PolkaDoodles Wedding Night with Forever Friends Forever Love

Products Used:

Challenges Entered:

Anything Goes - Polkadoodles Crafting Challenge
My Time to Craft Challenge #338 Feathers
Come and Get It - Valentine's Day Cards
Scrapbook Stamp Society Challenge 109 # Use The Colour Red
Bugaboo Challenge Anything Goes!
Glitter 'n' Sparkle Challenge #225 Red and White
Crafty Cardmakers #181 Love, Love, Love
Mojo Monday 483 Contest
Cardz 4 Guys Challenge #156 Love You!
Addicted to Stamps Challenge #141 Love

Here's the sketch:

Chicken and Mushroom as You Like It Recipe

This started life as a chicken and mushroom soup but while it was cooking it occurred to me that it could be so much more.  I love soup in the winter but winter is starting to come to an end - at least we're experiencing a temporary warm spell that makes me feel that way!  So I'm looking for alternatives, sandwiches and salads are fine with hubby and me but Little Miss is currently refusing to eat her veggies anything less than cooked to a pulp.  

It occurred to me I can take this scrummy soup and mix it with some pasta as an equally scrummy pasta sauce.  That led me to thinking of a potato salad type dish using the soup as a sauce and pre-cooked or even air fried supd chucks.  Or what about jacket potato filling!  Or of course soup if a little water were added.  

Sounds like a plan.  I think next week will see a tomato type soup as that will make a nice sauce too.  

So anyways, on with the recipe.  

• Chicken
• Mushrooms
• Onions
• Garlic
• Celery
• Parsley
• Thyne
• Butter
• Cream
• Oil (For Frying)
• Flour

Chop the onions.

Fry until golden then throw in the slow cooker.

Chop the garlic.

Fry.

Chop the mushrooms and fry these too.  Frying the mushrooms before cooking them helps them to maintain their shape and texture.  Sling them in the slow cooker.

Slice the celery into thin strips.

Then chop it into little chunks.

Into the slow cooker.

With the diced chicken - finely diced as I won't be blending this soup.

Sprinkle with flour.

Add butter.

And stir.

Cook on low for the day and it's done.

With some added water. served with a roll.

Or mixed with some pre-cooked pasta for hubbys lunch.  

Great Mitton Circular Walk

An impromptu walk to blow away the cobwebs after an indulgent Christmas.  

An interesting little walk.

In an area we don't normally walk so it made a nice change.

With the hubster in charge of Little Miss for another change.  

And me with the pupster.

Here's the route we followed:

http://www.thethreefishes.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/The-Three-Fishes-Great-Mitton.pdf

We parked up at the Three Fishes planning to stop for a drink but it was very busy and rather posh looking, as we were anything but posh - totally caked in mud, we thought they'd prefer we didn't!

Fabric Toy Boxes

I'm experimenting with some new storage solutions and I'm inspired by IKEA's DRÖNA boxes but they're a bit pricey and the colours are limited.  I'd rather make my own and co-ordinate them with the rest of the fabrics in the room.  Plus this means I can make them in custom sizes.

I'm using a contrasting lining of a cheaper fabric to make my coordinating upholstery fabric go a bit further.  If I really wanted to be frugal I could use the upholstery fabric just for the front of each box but I have plenty of it so I'll splurge.

These boxes need to be 18" x 11.5" x 7" tall.  Including a 1/2 inch seam allowance that's:

• 8" x 19" for each side in upholstery, lining and interfacing
• 8" x 12.5" for the front and back in upholstery, lining and interfacing
• 19" x 12.5" for the base in upholstery and lining
• 4" x 10" for the handle / strap in upholstery fabric

After cutting these pieces I ironed on my interfacing to the weakest fabric, in this case the lining fabric.  Heavy weight interfacing would have given the box more strength but I'm working with what I had to hand.  

Starting with the strap I folded it in half right sides together and sewed along the open edge.  Then turned it rightside out with the help of a loop turner.  I gave it a good press.  

Then top stitched the sides to make it look really neat and professional.  I pinned it to the front panel and sewed in place.  

I then sewed all four sides to their corresponding base.  Then up each corner to make a rough box out of both lining and upholstery fabric.  

I put the lining fabric right sides together inside the upholstery fabric and pinned the tops together matching all the side seams carefully.  I sewed the tops of both pieces leaving a large gap for turning.  

 

Here's the rather unstable box after turning.  If this was going to be filled with say folded fabric or if it was much smaller it'd probably be OK like this but as you can see a big box just isn't anything like rigid without some help.  This is going to be a toy box so it needs ot stay open whilst Little Miss learns to throw her toys in it.

So out comes my cutting mat and ruler with a stanley knife.  I cut four pieces of mount board just a half inch smaller than the four sides of the box.

Then I pushed those pieces of mount board through the gap in the top.  

This is how it looked if I arranged it carefully and didn't move it.  The whole thing would collapse as soon as it was touched.  

First I top stitched the top edge to ensure that gap was closed up.  

Then I carefully matched up the lining and upholstery fabric corners.  Plenty of pins and some careful sewing up the sides.  

Then comes the very fiddly part, persuading those mount board pieces to go into the right sides.  It's pretty tricky, I fiddled about with it one evening in front of the telly.  Maneuvering each piece until I could push it between the right two corners.  The last piece was the toughest, I had to gently bend the mount board to get it to snap into place.  

And voila!  A reasonably sturdy box that stands up to a toddler and bounces back into shape.  More importantly it keeps all her toys out of sight so I can enjoy the living room after she goes to sleep.