Cross Stitch Stocking Project

Dudes... I have spent well over 30 hours on this I would say. Cross stitch is a time sucker. But the results are so worth it, so I keep doing it.

I have started this stocking to give to a future progeny at some point; a child that in no way exists yet but I am hopeful that when I do eventually become pregnant, have a kid, send it to high school and listen to it tell me that my music is "lame and old fashioned" or whatever kids in the future will say, that the stocking may get done. And then the child will be so in awe and grateful that he or she will sit down with me, look at the stocking lovingly, and we will listen to Sonic Youth together and eat Christmas shortbread. That'll shut 'em up.

I cooked a turkey

It wasn't massive (9 lbs or so) and the brining process definitely helped make it tasty (lots of sugar, salt, thyme, sage, apple, celery, carrot, onion, bay leaf etc, for 24 hours sitting in the fridge, marinating the turkey). But it really is a little daunting when you keep brushing past the oven and the too-sensitive knob keeps turning the temp down to 200F. And you are trying to time the cooking with the 4 sides one must make with a dinner such as this. I must salute my aunts and grandmothers for their turkey-making for up to 20+ people over the years, and to my in-laws for being my guinea pigs for my very first one! (And to my vegetarian hubs for not vocally getting grossed-out by the carcass- because they are weird). All that said, I look forward to doing it again!

TERRORDOME!

Well, actually, terrarium, made with old mason jars and plants from the cottage. Terrordome sounds more exciting.

EASY CLOTH NAPKINS WITH A SERGER

One of the first projects I knew I wanted to undertake for the wedding was cloth napkins for the tables. I settled on using the several colours from our invites and found gingham fabrics in different sizes of checks that matched as the main focus for the settings. I thought it would be easy enough to find a lot of different colours in a decent weight of cotton fabric, but it was not the case. Yellow was almost impossible- I ended up buying 3 yards from someone in Wisconsin on Ebay. But I was very happy with what I ended up finding, colour-wise, in the end.

I tried making 6 napkins at first, to get a real sense of how long it would take. After washing (pre-shrinking) the fabric, then ironing it, cutting it, and hemming 6 napkins, I was a little worried. The hemming especially took a very long time- about 20 minutes a piece using an iron and double fold. Oy. Could I really make 140 in this way?

Then my gorgeous and talented friend at (skona life) who is a proud owner of a serger (remember those crazy-looking contraptions from home ec that cut and sewed fabric at the same time to create easy and solid seams?) suggested I use it if I wanted to make quick(ish) work of them . That is exactly what I did and was very happy with the process (so fast!) and results (professional-looking seam without any bulk). The mix of bright colours really popped and looked casual and pretty.

Pickles!!

So in the thick of my and K's coming up with more and more insane projects to do for the wedding, one came to mind that had to be done- pickles for all the tables. Homemade pickles are summer- and as we wanted an airy, casual, almost (but not quite) picnic-y feel, we decided to make one for each table.

My friend hooked us up with a vegetable guy in Kensington Market whom he uses to supply his restaurant, and we bought a bushel of pickling cucumbers. (Dudes- it turns out a bushel is a ****load.) We easily made 20 jars, could have made 8 more at least. Cucumber salad was on the menu for a while.

So that we could use pretty swingtop Ikea jars that could not be heat processed, we made refrigerator pickles- ones that stay crunchy because they are never heated. After about 3 weeks I tried them- they were too mustardy and not nearly garlickey or dill-y for my liking. So I added the necessaries and let the flavour develop again. They went over like gangbusters.

Now my mom, who initially thought we were crazy for making these got really into it when she pictured them on the tables of our quaint little venue. She then insisted that she find us an antique pickle fork for each jar My mom ended up using Ebay for this- her first foray- and it was adorable how into it she got. She found some insanely cool and gorgeous ones, from Queens, England and even Japan. Very glad we took the time to make pickles, but also glad to have the lower shelf of our fridge back now.

HAND STAMPED AND EMBOSSED WEDDING INVITATIONS

Rubber stamping is one of my favorite nerdy pastimes as anyone who knows me can attest to. Ever since I was a kid I loved them- it's like being your own little printing press.

When it came to our wedding invitations, there was no question we would make them. So over a week we chipped-away at them diligently. I made the invitations, and K made the inserts- the location directions and map, hotel info etc.

We used a printer to print our names, and I bought the rubber stamp pad on Ebay of the two horseshoes, and then had it mounted super cheap at Speedy Rubber Stamps on Queen east. First, the image was stamped, then embossed with the heat embossing method. Then I did the side flower garlands one colour at a time. K used Illustrator to make the inserts- I think they looked amazing. All in all, we took a good week of evenings to do execute these (not including the time it took to work out the design).

For the reply card, we replicated one of the better invite specimens and made a postcard, using an oldtimey postcard template from good ol' Martha on the reverse. I gotta say, getting reply cards in themail is very exciting- I miss mail!

Easy-as-anything cake topper

My very talented sister Julia and I have had a long standing pact that when I got married, she would make my wedding cake. This may sound like folly, but she just so happens to thoroughly enjoy making cakes and was no stranger to fondant work. So she made a wonderful chocolate cake with minty frosting between the layers. Just beautiful.

Now topper-wise, Etsy has all kinds of adorable, customizable options, where your likeness can be made into peg figures, or your wedding ensembles painted onto squirrel figurines or (my favorite) a little bust of a tree trunk has your names or initials "scratched" into it. As the wedding got closer, my attention moved away from figuring-out the cake topper to important things like schedules, catering, and booze numbers. (It should have been about what hairstyle I should have, but I will tell you that story later).

A trip to my not-so-local Michaels produced a very simple, pretty and yes, DIY cake topper. And it cost about a buck fifty.

3 wooden pieces, an L, K and a heart, spray painted with blue and red Krylon that we already owned and then each piece was hot glued onto its own wooden coffee stir stick. I was very happy with the results!

This Summer

... was amazing and busy and I am now a Mrs.! Our wedding was more or less of the DIY variety (though I am loathe to use that term when I can avoid it) and we had a lot of help from amazing friends and professionals. I will be detailing some of our projects on here in the weeks ahead. Hope your summers have all been wonderful...

HOW TO MAKE HOMEMADE VANILLA EXTRACT

I had a couple vanilla beans sitting in my cupboard. Though fancy recipes often call for whole vanilla beans, it just seems like such a waste to use a vanilla bean once and then toss it. My friend told me how easy it was to make your own extract, and cheaper than buying, so I thought I would try it. Basically, you sterilize a jar and fill it with vodka (or rum if you want that kind of taste in your baking) and then for every couple ounces I think, you use one bean. Here I have a baby food jar with two little vanilla guys. Now I wait..... 2 months.
For one, imitation extract comes from the byproducts of the paper industry.  And at one time, 60% of the world's imitation extract came from Ontario, where there is such a big pulp and paper industry. Also, vanillin is not found solely in the vanilla bean (which is from a type of orchid), it is a chemical compound that can be made artificially (ie; from wood) and can occur naturally in things like wine if they have been in certain types of wood under the right conditions (Yellow Tail Shiraz, anyone?)

Update- The homemade vanilla extract was DELISH

Gorgeous Kitchenware

I wish I lived-in Sweden or at the very least understood the Swedish that could explain to me where to get these gorgeously patterned items from retailer Rorstrand. The colours are killing me!

Gift for the in-laws

Fun little project- maybe my last non-wedding project for the next few months....