Don't Wake the Wookiee

There are a lot of stores out there in the big wide web that offer free infant car seat covers to new parents. They do the job, for sure. They provide a comfortable, enclosed and shaded place to allow your little bundle of joy to sleep. If only for a few desperate minutes...

They come in a variety of colors and modern patterns. Most are very pretty and make you feel very stylish, even when that spit-up stained shirt and un-brushed hair don't. And they are FREE after all. Not many things associated with your little creature will be free. Except for all the LOVE, of course.

While we enjoyed our stylish cover (graciously given to us by a friend), we are always ones to want to stand out the crowd. We started putting stickers on our infant carrier in an attempt at individuality (and a hearty pride for our local hockey team. Go Ducks!), but started to worry that it could spiral out of control. We didn't want the carrier to look like the back bumper of an old car. 

My husband found the cover to be lacking enough "MAN"-ness and so we bounced around a few ideas. We could continue with the Ducks hockey theme, though that would be seasonal in nature. We could always make it a double sided cover with the Green Bay Packers on the other side, but we liked the idea of both sides being part of the same theme. Plus, Ducks gear seems to bring out the hateful Kings fans and we get enough of them at games at The Pond. 

The idea of Star Wars came upon us since the latest movie was about to be released in the next month and it was Star Wars EVERYTHING, EVERYWHERE. If you didn't notice, you must have been living under a rock. We are fervent fans of the originals (no JarJar lovers in this household) and fully plan on educating our young Padawan in the ways of the force. We already have some awesome board books that we read to him at night and some art work in his room. We have the Empire symbol on our car's back window and I had to stop my husband from making his white VW Gulf into a Stormtrooper. Star Wars is timeless and would bring us joy every time we looked upon this new cover, at least for the next two years we would be using it. 

Next, a trip to our favorite Joann's. As we perused the aisles and aisles of fabric, we discussed what each of us wanted out of the design. My husband really liked the patterns of the Star Wars copyrighted fabrics. I was not all too impressed with using two different patterns and wanted to have one side with a single color, maybe to match the color of one of the patterns. As we walked down yet another aisle of fabric, some furry fabric caught my eye. It reminded me of some pillows I had seen somewhere (probably on Pinterest) that looked like Chewbacca. Brown fur with a utility belt strung diagonally, like Chewbacca would over one tall, brawny shoulder. 

Light bulb!

I described my new idea to my husband and he immediately jumped on board. The next week was a whirlwind of cutting, pinning and sewing. See the images below to see our resulting cover.

We went with a newer pattern from the Force Awakens since it was the closest in coloring to the brown fur. We took a bit of a risk since we had not yet seen the movie at that point, but we think we made the right choice. 

We want to keep using this cover after our little Padawan outgrows the car seat, so we plan on removing the Velcro loops and using it as a blanket. The soft fur is short and soft and has already been napped on once, to much success.

Alton Brown's Pork Wellington

There is nothing finer than a lazy Sunday watching our backlog of Food Network shows while our little one naps. Our favorite Food Network host is Alton Brown and our latest habit is watching his old Good Eats episodes.

I have been watching Alton since I was in high school, which is a long time. (I feel old just thinking about it.) His gleeful and nerdy approach to cooking is infectious and right in line with my own nerdy personality. 

I mean...he is Thyme Lord after all... And he is friends with Adam Savage from Mythbusters! 

(Sorry, I just nerded out a little bit.)

The steps are easy to follow and the science behind it all becoming yummy goodness is really very interesting. Every so often, the recipes look so easy or the food looks so good that we just have to make it ourselves.

Recently, we watched the episode called "Tender is the Pork" (listed on Food Network as Episode EA1301H) about the great versatility of pork, especially as an alternative to chicken. Pork is great favorite of mine, though I am a carnivore at heart so any meat will do nicely. The Pork Wellington recipe caught our eye out of all the recipes that Alton offered in the episode.

Beef Wellington's always seemed to be so difficult to ever consider making at home. It was one of those fancy entrees you see on an episode of Gordon Ramsay's Hell's Kitchen (another favorite TV chef and our kid's namesake) and too time intensive and technical to try in our home kitchen.
But Alton made it look so easy, we knew we just had to try it ourselves. 

You can find the Food Network recipe here. 

Continue below to see each step of our cooking adventure.

First, we gathered our ingredients.
The pork tenderloin has been relieved of its silver skin and sliced in half (long-ways). We had gathered fresh thyme from our garden and had kosher salt and fresh ground pepper ready to go. The frozen puff pastry is taking a sweet little nap in a warm area by the oven wrapped in a towel so it can defrost a bit.




The prosciutto has been laid out on wax paper and the dried apples have been chopped up. We recommend using parchment paper with the prosciutto (we ran out). It stuck to the wax paper alot.

We sandwiched the prosciutto between two sheets of wax paper and rolled a rolling pin over it to knit the fat together.

Next, the seasonings are sprinkled evenly around on the prosciutto and the tenderloin is laid out down the center. The dried apples are spread out evenly between the two pieces of pork.



Next comes the rolling of the meat.



This took a long time with the wax paper. I can only guess that the parchment (per the recipe) would have worked much better. Now, we have a log of pork! (Insert jokes here.)



Next we prepare the puff pastry dough. It gets rolled out to a rectangle, about 14" x 12". We spread a layer of mustard down the center to encircle the pork.



Before completely rolling the pork into the pastry dough, leave a few inches of dough open and coat it with a bit of egg and water mixture. Now close it on up.



Transfer the Wellington to a parchment lined pan (this is all the parchment that we had) and coat the top with the same egg and water mixture as before. Now place in the oven and bake for about 25 to 30 minutes at 400 degrees (Fahrenheit).



This is the golden, delicious Wellington that came out of the oven.



Doesn't it look yummy?



Let the Wellington sit a bit so that all the yummy juices do not run out when you cut into it.
I hope this makes you want to try it out on your own. You will not be disappointed!

Baby Mobile

I know that it has been a while since we have made any posts (pregnancy or otherwise) so here is a recent photo that we took a few weeks ago just to assure you that I am getting bigger every week.

Everything has been going according to plan, but lots of other things have been taking up more of our time. I have been working full time up until this week, as has Brian, and as I have been getting bigger, I have found myself going to bed earlier and earlier. Carrying around our wee one is making me more and more tired. We have spent whatever wakeful hours I have celebrating 2 baby showers, getting the baby's room ready, taking birthing, newborn, CPR and breastfeeding classes and watching the Duck's enter the NHL playoffs. Go Ducks!

Now that I am home...napping mostly...I have a bit more time to tell you about what we have been up to. My favorite project so far has been our custom home-made baby mobile.

We have a whimsical theme of "Fantasy Travel" that we came up with for the baby's room. It is a combination of our love of travel and our love of movies. One such favorite movie is Disney's Up, which happens to make me think of my late Grandpa Duane. Mr. Fredricksen may have been a cranky old man, but he had a love of adventure and a great love for his wife, just like my grandfather.

So I started with a concept sketch of the house from the movie. I had originally planned on making it entirely of felt, but Brian quickly mocked up one in cardboard.

We decided that this little house of cardboard and tape would be far more detailed than I could make out of just felt, so we decided to use it as our centerpiece.

I cut out the different colored walls and roofs of the house out of felt and went about gluing them to the little cardboard home.

Soon we had a little colorful house!

In the movie, the house gets a lift into the air with hundreds and hundreds of colorful balloons all tied together with strings.

We found a link on Pinterest that showed us how to make our own pom-poms out of yarn and a fork and got to work!

As much fun as it was to make our own pom-pom "balloons" from yarn, making hundreds of them seemed to be irksome and tiring. No one would be able to see the ones in the middle of the great mass of "balloons" anyway, so we came up with an idea to use paper maiche to create the illusion of more balloons.

The paper maiche mass in the middle would be lightweight and give us a surface to glue the "balloons" to. We gave the mass an imperfect tear drop shape to look more free form with the "balloons".

Next, to give it the illusion of being up in the air, we created some cute puffy white clouds to dance around the colorful balloons and little house. These were just made like little pillows with felt sides and a poly-blend stuffing in the middle. These were all hand-stitched.

In order to hang all of these cute elements together, I found some string and two embroidery hoops of differing sizes which I wrapped in white yarn to help them blend into the "sky".

Here you can see it all come together after we have hung it in the baby's room.

Best of all, it reminds me of my Grandpa Duane, who I know will always be there watching over our little gentleman. We miss you Grandpa.

This makes me smile everyday that I see it. We think it came out beautifully.