Month: March 2014

March Madness: French Knot Friendship Bracelet

Posted in crafts, kids

Today I took a break from memory wire and turned to my embroidery floss. Using a pattern from the book “Friendship Bracelets 101” by Suzanne McNeill, I made a French Knot Friendship Bracelet. It features colors from the Prism Tie Die Pack.

The book has more variations of this knot, but here’s the basic version of it:

  1. Cut two 60″-72″ lengths of floss. Fold each in half. Make a cow hitch knot to tie your second length onto the center length.
  2. The second length will be what will do the knotting. Divide it to the right and left of center, then bring the right strand under the center and over the left strand.
  3. Bring the left strand over the center and through the loop created by the right strand (or under, if you prefer to think of it that). This will be your pattern the entire bracelet; I found it helpful to repeat “under then over; over then through” in my head while working on it.
  4. Pull the strands tight to knot, then continue until it reaches your desired length! The bracelet will naturally spiral as you work on it, but try to keep the center strands flat.

Discovering 2014: Pancake Bites

Posted in food
Discovering 2014 is a personal goal to complete a daily project throughout the year!

Good morning! Today’s project was Pancake Bites, following the directions from this pin. The simple version is to bake pancake batter in a muffin pan at 350°F for 12-14 minutes, but you can add more to jazz up the bites!

I’m not remotely close to a morning person, so using a Bisquick mix sounded much more appealing to me at 8:30am compared to making my own. I used one of the modified versions they offer that includes 1tsp vanilla extract and 2tsp baking powder (halved to 1/2 and 1, respectively).

While mixing the batter I also cooked up a couple pieces of bacon and chopped them up. I didn’t mix in the bacon and added them on top instead. You could also add other things like cooked ham, frozen fruit, and maybe even jellies.

I decided to use a mini muffin pan instead of the normal-sized pan shown in the pin, because to me the word “bite” signifies something small. Most of it got filled up! Remember to use non-stick cooking spray before adding in the batter.

Into the oven it went for 12 minutes at 350°F. Here they are fresh out of the oven:

Only one Pancake Bite broke trying to remove it, so the non-stick spray worked very well. I put some syrup in a side dish and enjoyed breakfast!

Since everyone else was at school or work I had quite a few leftovers, which I’ve stored in tupperware in the refrigerator. Tomorrow I’ll have a few more for breakfast and see how they taste reheated.

Tomorrow’s project is Egg Carton Flowers!

Discovering 2014: Foil Starlight

Posted in crafts
Discovering 2014 is a personal goal to complete a daily project throughout the year!

Today’s project was Foil Starlight, and it really didn’t work out at all. This was supposed to be another dollar store craft you see floating around a lot on Pinterest, like seen here. It’s possible that it didn’t work out for a couple of reasons: my LED light may have not been strong enough or the lack of a real lid allowed too much light to shine. It’s also possible that this project is just not all it’s cracked up to be.

To start I used a foil dish from the dollar store, my exacto knife (scissors or a razor blade would work well, too) an awl, a jar and an LED light.

Contrary to this looking like a kid-friendly project, it’s not. There’s sharp objects involved, including the foil itself after it’s cut.

After you have your foil piece, roll it to figure out how much you’ll need to fit inside the jar and cut off any excess.

Use an awl (or similar object) to poke holes in your foil.

I had the idea to use the smaller piece like a lid, but that didn’t really work out.

Left: with lights on
Right: with lights out

Finally I tried making the foil tightly rolled and the foil “lid” covering the top, but all I could get was one hole to show up inside my blackbox (look on the left side of the lights-out pic).

After thirty minutes I called it a lost cause. It was interesting trying out various ways but obviously I’m missing something here.

Tomorrow’s project is Pancake Bites!