I love this: maezm

My hubby sent me to this website: sub-studio design, where they've featured maezm and a couple of their really sweet designs.
Fabulous.

I made this: Banana

I found this really great free amigurumi pattern site last week that I just had to share. If you like to crochet small anthropomorphic things, this website is just the place for you. While I was intrigued by the severed fingers pattern that came up in my google reader today, I poked around a bit and found this great banana pattern. I have made some other amigurumi play food for my kids and I started to attempt a banana earlier this summer, but got caught up in trying to make the pattern curve like a banana. This pattern really relies on the way you stuff the banana to get a curve to it. But it works. And it's a lot better than the banana I never finished.

 I like how this shot of the banana looks like it's in a police line up.

Pizza Dough

I have been making my own pizza pretty regularly for nearly a year. It has become something of a Sunday tradition for our family. We all look forward to it. We've taken a bit of a hiatus from pizza making through most of the summer, since the warm weather and hot hot oven do not go well together. I have been asked by a few people if I have a favorite recipe for pizza dough. As it turns out, I totally do. I posted previously on my personal blog, about making pizza (and having an oven fire). I gave my mom's pizza sauce recipe there.

Here's a link to the dough recipe I use. Since I'm not really sure how recipes and copyright and the internet work/don't work together and I try to respect people's property rights, I'll let someone else give you the dough recipe that I use. I got it from this book: Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day. It has a chapter on pizza and flat breads. So go get the recipe and come back here and I'll tell you what I do with my dough for the rest of the instructions.

So, after I've made my dough and let it rise and chilled it, I turn on the oven to 550 degrees with my pizza stone inside, then I dust the top of the dough with a little flour, and then cut of a grapefruit sized piece of dough with a serrated knife. After that, I fold the dough inside out by taking a bit from the middle and folding it over and tucking it under the bottom all the way around to make a nice smooth ball. There's no kneading here. Then I use a fair bit of flour since it's so sticky to work with and shape a nice flat pizza shape. I don't make huge pizzas, but I do like the crust thin, so aim for 10-11 inch diameter pizza. Before dressing the pizza, I put it on my pizza peel that's covered with a good sprinkling of cornmeal (to help it slide off). I bought mine at my local Italian Market; I feel so cool when I use it. Then I dress the pizza with my mom's pizza sauce, some fresh basil and mozzarella cheese. The kids like pineapple on their pizza and D likes some meat; I'll occasionally indulge them. Even if the oven hasn't fully heated up, I gently wiggle the pizza off the pizza peel onto the pizza stone. Close the oven, let it cook for about 5-10 minutes. I usually cook it for 10 minutes and turn it around half way through to get it to brown evenly. Take it out, let it cool a bit and serve. Delicious!

Here's my second favorite recipe, given to us by some friends along with pizza pans for our wedding:

Traditional Pizza Dough

2 3/4 cups bread flour
1 tsp salt
1 tsp active dry yeast
1 tsp sugar
3/4 cup warm water (or more depending on how dry your climate is)
1 tbsp olive oil

Mix flour, salt, yeast, sugar in medium bowl
Add water & oil
Mix to a soft dough, knead on a floured surface 10 minutes, until smooth (or 2 minutes in KitchenAid mixer).
Place in greased bowl and cover with cloth. Let rise in a warm place 45 minutes or until doubled in size.

Punch down and knead briefly. Shape dough into 2 thin crust pizzas or 1 thick crust.

 For thick crust, put on favorite toppings and cheese and cook at 375 degrees for 15-20 minutes or until done and cheese is bubbly.

For the tastiest, cripiest crust, dress your pizza without the cheese. Then cook at 500 degrees for about -4 minutes until the crust firms and the toppings start to cook. Remove from oven and then remove from pan. Top with cheese and fresh herbs. Place back in the oven carefully and cook ntil the crust is brown and the cheese is bubbly ans starting to brown (about another 3 minutes). You have to watch this and you need lots of space, but it's worth it.

Hexagonal Stacking Boxes!

These are awesome. I love little containers. I want to buy small things in bulk so that I have little things to put in great containers like this.

Please go and download the free pdf from Evil Mad Scientist Labratories and make yourself some cool hexagonal stacking boxes. That's right stacking boxes! I love these already.

Hamburger & Fries for cake

This is a re-post from my personal blog, Containers and Compartments. This was for my son, S's second birthday. Instead of making a cake, I made a bunch of hamburgers and french fries, since he's such a fast food loving kid (not really). I got the idea from this post from Bakerella.

Okay, so we didn't forgo cake altogether! It's a brownie cupcake hamburger and sugar cookie french fries! So fun and so tasty (though I found the hamburger to be a little too sweet for my taste).

Duncan Hines yellow cake cupcakes, made a little on the short side. I got 35 cupcakes out of one mix.


Orangey-yellow marshmallow fondant... perfect processed cheese colour!


Tomato red marshmallow fondant for ripe red tomatoes.


Vanilla pudding... mayonnaise.

Brownies.... for the hamburger patties. To stretch my batter a bit, I added 1/2 cup of homemade applesauce instead of increasing the butter, and increased the dry ingredients by 1/3 except the sugar (I figured 3 cups was quite enough). Instead of cracking and falling like they usually do, they were even and fluffy, a little more cake-y, but tasty and beautiful looking.

The "cheese" rolled out and cut for hamburgers. I used a ruler (to make them square) and a pizza cutter and did my best to cut in straight lines. But it didn't matter that much.

The "tomatoes" rolled and cut. I used a biscuit cutter for these and the brownie "hamburgers."

All the ingredients ready for assembly. The bowl is full of the brownies. I squished each one of them before assembling. They were too tall otherwise. The squishing made them a little less perfectly round, which added to the authentic look.

"Ketchup" "Mustard" and Coconut "Lettuce"

Hamburgers assembed.

D taste-testing.


Hamburgers and fries assembled for our friends at the Legislature Grounds.



Delicious! And totally fun!

I made this: Robot

I borrowed this book by Christen Haden of Needle Noodles from the library last week. It's not new on the market, but its copyright is just last year, so that's not so bad, right? I really enjoyed the book. After listening to a podcast about traditional book publishing and e-book publishing, I feel a little guilty borrowing it from the library instead of buying it. Oh well. Maybe I will still buy it. The first thing I remember seeing from Christen was a pattern for a cute Santa, Mrs Claus, Elf and Snowman set (the pattern seems to be missing from her etsy shop right now), which inspired the nativity creatures I created last Christmas for the children.

I made a donkey and Jesus, too, but they were galavanting somewhere around the house at the time of this picture (⁴⁹"Why were you searching for me?" he asked. "Didn't you know I had to be in my Father's house?" Luke 2:49)

I made this cute robot from the Creepy Cute Crochet.


The kids like him too, but he mostly just gets thrown around like a ball. Just what I was going for.

Squirt Gun Refill Station

Ok. This is so sweet. I would totally do this. Especially if I had a fountain pump and 1/2 inch hose just hanging around in my garage (and if I had a garage). Instructables rocks.

Doing better already: free fonts

Hey, see? I'm getting back on this blog bandwagon and am looking forward to getting better (and faster, because faster means I'm more likely to do it more frequently if I don't have to take a long time to do one post).

The point of craftevangelist is that I get to share the cool crafty things that I've found with you. And I like to do that. Today I found a bunch of cool handwritten fonts you can download for free from Tripwire Magazine! I love these kind of things. (via CRAFT)

A few of my favorites. I haven't even finished looking through them all! My first thought was to download them for fun and projects at home, but the more I think of it I can use them for some of my design projects at work, too!

Dust off the blog and I made this: purse

Ok, so I've really done a crap job of this craft blog lately. Ok, I've never done a good job of this craft blog. But for the amount of crafting I do, I really have a lot to put here. Because I've never done much of an introduction for this blog, I thought I'd give you my thoughts about it. I wanted a place that was different from my personal blog where I could send people who were interested in the crafty me. My personal blog turned pretty crafty for a while, which was fine, but many people who don't know the real me don't necessarily care to hear about my conversation with my three year old on the bus or why I choose to cloth diaper. I've never been much of a poop-talk, mommy, but still.

As you will learn, I don't spend a lot of time apologizing for things I haven't done, like not blogging. So now that I'm here, let me share something with you. This bag has been a long time in the making. I have a purse. Just a small, regular, going out purse. But I needed a hand bag. A transition diaper bag/mommy purse/shopping bag. I don't always need a full diaper bag... one diaper when we're out is usually more than enough. So if I have one in my bag with a wipe or two, that's usually sufficient. But I always need room for a couple pairs of socks (in case we're at a play place) and I like to have pockets for all my things... wallet, cell phone, iPod, sunglasses, keys, change purse, you know.

And for entirely too long, I was hauling around a reuseable shopping bag (not a cool one) with my purse in it and all the other crap I wanted to carry. Finally, my coworker, who brought her sons to my son's birthday party, gave S his birthday gift, it came in a cute reusable bag that I commandeered and carried that around. It was a big step up from the one I was using.

All this time I was dreaming of and looking for the perfect fabric for my handbag. I have a small stash of fabric. So I couldn't just go to my stash. After nearly 9 months, I acquired all the fabric I needed for my handbag. And a couple months later, in less than 2 days (mommy days... naps & evenings) I designed and put together the new handbag. And I'm SOOO pleased with it!

Isn't that a fun lining fabric? I bought it for aprons that I made for me and Z... (I changed the style of apron I was planning to make so that I would have extra leftover to line a handbag!)

Not too bad for a first time, eh?

Amazing Paper Cutting

I just found this amazing paper cutting artist through Dude Craft.
wow
She is phenomenal.
Check it out.