Calling all Papas

The time ran away with me yesterday and so I'm not getting my post out till today. As I stated before usually when I have time to post about food I have little time to do any crafting. So today's post will feature last night's dinner. I made the Fritatte from Nonna's Italian Kitchen last night with a spinach salad and some of my crusty Italian bread. It was a lovely filling dinner and we'll most likely be having leftovers tonight. I feel bad that I'm not making a new meal for Father's day but you know, I have things to do and anyway I made cupcakes so that should make up for it! Sorry there are no pictures of the cupcakes, it was the Golden Vanilla cupcakes with vanilla butter cream frosting from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World, another one of my staple cookbooks. I didn't have any shortening for the vanilla butter cream and so I just used Earth balance and well it's not very solid at room temperature so the butter cream is a little bit runny. Therefore, not very picture friendly.

I stumbled upon a new blog yesterday called Vintage Kids' Books My Kid Loves. I love the concept of this blog and have been having such a great time going back through her archives to look at all the vintage book titles and see what they were all about. As you know I have a penchant for all things vintage and books have not escaped that obsessive love. I haven't been thrifting very much these last few months but it's definitely something I want to get back to once summer is in full swing. And you can be sure I'll keep looking through the book bins. There are a couple of used bookstores around town that really I could spend hours in but you know Alex is not about spending hours in bookstores so we always left way before I was ready. I especially loved seeing Caps for Sale on her site. I loved this book as a child and so I'll look forward to finding a vintage copy.

Speaking of Alex, today as you might all know today is Father's day! Unfortunately the Papa of this house is working so we won't be doing anything special and I probably have a driving class right after he comes home until about 9pm. So our day is mostly shot but hopefully yours won't be. And if you've forgotten to call your father or brothers or uncles or whomever then hop to it because fathers are just as important as mothers in the equation of things!

Late night updates

I'm noticing that it's taking me a long time to actually get to posting these last few days. I'm usually busy doing around the house and Ayla stuff in the mornings and during the day so I never seem to have a down moment to actually blog. Well I do have time to quickly read the blogs that I frequent daily but never to update this one.

Anyway, I've going back through the CraftSanity and CraftyPod podcasts and listening to some really inspiring people while I work. It's really nice because I don't have time to just walk around listening to my Ipod all day so when I do get some time to myself to craft or sew it's like I have some company. While listening today I discovered a site that I'm extremely excited about called Burda Style (I added a neat little button on the right sidebar that also leads to the site). Basically it's an open source sewing site where patterns for clothing are posted for free online and you can go through and sew up whatever your heart desires. Another really great thing about it is that you can alter the patterns to suit your own needs and if you feel so inclined you can also sell your garments when you're done.

It's no secret that I got a dress form from Freecycle not that long ago and have been wanting to sew clothing for quite sometime. It's really been a passion of mine since Home Economics class back in highschool when I actually learned to sew. I remember everyone sewing the standard boxer briefs and me and one other girl saying that we'd rather sew a dress. It was a great learning experience and since then I've been completely hooked. I love to sew and although my garment sewing is very limited it was always in the back of my mind as something that I wanted to learn how to do properly. I remember one Christmas when we were living back in Drummondville I decided to make everyone's Christmas gifts by hand and that year I made a fleece hooded sweater for Alex. He still has it and even I like to wear it from time to time because it's so big and warm. It's great too because it's heading into summer and everytime I see those cute summer dresses in the store I can never buy them because they fit me all wrong and then I just think to myself 'I bet I could make this'. So maybe I will this year!

I also finished my softy that I'll be sending off for Softies for Mirabel. I came up with the design and just kind of went from there. I'm pretty happy with how it turned out but but I'm not sure what to call it. His arms were much longer but I had to cut them in half because I just thought it was too much.

I also got my package from Vegan Essentials today and boy was I ever happy. I ordered a bunch of vegan jerkies that we really love and a vegan version of Nutella. Alex was dismayed when he found out that Nutella sadly has dairy products in it. Luckily the vegan version, Chocoreale, is amazing and he'll have nothing to worry about now. I had a taste of it on my Italian crusty bread that I made today from Nonna's Italian Kitchen. We went out while it was rising and didn't come back till it should have already been in the second rising so I'm not sure if it turned out the way it should have but it sure was delicious!