Wet Wednesday

   My husband has been on vacation so this will be a short post. We woke up to an awesome storm this morning! Complete with bright red sky one minute and then green the next...I wasn't able to get a picture of the sky itself but I did get a picture of everything red because of the red sky.

   We have a squirrel that hangs around our house, he's been around for a while...at least since before Pea was born. He's not to fond of bad weather, whenever we get bad weather he runs to this little house. 

   Today is WIP Wednesday, I have two blankets in the works. The first one is a corner to corner lapghan made with two different shades of purple and black for my dad for Father's Day.....I still have a long way to go!

   The second blanket I've been working on every now and again for the past 5 months, it's a weather blanket.

   What's a weather blanket you ask? Well I'll tell you. Everyday, around the same time I take note of what the weather is doing in my notebook and then I crochet with the corresponding yarn color I have chosen.

   For clear, sunny days the color is yellow, partly cloudy; light blue, overcast; light gray, drizzles; blue, rain; dark blue, thunderstorms; charcoal, hail/flurries/sleet/snow; white. Yes, I know, I'm a lot behind but I like working on this blanket became I can stop and then easily start it back up.

   I'm also drawing up a graph to make Mars a Pikachu blanket for Christmas, I'm hoping to get it done early because I would like to make one for the other kids as well....hopefully I don't get sick of doing it lol 

It looks cute so far though :)

xxoo

Yummy in my tummy Tuesday; crawfish étouffée

    This past month my family and I have been boiling and eating a lot of crawfish! At the end of the day, when we've all had our fill, we put the remaining tails in freezer bags and throw them in the freezer (either peeled or in the shell) to use for future meals. Gumbo, jambalaya, fettuccine, étouffée, etc.,. My, soon to be married, little brother came for a visit yesterday and my husband made the suggestion of cooking étouffée for dinner. Beyond awesome idea for him! Which gave me the idea of making a tiny little tutorial for all of y'all.

      For this recipe we used 6 lbs of already boiled crawfish (boiled in Zatarans crawfish, crab and shrimp boil, you can use whatever boiling spice you prefer, we like ours spicy so that's what we use), that we had frozen. This made a lot! I normally would only use 3 lbs for our family but I wanted to make sure we had enough and with 3 lbs of crawfish it usually serves 8 or 9. The batch I made last night was enough for all 7 of us, for lunch today....maybe for dinner lol and the to freeze for a different night.

    Doesn't it look yummy? It is, trust me. It's so good you'll want to lick the plate!

Crawfish étouffée 

4 sticks of butter

1 large green bell pepper, diced

3 medium onions, diced

3 bay leaves

Garlic, a lot of it probably about 1/4 cup

6 cups of water

6 tbsp of flour

Salt to taste 

Cayenne to taste

Cooked rice

Diced green onion (optional)

Melt the butter on medium high heat then sauté onions and bell pepper for about 10-15 minutes.

    Once your veggies are nice and tender add the crawfish, garlic and bay leaves, stir well so that the crawfish gets covered in everything.

Reduce heat to medium and stir occasionally for the next 10 minutes.

   Meanwhile dissolve the flour in the water and then add to crawfish mix.

Turn your heat down again to low medium and let simmer to thicken up, about 10 minutes. Add your salt and cayenne to taste. Serve either over or under rice. If you choose you can put green onions in it you can either put them in while it's simmering or when your serving...either way it's delicious! How about another look at the deliciousness?

   We like to also put freshly grated Parmesan cheese on top...but that's just us :) serve with a salad to make it healthier (you know cause of all that butter lol) and a nice glass of white wine. I like the Chateau Ste Michelle sweet Riesling. I hope y'all enjoy.

xxoo

Yarn stash organizer

    Yup. You read that right. Yarn. Stash. Organizer. I found a couple organizers that Dedri, from over at Look at What I Made, made and I thought they were both super cute and knew I had to make one for my stash. I have adapted her organizer slightly....so that I wouldn't have to by a new ink cartridge and more printer paper...that and for some reason my printer hasn't been liking my computer....anyways....Dedri is so awesome she gave me permission to share my adaptation with y'all.

    Now I haven't finished putting my yarn in it...I've really only put my yarn that I got for Mother's Day into it but I wanted to share with y'all anyway. For my organizer, I decided to use a sketchbook and after standing in Wal-mart's scrap booking aisle for what seemed like forever, I decided on using sugar skull duct tape to decorate the outside and got a permanent green (Wasabi) paint marker to use to write on the front of it. Armed with all of these things and my trusty heart hole punch, I set out to make my yarn stash organizer.

   Cut a piece of tape that is about two inches longer then the edges of the book.

   Place the first piece so that it hangs over the top and bottom by an inch and a half and the side by an inch. Cut a one inch slit into the side of the tape, you will be folding the longer piece over onto the inside of the book.

 After folding the longer piece onto the book, cut the shorter pieces so that they are even with the long side of the book and then fold them over as well.





Since I was using a duct tape that had a big design on it I had to make sure the pictures on each piece matched up.

 I did the binding by cutting a half a cm piece,

 and carefully placing next to the paper.

  Cut a the ends into a rectangle small enough to fit into the opening of the binding, fold the end over by a half a cm and then carefully tuck it inside (I used a toothpick to push it in there).

Then continue the previous steps on the other side.

Came out so cute! Don't you agree?! There were other kinds of duct tape and stickers and stuff so you can decorate anyway you want. I did write down a bunch of different sayings/handwritings to figure out what I wanted to write on it. But I'm happy with how it came out.

I put a tally mark under the color so that when I start going thru my stash I can put more tallies so I will know how many skeins I have.

I also used a little bit of Elmer's to glue down the wrapper so I would have the brand and washing info...I think I will be getting some double sided tape in the near future to do this instead. Recap? I love it & I can't wait to add all of my yarn to it!!!
xxoo Crystal

Friday Find

     I wanted to post this find with my version of this Friday's Find but unfortunately life happened and I was unable to do the project yesterday. That life would be my husband and stepson getting the stomach virus and I don't know about other husbands, but mine is a big baby when he's sick. I do, however plan on doing my project tomorrow sooooo afterwards I will post it.

    This weeks Friday Find is a yarn organizer by Dedri over at Look at What I Made. I LOVE everything about her organizer! From the heart hole punch, how she decorated the outside of the binder and even the colors of her yarn in her stash :) I'm excited to do this with my own stash...thinking I might do one for all my projects as well! But that's a whole other post.
xxoo Crystal

First Friday Find

     These past couple weeks I've been wracking my brain trying to come up with ways to be successful with this blogging thing. You know, being able to blog about things I'm passionate about without overwhelming myself. I mean yes I am a stay at home mom, but I also have to bring our children to school and to ABA everyday during the week. I enjoy sharing, crocheting, cooking and looking over pinterest, so I'm thinking on Fridays I'm going to share something I find during the week that I think is awesome enough to share...hopefully y'all find it awesome too because I've been told I'm easily entertained ;)
      My first Friday find I saw on The Crochet Crowd's facebook page. It's super cute and called a No Fuss Fish, and the creator of it wrote a pattern which can be found at Eden Reborn

(image from edenreborn.com)

       I love it! Fish are my favorite and this may be the cutest fish ever. I can't wait to make this!
I think they would be cute Christmas presents and with a little creativity they can be altered to look like different species of fish :)
       Mother's day is quickly approaching and that brings me to my next Friday Find. I've always wanted a necklace that displays my children's names on it but I wanted to wait until we were sure are family was complete and now that it is, I've found the perfect necklace!

       (Image from tensevendesigns shop on etsy)

     I saw it and fell in love. I think that I would want it with my husband's name, along with mine on the top, then each of our children on the bottom, all separated with hearts. Don't get me wrong I'd be perfectly happy with say sleeping in and breakfast in bed.
     The two youngest littles and I have been a bunch of sickos as of this past week; fever, sniffles, coughing, and other nasty things...you name it, we did it. The older two and I still have it, just the mucus part of it, Cass caught the full affect of it today and he has been giving mommy a run for her money. I don't know about y'all but I hate it when my babies are sick, especially since they don't understand that the medicine your trying to give them and they can't tell you exactly what's ailing them...even more so AA since he's nonverbal. Despite the ickies I was able to finish Pea's dress and it came out lovely, I haven't been able to take pictures of her in it yet (she isn't having mommy's picture taking shenanigans while she's sick) so here's a sneak peek.

    Beautiful isn't it? I love this pattern by Mon Petit Violon, its called the Granny Square Crochet/Fabric dress and you can find it here on Ravelry or on Pinterest by searching "crochet fabric dress"....which also has many more designs that I've pinned...I may have an addiction to yarn...or pinterest....

    I used Hobby Lobby's I love This Cotton in Mulberry with a size F 3.75 mm hook and the fabric I got from Wal-Mart..I can't remember the name of it but I do remember it was 4.44 for (a lot of fours/fors there huh?) a yard and a half. I will put pictures up of her wearing up sometime this week. xx

 

I am in no way affiliated with these websites, blogs or companies ie., etsy shops. I am simply sharing because sharing is caring....