Have you been stitching away your embroidered masterpiece? An embroidered footstool or some coasters would be a great project to start.
Click here to find out How to Enter.
How to Preserve Tomatoes: Three Simple & Delicious Ways
Enjoying a bumper crop of luscious fresh tomatoes? Not sure how to store your tomatoes so you can use them all winter long? Wondering what you can do with cherry tomatoes to make them last? Come into my garden with me, and I’ll share three of my favorite simple and delicious ways to preserve tomatoes.
For the complete step-by-step recipes visit these posts: How to Can Tomatoes, Slow Roasted Tomatoes, and The Best Pickled Tomato Recipe.
This video is sponsored by T-mobile. Check out mytouch.t-mobile.com and learn how the new T-Mobile myTouch and myTouch Q are as simple as they are smart.
Embroidered Footstool Before & After
Throughout the Borderline Brilliant Embroidery Contest we will be sharing projects that might inspire your own entry. A few weeks ago I reupholstered a footstool in oilcloth, this past weekend I used the artwork on this Melody Miller fabric as a template and created an embroidered version. This $10 footstool is now my daughters favorite hangout. But do you want to know a secret about this little seat? (more…)
Bebah’s Ultimate Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipe
Our lovely friend, Macki is definitely a master of her cooking craft. She last shared her Fiesta Taco Burger and Fries with us and oooh my mouth waters just thinking about it. If there’s any mom who has mastered after school healthy eating it’s Macki with her Homemade Cheez-Its, munchable lunchable and her round up of After School Snack Attack Ideas. Today, she’s going a different route with a special sweet something that was created by her pops. I’ll let her fill you in…
Bebah’s is what my kids call my dad who happens to be famous in our family for his cookies. Other people might know him as expert carpenter, vintage motorcycle restorer, craft beer brewer or winemaker, but around these parts he’s the cookie crafter. My parents have a big glass cookie jar in their kitchen that is always filled with his cookies and someone (Bebah) is always cooking up a batch to ensure the jar is stocked. During our last visit my daughter, Sylvie, walked by the jar and stopped and in an almost panic tone announced that the jar was empty. A silence fell over the house. Sylvie and her brother Lincoln declared that we must make some of Bebah’s cookies immediately. The urgency was felt by all and everyone went running for ingredients…
Keep reading for Bebah’s Ultimate Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipe and to see a real flour-ful explosion…
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Camping, Contests, and Princess Cheese: It’s Friday I’m in Love…
New friend I made this week: PRINCESS CHEESE! Oh, my, goodness.
For eight months I have been missing my first dog-love, Puck, so very much. So on Sunday, to celebrate our sixth anniversary, Carleton, Scarlet, and I went to the animal shelter in search of a new four legged friend. And we found her! And then also Scarlet gave her a very, umm, special name. Meet Princess Cheese (full name Princess Cheese Aurora Chocolate, ahem).
Many thanks to my dreamy hubs for making our anniversary extra special.
Now to battle away a lingering kennel cough and some pesky dimodectic mange. She’s on a bunch of meds, but any helpful tips are welcome. Shelter dogs may be a little worse for wear, but she sure knows where her home is now. She’s one happy mutt and just a perfect little scruffins.
Recipe I tried (and loved): Thanks to all of your wonderful advice on Facebook (so many good ideas in the comments on that link, thx), I prepped for our camping trip this weekend by making and freezing 20 “Campurritos” a la this recipe from Ninth and Bird. Now on Sunday morning I can just open one eye and point my husband toward the cooler while mumbling something like “heat…fire…go…” before rolling over and covering my head with a pillow. Win.
Happiest place on earth: Still, Disneyland!
Cause that caught my attention: My friend had Hodgkins Lymphoma. That blew. But she’s better now, which is good. So much better, in fact, that despite being sort of not-so-athletic on the regular, she’s decided to do a triathlon (along with two friends – she’s the swimmer) to raise money for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. If this cause means anything to you, give them a pledge! P.S. I love their team name – “the TRY team.”
THING YOU WANT TO WIN: Have you started planning your entries to our contest to win a Brother PE500 Embroidery Machine? Get the deets here and start crafting. We can’t wait to see your entries!
PHOTO CONTEST FUNTIME:Jacinda and I have become obsessed with Instragram since signing up a couple weeks ago, so we want to play with you there (Follow us @prudentjaime and @prudentjacinda. Each week we are going to do a silly photo contest with a theme. Upload your pics on instagram and hashtag them #thisweekonprudentbaby, along with the week’s theme. We will pick a winner based on no discernible criteria, and post the pic and instagram handle here in this column next Friday. So this week’s theme is #CraftyKids. Here’s my entry…
How to Pickle Tomatoes: The Best / Easiest Recipe
The end of summer and a bumper crop of tomatoes means preservation mode is in full effect at Casa Curtis. If you want to store some of your tomatoes for winter, making pickled tomatoes is a unique idea and it’s crazy easy. We’ve shown you how to can tomatoes without a canner, but that doesn’t really work for cherry tomatoes, just because you’d have to peel them and they tend to turn to mush. We’ve also showed you how to roast tomatoes and pack them in oil. YUM. You can also freeze them, I love doing that so I can toss them onto a bowl of hot pasta anytime. But why not do something fun, unique, and totally giftable to make your tomatoes last after the plants are long gone? Let me show you how to pickle tomatoes.
A great way to preserve and store cherry tomatoes is to pickle them. Pickled tomatoes might sound kinda nasty (at least I thought so at first), but I played around with it for a while and came up with an easy recipe that all my taste-testers have given mad props too. Learn how to pickle tomatoes with my cherry tomato pickling recipe below…
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Borderline Brilliant Contest: Brother PE500 Machine – Grand Prize!
If our How to Use an Embroidery Machine video, featuring the Brother PE500 Personal Embroidery System,
has you dreaming of owning one of your own, get out your embroidery floss because we are going to have a little contest and the prize is – one of these beauties! We had the pleasure of testing out the totally new (and totally affordable) Brother PE500 embroidery machine. This machine has so many options – lots of included designs like alphabets, images, and frames, as well as the ability to use designs stored on a card or from your computer, and it’s only $299 on amazon!
What do you have to embroider (by hand or machine) to enter this contest and maybe win a Brother PE500 Personal Embroidery System? Any design that includes a frame, meaning a border that goes all the way around either the outside of your design or the outside of the object. Here are a few examples…
The lovely felt coasters that Jaime shared in the How to Use an Embroidery Machine video.
Score some $1 felt baskets from your favorite discount store and add a little character. Note the opening has a running stitch border that goes all the way around!
This little pincushion that my mom made features an embroidered illustration of her childhood home.
Completely new to embroidery? This Beginner Embroidery hoop project might be your inspiration.
Or maybe, like me, you’ll decide that you want to embroider some underpants. We don’t judge.
And of course, some monogrammed hand towels, just don’t skip the border/frame!
All of the machine embroidery in these samples was done on the PE500. You will seriously have so much fun with this machine!
To recap:
1. Hand embroidery or machine embroider your entry.
2. The surface may be purchased or made by you.
3. A border or frame must either completely surround the artwork or the edge of the surface, like these examples.
In order to “link” your entry you must have it originally posted to Facebook, Flickr, or a blog. Please include your entry photo and project info where you have the project “hosted.” Project images should be at least 300 x 300 pixels.
Project info should include: 1-2 sentences about the project including how it was made and credits for purchased materials and/or pattern.
Enter Here:
This contest is open to any individual 18+ with a mailing address in the 48 contiguous US States. Please read Official Rules carefully. Deadline for entries: September 30, 2012
How to Make a Jump Rope
Whenever I think of going back to school I think of hours upon hours of homework and double dutch. As soon as the recess bell rang all the girls would be outside with their ropes in hand getting ready for the next Double Dutch match of doom. I tried to live up to the old days recently and failed miserably (sigh). On to the next generation of Double Dutchers, starting with these pretty jump ropes made by The Salty Pineapple. Nikki, from The Salty Pineapple also covers some back-to-school basics with her satchel and chalkboard tutorials.
Besides using these awesome jump ropes just to brush up on your Inverse Toad Double Under Side Swing skills (thank you Wiki), they also make great gifts and the handles can be completely cutomized.
Let’s see more…
