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change is in the air

autumn leaves

There’s a tree in my neighborhood that’s starting to change colors. Slowly, branch by branch, its leaves are turning red. Most of the tree is still a brilliant, summery green, but you can tell change is slowly coming. My website feels a little bit like this tree today.

Over the weekend I merged julie-bird.com with this site. I’m guessing most of you wouldn’t have even noticed if the rss feed hadn’t sent out one of my posts from a few weeks ago. (Seems feedburner is easily confused by change.)

Like the big green tree outside my window, most of the site remains unchanged. However, there are a few exciting things to note:

  • There’s finally a navigation bar at the top!
  • Tutorials have their very own page (with photos to come soon)!
  • Images are bigger! Tutorial photos are easier to see!

You may notice little changes in the coming months. I’ll let you know if I add anything terribly exciting. Right now, I’m just happy to have a little more elbow room to organize my creative thoughts.

Are the leaves starting to change in your part of the world? Real or metaphorical, share in the comments!

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recipe: how to make drop scones with yogurt

lemon cranberry yogurt scone recipe

A few months ago, I wrote about my success at making soft and fluffy scones. At first, I thought their texture was because of the yogurt. Turns out, it’s because of the flour.

I have tried many variations of this recipe and the only scone that stays soft and moist is made with a mix of unbleached white flour and cake flour. I’ve had tasty success with whole wheat pastry flour, but the texture just isn’t the same. I’m posting the white flour version, but I encourage you to try different, healthier flours to see what you like best.

I’ve also tried different kinds of plain yogurt and found that a drippy consistency is best. Regular store-bought and homemade yogurt* work fine as is. I recommend thinning Greek yogurt with milk to get the right consistency.

This recipe is loosely based on the one found in Alice Water’s The Art of Simple Food. I almost always make them with lemon and cranberries. Try substituting orange for the lemon and play around with the dried fruit.

Lemon Cranberry Yogurt Drop Scones

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

Mix together:
1 cup unbleached white flour
1 cup cake flour
2 1/2 t baking powder
1/2 t salt
1/4 c sugar
1/2 c chopped dried cranberries
grated zest from one small lemon

Stir in:
1 1/3 c yogurt or yogurt/milk mixture
juice from one small lemon (about 4 T)

Mix until the dough just starts to come together.

Drop 12 heaping spoonfuls on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper.

Bake for 15-17 minutes.

*I make my yogurt with 2% milk. I promise you won’t miss the butter or cream in this healthy treat. Enjoy!

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which came first: dumb t-shirts or dumb attitudes?

Every Fall for the past few years I have gone to Neat Repeatz, one of Lincoln’s largest consignment sales, looking for some cute and affordable clothes for my daughter. This is where I first learned that cute for toddler girls is anything pink or lavender covered in princess decals. I had to shop the boys section if I wanted to find anything with primary colors, trains, cars or dinosaurs.

Last week I learned that cute for little girls isn’t so cute. As I looked through the hundreds of t-shirts, I found the princess theme for this age group is now “Treat Me Like the Princess I Am” and “Her Royal Highness.”

dumb t-shirts

Even less cute are JC Penney’s and Forever 21’s back-to-school t-shirts: “I’m too Pretty for Homework, so My Brother Has to Do it for Me” and “My Best Subjects: Boys, Shopping, Music, Dancing” and “Allergic to Algebra.” They have been pulled from inventory after enormous public criticism, but how they even made it to sale is troubling to me.

dumb t-shirts

It doesn’t stop there. I recently read Lisa Bloom’s Think and discovered some scary statistics.

  • A quarter of young women would rather win “America’s Next Top Model” than the Nobel Peace Prize, according to Oxygen Media.
  • Half would rather get hit by a bus than get fat, according to USA Today.
  • Fifty-one percent say that becoming famous is their number one or number two goal in life, according to the Pew Research Center.
  • Most American women can name at least one Kardashian sister, but the majority can’t name a single branch of the federal government.

Seriously, ladies?

It’s becoming clear to me this is no longer about finding appropriate clothing for my daughter. I have to ask, does a market filled with “Too Pretty for Homework” type t-shirts cause this problem or do the t-shirts exist because of the problem?

I also have to ask how the parents of boys feel about all of this. Are you noticing similar trends? I’ll admit that I’m probably more exposed to the girl side of things because I have a daughter. Share your thoughts!

related links:
– julie-k tutorial: ruffling up some boys t-shirts
-in the news: JCPenney’s Too Pretty for Homework t-shirt
-in the news: Forever 21’s Allergic to Algebra t-shirt
-statistics: published on CBS’s website, along with a link to an excerpt of Think

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finished: wagon wheel baby blanket

this moment

I am so excited this is finished because I’m really ready for a new project. It turned out just as beautiful as I had imagined the day I found the sweater.

this moment

I couldn’t wait for it to dry, so I took pictures while it was blocking. I don’t normally block blankets, but because this is a gift, I wanted all of the squares to look perfect.

this moment

Some friends have asked me about my seaming technique on this blanket. I took pics along the way so I can post a tutorial. My next blanket will be joined as I go. Maybe it won’t take so long to finish.

original post: You can see parts of the original sweater in my first post about this project.

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easy kids bike shorts pattern

wardrobe refashion

The bike shorts pattern is finished and ready for download! It’s been over two years since my original Easy Kids Shorts pattern and I do a few things differently now.

  • These days I sew the inseams first, then the rise.
  • I almost always use a 1/4 inch seam allowance instead of 1/2 or 5/8 inch, usually because I’m trying to squeeze as much as I can out of a piece of fabric or t-shirt.
  • 3/4 inch elastic seems to be more comfortable around the waist than the smaller widths.
  • Now that I have a serger, I finish my raw edges and just fold the waist over once. You can finish your edges with a zig zag/overlock edge or adjust the pattern to accommodate the double fold waist.

I recommend you pay attention to the type of knit fabric you use. The original piece I traced for this pattern was a tightly-knit jersey. The t-shirt I used was a loosely-knit jersey and the shorts turned out a little big. Not big enough to re-sew, but definitely roomier.

Finally, my daughter is long and lean: 20 inch waist and 14 inches from waist to knee. Adjust seam allowances and elastic size to get a better fit for your child. Want them shorter? Trim off the bottom of the pattern an inch or two.

Please leave any questions in the comments. Download the pattern here. Enjoy!

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this moment

this moment

{this moment} – A Friday ritual. A single photo – no words – capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember. Join in the fun here.

Photo credit: The Daweshaus

. . . . . . .

Posting my “Friday” ritual on a Sunday. And it’s a moment from a few weeks ago. And I didn’t even take the picture. Husband was out of town and I’ve been a little distracted the past few days.

I was also working on my annual September 11th post. It feels weird knowing that when I combine blogs, words like this will be mixed in with a t-shirt bike shorts pattern.

Yep! I found the the bike shorts pattern under a pile of my daughter’s artwork. Hope to get it posted this week.

Stay safe and hug your loved ones.

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homemade raspberry jam

homemade raspberry jam

Last night I made jam. Ooey, gooey, yummy in the tummy jam. It was so incredibly easy that I can’t believe I haven’t done this before.

I started out following the recipe in the Ball Blue Book , cutting ingredients by two-thirds because I only had three cups of fruit. On the first try, the fruit didn’t gel. Maybe I had let the berries get too ripe? I boiled again and added some powdered pectin. Still no luck. Tried one more boil and some more pectin and voilà! Jam!

Two containers are in the freezer. A half filled container is in the fridge. Now I just need to make something that needs jam. Maybe scones?

resources: Target has the Ball Blue Book in stores right now with the canning supplies. I also found this website helpful and followed this advice when my jam didn’t gel.

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it’s u-pick your fruit season!

picking fruit

Over the weekend we went to a local orchard to pick raspberries and apples. It was a beautiful day: warm and sunny, but not hot — breezy, but not windy. Autumn is definitely in the air.

picking fruit

First up were the raspberries. They aren’t supposed to reach their peak ripeness until later this week, so we had to hunt for good ones. I think we did pretty good.

picking fruit

My daughter enjoyed picking them until she began to notice Bees! and long grass Scratching Her Legs! In her defense, she doesn’t really like the seedy texture of raspberries, so this was a lot of work for something she wouldn’t eat.

picking fruit

After the berries, we headed over to the apples. Galas are our favorite and they just happened to be the ones ready for picking. Our daughter was much happier once she got her hands on a juicy, sweet treat.

picking fruit

It was hard to resist some of the other trees that were full of unripe fruit. We couldn’t believe they weren’t ready and threw a few into our bag anyway. Woah, were they tart! Lesson learned.

picking fruit

I plan to make some freezer jam with the raspberries. The apples will disappear fast around here, but I hope to at least get one pie made and maybe an apple crisp, too. On our way out we talked about a return trip later in the season, maybe when the pumpkins are ready.

for the locals: We went to Martin’s Hillside Orchard. I follow their updates on facebook. A list of local orchards can be found here.

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taking the next step

I’ve been thinking a lot about my little space on the Internet. A few years ago I spun my creative work off of my personal blog because they felt like two separate parts of me. Now they couldn’t be more intertwined.

This space isn’t going away. In fact, it will probably grow to include more aspects of my creative life. I don’t want it to become too cumbersome, but I need a place to document more of the whole me.

I wrote that back in June. Since then, I’ve been reading through my personal archives and realized there’s a lot of really great creative stuff over there.

I’ve decided to merge the two blogs back together. I plan on doing it chronologically, so you probably won’t notice. I thought you might want to take a look around before everything is whooshed over here.

I’m also planning to redesign this site. I’d love to have a menu at the top for different categories. My tutorial and pattern lists could use some organization and I’d like to share more photography and creative writing. The personal archives will be coming over, too. They are a huge part of me and I just can’t delete them.

Finally, I’d like to take a moment and thank you, dear readers, for visiting and commenting on what I’m doing. During the days/weeks/months where I thought I’d never be able to keep up my creativity, taking time to document things here has made such an impact. It may not have been much sometimes, but I never stopped making things.

Many of you have told me that I’ve inspired you to keep making things, too. Let’s promise to carve out a little bit of time everyday for our creative spirits, even if it’s only for five minutes. Reading through my archives made me realize those minutes really add up!

Let me know if there are any changes you’d like to see as I (slowly) rearrange the furniture around here.