Fresh Peach Pie with Cream Cheese

Peaches. My favorite thing about the summer. They are Pretty. Sweet. Tangy. and really you can make so many different things with them. From simple peaches and cream/ice cream, pie to cobbler. My favorite is fresh peach pie though. I love pie. Give me pie and I will always be happy <3

I recently bought a box of peaches and used them just to have some fresh fruit. A few days later they started to become very ripe and I knew I needed to use them up. So I started a pie.

For this peach pie you will want
1 9 in. Pie Crust (baked and cooled)
1 8oz.  Philadelphia Cream Cheese
5-6 medium sized Peaches (you will want them ripe)
Powered Sugar
White Sugar
Milk or Heavy Cream

Pie always starts with the crust. My mom has always made the perfect pie crust, perfectly flaky and light.  It has always been a goal of mine to learn to make it as well as she can and have to say I am getting pretty good ;)
 I was at Moms when I started to make this pie crust and it was humid! We have had a ton of rain lately and I didn't even think about how it would affect the pie. I made the crust as usual and I could tell when I went to roll it out that it was very soft. The butter had melted a lot, so when I went to pick up the crust to place in the pie plate it kinda fell apart in some areas. So please excuse this crust as it isn't the prettiest I have made. (Make sure that you let your pie crust cool completely before moving on.)

If you dont feel like making your own pie crust go ahead and do what suits you! 

Peel and slice the peaches. I always do long slices after cutting the peach in half but what ever your preference is go with it.

Notice the holes and the gap in the crust? Didn't patch as good as I hoped but it still tasted fine.

Next you will want to mix your cream cheese. Let your cream cheese soften a bit before mixing. It will spread easier. I added about a 1/8 cup of milk (usually I use cream but I didn't have any one hand.) and whipped it with the beaters till smooth. I added 1/4 cup of powdered sugar to sweeten the cream cheese. But really that is up to you on how sweet you would like it to be. It will also depend on your fruit! How sweet is your fruit? If you feel like its too tart you can always add more powdered sugar to the cream cheese. Make sure it is all blended together nice and creamy.
Then spread all the cream cheese on the bottom of the cooled pie crust. Be careful to not crumble the pie crust. Have patience. It is best to place dollops of cream cheese around the crust and then spread them together. Make sure it is all evened out and to all the edges.

This pie crust really took a lot before we got to eat it. Theodore had come by earlier and touched the edge of the crust causing it to break. If I was not just making this just to make it, I would have started over because now it was really ugly lol.

 I like to add a little sugar to my fruit but that is my preference. (If your fruit is nice and sweet and doesn't need it then you can fore-go the extra sugar.) Toss the peaches with the sugar till they are all coated and then place the peaches over the cream cheese. You will want to serve immediately as the juices will drain down to the crust making it go soggy. If you wont be eating it quickly you can always refrigerate the pie crust with the cream cheese and put the peaches on later. Slice the pie and enjoy!

This is my go to pie for dinners, coffee dates or tea parties! And really you can make it with whatever fresh fruit you enjoy. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.

Hooded Horse Towel Tutorial

So as I posted before in the post from Wallace's birthday I made a hooded towel! I am really excited about it cause it turned out awesome :D

My older sister gave Theodore a hooded towel for his 2nd birthday and Wallace has loved it. So as the boys were bathing a while back I started looking at it and decided it would be a piece of cake to make one just like it. Since Wallace loves horses I decided on a horse hooded towel.

So here we go!

You will want a full size towel (Color of your choice. I chose dark brown)
Same color of hand towel.
3 wash cloths (Black for the hair and hoofs. and White for the nose)
2 large buttons.
And I will talk about the eyes later on :)

 I started with the head of course. I took the towel that already existed and placed it over the hand towel seeing that it was a half circle, I taped 2 8x10 pieces of paper together and traced around the half circle. This will be easy enough with out something to trace, the circumference of the circle was almost as wide as the hand towel so I left some there to allow for seam allowance. Make sure to fold the hand towel in half (hamburger style lol I feel like I am in 3rd grade again!) and place the pattern on the free edge side. (You don't want your semi circles to be connected :D ) and cut around your pattern. You will now have 2 half circle pieces that are separate.

The semi-circle pattern

All cut out. Notice how cutting it on the free edge gives you a finished edge already!

 Next I started on the nose and eyes. (Note the eyes are pictured in this part but I did change my mind later on and changed them.) I drew a half circle on a piece of paper and drew in some nostrils, and then cut it out and placed on the hand towel. I wanted to make sure it looked right before I went ahead and started cutting. I liked the size so I went ahead and cut it out from the white wash cloth. I placed that piece on the hand towel with my large brown buttons just to get a look of it before I went to the sewing machine.

You may notice that there are white specs of towel all over my project. Towels when cut fray really bad so I went ahead and hemmed the white nose. I went ahead and sewed the nose on top of 1 half circle, and hand sewed the buttons in place.

Next I did the hoofs which sadly I did not picture how I cut them out. What I did was take 1 of the black wash cloths and place it over a corner of the towel (Make sure you are using the two top corners when the towel is unfolded and your looking at it landscape style.) and then decide how large you want to make the "pocket". I did mine pretty small as he is still little. And then cut out 2 triangles and hem the raw edge. Place back over the top of the corners of the towel and sew the perimeter of the triangle leaving and opening for their hand.

 

You can see that I left the hypotenuse of the triangle open for the hand.

Now you will want to do the ears. Mine were a kind of trial and error and I will just tell you how it ended up. The drawings that I made were much too long and I didn't like them so I made them shorter and ended up with something about 2.5 inches long and 2 inches wide. You will want to cut out a piece of white and a piece of brown (using part of the hand towel and part of the white wash cloth.) Sew the wrong sides together and turn inside out. 

Make sure to attach them while sewing the 2 large half circles together. Otherwise you will end up picking out the thread to make room for them like I did. -Aren't you glad I went through all the mistakes for you!?- Make sure the white side of the ear is showing with the nose of the horse otherwise your ear will be backward. Pin in place with the head and sew wrong sides together.

Haha notice how I didn't think of adding the ears before sewing the head together?! I had to go back and unpick some stuff to get it right! But it all turned out in the end.

Now as for the hair. I knew that towels would fray really bad but I had already bought the extra black wash cloth and didn't want it to go to waste. But I put my project away for a few days so I could decide on how to do the hair. I knew a over-lock machine is what I needed if I wanted to use the towel so I called my old sewing teacher up and asked if I could come over and use hers. ( I so wish I had one! It would have made this whole project easier lol. But we have to make do with what we have!) I spent about a half hour cutting out the hair and over-locking the sides of them. I made sure that no sides were left raw. I used the other half of the black wash cloth that I had already cut into for the hooves, and I cut the other one in half and used half of that for the hair as well. I cut them into 1.5 inch strips. Then folded them in half to create a loop. I did all this before I left her house. When I got home I turned the strips right side out so I could sew them on top of the hood of the towel.

 I placed one piece of hair on the front part of the head making sure that the loop was going up and down not sideways. I then just lined up the rest and pinned them into place. I sewed on the inside of the hair so it would stand up right instead of laying to one side. It was kind of hard to figure out in the beginning but it got easier. Just do what works for you. I ended up using 6 pieces of hair.

It is hard to see because of the color of the fabric but I am trying to sew to the inside of the hair. Try folding the top part down and out of the way as much as possible.

I wanted to do a tail. So while I was at the over-lock machine I went ahead and took the other half of the black wash cloth and sewed the sides together. length wise At home I folded the big towel in half and attached the tail about 3/4 way down. Just make sure the tail doesn't hang lower than the towel.

Now to attach the head to the large towel. Fold the towel in half and find the middle, put a pin there and do the same to the head. Pin the middle of the head to the middle of the towel. Then unfold both pieces and both ends of the head to the big towel. Sew along the hemming making sure to reinforce each end.

Now remember when I cut those eyes out? Well I knew that there was no way I was going to able to hem them or use the over-lock for it. I spent those few days trying to decide what to do for the eyes. I didn't have any buttons that would work and I wanted some white on there. In the end I crocheted the eyes. I did a circle of 8 half double crochet stitches for the black, and 2 rounds of the same for the white (ending up with 16 total stitches for the white.) I attached the black part to the lower part of the white and then hand sewed the eyes onto the hood.

Now if you do not have a over-lock and don't have access to one I suggest using some fabric that doesn't fray. It would have made the whole eye problem go away too. Maybe some felt or something of that nature.

But that is the finished project. Wallace loved it and really bad wants me just let him run around the house in his horse towel so he can really be a horsie :)

Yay for my 1st tutorial! Feel free to message me about any questions you might have :)

Happy Birthday to My Little Cowboy!

Oh man I had such a crazy week I never got to posting this! With working and meetings and the birthday party to do it was all just crazy but I am happy to say Wallace is now 2 years old!

He was born July 24th, 2011 at 3:38 am. He has been so much fun and it just gets better each day!

Here he is on his first birthday ready to have cake!

Right after his birth getting weighed and cleaned.

I love him to pieces! He is a little teddy bear who likes to think he is a big tiger. This year he played in the water with his older brother and we had cake! The awesome thing about his birthday is that it is on the 24th of July, which is Pioneer Day to all us here so he got to watch fireworks and do sparklers.

 Having fun with sparklers! They didn't want to stop :)

With his cake! Which I might add was delish! Made from scratch and it turned out great.

These books are the cutest things! Mom found them :) They are all about trucks and tractors and the book is in the shape of a tire.

One part of his gift was a towel that I am happy to say that I made! He is so into horses I decided I wanted to find him a hooded horse towel. 

His older brother has a dragon one that his Aunt gave to him for his 2nd birthday, and I figured I could figure it out and I love how it turned out. I am planning to make a tutorial for this soon so keep posted :)

Four and A Half Years in the Waiting!

It's true I have been waiting for something in my life to change since I got married and moved into my little tiny place! In little spaces organization is a HUGE thing. You want it to look neat and nice without looking cluttered or messy.... And that is how my bathroom has looked for 4 1/2 years.

My husband is the one who fixed up our small trailer before he moved in. He chose the colors, the curtains the flooring. I totally agree with everything he chose except when it comes to the bathroom. He chose a over the toilet organizer that was made from flimsy metal that had 3 shelves. I have hated them the whole time.

For months now the whole thing has been wobbly and when I go to clean around it I feel like it could collapse on me. Before I had Cedric in April I told Theral that we needed to get a real bathroom cabinet for the towels etc. I had been searching Pintrest for months trying to find a good fix that would be inexpensive but nothing I found suited my needs. We have 2 sets of towels plus the kids towels and miscellaneous white towels, just to have on hand. Nothing I found on Pintrest would work for all that, I really liked the basket idea of hanging it sideways to create a shelf but I felt like I had too much to put in and it might not all fit on the tiny wall. So I though that maybe we could find a nice cabinet that would fit everything and I could maybe close the doors to the mess I hated.

 Here is a before picture of what I had. 

Some of my black towels were in the washing machine

 so they are not pictured, 

but they usually go in the middle shelf.

My husband and I were in Walmart last Friday and I mentioned wanting the bathroom cabinet. He claimed he could find one I would like in the store so we went looking. There were some nice ones but the cabinet shelves were not deep enough to hold my towels. So we walked away, and once again I felt like I would never find what I wanted. I mentioned getting some baskets to hang and put towels in. When he saw the cube organizers we loved for our toy box. He had a brilliant idea to use that and hang it on the wall.

I told him YES! Okay something to solve my problem. It might not be the prettiest or the best looking but it was going to work and look so much better than what I had. So we spent the $35 on the shelf and brought it home. 

Tonight he came home from work earlier than he usually does so he got a chance to build the shelves after dinner with the boys. (They love helping him with his tools <3) And little me got to help him put it on the wall- I am not built for that kind of work! I could hardly hold up the shelves... time to go work out and build me some arm muscle!- And wa-la! We have a over the toilet cabinet! I got to organizing things and I love it so much! I am totally satisfied with how it turned out :) 

 

Hats! Hats! Hats!

Ah! I have been busily making some hats! I have a friend who is expecting her first baby in about 3 weeks time! We are very excited for her to get into motherhood and go through that BIG experience! I was having a hard time deciding on what beanie to make for her because she hasn't really chosen a theme for the nursery (she is just going to "go with it" and see in the future) So I finally just broke down and told her "Hey I am going to be giving you a beanie at your shower so what do you want?!" I figured may as well let her choose. She chose a brown bear beanie 3-6 months size so he can wear it this coming winter, and it turned out DARLING! This is my first "bear" beanie so I wasn't quite sure how it would turn out. Would I have to undo some of it and make a different decision on colors? Different eyes? But I am happy to say the first try for everything just worked out! I plan to put a listing for this in my Etsy Store soon because I love it so much!

This hat was made with Lion Brand "Homespun Yarn" and the color I chose was "Pearls"

The other beanies I have been working on have been more for the "fun" of it. I love trying out new stitches and seeing how they will work out as a beanie so I have this basket weave stitch beanie that I fell in love with! And the color is so much fun.

This hat was made with my all time favorite yarn "Caron Simply Soft" the color is "Blue Mint"

I found a fun chunky yarn in a nice mint blue and made a aviator beanie out of it. I accented it with a nice cream and added buttons. I am hoping Cedric will fit into it this winter, we'll have to see!

 Mint Blue Aviator Hat made with Lion Brand Yarn "Babies First"

And then a personal favorite color combo! Grey and Green! I had some extra grey laying around and I cannot remember what the brand is. :( But it is really soft and cuddly!

 

 Aviator Beanie made with  Grey Yarn and accented with "Caron Simply Soft Green"

What fun it has been to just crochet for fun! I really need to get busy and start listing my hats in my Etsy Store. I have been procrastinating it, but I think this week I will just have to do it and see how fast they sell. I want to start getting some bulk made up for the winter season, I just don't know what will sell best. It is however my first year really getting into selling online so it will be trial and error for now! 

 

Weekend Get-Away!

Home sweet home! It is always so nice to get home after a long trip to a familiar place, where kids can go to sleep no problem and just be in their comfort zone :) Theral and I were invited to a wedding reception in Salt Lake City so we figured "why not just make a family trip out of it." Famous last words I know! We made a long weekend out of it and traveled up Thursday night while the little tykes slept to avoid the craziness of the drive.

Friday we hit Lagoon. Yes it was exhausting but so worth the time we spent together as a family. And thanks to their Grandma and Grandpa we had some help with them so everyone got to go have fun <3 

They were pretty excited about the stamps on their hand :)

 On a couple of different rides! Wallace did so good going on the rides himself. 

I was kind of skeptical about it when we were buying his ticket, but he had fun and participated.

Cedric's first ride was the train, we had to document that ;)

On Saturday we went to the Zoo. Last year when we did this same trip Wallace was just under a year old so of course he doesn't remember it, so I wanted to make sure he got to go see the animals. The boys both had a lot of fun looking at them and watching them move around. 

(We were lucky and got to the animals while they were out and about, even though it was really hot!)

 

The Polar Bear was probably the most exciting to the boys. He was having so much fun swimming in his water we ended up watching him for a while. The boys really got to see how big he was compared to them! 

When we got to the peacock he had his feathers all ruffled out! 

Not something you see all the time. He walked around for awhile showing them off. 

(Isn't he beautiful?)

Throughout the zoo they have different statues of animals that kids can go up to and touch and play with.

The trunk of the elephant was alot of fun! I am glad I got to get a picture of them on it this year, 

Theodore wouldn't go near it last year, scared him to bad ;)

But I understand it is pretty big and kids don't quite understand!

 And of course after a day at Lagoon the kids wanted to get back on the Merry-Go-Round! 

The whole weekend was perfect. The boys got to see where their favorite Auntie moved to (they are always hearing about Salt Lake so it was nice to actually show them where she lives now.) But it is nice to be home and get back into the swing of things.