A Personalized Hostess Gift

Plants make great hostess gifts, but they can sometimes be pretty ordinary. With just a small amount of effort you can add pizazz to your plants!

First, start with a cool pot. I got this one at at Anthropologie. If you aren't lucky enough to have an Anthropologie where you live, it is available online. Its description reads, "rough-hewn terracotta, worn and weathered as if it's spent a dozen seasons braving the elements, yearns for a sunny indoor perch to cradle fresh herbs and aromatics." Whatever. I just think it's a cool pot.

A great place here in Birmingham to buy plants is Leaf 'n Petal. I bought this maidenhair fern there. It is beautiful and delicate. I added some wild moss from our yard to the top of the soil. You can see it more closely if you click on the picture.

I used my chalk ink markers for the gift tag. They are available online and at Michael's. I would recommend the primary colors over these earthy ones because there are several colors here that don't show up on black.

I found this tiny chalk board gift tag at World Market. Isn't it cute? I love tiny versions of things. I used a small piece of wood inside to hang it onto. A popsicle stick would do. A cute bow completes it.

Create Your Own Baby Blankets

I noticed one of the babies in the nursery at work was wrapped in a cotton gauze blanket which I thought was a really great idea. I looked up the website and thought they were pretty pricey (1 for $19.99, 4 for $44). So I decided to make my own and made them for about $7 each. Watch for sales at Joann and Hancock and pay even less. The gauze is great for summer.

I made these blankets about 45" square, which for 45" fabric, each blanket required 1 - 1/4 yards.
I folded over a 1/2" hem on all 4 sides and pressed. Then I folded over another 1/2" and pressed again. A hot steam iron really helps.





My machine does a lot of fun stitches, which I used on my blankets, but just a straight or zigzag stitch would be fine. I made some flannel blankets, too.


I found this cute alphabet print at Hancock. I love cute little animal faces.

I layered it with batting and backed it with muslin.

I machine quilted around each square.

I think there were 64 squares, but it really didn't take all that long.

It turned out to be really soft and cute.

I loved making these blankets. It is a great way to do a special baby gift. Especially for your baby's baby. : )

Homemade Pizza Dough

There is nothing like homemade pizza crust. It tastes sooo much better than the best you can buy in the grocery store. I use my basic roll dough recipe that I have posted several times. It is great for rolls, cinnamon rolls, cheese danish, cheese rolls, pepperoni bread, calzones, and PIZZA DOUGH. For the pizza toppings, I also think it's fun to scavenge through my refrigerator and use ingredients I have on hand to challenge myself to create culinary magic. I know. Kinda sad.

Here is my roll dough recipe again:

Basic Roll Dough

4 cups all-purpose flour

1 cup water

1 egg

1 stick butter, sliced

2 tsp salt

6 tbsp sugar

2 pkg yeast (either regular or rapid rise)

Place ingredients in bread machine. I like to add about 1/2 the water first, then the flour and other ingredients, including the rest of the water. Set the machine to the dough setting. This takes 90 minutes. When the cycle is over, roll the dough out onto a floured surface and cut into the desired sizes.

My toppings were: leftover grilled chicken, fresh basil, chopped red bell pepper, grated cheddar cheese, and a few strips of bacon. For my sauce I used Ragu Pizza Quick.

After the dough was ready, I divided it in half and sprinkled it with cornmeal as I rolled it out.

Then I placed it in a greased pizza pan. (I don't let it rise).

I covered it with my toppings.

Bake at 450° for about 20 minutes or until the crust is golden around the edges. This pizza did not last long at my house.

While it is baking you can reserve the other half of the dough for future small personal pan pizzas. I divided it into 5 portions and rolled them out individually. Then I separated them with pieces of parchment paper.

I wrapped them with plastic wrap and put them in the freezer. When you want to make small pizzas, you can pull as many as you need out of the freezer and place the toppings on them and bake them without thawing them first. How easy is that?

Tie Dye, Part Two: Onesies

This is my second installment of my tie dye adventures. I was inspired by the anticipated arrival of my grandson to try a onesies project. Please refer to my first post for any basic instruction, such as types of dye, etc.

I bought onesies at Walmart and prewashed them. I dampened them with water before I dyed them. For this one, I did the spiral technique. Place a fork at the center of where you want the spiral and begin to twist it.

Continue twisting...

Once you have twisted it into a circle, add rubber bands and apply dye to the front and back of each section. I used orange, yellow, lime green, and brown.


This is how it turned out.
After I finished each one, I wrapped it in plastic wrap and let it sit for several hours. I understand that there is a microwave technique that will set the heat but I haven't tried that yet.

You can also section it off like this:



I did several solid ones. They still had a mottled, hand-dyed look, which I liked.

I placed the rubber bands on the middle of this one. I don't have the pictures of it, but I dyed the onesie a turquoise color and the sectioned-off part a denim blue.

I made a pair of white knit pull-on pants and dyed them a solid denim blue to match the onesie.

And this is the outfit. The pants looked stonewashed.

I hope this helps to give you some fun ideas for tie dyeing onesies. It is a fun and inexpensive project and it makes a great gift. I will be posting a lot more fabric dyeing ideas soon!

Tie Dye, Part One

I love to tie dye. If I could establish a lucrative career creating clothing and accessories out of hand-dyed fabric, I would do it in a heartbeat. But since no one is beating my door down to buy my creations as of yet, I guess I will stick to just doing it for fun.

I had so many pictures that I decided to divide my tie dye projects into two parts. This post will cover the basics, and part two is going to be how to tie dye onesies for babies. Even divided into two parts, this post is really long. Hopefully some of my trial and error will be helpful to you so that you are happy with your results.

I have tried two kinds of dye. One is the basic powdered Rit dye which has been around for as long as I can remember. It is very inexpensive and can be found at Walmart as well as most grocery stores. Rit dye is very intense and concentrated. It also comes in a liquid, which I haven't tried yet, but plan to. It seems more convenient and easier to mix to create other colors. Rit has a fabulous website which gives tutorials on various techniques and recipes for your own color creations. You can order from this site as well. Go here to see it.

There are also Tie Dye kits by Tulip, which are very convenient. They offer a variety of colors, such as turquoise, fuschia, and lime green. These are available at Walmart, Michaels, Hobby Lobby, and Hancock.


Tulip recommends soda ash to soak your shirts in before dyeing them. It is supposed to make the color adhere better. I honestly can't tell that it helps. And it smells weird. Whether you use soda ash or not, your shirt should be prewashed and damp before you tie dye.

Be sure to cover your surface with large plastic bags. The dye can leave permanent stains.

Have plenty of zip lock bags or saran wrap handy. You will need to let you shirts sit and cure for several hours. This is hard to do, by the way. I am always so curious to see how they turned out and I rarely wait as long as I should.

So, the items you will need are:

t-shirt, etc to dye (prewashed and damp)
dye of choice
rubber bands
rubber gloves
squirt bottles (Walmart-kitchen section-99¢)
large garbage bags to protect counter or table
ziplock bags or saran wrap


One easy thing I've done is just to dye a t-shirt all one color. I poured the whole package of dye into a large pot of boiling water and dissolved it. Then I dipped the shirt into the dye. The two factors that determine the intensity of the color are how hot the water is and how long you leave the shirt in the dye. I always save some of the dye I make and pour it into squirt bottles because it is reusable and it keeps for a long time.

Here is a shirt that I dyed pink. I left it in the dyebath for about 30 minutes. It is just a Hanes t-shirt (men's small) that I got in a pack of 5 at Walmart. I love how it turned out. It is really soft and comfy and looks cute with jeans.


I bought a plain beige t-shirt at Hancock (they are in the tie dye section) and decided to dye it orange. I left it in the water for about 15 minutes, stirring it every once in a while.

I took it out of the water and squeezed it out in the sink, being careful not to burn my fingers. It seemed a little boring to me, so with the middle of the shirt as my starting point, I placed rubber bands around it about an inch apart for a total of 6.


I filled a squirt bottle with 1 part clorox and 1 part water and shook it up really well. Then I squirted it onto every other space between the rubber bands. I let it sit for about 8 hours, then rinsed and washed it.


This is how it turned out. Very funky.

I had a plain white t-shirt that I got on a trip. I livened it up a little by dyeing it turquoise. I liberally squirted the Tulip dye onto it while scrunching it up in my hands.

As you can see, it ends up a much lighter color once it dries. I really like it, though. Much better than the white.


I have dyed several tank tops. Hancock has these nice simple white ones. They usually run $3.99-$4.99.

I divided it into 3 sections with rubber banding and added a different color to each section.


Here is how it looked. This is also after several washings. If I do this color combination again, I will put the purple in the middle. The turquoise and green are a little too similar and blended into each other a little too well.

This is another Hanes t-shirt.

The spiral technique is one of my favorites and it's very easy to do. First decide on where you want to center the inner circle. Then place a fork on that spot.

Begin to turn the fork clock-wise, twisting the fabric along with you.

Continue turning the fork...


...until you have a circle, kind of like a cinnamon roll.

Place rubber bands across the circle and divide the shirt into 4 or 6 sections.

Color each section on the top, them flip it over and color the bottom as well.

This is how that shirt turned out.

This is a cool shirt that Amby made for me. It is one of my favorites.

You can also dye a shirt to match something. I had some army green shorts and I dyed this tank top to match them. I used camo colors, but added a touch of purple to make it more girly.

Most importantly, be careful washing any clothing that has been dyed. I always hand wash mine a couple of times first. Then I wash in cold water only with like colors. The color can bleed onto your other clothes.

I hope that this lengthy tutorial is helpful. Stay tuned for more.