Today I:

• Dyed a bunch of stuff black!
• White, stained washcloths: they came out a nice, deep black.
• A pair of jeans I had previously bleached white: they turned a nice grey.
• A white t-shirt I never wore: I scrunched it up and dipped it in the dye very quickly for a tie dye effect. It looks amazing and I can't wait to wear it!
• A white dress blouse with pit stains I never wear: it turned an okay grey and the pit stains are gone, but I'm still not sure I'll wear it. But I'll be a lot more likely to now.
• Worked with hubby to see why the outer mirrors on our car don't move. All we were able to determine is that it wasn't the fuse, though that is actually somewhat productive since what that tells us is we need to take it to a repair shop or live with it. We can live with it. :D
• Lots of laundry.

I also bleached another shirt in an ombre effect yesterday with the jeans; it turned out pretty good, and I like it better than I did before, but I wish I had left the bottom of the shirt in longer. All in all I'm having a lot of fun bleaching and dyeing things!

Today I:

• Finished sewing in one (1) pocket to a pair of capris that only had fake ones. I had to hand sew it, so I doubt I'll do the other one. It's sufficient to hold my keys, and that's all I wanted.
• Finished working on a skirt I started on yesterday. I wore it to church which reminded me of why I don't wear it anymore despite the fact that it used to be my favorite: the elastic is too tight. Luckily for me it also had a drawstring (why both??) So I just picked out the waistband, removed the elastic, sewed it back up and threaded the drawstring back through. Now it's nice and comfy again. :)
• Made bread.
• Did laundry.
• Worked on a cardboard cat scratcher for Cosmo. It feels like it will never get done, but it's slowly getting there. I'll post a picture of it when I'm done.

Lots of tests, not much accomplished

I started, tried, (and failed at) a lot of things today:

• I went and bought a lace dress at the thrift store in the hopes of cutting out the pattern to make earrings. When I get this right it's going to look great, but I tried out a homemade fabric stiffener made of Elmer's glue and water, and it made the fabric kind of crusty. :T
• I started to unpick the fake pockets on a pair of jeans, and got as far as attempting to pin the new pocket inside the jeans, but then realized I have no gold thread to match the existing top-stitiching. :(
• I tried to take an old shirt and make a baseball tee out of it, but I decided the shirt I was going to use as the sleeves and as side panels to expand the shirt wasn't going to work. Mostly since it wasn't a baseball tee. :B
• The one thing I feel was at least somewhat successful was an experiment to dye some black fabric I had bleached. It worked okay: the fabric had been a burnt orange and now it's sort of a blue-green-brown- not what I wanted, but I feel confident that if I bleach the fabric a little more and make it lighter, the dye will take better. :D
• In the furtherance of this experiment, however, I ended up completely destroying a shirt (that luckily I didn't care too much about) by submerging it in pure bleach for about ten minutes. When I checked on it it was foaming and had made rusty stains on the shirt and the pot. Just picking it up and wringing it out tore huge hole in the fabric. >:T

Now I'm going to go out to eat with hubby and try to learn from my mistakes instead of brooding over them.

Crock Pot Creamy Chicken Noodle Soup

I should like chicken noodle soup. I love chicken in all its varieties, and I love soup as well. But I've never met a chicken noodle soup I liked. Mostly it's the texture: thin broth with chunks of chicken and large noodles don't work for me. Then I had the idea to make it creamy! There were a lot of recipes for creamy chicken noodle soup when I googled it, so I combined the aspects of each that I liked into one Franken-recipe. Here it is.

Ingredients

1 pound chicken breasts
3 carrots
4 small celery stalks
1 medium onion
4 cloves garlic
2 cups egg noodles
1 quart chicken broth
1 cup water
Parsley flakes

Slice chicken breasts into big chunks (you'll be shredding it later, so just slice it into thin enough chunks that they cook through easily), slice carrots, celery, dice onion and garlic. Add to pot with noodles, broth, water and parsley. Cook on low heat for 6 hours. At about five and a half hours, shred chicken and add one half pint of heavy whipping cream and stir.

It turned out pretty well for a first attempt. First problem was that I added the egg noodles right away, so they had completely disintegrated by the end. One recipe said to add them 8-10 minutes before serving and turn the crock pot up to high. Another problem is that the chicken was fairly dry. This is either because I didn't sear it, or because I forgot to add salt. I also think I should have added thyme or something because it was a tiny bit bland. All in all, it came out more like a chowder than a chicken noodle soup, but I liked it, and I'll definitely be trying it again.

Apple Pie recipe

Today I made apple pie. Here's the recipe I used. It's based heavily on this one.

Ingredients

1/2 cup apple juice
1/2 cup white sugar
1/2 cup butter
4 apples, peeled, cored and sliced
1/2 cup white sugar
3 Tablespoons cornstarch
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
2 (9 inch) unbaked pie crusts

Directions

• Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. 
• Combine the apple juice, 1/2 cup white sugar and the butter in a sauce pan and heat until melted. Add the apples and cook until fruit is tender.
• Combine 1/2 cup white sugar with the cornstarch, cinnamon and nutmeg. Stir into the fruit mixture, then cook until thickened. Pour into pie shell, cover with top crust and seal.
• Bake for 45 minutes or until golden brown.

Notes: apple variety is according to your taste; I use Fuji, honeycrisp, golden delicious, or jonagold, as they are available, and often in combination. I almost never use just one variety.

For pie crust I use this recipe.

Here's how today's turned out!

This is what happens when you don't seal your crust. 😅 Oops!

Today I:

• Washed, folded and put away laundry (I didn't just 'do laundry'; no, those are three separate chores)
• Did the lunch, dinner and breakfast dishes
• Made dinner in the crock pot (it already smells delicious)
• Put some beef on the dehydrater to make jerky

And it's only 1:30pm!

Today I:

• Removed nonfunctioing buttons from a shirt
• Tacked down a jeans pocket lining that liked to flip out (we'll see if it holds)
• Removed the riveted buttons from the back pockets of another pair of jeans and covered the resulting holes with ribbon
• Made a pin cushion out of a sock

I also returned a library book, and did a few other errands. Hubby slept all day after pulling a 24 hour shift, poor guy. Dinner was simple spaghetti and garlic toast.