I took my husband's shirt

I did! I took it right out of his side of the closet and cut it up to make a shirt for me. When he saw what I was doing he was like, "Hey! Isn't that my shirt?" And I said, "Yes, it sure is!" And I don't even feel bad about it. Because, the truth is, he has never worn it and it's been hanging there for at least 3 years. So I decided to put it to good use and make something for myself.


I saw this shirt on Pinterest and I went and checked out the pattern and tutorial at Craft Habit.

Isn't it cute?

But, I wasn't starting with just fabric so I kind of had to just wing it......so mine doesn't really look like that either.

I started with this shirt, which I shopped from my closet (on my husband's side).

See, if you look on the edge of the table by the sleeve, you can see the price tag still attached. Three plus years is long enough to wait to see if he'll wear it!!

Anyway, I cut off the pocket and the buttons. Then I cut off the area where the buttons were, the area with the buttonholes, and the collar. I cut all of that off in one long strip. But I kept it around just in case.....and it's a good thing I did.

Here's the shirt after I cut that part off.

Then I tried it on and marked where I wanted the neckline to come to. I cut off the excess so that it was v-shaped then seamed it together all the way down the front.

Because I'm kind of a lazy crafter I decided to use the strip that I cut off the front of the shirt where the buttons had been as my facing along the neckline. It had been folded over and stitched so it would give me a finished edge on the inside too, so why not? And it worked out great!

Then, I tried the shirt on again and marked how much to take it in under the arms and along the side and also where to cut it off under the bust.

I stitched it up and cut off the excess on the sides and put a couple of tucks under the bust. (Oh, and did you know you can use a fork to make your tucks so that they're always the same? You can see the tutorial here. Genius!)

Then I took in the bottom of the shirt at an angle (the piece that I had cut off from under the bust) so that it fit to the bust line and got wider as it went down to the hips. This didn't take long at all and here's the finished project.

It was still a little loose when I got it finished (it made the bust line poofy) so I added a band from the side seams across the back to pull it in a little.

For that I used a piece of the strip of fabric I had cut off the front that had the button holes in it. To make it look finished I stitched some buttons on also, but they're really only there for looks. :0)

I was really please with how it turned out. Especially since I didn't have a pattern. Just an idea in my head sparked by that Pinterest find.

Banana chocolate hazelnut muffins

So I decided to play around a little with some muffins. I had seen a recipe for muffins using Nutella but of course I couldn't find it again when I was looking. That meant I was left to my own devices so I made something up. lol Oh, and I didn't have any Nutella......my son prefers the Jiff version of chocolate hazelnut spread.

This is the end product....

I decided to make a banana version.

I got my basic banana muffin recipe made. (You can find the recipe at the bottom of the post.) Also, I used agave nectar instead of sugar to keep more moisture in the muffins. I find that when I make banana muffins they tend to be drier than I want so I use the agave instead. Of course, I could always just add a little more milk.....that would work. If you don't want to use the agave, of course you can use regular sugar. It's the same amount, and you might want to add in a splash of milk so that the batter isn't quite so thick.

So, back to the making stuff.

After I got my recipe all made, I just dumped some of the chocolate hazelnut spread into my bowl. It looked like this..........

I just folded it in so that my batter (and later my muffins) would have swirls of the hazelnut spread.

Then I put the batter in the muffin pan, put it in the oven and waited 20 minutes.

And that's it. Yummy muffins for breakfast!

Here's the recipe.


Banana Chocolate Hazelnut Muffins

1 ¾ cups all-purpose flour

2 tsp baking powder

¼ tsp salt

1 egg beaten

1/3 cup agave nectar

½ cup milk

¼ cup oil

½ cup mashed banana

½ cup chocolate hazelnut spread

 

 

Preheat oven to 350F.

 

Grease 12 muffin cups or use paper muffin cup liners. Mix the flour, baking powder, and salt in a large bowl and set aside. In a medium sized bowl, combine beaten egg, agave nectar, milk, oil, and mashed banana. Add to the flour mixture and combine well, but do not over stir. Gently fold in the chocolate hazelnut spread leaving a swirl effect to the batter. (To be perfectly honest here, I did not measure the chocolate hazelnut spread. I just glopped a bunch out into my bowl until I thought it looked like enough.)

 

Fill the muffin cups 2/3 full and bake for 20 minutes or until set.

Let me know if you try them and what you think!

Ugly Christmas Sweater Gift

A few years ago I bout a Christmas sweater at Goodwill for the sole purpose of making a pillow with it. Well, since then my mother-in-law has been trying to sneak it out of the house and take it home with her. I've been looking like crazy to find another one but since people started having ugly Christmas sweater parties it's almost impossible to find one. But, that's because I was always looking when it was close to Christmas. I finally found one but it was in early June.

So, I took this sweater....

And made this pillow.....

She's going to be so happy when I give it to her.

It's really just a pillow cover because I left all of the buttons in tact and operational so she can just unbutton the sweater and take the pillow out if she needs to. It's also very quick and easy to make. I didn't have to take in the sides of the sweater at all so all I did was cut it off at the top, turn it inside out and stitch the top and bottom closed. I turned it back to right side out, inserted the pillow, and buttoned it back up. Piece of cake!!

Fourth of July Shirts

The girls made shirts for the Fourth of July. These were really easy to do, too.


We started with a plain white t-shirt and added a hand print in blue.

Next came some red stripes.

And that's it!! Then we just let them dry.

Easy stuff and it makes a really cute shirt.

I'm back......

Sorry for the long absence. We've been out of town on vacation for the last couple of weeks. We took a driving vacation from our home in Texas up to Pennsylvania and back. We did so many things along the way and had a great time.

It just so happened that Father's Day fell during our trip so the kids and I made Dax's present before we left and gave it to him on Father's Day.

The kids cut out the signs to hold up and I took the picture. I had the picture printed as an 8 X 10 and put it in a nice frame for him.

It was funny when we were trying to take the picture because I only had a few minutes in which to take it and it was cloudy, so we kept running around looking for the sunniest spots as the clouds moved.

I was happy with the picture and I think Dax liked it too.

I have more to show so I won't be absent as long this time. Hope you're having a great day.