Pancake Day 2014

One of my favorite annual random holiday events is Pancake Day!  Every year I look forward to planning what new and creative pancakes I can make and then sharing them with friends.  After looking through tons of recipes and reading all sorts of blogs, I have to make myself narrow it down to a final list.  This year I ended up with:

This is just the dinner list

For anyone who knows about my Pancake Day celebrations, you know that this is not just a dinner event.  It is an all day celebration with pancakes for every meal of the day.  While searching through all of the creative recipes out there, I came across an interesting 2-ingredient pancake.  It intrigued me enough and was easy enough that I decided to try it for my breakfast pancakes.

Just a banana and 2 eggs

Mash the banana and mix well with the egg

Throw it in a hot pan and you get a pancake!

I would say it could win an award for easiness, but not so much on flavor. It wasn't bad, but it wasn't something to rave about.  On to better pancakes!

I wanted people at work to enjoy the pancake fun too, so I asked a co-worker to bring in his electric skillet.  I brought in some regular pancake batter and all kinds of fun toppings to set up a make-your-own pancake bar.

Bananas, strawberries, chocolate chips, sprinkles, and more!

My favorite part of this was getting e-mails from co-workers telling me what they tried.  They made all sorts of fun combinations.

For lunch, I went with pretty much the same thing as last year because they were so good.  It seems fitting to have a pancake sandwich for lunch.

Spinach pancakes with hummus, tomatoes, red pepper
and cucumbers to make..

a hummus pancake sandwich

My adventurous co-workers who were willing to give
it a try and enjoy pancake sandwiches with me!

I made sure to leave work on time that day to allow plenty of time to make the plethora of dinner pancakes.  I am not fast in the kitchen, so I knew I would really have to work hard at somehow getting all of the different pancakes on my list made before people showed up at my house.  I had three pans going at a time and more baking in the oven.  It's a good thing pancake day falls in the winter because I definitely heat the place up with that much cooking going on.

The savory selection

The sweets

The whole list is there!

Fun toppings to make it even more interesting
Avocado Sauce for the Spicy Black Bean pancakes
Tomato sauce for the Pizza pancakes
Syrup, caramel, chocolate, yogurt, sprinkles,
and cherries for all the rest!

Apparently a lot of my friends still like the more traditional sweet ones the best.  They were definitely the first to go.  My personal favorite of the year was the Spicy Black Bean pancake.  I could eat those all the time, especially with the avocado sauce on top.  Yumm!

Because I made so many, pancake day turned into pancake week for me. I think my coworkers laughed at me every day when I pulled out another round of pancakes for lunch.  But you know me, nothing goes to waste!  I finished off every one of those pancakes.  And now I will probably have little desire to eat another pancakes until Pancake Day 2015. :)

The 5th Annual Pancake Day was another great success full of lots of fun and lots of pancakes!

Sara's Ready to Pop

My good friends Sara and Jordan are expecting their first baby at the end of March.  Loving celebrations, I offered to throw Sara a baby shower along with a few other friends.  I went straight to the internet to get ideas from all the blogs and Pinterest.  My favorite was the "Ready to Pop" theme, and everyone else agreed, so we went with it.  Everything at the party has "pop" in it.  We also combined it with a bit of a safari theme (which I love of course!) because that's what they're doing in the nursery.  They're leaving the gender a surprise, so safari makes for great gender-neutral decor.

 We were quite pleased with our "pop" treats.  We also had a great time putting it all together.  My favorite part was teaching Perla and Alyssa how to make cakepops for their very first time.  I forget how much I have learned and the little techniques I've acquired from making so many batches.  Let's just say there were a few that didn't quite make the cut so we had to do some quality control.  Haha!

Anyone who has been to a shower knows that there are typically at least three parts to the shower.  You have to have great food/snacks, you have to open presents, and you have to have some sort of activity.  We early on decided that we did not want to play the typical shower games.  It just didn't seem to fit Sara.  So back to people's blogs and Pinterest boards I went.  I thought it would be really fun for everyone to be able to do a craft.  I didn't want it to involve any sewing or knitting, which helped me narrow down the options quite a bit.  I pretty quickly found several blogs of showers where all the guests decorated onesies.  I thought that was a great idea and so practical because you know the baby is going to go through quite a few onesies.  All you need are scissors, cute fabric, Heat 'n Bond, an iron, some patterns, and plain onesies.  We also did some burp clothes to change it up a bit, but it was the same process.

Cutting station set up

The bonding station

Tracing the pattern on the back of the Heat 'n Bond

Some of our first products!

Crafting with friends!

So cute!

C for baby Christopher (their last name)

Mine!  Would you expect me to do anything
other than an elephant?!  ;)

As people completed their onesie, they could hang it
on the line for display

The final products - quite an adorable assortment if
I may say so

It all turned out so great.  I would highly recommend this to anyone who is planning a baby shower.  It was great for people being able to mingle and snack while others crafted and then as space opened up others could go craft.  Plus it seemed like people really had fun getting to create something for Sara and the baby.
And we still had enough time to all gather in the living room for present time.  I think baby presents are the best because there are so many fun gadgets and cute things.

This might be one of my best showers yet.  It helps when you have great people to plan and throw the shower with.

The mom-to-be and my fellow hostesses

Baby C will soon be wearing all those adorable onesies! :)

They certainly are a miracle, and I can't wait to meet this one!

Snow Day = Sew Day

We were the last district in the entire Colorado Springs area, but Harrison did decide to close the district this morning because of inclement weather.  I got the phone call at 7:20 just as I was about to walk out the door to go to work.  Of course we could all wish that they would make the decision earlier, but I was just elated to not be sliding down my icy hill in -6 degree snowy weather.

Plus, I was already ready for the day so it helped me make much better use of my day instead of sleeping it away and being totally lazy.  My first thought was, "what a great opportunity to try out my new sewing machine!"  So I pulled it out and set to figuring out the basics.

 I am a visual learner, so I knew that reading the little manual probably wasn't going to help me much.  I am so glad that we live in a time where Youtube can teach you to do just about anything.

Ready to learn!

I found great step by step videos that a lady had made specifically for my machine.

Video 1: How to wind the bobbin

Video 2: How to insert the bobbin

Video 3: How to thread the needle

Video 4: How to bring up the bobbin thread

With just those 4 videos, I was set to sew!

Needle is threaded and bobbin thread is up!

 The generous woman that I got this machine from was kind enough to give me some scraps to play with and a spool of thread.  So that was all I had to work with.

Google: Sewing projects with fabric scraps

Of course, I got a ton of results for ideas, but I settled on an idea that looked like a brand new beginner could handle.  I chose a pattern for a simple wallet.  You can see what an experienced sewer's would turn out like here: http://alexiaabegg.squarespace.com/blog/2013/4/2/his-and-hers-micromod-sew-along.html
I knew that I should not expect mine to turn out so nice; I primarily needed to prove to myself that I actually can use a sewing machine.  And with that as my goal, I would say that today was a success!  And it turned out that the sewing wasn't even the most frustrating part of the project.  It was trying to get it turned right side out through the little hole that was left open.

I thought I would never get it all through there!

But I eventually did get it all turned right side out.  And here it is, my first solo project...

Simple Wallet

with pockets

Now I very strategically took these pictures at angles that make it look its best.  The reality is that I've got some learning to do and room to grow :)

Lesson #1: Cutting straight lines is important

Lesson #2: It would help if I owned an iron

Lesson #3: It is important to keep the fabric
moving through when the corners get thick

Lesson #4: Know where the edges of all layers
are so that you don't run off the side

Lesson #5: Sewing takes practice and time,
and it will get better

I'm thinking about flipping it the opposite way and re-purposing it as a pot holder.  I think it would be great for that.  So versatile ;)  It definitely looks like my very first sewing project, but I hope that one day I can look back on this and see how far I've come.
As I was sewing, I was enjoying a nice hot cup of chai tea.  My chai tea bags have quotes on the tag.  I thought today's quote was quite fitting.

"Every artist was first an amateur."
-Ralph Waldo Emerson