified)!
Our sweet Lucie is going to eat well, and her home will smell of freshly baked goodies ever so often!

'Vintage' baby shoes

While Laura (cautious as always) is learning to ride a bike, Lucie is practicing her first steps. She's a tough cookie, that little one: never without bruises or scratches and never, E V E R giving up if she's set her mind on something! I figured it would be wise to make her some soft-soled shoes, to protect her little feet a bit. My mom had my first pair of shoes bronzed, and I thought I'd try to make a replica, using Mark Jenkins' cling foil and sticky tape method to derive a pattern. To make a long story short: the pattern turned out very accurate, so this technique is a marvellous tool if you are into shoe-making and want to copy a favourite pair. The trial shoe (I had made only one) proved two sizes too big, and it took me two more efforts to adapt the pattern so it fits her. To my surprise she seems to like wearing them, because when I took them off, she immediately grabbed them and had me put them back on!!! My guess is that she'll outgrow them in two or three weeks, but that's OK, I'd love to make her another pair ;-))

Present for a baby boy

This is what baby shower present you're bound to get when your parents named you Rafaël... Although the final result is OK, this wasn't one of my most successful projects :-(
At first I cut out the pattern pieces for a little shirt, but I ruined them at once by trying to sew on those fleece wings with my sewing machine. Both fabrics stretching in all directions of course, why on earth did I think I could pull that off? Running out of time, I bought a ready made onesie, and started anew. I stitched the fleece wings onto fusible interfacing, medium quality, and then zig-zagged the black lines on. That was a time consuming enterprise, argh! That done, I cut them out carefully, ironed the wings onto the onesie and zig-zagged once more around them. When I finished it, it occurred to me that I could just as well have painted the wings on with fabric paint. Oh well...

Animal farm

When I stumbled upon this delightful (and free!) paper model by Fantasy cutouts.com, I thought my daughter might like to do a room box project with me. A shoebox was found quickly enough (my sisters don't call me Imelda for nothing LOL!). We collected some moss from the garden, and cut out landscapes from an old magazine for a background. With glue and sand we made a winding path to lead right up to the front door of the little shack. The shoe box proved too small for the cottage though, and she kept taking it out anyway, so the project was never really completed, that is to say... in my eyes it wasn't. I guess the concept of making this box 'just to look at' was a bit lost on my three year old ;-)) Laura sees it quite differently: she lets her tiny horses and care bears play in the 'miniature garden', as she calls it, with a swing, a slide and a seesaw. The cottage she just puts up wherever she fancies it, in the window between the plant pots for example. The roof is removable, so the cute little farm animals can stay indoors when it's cold outside. They are also free cutouts, located at Agence eureka (blog entry of January 22). I found her through Meggiecat, who's lovely and generous blog I truly like. Check them out, if you haven't done so already!

Bow hairband

Half a year has gone by like a whirlwind, with no time to craft, let alone post to my blog! Slowly, ever so slowly, our baby is now learning to sleep through the night, leaving me a little less exhausted than I have been all these months. Arrival of the spring season makes me want to clean up and finish all those projects that had been put on hold! As each year, by the end of winter, mice become a real pest at our house. They raid our laundry basket and eat the stains in the children's clothes, thereby ruining many a favourite piece ;( Ofcourse I'm to blame too: because I can't bear to kill them, we set live traps an expell them from the house when we catch 'em. I bet they slip right back in when our backs are turned ;) Last week I found my daughters bow hairband full of holes, and man, was I vexed!!! Taking apart what was left of it, I proceeded to make a new one right away, taking pictures as I went. This little tutorial came out of it. Enjoy!