Hummus

Bowl by me, the best piece from that pottery class I took right after grad school.

There are some foods that are so quick and easy to make, I wonder why I bought them ready-made for so long. Hummus is one of those foods. It literally takes seconds; just throw a few ingredients in the blender. We make it all the time now. Including for snack on this rainy morning.

Hummus

1 can chick peas (garbanzo beans), drained and rinsed
2 tbsp olive oil
3 tbsp lemon juice
1/2 tsp salt
1 clove garlic, grated. Or two, if you're feeling really zesty.

Put all ingredients in blender and blend until smooth. I usually have to stop the blender a few times and scrape it with a spatula to make sure all the chick peas are pureed.

Serve with pita bread or veggie sticks. Or if you're Abigail, just eat it with a spoon.

Super Easy Super Stripey Baby Blanket

As I was making these balls and baby blanket for a friend's little boy, I thought, "hey, I should write down the patterns." Because I'm bad about doing that.

I'll post the ball patterns later, but for now, here's the free baby blanket pattern. If you try it, please leave me a comment and let me know how it works up for you. I'm not new to crochet, but I am new to writing out patterns!

Super Easy Super Stripey Baby Blanket Pattern

You'll Need:

100% cotton 4-ply worsted weight yarn in a variety of colors
Size K or 10.5 (or 6.5 MM) crochet hook

My stitch gauge was 3 stitches (plus a smidge) per inch.

Instructions:

In first color, chain (ch) 119 loosely. If your initial chain is too tight, you'll end up with more of a trapezoid blanket than a rectangle. Which actually sounds kind of fun.

Starting in second chain from hook, work one single crochet (sc) in each ch. Ch one, turn.
Sc in ea sc across. Ch one, turn.

Repeat until you have 90 rows total.

Now here's the fun part. You can do anything you want, color-wise. You could make the entire blanket a solid color, you could do alternating stripes, or you could use a variety of colors and stripe widths, like I did. I'd used three different variegated yarns for the balls, so I used everything in that color palate for the blanket (including leftover bits of the variegated yarns). I'd crochet until I felt like I had too much of something, then add something else to balance it out, then throw it off kilter again, and balance it out again. It was actually a lot of fun to work this way, because I avoided the monotony of crocheting with any one color or pattern for too long, and I had to keep thinking about what I wanted to do next.

End with a slip stitch (sl st).

With border color, work around outer edge of blanket twice using one sc in ea sc of blanket edge, using two sc in one sc at corners to turn. Sl st and weave in ends.

The Certificate of Big Sloppy Thanks

While cleaning up a series of large and particularly nasty messes I thought, "Wow! This is probably the biggest mess in the whole history of this home! I sure am working hard! Someone should give me an award."

I wiped my sweaty brow, leaned wearily but proudly on my mop, and waited to receive my award.

And waited.

And then I drew my own award. Here it is, just in time for Mother's Day. Feel free to print it out, fill it in, color it if you feel particularly zesty, and give it to a person to whom you'd like to say, "Thanks for cleaning up that time/all the time. You are great, and I appreciate you."


It's fun! Free! A great last-minute gift that looks like it took you WAY long to write out by hand!

Perfect for messy occasions such as:
illness
the morning after a party
raising children
the science fair
cooking
home repair/remodeling
insect invasion
AND MUCH MORE!