A Petticoat From a Dust Ruffle

Starting with a white cotton dust ruffle made for a full size bed, I made a new petticoat. It's comfortable, inexpensive, and easy to sew. The dust ruffle itself was $2 at a thrift store and the only other expenses were white thread and a package of elastic (another $2).
Besides the money saved by purchasing a used bed ruffle instead of new fabric, this project also saves a lot of time and energy. Since there is already a ruffle attached to the cloth, there is no need to make one along the bottom of the skirt.



Lay the fabric out flat and cut off the ruffle along the short end ( see the red lines on the diagram). Then cut down the middle, longwise, making two equal parts, each with a ruffle.





Place the two halves together, right sides facing each other and sew up the sides.



Iron over a 1/4 inch fold all the way around, on the side with no ruffle. Using that fold as your new top edge, fold the fabric over 2 inches and iron down.



This will be the casing for the elastic waistband. sew down, leaving a 2 to 3 inch gap to feed the elastic though. Pin a large safety pin to the end of your elastic so that it is easier to grab and pull as you feed it through the casing. When the elastic has been pulled all the way through the casing and come back out the other end, overlap the two ends of the elastic and sew together. Pull the waistband until the elastic is fully inside the casing and sew the gap, through which the elastic entered and exited the casing, shut. It is now ready to wear.

Ula turns 21 today

Picture taken at Starved Rock, Il. August, 1990.



We were both so young back then!

Spanakopita Recipe

Spanakopita (Greek spinach and cheese turnovers)

filling:

1 small onion finely minced

2 Tablespoons olive oil

8-ounces of feta cheese

2 eggs

1 pound of frozen spinach, defrosted and drained

1/3 Cup Parmesan cheese

pinch of nutmeg

1/4 teaspoon dry oregano

1/4 teaspoon dry rosemary

salt and pepper


Saute the onion in the olive oil until it is soft and translucent. In a large mixing bowl, crumble the feta cheese and beat in the eggs. Add all the remaining ingredients and mix together. Cover and set in the refrigerator until ready to use.


Filo:

1/2 package of filo dough

1 beaten egg

1/2 cup melted butter


Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.
Carefully unfold defrosted filo dough. Place a single sheet flat on a large flat surface ( a cutting board or a table covered by a sheet of wax paper work well). Brush the sheet with melted butter. Lay two more sheets of filo on top of the first and brush the top sheet with butter. Add two more sheets and brush the top one with butter. Add two more sheets and brush on butter. There should be a total of 7 sheets stacked together. Carefully cut the rectangle of filo into 6 equal squares. Place a spoonful of spinach filling in the center of each square.




Brush the edges of each square with beaten egg and fold each square over on the diagonal to make a triangle. Brush the edges with egg and pinch together.*
Place on baking sheet, brush with additional butter, and bake for about 30 minutes.

-makes 18


*this recipe can be made without egg. The egg is a better "glue" for holding the edges together, but butter can be used as a substitute.

Scenes from Sunday and Monday in St. Augustine

A secret Garden


Dusk on Sunday, the most deserted I have ever seen St. George Street.


Flaggler College:




The Lightner Museum:










There are so many wonderful places to eat in St. Augustine, that we will probably never try them all, but we did try three really excellent places this weekend.

Athena Greek Restaurant serves wonderful breakfast food until 2 p.m.on Sundays.
For lunch on Monday, we went to the very small, but very wonderful Casa Maya. They make their own guacamole and the Mayan soup is fantastic.



For desert, we had popsicles made with real fruit and spices from the new gourmet popsicle shop that just opened 4 days ago, next door to the Casa Maya.





It rained off and on all weekend, so Blaze got a new umbrella from one of the many pirate stores,



but in St. Augustine they know how to deal with pirates.

Public Archeology Day at Kingsley Plantation

There was a really nice turn out for Public Archeology Day. Blaze and I showed up just as DH was doing a question and answer period after his talk.

Question: Were all these tree here back then?

Answer:


DH was giving his talk at what they've been calling "The sugar mill", although they are not really sure that is what the structure was. The whole time he was speaking, and for a short time afterwards, two students were working on a unit right there.



Sifting through the dirt to uncover several pieces of various colored, broken glass.


Not far from the sugar mill, in the woods, between the mill and the river, DH proudly shows off that with a single shovel test he has found the tabby floor of another building.



Blaze helping dad brush dirt away from the new building site.


One of the other grad-students gave a talk at the cabins, where she showed the crowd the well they just uncovered behind one of the cabins.




There were students hard at work in the floor of one of the cabins.







Sifting dirt from the cabin floor.


In a previous post, I mentioned the hand charms and showed a picture of one found on another plantation. Here is a picture of the two found at Kingsley over the past three weeks. They are a hook and eye (one of each, making this a complete set).



I just have to include this picture, because I'm so pleased with how it turned out. This is one of the park rangers at Kingsley.

Rumpus in the Rainforest

Last night was the elementary school play Rumpus in the Rainforest, and the kids did an incredible job! Costumes and props were still being worked on right up to the last minute and a couple cast changes meant that parts had to be learned in about 48 hours time, but the audience couldn't tell.Even the children who had been so nervous that they were shaking or getting upset stomachs during those last rehearsals, overcame their fears and preformed beautifully. I'm so proud of all of them!


"In the Amazon Rainforest there lived a frog. This is his story. The story of a frog with an impossible dream that came true..."


The youngest group of kids didn't have any speaking parts, so they were able to choose what rainforest animal they wanted to be, so besides the regular characters in the play, we had a piranha, a parrot, and a blue morpho butterfly.









The sloth was a real show stealer:



The monkeys were all perfectly cast.



He's a cool, cool cat:




One of our two boa constrictors:


Humans are also in the rainforest, looking for cacao beans and scaring away all the animals:


But there is also a helpful human. The shaman is able to help the toucan's injured wing with the help of jungle medicines.

The Museum of Science and History, Jacksonville

Last Saturday, we visited MOSH, The Museum of Science and History, in Jacksonville to see the Narnia exhibit. The exhibit contained props and costumes from the Narnia movies, as well as a small display of things that belonged to C.S. Lewis. The item that DH most coveted was C.S. Lewis' personal copy of The Lord of the Rings.



The exhibit also had a few hands-on activities for children, such as this set of blocks that demonstrated how to build an arch.



There was also an exhibit about the human body





and all the permanent exhibits, like the one about ocean life.



I love science museum gift shops! For less than a dollar, I purchased this little parachute man, which kept Blaze busy and asking questions about air and flight for the rest of the weekend ( it also caused him to get lots of exercise climbing up and down stairs, which is something he's normally not comfortable with). The house we've been staying in at the Plantation has multiple levels, so it's perfect for this.