Hooded Towel Tutorial

We've pretty well worn through the nice stash of baby towels we got when Boo was born. The plush, thick ones are still hanging in there but are way too small for our quickly growing toddler. I wanted a few more without spending a fortune. When I was at Walmart the other day, I grabbed a few towels they had on sale. The big bath towels were only $3!

Here's a step-by-step to sewing a very simple, toddler-sized hooded towel:

You'll need one bath towel and one hand towel. I also used rick-rack and minky dot fabric to jazz it up but that's not necessary.

Start by cutting the hand towel in half lengthwise.

I had some leftover blue minky dot fabric that I wanted to add so I cut that to the same size as the halved hand towel.

On the decorative end of the halved hand towel, I folded the minky dot under about a quarter inch and pinned.

I stitched in place, closely to the edge of the minky dot.

I pulled out some old rick rack I found on sale at Walmart for the incredible price of a quarter! {Walmart has been slowly closing down all of the fabric departments within its stores. I picked up several packages of rick rack in the clearance bin before our nearby store's fabric section disappeared. If the one near you is still up and running, keep an eye out for notions to go on clearance. Can't beat a quarter!}

Anyways, I sewed the rick rack over the seam where the minky dot and towel meet.

Fold the hand towel in half again - right sides together with the decorative edge folding over on itself.


Pin and sew a zig-zag seam along the short edge opposite to the decorative {rick rack} edge.

With right sides still together, sew diagonally across the corner where the long, folded edge and the just-sewn shorter edge meet.

Cut off the excess corner material. This is what it should look like:

Bear with me on this next part - it's difficult to explain. Turn your hood right-side out. You need to make a pleat on either side of the seam. Start by measuring 3 inches from the back of the hood.

Pull the fabric over from there towards the back to make a pleat.

So your pleat is 6 inches "deep". Pin it in place.

Turn it inside out again and sew your pleat in place. It's a little thick to sew through, especially if you've opted for some decorative minky dot, but my good ol' Singer managed - slowly but surely.

Repeat to make an identical pleat on the other side of the hood. This is what it should look like from the back after you finished both pleats...

Now on to the bath towel. Fold it in half lengthwise with right sides together. From the folded corner, measure 4 inches from the fold and 4 inches from the top.

Mark with pins and sew a straight stitch from the top {4 inches away from the fold} that is 4 inches long. Confusing? Sorry! You're just making a single pleat in the middle of the towel.

After sewing, with the wrong side facing up, fold the pleat flat with equal sides of excess fabric on either side of the seam. Sew the pleat in place.

This is what it should look from the inside {wrong side} of the towel.

This is what it looks like from the outside {right side}...

On to the last step! Line up the right side edges of your hood and the bath towel {where the pleat is}. Match up the pleat seam on the bath towel with back middle seam of the hood to make sure they're exactly center.

Zig-zag stitch the hood and towel together along the edges. I went over this twice to make it extra secure since I have boys that like to run around the house like superheros in capes after their baths.

There you have it - a simple hooded towel for a toddler. Less than $6 and only about an hour's worth of time start to finish. Let me know if you make one!

{Almost} Free Paint

I thought of doing this post a few days ago after I went to the Glidden website and happily picked out a free quart of paint courtesy of their Paint Giveaway Promotion. I was going to share in my freebie find with all of you and show some of my favorite ways to accent with paint.

Instead, I spent the weekend mostly in bed trying to beat a cold so I never got around to posting. Now that I'm on the mend I returned to their website only to find out that they've run out of free paint. Bummer! To make up for their shortage they're offering $5 off Glidden paint through this Sunday. So you can still take advantage of the deal by printing the rebate here and running over to Home Depot and picking out a can.

And as for my ideas about accenting with paint, stay tuned.

Easy & Asian-Inspired: Chinese Ribs

I love Asian flavors. From sweet teriyaki, to ginger and soy sauce - I love it all! While I love the authentic stuff made with lemon grass, fish sauce and other harder-to-find ingredients, it's my easy weeknight Asian recipes I most often make. They have enough Asian flavor to satisfy the craving when you're short on time or don't want to make a special trip to the Asian market to gather ingredients. I'll post a few of these favorite recipes here this week. First up, Chinese Ribs.

Chinese ribs are a nice change of pace from the standard BBQ ribs that are often a summertime staple. And who doesn't love ribs? Look, even Honey Bear is eyeing them.

Start with two racks of baby back pork ribs {approximately 4 lbs.}. I use sharp kitchen shears to cut them up and then I pile them into a large baking dish.


Make the marinade by combining the following:

1 cup hoisin sauce {I use Soy Vay's Hoisin Garlic}
1/2 cup soy sauce
3 Tbsp. honey
3 Tbsp. vegetable oil
2 cloves crushed garlic
3 Tbsp. finely grated ginger

Tip: I keep ginger root wrapped in plastic wrap and stored in the freezer. Whenever I need some, I peel off part of it and run it over my microplane grater.

Well, I guess this isn't really a marinade as you don't actually marinate the ribs in it. Maybe it's more of a sauce. Whatever it is, pour it over the ribs and mix to coat.

Cover your baking pan tightly with foil and place in a 300 degree oven for 4 hours, turning and basting once with some of sauce. {If you're just using one rack of ribs, cook for only 3 hours.}

There you have it: tender, juicy Chinese ribs. Full of flavor and easy as can be! Stay tuned this week for more easy, Asian-inspired recipes.

Library Note: My Life As A Chicken

Here's another book we grabbed at the library and were pleasantly surprised to read when we got home. My Life As a Chicken by Ellen Kelley is a new favorite. With melodic, action-packed text, the reader is taken along Pauline's perilous journey from the hen house to a petting zoo. The story is captivating for a young one like Boo and peppered with all sorts of great vocabulary words like "plummeting", "spellbound", "unoccupied", and "aeronaut". The first few times we read it without pausing, caught up in the action of Pauline's adventure. Now, we occasionally pause and I ask Boo questions about the story to see if he's catching on to some of the more advanced words. And with the context, he's already understood the meaning of most of the new, more difficult words in the book. It's so well written and the illustrations are as interesting as the story. Check it out!

Father's Day Fare

Father's Day was a lot of fun this year. We got to celebrate with my dad which was a special treat since we've moved so far from my family and rarely get to spend these little holidays together anymore.

We had a Father's Day lunch on the patio, enjoying the beautifully mild Colorado weather. The darling Daddy of my two boys requested pulled pork sandwiches and jalapeno chips for his Father's Day lunch. I was more than happy to oblige - I love cooking for my sweetie.

And since he was craving BBQ-style food, I couldn't resist making these perfectly adorable desserts Bakerella featured on her site last week.

Here is the pulled pork recipe from none other than Ms. Martha. It's delicious and the sauce has a sweet-vinegary flavor that really complements the smoky paprika rub on the pork.

{I couldn't find the sauce recipe online so here it is: Pour about 1/2 to 1 cup of water into the pan and boil to release pan juices. Reduce the liquid to about 1/4 cup. In a sauce pot, combine 2 28-oz. cans of tomato puree, 1 cup of spicy brown mustard, 1/3 cup packed dark-brown sugar, 1/4 cup cider vinegar, 2 crushed garlic cloves, coarse salt, 1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper and pan juices from pork recipe. Stir and simmer over medium heat until sugar dissolves and mixture thickens, about 10 minutes. This makes a lot of sauce, so I usually freeze half of it for next time.}

The dessert was a fun highlight to our lunch. Boo quickly finished his sandwich so he could move on to the sweet treat sitting in front of him, which he particularly enjoyed.

Hope your Father's Day was lovely. Try that pulled pork recipe sometime. It's delicious!

The Best Iced Sugar Cookies

Back in my Finance days I had a teeny little cookie business {if you can even call it that} on the side. It was my creative outlet during a time when I spent most of my day in a gray cubicle. I loved making cookies and designing each order. Since having our second child, I've set that "business" aside but have held on to my vast collection of cookie cutters and other cookie decorating tools.

For a baby shower recently, I made onesie cookies as shower favors. Here are a few tips for making your own decorated sugar cookies.

Using a good dough recipe {this Williams Sonoma one is great}, make your dough and tightly wrap it in plastic wrap.

Dough-making tip: use softened butter and beat for several minutes with the sugar until the mixture is fluffy and considerably lighter in color. Don't rush this step!

Refrigerate for a couple of hours or overnight. You can even freeze it at this point if you want to really spread out the work.

When you're ready to roll out the dough, let your dough sit out of the fridge for just a few minutes. You don't want it to come to room temperature but need it to be pliable. If your dough is too soft or warm, the cookies will spread when they bake and won't retain their shape as well.

Flour your surface and the top of your dough. For the best cookies, don't roll them too thin. You want them to be 1/4 to 3/8 inch thick. The thicker the cookie, the better it will hold up and the more evenly it will bake.

Cut your cookies as close together as possible to minimize scraps. The best dough is fresh dough. The more times you gather up the scraps and re-roll, the warmer the dough will be and the crumblier {hmm...is that a word?} it becomes.

Bake according to the recipe. I use a Silpat-lined half sheet. I swear by Silpat and couldn't live without my half sheets.

If you've never made these before, be sure to set the oven timer to a couple minutes sooner than the recipe suggests. Check the cookies often towards the end of the baking time. You don't want them to get brown on the edges. They should be barely-golden and the edges and middle should be the same color. If you touch the middle, it should still be soft, not crispy.

Let them cool for several minutes on the cookie sheet before transfering them to a cooling rack.

Sugar cookies traditionally are decorated with royal icing using egg whites. However, I don't care for royal icing and use a thinned out buttercream instead. It has a better flavor and doesn't get rock hard like royal icing does. I don't have an exact recipe for it but I start with about a tablespoon of softened butter, add several cups of powdered sugar and stir in milk until I get the right consistency. I whip it in the stand mixer and add either vanilla or almond extract to taste. Since it's a softer icing, I use about a tablespoon or more of meringue powder to cause the icing to crust over a bit once the cookie is decorated. That prevents smudges and allows the cookies to be wrapped without smearing the icing.

For the base coat, I make my icing slightly runny. It covers the cookie smoothly without any smears or streaks.

For piping, I use a parchment triangle folded into a cone, a coupler, and a size 3 round tip. I thicken the icing with powdered sugar for piping details. You want the icing to smoothly come out of the tip without running or spreading.

I always outline my cookies with piped icing. Even if the cookie is all one color, I outline it. It gives them a finished, defined look that you can't achieve with simply spreading icing on.

Here I used a contrasting color to outline and add the baby's initial. To color icing, I prefer the gel food coloring. The Ateco Spectrum squeezable gels are my favorite but the Wilton ones are good too. The only thing I don't like about the Wilton gels is that you have to use a toothpick to get the color out, being careful not to get icing in the container.

Once decorated, I let the icing dry for several hours before wrapping the cookies. I use clear, cello bags to wrap them in and tie them with all sorts of ribbon, though grosgrain and raffia are my favorites. You can buy cello bags and ribbon in bulk from PaperMart. Hobby Lobby and Michael's carry them too.

A tip about cookie cutters: If you're looking for beautiful cutters in nearly every shape imaginable, check out CopperGifts. For less expensive, aluminum cutters try Foose Tinsmithing. I have over 100 different shapes and have found many through these two companies. But Sur la Table, Williams-Sonoma, and Hobby Lobby have several cutters available too.

Back when I was in "business", if a client requested a very customized cookie and I didn't want to buy an expensive cutter for just that order, I'd make my own. Now, you don't want to do this if you're making a ton, but for a dozen or so, it's not too bad. Just find a shape you like online or in clipart. Print it out and trace it on vinyl {like the vinyl used to back spiral bound notebooks}. Using your template, cut out your dough with a sharp knife and gently transfer to your cookie sheet.

Happy cookie decorating!

A Simple and Quick Diaper Cake

This weekend I helped host a friend's baby shower. I made a diaper cake for the gift table and thought I'd share the process.

If you've been in the baby shower "circuit" the last few years, you've no doubt seen a diaper cake. They're great, practical gifts that can double as party decor and I love them.

When I was pregnant with BooToo last year, my friends threw me and another girlfriend a surprise double baby shower during our annual girls' weekend.

My dear friend Em {check out her fabulous designs here} made both of us beautiful diaper cakes. I loved mine so much that when I got home and unwrapped all of the diapers {a whole month's worth of diapers by the way!}, I saved the ribbon and rubber bands she had used so I could reuse them someday.

This weekend, I pulled them out and got busy making my own. I used size 3 diapers and rolled them starting at the waistband and hiding the Disney characters on the inside. Bye-bye baby Mickey.

Tiny rubber bands, such as dental ones, are ideal for keeping the diapers tightly rolled.

Once you have all of your rolls, set them up on a flat surface. Determine how large you want each tier of the cake to be and gather the upright rolls into circles accordingly. I got to cheat on this part because I was reusing pre-made circles of ribbon.

Use decorative ribbon around the circumference of each tier and tightly secure with a straight pin.

Make ribbon bows for each tier and hot glue them where you pinned the ribbon ends together.

Now the hardest part is done. Stack your tiers and decorate. Em tucked a bottle into the top of mine, and had cute baby items hanging from each tier: pacifiers, toys, baby shoes, etc.

I duplicated her matching card for the cake topper.

Just print out a message or the baby's name on card stock, attach matching ribbon, and tape a toothpick to the back to make the card stand up. I placed a couple of silk flowers on the top too.

I decorated the cake with a knit pacifier clip but you could use any toy or baby accessory.

Because the cake was only two tiers, I displayed it on a pedestal for added height without the added cost of dozens of additional diapers.

It was a great centerpiece for the shower's gift table. Next time you're helping out with a baby shower, consider making a diaper cake. The mom-to-be will appreciate the extra diapers {I know I did} and the cake is a beautiful touch for a buffet or gift table.