Weekly Pinspirations

The weekend was full of random Pinterest help. Some friends of ours were driving home through Georgia and stopped at the state Farmer's Market to grab peaches. They grabbed a whole box full for us, so I was busy processing the peaches. I started off with peach cobbler for dessert, but I honestly had never made it with anything but canned peaches, so I needed to find a recipe and this one fit the bill:

I didn't get a picture of my results, but I can tell you - it was quite tasty!

With all the peaches I peeled and sliced I ended up with a bunch of pits and seeds. I got it into my head not to waste them so I looked up what to do to start my own seeds.

My search brought me to this pin. It was pretty straight forward - clean all the pulp off the pits, wrap them in a damp paper towel, put them in a ziplock bag and freeze them for several months. Pretty easy. Aparently you can do thus with just the seeds too and most of my pits had already opened up I had mostly seeds. One thing I learned - you have to be careful with peach seeds because they contain cyanide! Interesting ...

For dinner last night, my husband really wanted enchiladas. No problem! I went to the cupboard to get enchilada sauce to find that we only had one can - and the recipe required two. I knew I could make it myself so I turned to Pinterest for a recipe and decided to go with this one:

It was very easy to make. My only complaint is about the person's taste - I made it up like it says and it was total blandsville. Like salty canned tomato sauce. Then I noticed that she says her family doesn't like spicy food - she wasn't kidding. So I pretty much tripled the amount of spices the recipe calls for. I just added a little, tasted it, then added some more, and so on until it tasted like actual enchilada sauce. Success!

This was my sauce and it no joke tasted just like the canned stuff, just without the nasty preservatives :)

And here is my lack luster photograph. I forgot to take a pic until after we ate and they had been out if the oven for about 20 minutes. Is it just me or does cheese just loose all its visual appeal after it's cooled? The enchiladas were really good though, in spite of my not so great looking photo.

So that's a sampling of my Pinterest adventures of the weekend. Have you used any pins lately?

Weekend Update

If things like mending bore you, you will not like this post :) Just a warning.

So this weekend was spent doing lots of random little things around the house. I spent a good deal of time knitting, but got a little bored with it and decided to branch out. I have a good size pile of clothes that need mending or altering, so I picked these 3 to tackle.

The skirt with the circles I wear a lot, but the seam at the zipper was coming undone (to the point it was a serious nuisance to zip and unzip). The purple blouse had several of the bows that had fallen off. Also the black skirt had a large section of the blind hem that came undone in the front and was driving me crazy. All of these problems could be fixed with just a little hand sewing, so I just hit the bullet and went for it.

I started with the purple shirt. I love this blouse, but seriously haven't worn it in about 2 years because a section of the bows on the bottom came off. So I repositioned them all so they looked good(not as easy as it sounds) and sewed them back on. I noticed how all the thread that was holding the bows on was getting pretty loose, so I went ahead and stitched them all to make them more secure. I also saw that the back button was about to fall off, so I stitched it up too. Then I cut out the tag because it was very sharp on the edge and always drove me nuts. Now I can finally wear it again!

My next victim was the black knit skirt. This has been my go-to black skirt for a while now and as such has gotten a lot of wear. This caused the blind hem to come loose across more than half of the front edge. It seriously drove me crazy, but I wore it anyway. No more! I did the best hand picked blind hem I could manage on this thick knit and was quite satisfied. You can see the new stitches just a bit if you look right at it, but this fabric was just too difficult to make it completely invisible. I'm happy with the results.

Once I finished the hem, I saw that the end of the zipper was starting to pull free from the stitches. This means that I've been wearing it and it looked like my butt was too big and was splitting the seam. Not a fun realization. So I just stitched the seam together to reinforce it - good as new :) This skirt also had a date with the clothing shaver - it's so comfy but pills like crazy when put in the washer. Now it's ready to wear and looks so much better than before.

My final project was the zipper seam on this circle pattern skirt. I started my sewing the seam back together so I could actually zip it without having to push the zipper base in with my fingers while pulling it straight. This was no easy feat with the lining. It wasn't hard per s&w, just cumbersome.

Once the zipper was secure, I saw that the lining was pulling apart below the base of the zipper too, so I stitched that up too. I used the same black thread, but it's the lining and no one will see it so I seriously don't care.

With just those few simple repairs, about an hour later I had 3 new pieces to add back into the rotation :) I think with today's disposable mindset, most people would have just thrown these away, but I knew they could be fixed and it was well worth the little time it took. Now to just tackle the rest of the stack :)

On Monday, I knew I needed to get going with using up a box full of fresh GA peaches we got, so I made 2 batches of freezer jam. This will replenish our supply and I can hardly wait til it sets up and we can eat it!

So those are just a few things I marked off my list. Did you tackle any long-awaited projects this weekend?