Leftover Summer Veggie Pizza

I am not a fan of veggie pizza because the steaming chunks of onion, pepper, and black canned-tasting olives tend to fall off the pizza in chunks, leaving big cheeseless craters behind. And a cheeseless crater is not my idea of a good time. But tonight, I made pizza and realized we had some extra fresh sweet corn, cherry tomatoes, and broccoli we needed to use.

This combo of veggies was delicious. Even William approved.

The veggies were small enough not to weigh down the pizza, and the addition of basil pesto gave the pizza a richer and fuller taste.

I started with one ball of freshly made whole wheat pizza dough.

Then I layered it with tomato-basil pasta sauce, herb-marinated mozzarella, parmesan cheese, tiny broccoli florets, fresh sweet corn straight off the cob, and halved cherry tomatoes. I drizzled lightly some basil pesto over the top.

I always assemble my pizza on a flat sheet pan covered with heaps of corn meal, which allows me to slide the prepared pizza straight from the pan onto the hot pizza stone in the oven without tearing the dough or spilling the ingredients on the oven floor while transferring it.

I bake it at 420 (our gas oven runs extremely hot, but if yours doesn't you might want to bake it closer to 500) for about 12 minutes. Let it cool a minute before slicing and eating. Yum!

The Help & I Tried

Two things.

First, I am trying really hard not to eat a lot of sugar. Sugar is one of my top five weaknesses, right up there with new bottles of Essie nail polish, Pottery Barn pillows, lipgloss that isn't sticky, and anything with caffeine. But since William needs to eat dinner before 5 pm, I now eat dinner around 5, which means I am fantasizing about mint chocolate chip ice cream by 7 pm.

As I sat and finished The Help, I needed some sugar. I was desperate. We have nothing unhealthy to eat in this house. I stared at the open fridge, poked around the freezer, and stood in the pantry with my hand on my hip for a full five minutes before I remembered...PEEPS!

I still had some peeps in the pantry from Easter. Don't judge. I ate them up as I finished the book. They were kind of dried out and chewy, and I liked it. Remember? I said don't judge!

Have you read The Help? It took my breath away, largely because the world of the characters is not far removed from our world, especially the parts about caring for other people's children. I read it in two nights, and I want to start right back at the beginning.

Second thing.

Pictures of William and me together are extremely rare, especially since he learned to walk. It's odd because I am right beside him practically every moment of the day, guiding him, removing the remote control from his grubby little hands, wiping yogurt from between his fingers. But none of this is documented.

Today, I tried my best to get a picture of both of us. I really did. I did not succeed.

This is me protecting my lens from the tiniest hand of doom in existence.

Well, we're both in the frame. Kind of. 

The lighting was so nice. I was so close to taking a picture of both of us.

Almost! You can even see the little drool rash on his sweet cheeks. He sucks his index and middle fingers at the same time, which results in a pool of drool accumulating on his crib mattress. Did I mention that he sleeps face down while sucking on his drooly fingers?

Agh! He ducked down just as I took the picture.

Wrong focus. It's hard to control the zoom when you can't see what you're doing.

Oh em gee.

At this point, he was frustrated with me trying to confine him to the window area.

And then he pulled my hair. I think he did it out of love.

 At this point, I gave up.

And then this afternoon, after a hand washing break, I realized that taking a picture in the bathroom mirror may be the only way William and I are in a photo together. Even though you can't see either of our faces and my child is not dressed. You can see his tiny fingerprints all over the mirror from when he tries to grab that dang baby who is everywhere we go!

This mama needs a tripod and a camera remote.

New to Sewing: Happy Imperfect Ruffles

I live with all boys, so I will take some ruffles any way I can get them.

I guess technically these are more like pleats, but I choose to see them as ruffles. Ruffles on a kitchen towel. Because, let's be honest, I am the one cleaning the kitchen 99.9% of the time, and I would like some ruffles to be present for the ever-present task of wiping down a certain someone's high chair tray. I used scraps from William's crib bumper to sew a very long strip of fabric, hemming both the top and the bottom of the scraps. I joined them together in a very imperfect seam, as pictured above.

 Then, I pressed the strip of fabric into slightly irregularly spaced pleats and ironed them down.

 I sewed along the top and bottom seams, and now I have a pleated towel. Let's call it a pleated poppy towel, because the flowers printed on the fabric could possibly be poppies, right?

I am undisturbed by the fact that this towel looks like a seventh grade boy might have sewn it. I love knowing that I can SEW, even if it's just crooked lines. I'm off to find an incredibly complex pattern for some swanky Christmas stockings.

Cheap Thrills

Happy Monday! Today I decided to face my oilcloth fear head on. I've wanted to sew with oilcloth forever but I've been intimidated. I don't know why. I finally bought some from the Stitch Lab this weekend and planned on making a sippy cup case, but I got sidetracked. I love using journals and notebooks, and I bought this journal when Borders was closing down. The price was right, but the cupcakes? Not so right.

I used Prudent Baby's tutorial for sewing an oilcloth cover for a book. Okay, so I am actually too lazy to use the tutorial, but I did read the tutorial before just sewing a cover together. Her's looks much better, so you should definitely use her tutorial. In the future, I will do the same. However, I'm pretty happy with my waterproof new book jacket.

I'm not really sure why I need a water-proof journal, but I'm happy that I have this. If you're the kind of person who needs things to be sensible, you could make one of these for a cook book.

I found this lunch case on clearance at Target. At $9.99, I thought it was a reasonably good price, but then I rationalized that I could use it for sewing supplies, make-up, or its intended use as a lunch box. So, really, it's like paying $3 each for a sewing basket, a make-up bag, and a lunch box. What a steal. :) I just love thrills on the cheap.

Now & Then

We called my mom's mom Nonnie. Did that make sense? I loved Nonnie so much. She had short silver hair that she had "done" every week at the same salon. They wrapped it into tight curls that she fluffed out and sprayed with AquaNet. She always slept with her hair wrapped in a net and she had rose pink fingernails and wore White Shoulders perfume. I think they've stopped making White Shoulders, but several years ago, I followed an older woman around the grocery store because she wore that perfume and the smell of it made me feel as though Nonnie was right there with me. Of course, Nonnie preferred the Piggly Wiggly, but there are none in Austin.

When I was little, I was a tomboy and a wannabe acrobat. I would turn cartwheels and flips all throughout her home, and she would let me! My sisters and I would put on our white, lace-cuffed socks and "skate" across her marble-floored entrance. After we were finished exhausting ourselves, Nonnie would sit me on a chair in the kitchen and brush my hair back into a painfully tight ponytail before shellacking it into place. I HATED that hairspray and how tight my ponytail was, but Nonnie would say, "It hurts to be pretty." I would frown at that. Then she'd file my little nails to within an inch of their life and give me a manicure with clear nail polish. That part, I loved.  Nonnie's manicures and pedicures were infamous; you were getting one whether you wanted it or not. She believed in having perfect nails at ALL times, even if you were only seven years old and the most important task at hand was making rock and mud biscuits in the backyard. Nonnie had a set of glass canisters in her cupboard and they were always filled with different types of candy. That lady had a major sweet tooth.

After my sisters and I were coiffed and polished and snacking on our fruit cocktail with lots and lots of extra maraschino cherries, she would sit down, pull out her sewing basket, and start working on little projects. She was a functional sewer, mending or taking in seams. We would try to go through the sewing basket to find treasures, but she wouldn't let us look for long before telling us to stop because her sewing scissors were very sharp and there were other "sharp things" in the bottom of the basket. Recently, I inherited that sewing basket.

There's not a lighting issue in this photo. Those are the real life colors of her sewing basket!

As a teenager of the depression era, Nonnie wasted nothing. I think she saved every single button from every piece of clothing.

I loved realizing how many of the same products she had that I still buy, like Wright's hem tape and bias tape. Major difference in the prices, though!

This tiny pink pocket knife was a coveted treasure. I think it belonged to my great-great grandmother, though I'm not positive. My sisters and I always wanted to hold it and touch it. It's less than an inch long.

I discovered what the other "sharp things" were -- a set of my grandfather's shaving razors.  25 cents from Seibert's Pharmacy. Amazing.

My grandfather was a mailman, and Nonnie kept several of his postal badges in her sewing kit. He died when I was 5, but I remember the stories of how they met and fell in love and were married just before he left for World War II. 

I had to adjust the lighting and contrast to show the name carved into this sewing gauge. D. Colley. My mom, Deborah, must have used this as a girl.

 I may not sew by hand or have pink nails, but I am definitely Nonnie's granddaughter. And for what it's worth, I am teaching William to do cartwheels in the dining room and to skate on our wood floors.

P.S. I'm in the process of turning my grandmother's sewing supplies into a framed collage, and I'll post pics when I'm finished.

Coming to Terms with a Miscarriage (at Hobby Lobby)

This morning, I took William to Hobby Lobby to meet my friend Brandi. Both William and Brandi's son, Gideon, sat sweetly in the carts, munching on crackers and watching us discuss ribbon. The woman at the fabric counter joked with Brandi and said, "You'll have to keep having babies until you have your girl." Then she looked at me. "And you," she asked, "when are you having a girl?" 

I just smiled and kept rifling through the ribbon. I didn't feel like explaining that I already had her. That I had her and that the good Lord took her (because she belonged to him anyway, didn't she?) and I was left with a teeny tiny body to bury. My buried treasure in the Texas soil. I will see her again, one day.

My mother gave me a ring last week. Just to borrow for awhile, if not to keep. A very special ring. It belonged to my grandmother and it's a tiny violet. She pulled me aside at my sister's birthday party to give it to me, and I started crying (in my Jersey Shore outfit, no less...what a waste of eyeliner!). "Honey," she said, "I didn't mean to make you cry." "No no," I told her. "Mom, even when I'm 80, I will probably still cry for her sometimes." Not every day, but some days. 

I am an over-planner but a procrastinator. Even though I won't act on these plans until December, I've been thinking about making Christmas stockings for my boys, and it occurred to me that because she came between winters, Violet will not have a stocking. She will not have anything, really, save for a linen covered box with unworn baby clothes and cards from friends, congratulatory cards when we became pregnant and their condolences when she died. 

I want to say this: there aren't many physical reminders of Violet's brief weeks on earth, but I will ALWAYS carry her in my heart. And the next time someone asks me how many children I have, or if I'd like to have a girl, I will tell them the whole truth. It's the least I can do.

When I was pregnant, I showed William pictures of what our new baby looked like each day.

Sewing is Power!

I mean it. Learning to sew feels so empowering. There are so many things I've always wanted to make and I've spent hours trolling Etsy shops in the hopes that someone had already made something I'd imagined and I could just buy it. The things I found were never exactly what I'd wanted. But now that I can sew, I can make things myself.

I borrowed this book from my 4 year old neighbor because I love the colors. I've wanted to create some things for William using this color combination as a guide.

On a very fun play date that took a mommy-detour to the Stitch Lab (thank you, Jen, for introducing me to my new favorite place), I found this set of fat quarters designed by Stitch Lab owner and designer Leslie Bonnell.

Sorry about the orange hue in these photos, which were taken at 10 pm in our very warmly lit dining room.

It reminds me of the owl book, even though technically it has no owls. It has fish and dogs and cats, and I think it should be named Dogfish Head, but my husband disagreed. I love the colors and tiny print.

I decided to make a roll up changing pad that fits in my purse but is still big enough to give William room to kick his legs and spread out, since I have never been able to get him to stay perfectly still when I change him in a restaurant bathroom. I made up my own pattern for a longer than average portable changing pad. I wanted to use each of the fabric squares, but not just in a block pattern, which looked really choppy. I stacked the squares and sliced them up irregularly and intentionally crooked. Then I placed them together in a pattern I liked.

I fold the pad in half and then roll it up and tie it closed with a length of gold silk ribbon I sewed inside the pad. This fabric is so soft and squishy with the quilt batting I used that it could easily be used as a roll-up blanket, perfect for the car or for naps at grandparents' houses. I finished sewing this at midnight and left it on the floor just like this, and when I woke up on Sunday (which is Don's day to get up with William and make breakfast), this was happening.

These pictures are kind of fuzzy. It was 7:30 am and I really was in no mood to mess with my camera, but William was using his new changing pad as a bull fighter's cape. So far, it's a new travel toy. He pulls it out of my purse and plays with ribbon. It makes me so happy that he loves something I made that WASN'T a muffin. Yay for learning to sew!