Clean Up Your Blog Labels

Do you have a bunch of extra labels hanging around your blog? 

 I did.  Ugh.  

Sometimes when I would type Cooks, I would get Cook or Cookd.  And then it added it to my list and I just dealt with it. But not this update around!

Want to clean up your labels? It wasn't as bad as I thought it would be!  

First thing first open up your blogger dashboard.  Then, edit posts. 

Over on the right hand side you should see "Posts Per Page", click on that and bump it up to the max which is 300.

By doing this, you will be able to see all your posts 

( unless you have more than that, I had 296 so I was close).

Then, "Select All."

Next, pull down" Label Actions..."

Scroll through all your labels, until you see "Remove Label"

Click the "oops" label and your done. Repeat until your labels are nice and clean! 

I had about 100 labels and narrowed it down to 50!  

Updates...

Sorry for the lack of posts lately, I have been working hard behind the scenes.  

Working on the new header , a new button ( not up yet),

 re-organizing labels and going back through post by post putting more specific labels on.

Sounds fun? Eh. It's a lot of computer time. But hopefully worth it.

Make sure to stop by Monday for a new feature!

Spaghetti Salad

It's that time of year again, when soups are put on the back burner and salads are back!

This is one of my favorite salads that my great aunts ( who are in their 70's) make for parties.  I finally figured it is not that hard to make, and here it is!

Ingredients:

Skinny Spaghetti, or Angel Hair

Fresh Tomatoes

Fresh Cucumbers

Fresh Red Onions

Oil

Vinegar

Salt and Pepper

Boil your water and make your pasta as you would to eat hot.  Let pasta cool, or rinse with cold water.

While your pasta cooks, go ahead and chop your cucumbers.

Chop your tomatoes.

And chop your onions.

Add your cooled spaghetti.

Now for the tricky part. Mix all together and start to add your oil and vinegar.  I like to coat my pasta with oil first. Then slowly add the vinegar to taste.  You can always add, but not subtract!

Salt and Pepper to taste, and thats it!  Refrigerate and serve cold. The perfect alternative to a mayonaise based salad on a hot day!

Ah, Spring!

As more and more of the snow melts, the more and more excited I am getting about gardening and being outdoors. And with all that excitement I needed to work on my indoor "garden" before I can work outdoors ( plus I believe we are expecting some snow this weekend. Yuck.)

This  morning I took the Spring energy and put it to good use, I fertilized my plants, repotted some that needed it, and added dirt as needed too.

This here is a Polka Dot Plant, or Hypoestes, that I purchases to add some color to my indoor plants.  Currently, my plants are a Kalanchoe, Peace Lilly, Aloe  and the Polka Dot Plant.

Hope Spring is finding you all too!

My Sewing Machine

If you have been reading a while, you know that lately I have been bitten by the sewing bug.  Or at least the urge. I haven't made anything big in a while, but want to. Bad. So, in an effort to keep this motivation up, I thought why not make it a weekly post about what I am sewing, please share in the comments what your up to too! Plus, I love links to visit too!

So for starters, I thought I would share what machine I work on.

This is the Brother SE 350.  I purchased it refurbished a year or two ago off eBay, and love it!  It has the embroidery attachment, which is great for baby gifts!  But some of my favorite features are the simpler ones.

I love love love this feature seen here.

See the boxes in the upper right corner?  Those are programable. If you want them on they look like this, if not they would be white not black. But I leave them on. This feature automatically backstitches at the beginning of your seam, and then when you hit the backstitch button at the end it does that plus cuts your thread. Ah. Love.

Another favorite feature. You can run the machine with or without the pedal!  I have become very used to the hand controls and haven't used my pedal since I got it! The red button goes green when your foot is down, telling you its safe to start, and then you can adjust the speed using the arrows.

This is just the sewing half of my machine, and the embroidery half is just as much fun!

What's on your sewing table?  I'm starting a big project and plan to share it with you each week!

Crochet Class: Lesson 2

Today we will talk about double crochet! Last lesson, I showed you a slipknot, how to chain and single crochet.


This week we are moving up! Literally. The double crochet stitch is taller than a single crochet stitch.

To make a double crochet you need to have something to work from. Most likely if your just starting a project it will be your foundation row ( which is your chain).

Wrap yarn around your hook.

Insert hook into foundation chain.

Wrap yarn around hook again. 

Pull through two loops.

Yarn over again.

Pull through last two loops. And you have created a double crochet stitch.

Repeat until end of row. Once you get a couple stitches complete you can see them better!

At the end of every double crochet row you need to chain two. 

 This is so that your next row starts off at the right height.

Flip your project over so that your needle is on the right side of the project.

Keep going!  Don't forget to chain two at the end of each row.

Come back in two weeks for more step by step crochet!

Yesterday...Stock

Seemed like such a random day, and to keep it even more random I made stock. If this can even be considered stock. Clearly it isn't chicken stock, but I guess Vegetable Stock would be sufficient name!

I had some veggies that were getting kinda yucky looking, so I thought what can it hurt.

After a quick clean, and a rough chop I threw onion, celery and carrots in a kettle with a little bit of butter to get it all started.  After a couple minutes, I threw in some chicken broth ( to make it truly vegetable, just omit it)  and water.

It tasted great, I even at it like a bowl of soup!  Now it's off to my freezer to wait for a nice chicken soup kind of day, and half the work is done!

Sweet Sewing...A tutorial

Ah, it feels so nice to get back into the sewing groove. It also feel nice to give back! 

Through the grapevine, I was asked to make some blankets for a local NICU ( Neonatal Intensive Care Unit) and how can you say no to teeny tiny babies?  Want to make your own?  

Here's how I made them! Using some fleece (and a large dish towel for size, my measurements were 19" x 29")  I cut all my fleece blankets.

After a few minutes, I had a nice big pile! Ah. Instant gratification!

Indeed, I could have been done because the fleece does not fray, but I couldn't leave them alone.

So, out came some remnant from my stash! Ahhhh I love baby flannel!

To make some binding, I cut two inch strips.

Then I went ahead and sewed them end to end.

Now, to make my actual binding I made this little binding maker using a needle and an ironing board. No need to buy the fancy binding maker thing they sell in stores!

I folded my fabric to the size I wanted my binding to be ( folded the two edges to the center) and then stuck the pin through my ironing board cover.

As you pull the fabric through it will automatically fold it for you, handy huh? Then iron to keep it in place!  Keep pulling until you have all your fabric strip ironed.

To make it a little easier to sew to my blanket, I ironed my binding in half to create the crease that becomes the edge of the blanket. (This image below is before I ironed in half)

Sew around the edge of your fleece, and you have a super cute blanket ( or two)!

Happy St. Patricks Day!

We really don't celebrate St. Patricks Day, because it is my baby brother's birthday. And the funny part of being born on St. Patricks Day? He won't even eat Corn Beef and Cabbage. So my mother makes two meals, one for him and one for the rest of us!

Anyways, in an attempt to celebrate I decided to make some cookies!

And I may just throw in the towel after this one.  I am not a cookie maker.  Cakes I can handle, cookies not so much.

If your a friend on facebook, you may have seen my nice message to my shamrock cookie cutter. We are not friends anymore, actually it has been banished to the playdough cutter pile.  Every stem came off, either before or after I baked them. Grumble.

So, no they did not become those super cute ice cream sandwiches. But I did get 6  shamrocks to give to my brother.  But the rest are circles. Sigh.

Hope you have a Happy St. Patricks Day!