The Belle, her Bag, and her Beast- Blog Day 3

HELLO!

I didn't have anytime to post yesterday because....

 I made this!

 The front of the bag!

 The back of the bag!

The insides of the bag!

That's right folks! I made this bag without a pattern! I just cut and sew, cut and sew! I still don't think pictures do it justice but it still looks pretty amazing, wouldn't you say? I really needed a bag for church to carry my brand new button closed set of scriptures that my husband the "beast" gave me for Christmas last year. I belong to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints and I got the idea to make my own bag from church last week. There was a cute little girl in the class I was helping in and she had a bag that her mom had made. Then the wheels began to turn. A few days later and walla! Out from the right section of my brain arose my creation! MUHAHAHAHA! 

*clears throat* 

Moving on...

On the front of the bag there is two kinds of fabric that I had to sew together. My first mistake was following the #1 sewing rule that my mother infused into my bwain: "Right sides together". 

Oh yes...

We are breaking the law here with this bag! 

In order to create the cute little ruffles of the front I had to sew outside the lines of sewing form and sew backsides together! 

*gasp*

Then to have a more spill proof inside of the bag I added a silky backside to my front, and a little fluff in-between for a more lovable and squishy bag. 

I wanted a large pocket on the bag, I ran out of brown fabric, and I didn't want just the plain green on the back and SO the lacy pocket on the back was born!

And the back somehow ended up being smaller than the front....

MORE GREEN FABRIC!

I added a bit of the stretchier green fabric to the sides, added a cell phone pocket, and little pencil pockets and

POOF!

Somehow my ugly looking bag turned pretty! I braided the handle with more green fabric, took pictures, and  posted them! Hows that for someone who doesn't really know how to sew and didn't follow a pattern?

Alright! Enough of the bag and back to story time!

The Next week...

The young woman went into the village to deposit some of her gold coins into the treasury and then be nice and pretend to go to her sisters class to walk her sister home. The young woman's real intent was to have an opportunity to talk to the mysterious young man she had seen talking to the people of the church and later in her house when she was drenched from the rain.

On her way to the village, through the trees and bright green grass, she thought about the promise her father had given her. If she would "look in a different spot there would be a man prepared just for her, right around the corner." 

Butterflies exploded in the young woman's chest and she smiled. Slowly the smile faded as a new thought came into her mind. She had been told by another friend that he had a bowed and shortened right leg and the young woman knew that, that kind of operation from the miracle  man would be very expensive. Could she live that tight? Could she live through that? Was she strong enough? 

The wind seemed to blow cold around her and her pace slowed, almost to a stop. This thought saddened her deeply and she hadn't even talked to the man yet! Suddenly her heart burned with love and in her mind came a strong thought of "yes you can! You were made for this". And that horrid thought never bothered her again. 

The young woman bound up and over the flowered hill and right into the middle of town. She deposited her gold coins and went straight to the school house. The town clock tower rung and it was only 5 minutes before the class would start! The young woman panicked! She couldn't just turn around and go home, that would take to much time! However, she could very well go in, what if the man thought she was following him? 

Of course she was, but he didn't need to know that! 

She was only supposed to be there right before class got out!

With a large breath of courage the young woman walked into the building and sat in the back to not draw too much attention to herself, and wait, until the class was over and all the other students exited the building. 

The end of class came by the ring of a bell and all the students rushed out, except one. The young woman recognized this boy from church and internally groaned. 

"He's suspicious!" She thought

"Hey, Belle. What are you doing here?" the boy asked.

"Oh you know...just walking my sister home, Simon" the young woman said quickly to try and end the conversation so he would leave, giving her plenty of room to embarrass herself in front of an audience of one. 

"Oh, that's nice." The boy said and then continued to stand there. Belle was on the verge of shooing him out when he left on his own. 

Now what? 

Belles sister exited the room to give Belle sometime but she didn't even know what to say. The man was slowly turning pages in his binder and Belle knew she better say something quick because she knew he was already aware of her awkward presence. 

There was a song she had heard once from the land of Sir. Walter Disney, and so she improvised. 

"Um," She began and the man looked up at her with is beautiful caramel eyes and her heart just about sped right out of her chest. Her palms began to sweat and the more she dragged out the unintelligent word 'um' the more stupid she felt and the more confused the man looked. 

"supercalifragilisticexpialidocious?" Belle asked only a foot or two away from the man. The mans eyebrows furrowed and Belle envisioned her face in her palm.

"Excuse me?" The man said his voice as deep as a canyon and as strong as a river. His rain kissed earth colored hair, his olive toned skin, the soft caramel eyes, and his kind deep voice were all a recipe to make her heart melt. And now she added the wrong ingredient: the pudding of stupidity. 

So to make things better she had to explain herself. 

"You know," Belle said her face feeling as though she had stuck it in a bakers oven. "In the song it says that if you don't know anything good to say to just say supercalifragilisticexpialidocious and you'll sound smart anyways?" Belle attempted and the man laughed. "But that's the problem," Belle thought to herself. "You don't sound smart either way and how do you know he's even heard that song?" 

The man didn't seem to mind. 

The two talked for a little more than an hour before the man said he had to return the carriage to his mother and he left without any other knowledge then each others names and that Belle was a love stuck woman who was obsessed with the land of Disney. 

That night, much to the surprise of Belle was a letter waiting for her from the man she had met earlier that day.

Dear Miss Belle,

If you are not otherwise engaged on the week of the break for Spring I would very much enjoy your company. 

If it is of convince for you, please meet me the Monday next, in the middle of town for the Party of Spring.

Cordially signed,

Prince Adam

Excited Belle began to prepare for the party and over and over the letter played in her mind:

Prince Adam, Prince Adam, had her prince finally come?

To be continued...

M.E.G

Tales of the Belle and her Beast- Blog Day 2

First of all I would like to say it probably took me five minutes to find the page to write this post!
Second I would like to say that I call my husband a Beast in the way Urban Dictionary describs it:

1. Someone who is good at something, so much so that it exceeds human comprehension making them 'non-human' or 'beastly'.
2. Someone with a dominant presence. He is the only one I can see because he is such a "big" part of my life. 
3. A cool and sexy man. "He's such a Beast".

and then just for fun:

     4. A person or thing that is ripped, tough, and has an intimidating presence.

WARNING! If you click the Urban Dictionary link, just be careful. This website is definitions of slang words and some people use profanity.

Third- I was going to entitle this post "Tales of a Wild Child" at first because I am currently in love with a song called "Wild child" By Enya. This is some of my happy music! Go ahead and take a listen:

Fourth (and last before I actually get to the story), since Blogs are about making things up check out what i just recently made!

Homemade Poptarts

Peabody’s Pie Crust Recipe

Ingredients:

• 1-1/2 cups sifted flour
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 cup shortening
• 1/4 cup unsalted butter
• 3 tablespoons cold water

Directions:

Combine flour and salt in bowl. Add shortening or butter and blend with fork, pastry cutter or your fingers until mixture is fairly coarse. Add water, 1 tablespoon at a time, gently mixing dough after each addition until dough forms a ball. (Dough can also be prepared in food processor. Use the pulse button just until it starts to pull away from the sides. Be very careful not to overwork the dough.) Place dough on a lightly floured surface and roll into a square/rectangle. Cut out long strips about 2 inches wide, and 3 inches long. Repeat till you run out of dough.

Peabody is another blogger so I'd go check them out also! I found their crust recipe from yet another blogger via pintrest called Bake Me More. The only thing I didn't like about these recipes is it didn't say how many delicious pastries it made! I found out it made approximately 7, and for the 8 almost 9 people in my family that was barely one per person, which after you eat them you'll find out why 7 is definitely not enough! That's about one box of those cardboard pop tarts! Alot of my family thought they were even better then the almost too sugary toaster stroodles! When I try them again I'll make more and maybe even some chocolate filled ones for my dad who doesn't like seeds.

Homemade Strawberry Pop Tarts

makes approximately 7 tarts

Don't worry if yours don't turn out like the above...because mine certainly didn't!

Ingredients:

• Pie crust, refrigerated or homemade (see above for Peabody's Crust)
• Jam or Preserves (my other mother, Mama G, just gave me homemade raspberry and strawberry jam that I used and if possible I would suggest using a homemade recipe!)
• Glaze or Egg wash (I just used the glaze which is below)
• Sparkling Sugar (optional, but it makes them more pretty)

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees. ("I went by the temp setting on the box, the original recipe calls for 450." says Bake Me More)

If using refrigerated pre-made pie crust:

 Unroll one of the pie crusts and square the edges. Cut into rectangles. Place 1 tsp of jam in the center of a rectangle and top with another piece of crust. Crimp all four edges. Repeat until all of the pie crust is used. I also took the rounded edges that I cut off and rolled them together to form more pop-tarts. They weren’t as “pretty” as the others, but I hate to waste food.

If Using Peabody's homemade Crust:

Lightly flour any surface to roll out your dough and cut into rectangles or squares like in the recipe above. I just used a butter knife and cut all the way down, but if you have a rectangle cookie cutter I suggest using that instead, until all the dough is used up. Take one pie crust rectangle, fill with a tsp of jam. Cover with another piece of pie crust. Crimp all four edges. Repeat until you run out of pie crust. Bake at 450F for abou7-8 minutes or until slightly brown. Set aside to cool. Once cooled, pour glaze on to Pop-tart and decorate with sparkling sugar.

Bake the pop-tarts for about 7 – 8 minutes or until slightly brown. Once cool, pour glaze over and decorate with sugar. If you don’t want to add extra sugar with the glaze, you can use an egg wash on the tops  with some white sugar.

To Make the Glaze:

• 1 cup powder sugar
• milk to thin

Place powdered sugar in bowl. Pour milk slowly until it has a consistency of really thick syrup.

Okay now moving on, if you are still with me after this super long post. 

Once upon a time, in a land not so far away, there lived a young woman. She was an ordinary looking girl, or so she thought. She was of far more precious worth than even she realized as she was the daughter of a king and queen. She could not see her father the king, but she could talk to him as often as she wanted and could feel his presence. 

One day, the young woman was distraught. She would go out and wade in the lake to wait for her prince to come but all she could get were frogs! In disgust she would head back to her home and talk to her father. 

"Father," She would say. "I am sick of all these frogs! I want a prince who can take me to your beautiful Castle and we can all be a family forever someday! If I'm going to fall in love again he better be the right one! He better want a family, he better love me second to you, father, he better be strong, especially spiritually, and he better know where his priorities are!" 

The King, although the young woman could not see him, smiled all knowingly and told his daughter to be patient, she just had to look in a different place, and her prince would be waiting there, prepared just for her, around the corner. 

A few months went by and the young woman kept wading in the lake waiting for her prince. Another frog came up to her and wanted to hold her hand. The young woman didn't know it was a frog and loved having the attention. The more she learned about the frog and his nasty habits of eating flies for dinner she knew she couldn't be in a relationship with him. She realized that it felt nice to be admired by someone but it wasn't worth the slime. 

And then it began to rain. Hard. 

In a rush the young woman began to run towards the warmth and dry home. Inside it was warm and comfortable and bright. There was a young man there whom the young woman had seen before talking to all the people of the church about the adventure he had gone on. The young woman in her heart knew she wanted to talk to him, but she was wet and cold and didn't want to embarrass  herself in front of everyone. When she had gotten into a clean dress and was dry she went back to talk to him but he was gone. The young woman went up to her sister who had told her that he was going to be in the village to teach her class all of the next week. Excited the young woman prepared for what she was going to do. But no one expected what would happen next.

To be continued...

M.E.G

  

Blog Day One

To be honest I've always thought about having a blog.

Why haven't I before?

I haven't made a blog before because I have a hard time thinking about what to write in my own journal let alone a blog! Besides my journal isn't read by most people anyway and if it was I'm sure people would fall asleep.

How to make a Blog sound interesting with a splash of humor to keep the reader well informed and entertained: make it up.

 In my case that is exactly why I have created a blog this time: because I've made some things up and they turned out to be beautiful or tasty! Here's what I made for my own wedding:

eh? eh? Pretty cool huh? Did it add a little more stress to already having to plan a wedding? Possibly, but at least I felt like I was really apart of my wedding reception, not just the main event- with my cute husband of course.

Speaking of cute husbands Dax is the best little booger a girl could pick! Get it? Okay moving on...

When I first met Dax all I knew was that I needed to talk to him and boy did we talk! You couldn't get us to STOP talking! I was working for wal-mart at the time and sometimes I'd be working on only 5 or so hours of sleep because we'd be talking to the wee hours of the morning. He's my best friend and I don't know what I'd do without him. Maybe for another post I'll write out the whole story of our first year of being married but for now so long, farewell and a very good day to you!

-M.e.g