Mug Brownie : Recipe

There are many different recipes for mug brownies floating around on the web, and I have tried quite a few of them myself.  Most of them didn't use vanilla, over cooked them till they were too dry, and none of them ever used butter.  They used olive or vegetable oil instead.  How sad is that?

I have taken away, added, changed up, and mixed up all my findings from these recipes, until I have finally come to the point where I have my own mug brownie recipe, one that is chocolatey, moist, and uses real butter.

Because really, isn't everything better with butter?

Ingredients

• 1/4 white chocolate chips ( optional )
• 1/4 cup flour
• 1/4 cup granulated sugar
• 3 tablespoons cocoa powder
• 3 tablespoons water
• 2 tablespoons melted butter
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• a pinch of salt

You'll need your favorite mug, of course, just make sure that it is microwave safe, and preferably not stoneware.  While you can microwave most stoneware, those suckers take a long time to cool down, let me tell you.

So here we go, I guess.  

( Note: this really should not explode inside the microwave on you.  Pinky promise. )

Start out by mixing all of your dry ingredients together.  Dump your flour, sugar, cocoa powder, and salt into your mug.  Stir till evenly combined.

Next, add your wet ingredients.  This is the part where you have to melt your butter.  Now, I don't want you to get too emotional over this part.  I know that your two tablespoons of butter might be sitting in their bowl chilling and chatting with each other . . .

. . . and that they might be a bit upset when they find out they're going to be melted . . .

. . . but we're making brownies here, my peeps.  And sacrifices must be made.

I recommend zapping your butter for about 10 seconds at a time to avoid it popping all over the inside of your microwave ( it might be out for revenge, you see ).  It should really only take two 10 second runs to get it all melted.  Once most of it is melted, you can usually stir it around to get the rest of it to melt so that you don't over do it in the microwave.  The second it starts to sound like WWIII in there, you know you've gone too far.

Once melted, dump directly into your mug, along with your water and vanilla.  Stir till all the lumps are gone and you're super sure that there are no stubborn dry ingredients clinging to the bottom edges of your mug, because it's kind of gross to get to the bottom of your brownie and find a pocket of flour that didn't get stirred in.  Just a warning.

If you want to up your brownie game to royalty status, you can take those white chocolate chips and put them on top of your brownie after you are done stirring.  It might sound tempting to stir them into your brownie, but don't.  They will hold onto their heat stuck in the middle like that and they will burn.

It's not fun people.  It's not fun.

So keep them on the top, like a crown of white diamonds fit for the ruler of the world ( which I am, but you guys can pretend ).

Microwave for 1:30, then let stand in the microwave for 2 minuets.  This is the hardest part, because you can smell it, and it's right there in front of you, just waiting to be eaten, but don't give in.  Letting it stand for a few while it's still hot will complete the baking process without drying it out, and it will give it time to start cooling down, so that unless you used a stoneware mug, it should be ready to eat if you blow on your bites after those long, hard two minuets of waiting.

Look at that glorious mug brownie.  Just look at it.

Mmm, yes.  It's time now to get a book and curl up under a blanket to enjoy life to it's fullest.  So let me just go grab my book, grab my blanket, sit down and -

Oh, wait.  What's this?  Did I eat my brownie already?

Well then . . . I'll just have to make another one.

Em

Calligraphy, Someday

So once again, my local library ends up being totally and completely awesome.

There is this one very special corner by the front doors that has books for sale all the time.  You can stroll over, find what you want, and drop the required payment into a wooden box before strolling out with more books you obviously need despite not actually having room for them anymore.

There's not always something good over there ( it's mostly beat up romance paperbacks and unwanted children's books ), because the stock for it comes strictly from donations made to the library.  But every now and then you find something that's pretty neat.  Or, in this case, really neat.

"The Complete Calligraphy Set" was standing suggestively on the bottom shelf when I turned, just about to leave the library, to see it staring at me.

"Come," it said to me.  "You KNOW you want to take me home."

"I do?" I wondered.  And then, "Yes.  Yes I DO want to take you home."

But did I have enough cash to take it home?  Or was money going to come between us?

The little yellow sticker on the top of it said it was only $6.  So no, thank goodness, money was not going to come between us.

Thus it now stands along side my other meager calligraphy items, slowly preparing me for the day when I will actually sit down and teach myself calligraphy.  It has been a dream of mine since last summer, when I checked out no less than 10 calligraphy books to do just that, but sadly, Life came in and slapped me back to reality.

I did not have enough time, you see, to sit for hours and hours to properly be able to learn calligraphy, nor do I really have the time right now, not with everything else I'm trying to do all at once.  One day, when I finish with the 12 dozen other things I having going on right now, I'll do it.

( Though I'll have to go get some more ink first, as the little bottle my set came with, is all used up. )

And when I do, you can guess how absolutely fabulous this blog is going to look.

Em

Late Night Crochet

One of my goals is to open an online shop by fall or winter this year, hopefully.  It'll be all blankets and blanket patterns, and so to prepare for this I have been slowly but surely been getting some things together for it.  I started on a blanket today, one that I've been wanting to get going on for about a week now.  If you look very carefully behind my flower, ( Which is doing great, by the way!  Just look at how big it's gotten! ) you'll see the first notes of a pattern for said blanket sitting on my desk.

Now blankets are rather large-ish projects, and if you want to be able to work on them whenever and wherever, I think we can all agree that you need proper bags or other such carrying items to lug the thing around.  I found one such thing in my closet, a fabric basket of sorts with a metal frame, but it was already holding a lot of my past yarn-ish things that I had tossed away and haven't touched since.  I guess you could say it was my yarn graveyard.

Desperate times call for desperate measures, as they say, and having nothing else large enough to hold my blanket project, I had no choice but to dump it's contents onto my floor.  Strange experiments and tangled yarn tumbled out, and among them was the body of a toy I had never finished, along with a few other random body parts from forgotten crafts.

Yes, that's right, body parts.  Can you imagine how strange that might sound to someone who had never crafted a toy?  Just picture yourself walking any place where you might get your bags checked. Maybe a fair entrance or the movie theater, it doesn't matter.   Deep down in the bottom of your bag, you have a small project sitting, one that you always keep in there just in case where you're going gets boring.  Security comes up.

"Ma'am, what do you have in your bag?" they ask.

And you, being the smart aleck you are, answer,

"Body parts."

Now imagine the look on their face.

Of course, before you ever even find yourself in a situation like this, you might want to ask yourself; Is the pun worth the jail time?  I can see how the answer to this question might vary from person to person.

Ahem.  Anyways.

When you're having one of those nights when you're really, really worn out but don't feel like going to bed quite yet, there are few better ways to spend it then working a simple project you've been looking forward to while watching BBC and other British shows.  Especially if there's coconut cream pie mixed into the equation.

I picked out more mellow colors for this one.  In the past, when I had first started making blankets of all sorts years ago, I was known for picking colors so bright they almost looked like they were screaming at you.  But no more.  I love color, so much in fact, that I think I would be entirely depressed without it.  But now I have found myself drifting toward the 'low volume' colors, and, bright prints on white or off-white backgrounds.  This way I still get all the color I love without giving myself and others headaches just from looking at the things I have made.

I'm super excited to get it and it's pattern done ( though it'll probably be weeks before I finish ), so if you don't mind, I have more rectangles to make.

And, naturally, more pie to eat.

Em

My Own Black & White Memories

Have you ever looked at one of your own photos and thought "This is terrible, the lighting is no good, there's nothing interesting going on here, nobody would ever, ever like this, so why do I?"

That's exactly what these awful black and whites are for me, and there are plenty more where they came from.  I know that they're no good at all, but I continue to snap them anyways.  I couldn't understand why for a while.  No one ever sees them, they have no artistic value, and it's not like anyone would ever buy them, so why?  Why, if they are doing me no good at all and taking up extra space on my hard drive, do I keep them?

Then, I thought, maybe that wasn't the point of them.  I started paying attention to the things that I was snapping pictures of, and I realized that these weren't meant to be good photos, or photos for others to like, or even photos for a blog.  No one was going to hang them on their wall, and no one was even going to care about them.  Except for me.

These are personal snapshots of the way my dinning room table looks, of the light coming through the curtains I made in the morning, of the books I love, the way it looks to sit at my desk, of a little flower I saved that sits on my window sill and keeps growing bigger with each drop of water and black tea I give it.

I want to remember how my mother taught me to quilt.  I want to remember what I saw looking through an iron fence, or how the light looked coming down through the fuzzy tipped plants and the trees.  I want to remember all that I can, and keep those memories some how, so that I never forget.

The point of these photos is so that I can, with 100% accuracy, remember how these things looked when I'm old and on the verge of forgetting the way my life used to be.  The only wall these photos will ever belong on is my own, because they're my memories.  That's the reason I take them, and keep them.

My black and white memories.  So that I never forget how my life used to be.

Em

Chasing the Sprinkler Sunset

I went outside yesterday afternoon to water the plants like a good littler gardener when I saw that there was a sprinkler running in the front lawn.  As you might have noticed by now, I am merely a child who's pretending to be an adult.  Every now and then I forget I'm supposed to be acting mature, and things like this happen.

Yes, that's me jumping through the sprinkler in the pink ( though it looks more red in the picture ).  It wasn't long after I began twirling around in the water sputtering when it unexpectedly hit me in the face when my little sister joined me ( yes, the same one who runs around pretending to be a dragon with me in the winter ).

I was only going to run through the water a couple of times, but once my sister was out there with me, a few times turned into over a half hour of looking like dorks ( but happy dorks ).  We were soaked, we were muddy, and we didn't make it into the glorious sunset that I was clearly trying to lead my sister into in the picture below before she realized that she forgot her bags, but, we had fun, and really, that's all that matters.

You can think I'm crazy ( and you wouldn't be wrong ), but doing spontaneous, childish things like this just makes me feel better about life.  Who said you have to grow up anyways?  Not this gal.  So if you want my advice, go run through those sprinklers!  Trust me, it'll make your heart and soul feel happy again.

( I just hope the neighbors didn't see us. )

Em

Bloglovin' Love

<a href="http://www.bloglovin.com/blog/14918797/?claim=bm7gzy24gkt">Follow my blog with Bloglovin</a>

So here I am, trying to see if this works to get my blog on Bloglovin!

*  *  *

Update: It worked!  My blog is now on Bloglovin', a super fun site for all who love blogs and have blogs.  It's great for finding new blogs to read, get new readers to your blog, and following blogs you already love ( like me! ).  It's free to join and a lot of fun.  I would really recommend checking it out.

 I hope you will follow me on Bloglovin.com, and that you don't mind the strangeness of this post.  It was necessary to create a new post with that strange looking code at the top of it in order for me to claim my blog.

Em  :)

Bibliophile Book Sale Spree

I got 41 books for $8 over the weekend.

Don't believe me?

Here's how it happened.

My library had it's spring book sale on Friday and Saturday.  It's always super cheap.  50 cents for a paperback, $1 for a hardback, or $7 for however many books you can fit into a plastic grocery bag.  If you buy more than one bag, you get a dollar off for every bag you buy, down the lowest price of $4 a bag.  They also have super rare and old books, but they are sold separately for $3 a book, and are not included in the bag price.

My sister and I went to this sale.  Together we got 3 bags; one for me, two for her.  That meant each bag only cost $5 instead of $7.  I fit 18 books into my bag.  And I thought that was the end of it.

But then on the second day of the sale, I noticed that during the final hour of the sale, everything was listed as half off, including the old, rarer books.  With spare change included, I had $6 of pocket money left.  So I went back to the book sale to get myself 4 old books to add to my collection.

Turns out, the ladies running the book sale had dropped the price even lower than what they originally said.  It was now only $1 a bag, and the old books were now included in the bag price instead of being sold separately!  So that's when 4 more books turned into 1 more bag.

Then, as I was browsing, one of the ladies came up to me, super excited to see a younger person interested in books, and began to help me put books into my bag.  When that one filled up, she got me another one, and then one more.  And that's when 1 more bag turned into 3 more bags.  3 bags that I only paid $3 for.

So both days combined, I only spent $8 for 4 bags of books.  And in those 4 bags, I managed to fit 41 books.

Shall I go through what they all are, or would that be too long and boring for you?

You know what, I'm so excited that I'm going to do it anyways, just in case you can't read all the spine labels.  So let's go top to bottom in the pictures.  Please forgive me.

To start with, my wonderful, super heavy dictionary set from 1927.  These puppies hold the real english language in it if you ask me.  There are so many old words that don't make it into today's dictionarys, and there's no twerking or selfie nonsense to be had.  These dictionarys have style, from back when the English language had class.  And as a bonus, there's a built in Thesaurus, a proper name dictionary for looking up famous people of history and myth, and a cities and countries dictionary in the back of the second volume.

"The Beacon Lights of History" set.  I have volumes 1, 3, 8, 10, and 14.  I don't how many there are all together or where I could ever find the others, but these are still gems.  Inside of one of them was a newspaper clipping from 1899.  Can you believe it?  I got to read how the stocks and weather were that day in November over a century ago!  How cool is that?

Then there's "Twelve Way to Build a Better Vocabulary".  "Cathcart's Literary Reader" and "History of English Literature" are for studying all the famous written works without having to actually read them.  "Great Adventures and Explorations" are about the old explorers.  The last book in that picture is, "The Art of Clear Thinking".

"The Elegant Auctioneers", I'm not even sure what's it's about.  But it's stamped on the inside, saying it came from a New York hospital library.  "Paradise Lost and Other Poems", "A Tale of Two Cities", and "Bleak House".  I'm pretty sure "Pearls From Many Seas" is a work of fiction, but the first few pages are so dry that they're cracking, so I haven't looked further.

"Stories to Remember", "Hurlbut's Story of the Bible", "The Possessed" ( translated from Russian; should be fun to read ), "Life's Extras" ( something uplifting and inspiring ), and "Silver Wings", which is a collection of addresses to children, about life, I'm assuming.

I also have a copy of The Constitution ( and apparently California's, too ),"The Unheavenly City", about the future of our urban areas, Red Cross guides to home nursing and first aid, "Ex Libris", a book about books that is one of my all time favorite books, "The Day is Dancing", an old elementary school book of poems, "The Handbook of Chinese Horoscopes", and "The Pearl / The Red Pony" all wrapped up in one.

"Essays Literary and Critical by Matthew Arnold", "The Old Yellow Book", Le Morte D'arthur by Sir Thomas Mallory Volume 2", "The Life of Horatio Lord Nelson by Robert Southly", and "Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush".  I'm going to be honest.  I have no idea what those ones are about beyond what their titles say.  And then there's my first little Bible.  It's illustrated, too, and super cute!

That one with the face on it is called "Evangeline", and I don't know what it is.  "Don't" is a manners book written by an American in 1880, then re-published in England in from 1986-1998.  "Sunshine and Smiles" is a collection of sermons and biographical stories.

"Austen Country" is all about, you guessed it!  Jane Austen and the region she lived in.  That book on top of it is an old school book from one of the county school's from the early 1900's.  It's falling to pieces, and it makes me so sad to see it.  I want to restore it one day, if it's possible.

So there's all of them!  Some where signed, one had a sticker from a book store in Canada, and one had a whole list of previous owners starting back in the year 1895!  That's what I love most about these old books, and what makes me sad about them.  The last imprint of people's lives are left in some of these books, and then these books are just left to crumble and be ruined.  So many stories lost, not just in the pages, but of the people who once held them.  I wish there was a way to get all those stories back.

For now all I can do is seek out and hold dear as many of these books as I can find.  I hope that there are many, many people who feel the same way about them as I do, so that more of them can be saved.

You see to me a book isn't just a book.  When some really cares about writing, they put their soul down onto those pages.  It becomes a piece of them.  Long after you die, what you write might just be in the hands of a reader somewhere, and that person will hear your thoughts, will be reading a little piece of your soul, so that while those pages are still being turned, it's almost as if you never truly died at all.

That little piece of you will live on, and as long as it exists, so do you.  If you destroy a book, you are, in a way, killing the person who wrote it.  Because as soon as all their works are gone, so too is their last memory.  Nothing can last forever, but I will work to keep these stories, and these people, alive for as long as possible.

I think all writers are a bit afraid of being lost to the sands of time.  The thought that as soon as they are gone, so too are all their thoughts and memories.  I believe that is at the heart of why we write.  A book, in my opinion, is the closest thing humans can get to immortality, at least for a while.

It's comforting to me, at least, to think that one day after I'm gone, someone might still be reading my books, knowing that there was once a time when I existed.

Em

30 min. Summer Skirt : Tutorial

This is going to be my first tutorial.  I make a lot of these skirts, and I mean a lot of them, and I always have someone come up to me and ask me how I made it.  Well, now you'll know, everyone.  I only hope I'll make some sense as I explain it to you.

    Now, before I even start the tutorial, I should tell you about how big these skirts are.  I only use a yard of fabric for myself.  I am a whopping 5ft. 1in. tall ( I know, I'm giant, aren't I? ) and my waist is  less than the 36 inches in the yard.  The amount of yardage is going to be the waist measurement, so all you have to do to increase the waist is buy more than one yard.  Just remember, you'll want more than what your waist measurement actually is, so that the skirt will bunch up and create the ruffle look.

As for the length, that is going to be half the length of the bolt, minus the hem and waist band.  That ends up being about 21 inches in the end, which for me, goes from my waist to the top of my knees.  If you're taller than me, which you probably are, considering that most of the world is, then it's also easy to add length.  I'll tell you where to do this in the tutorial.

If you think you need more than 1 yard to make your skirt ( or less, if it's for a tiny fairy princess or something ), than I would read through the whole tutorial first to make sure you understand how the fabric is going to be used before you go buying or cutting anything.

Now, let's get going!  First, how about I tell you what you'll need?

Materials

• 1 yard of fabric ( or however much you determine you need )
• 1/2 wide braided elastic, enough to go around your waist
• Thread to match the color of your fabric ( optional )

And ta-da!  That's about it, folks.  No fancy tools are needed, just your average pins and such.  So grab your chocolate, grab your tea, and put your music on.

( Just a couple of notes first: always back stitch!  It's very important.  You can click on the pictures to enlarge if you need to see something clearer.  And please forgive me switching between two different skirts in the pictures. )

There's no need to prewash your fabric here, or even worry if everything is at a perfect 90 degree angle.  Just lay your yard down, folded in half salvage to salvage with the wrong sides together, and cut it in half at the top.

Just to clarify, the part labeled WAIST in the picture above is the folded edge, like it comes off the bolt.  This is the part you cut.  The HEM is the salvage edges, and BOLT is equivalent to width of fabric if you're more comfortable with that terminology.

So this is where you would add the extra length if you wanted it.  You have your two panels, yes?  ( See picture below. )  The bottom is the hem.  So figure out how many inches you need to add, cut two rectangles that are that wide and the length of one of the panels, then sew the rectangles along the bottoms of your panels.  This will add the extra inches to the bottom of the skirt.

Easy-peesey.

Now, here's the part that might throw you.  Normally you sew things with the right sides together to hide the seam.  But I want to you sew the panels together with the wrong sides together, at 2/8 in. seam allowance.  Trust me with this.  We're going for a French seam here, which comes with bragging rights.

Seam up the left and right sides of your fabric like this, then turn the tube inside out.  Now you're going to be sewing with right sides together.  Iron the seam flat and use pins to keep it from rolling in on you, and go right back down the two sides you just sewed up, this time at 3/8 seam allowance.

This will tuck the 2/8 seam on the outside of the skirt out of sight, and give you a fray free seam on the inside of your skirt.

When you're done, your tube will look like this.  ( Note that it is inside-out in the picture below. )  Now as a bonus step, we're going to sew those two seams down to the sides before going onto the hem and waist band, to give a more professional look.  Please take no note of the switching of skirts in the pictures.  Just pretend that I'm still working with the same fabric.



It doesn't matter which side you press the seam to, just made sure you press it and keep it taught.  Do this to both seams.  It'll keep it nice and flat looking on the outside.





Now we can start ironing the hem and waist band.  And I really do recommend that you iron well and pin.  It'll give you nice, straight finishes on both the hem and waist band.  If you have a handy-dandy tiny sewing ruler with the sliding bit on it, then that's great!  I use tape to keep the sliding bit in place so that my measurements are always the same.  If you just have a regular ruler, then easy-peesey, those are great too.



For the hem, fold over about a 1/2 inch all the way around the bottom ( maybe just slightly less ).  It doesn't matter which open end you choose to be the bottom ( unless you added length to the bottom  or you have a directional print ).  Just pick.  When that's all pressed down, fold it over on itself and press again, this time pinning as you go, making sure you line the side seams up nicely.

Sew less than a 1/4 inch away from inside edge of the hem ( don't forget to back stitch! ).  That'll be less than along the side of the presser foot, about half way between it and the needle.  I also like to start sewing my hems around one of the side seams.  I feel like keeping next to the seam helps make the back stitching less noticeable.  When that first seam is done, sew a second one next to it, at the same distance you used with the first.

There's your hem.

For the waist band, fold over and iron a 1/4 inch first, and then 3/4 of an inch over that.  Pin it down!  And head over to the sewing machine ( do not forget the back stitch! ).

Only one seam is required to sew it down, still using a tiny seam allowance that is half way between the edge of the presser foot and the needle, but, you can not sew it all the way closed at first!  In the middle of the back of the skirt, leave a 1 or 2 inch opening so that you can put the elastic in, or else you won't have a waist band at all.  Mark off that little area with a couple of pins and pay attention when you're sewing.  This is a little something I like to call "The No Sew Zone".

Start off on one side of it, and finish on the other, but do not sew within it.

Can you feel that?  That's the "Hooray, I'm on the home stretch!" feeling.  Because we are almost there!  And doesn't it feel great?

Ok, so now you need your elastic.  You could get out a tape measurer and see exactly how big around you are and then make an exact cut on the length for your elastic, or you could just wrap it around your middle and snip it a couple of inches short like I do.  Why a couple of inches short?  Well if it's not a bit shorter than your waist line, then the elastic won't be able to grab around you and keep your skirt up when all is said and done.  It'll just be too loose.  Let's try and avoid having our skirts fall down.

I like to use braided elastic in waist bands.  To me, it's just a bit thicker and more durable to hold up to the wear and tear of a waist band.  Because lets be honest, those things get tugged on a lot.

Use a straight pin to hold one end of the elastic in place by the "No Sew Zone" hole, and stick a safety pin in the other end.  The safety pin will help you fish the elastic through.

Once you've got the elastic through, take all the pins out and pull the two ends of it out far enough for you to get them under your presser foot.  Overlap them by about an inch, and use a zig-zag stitch to go back and forth over it again and again.  It's not coming undone on you after that.

All that's left to do now is pull the elastic in and sew up the "No Sew Zone" using the same seam allowance you did on the rest of the waist band.  WARNING: do not forget to switch back to a regular stitch!  One of the worst things is going to close up that hole and accidentally throwing some zig-zags over it from when you stitched the elastic together.

And look at that!  A finished skirt, with snazzy French seams, too.  If you didn't bring chocolate with you at the beginning, go get some now, because it's celebration time!

This might take you longer than 30 min. your first time around as you get the hang of it, but for all the times after that ( because there will be more times, I assure you ) these skirts will be flying off your sewing machine.  30 minutes isn't even my record time for making one of these.

I hope you love this skirt as much as I do!  If you have any questions or if something isn't quite clear for you, I would love to hear from you in the comments.  Nothing would make me happier than to help you fill your closet with wonderful twirly skirts.

Em :)