Felt Easter Basket

Here's a cute little basket to make for a special someone. You can make it whatever size you want and embellish it anyway you want to as well.

Here's what you need:
5 squares of felt for the outside, 5 more for the inside (mine are 4 1/2" square)
5 squares of plastic canvas about 1 square less than the width & heighth of your felt square
1 strip of felt for the outside of the handle and 1 more for the inside of the handle (mine 1 1/4"x12")
1 strip of plastic canvas about 1 square less than the width of your handle strip
2 circles of felt with the same diameter (or a little bigger) as the width of your squares
embroidery floss
desired embellishments

Start by making the sides. Sandwich 2 liner felt pieces between 2 outside felt pieces. Make sure all the edges stay lined up. I used 3 strands of embroidery floss to do a whip stitch along the edge. You can do a fancier stitch if you want to. Also, if you want to add some embroidery to the outside do it before joining pieces.

Continue with all the side pieces. Attach 3 sides of the bottom squares in the same manner. I cut a tiny square out of each corner of the bottom pieces.

Insert your plastic canvas into the bottom between the lining and the outside. You may need to trim it a little. Finish stitching the bottom. Insert plastic canvas into the sides, trimming as necessary.

Make the handle by putting lining and outside piece together and stitching along one long side. Insert plastic canvas and then stitch up the other long side. 

Insert handle between the outer piece and plastic canvas, centering it. Stitch it to the plastic canvas securely. Repeat for the other side.

Cut your 2 felt circles in half. Lay the half circle across the top edge of the basket. I used a blanket stitch to stitch them on. When you get to the handle make the stitches in front of the handle as shown. You can glue the lining to the handle at the top.

Now embellish your basket anyway you want to.

Enjoy!!

Homemade Frozen Greek Yogurt Fudgesicles

Ok, so I saw a picture of some yummy looking chocolate frozen yogurt on Pinterest. It gave the ingredients but not the instructions. You can see the picture on my Pinterest page here. I was unable to find the owner of the picture/recipe through a search on the Internet, but it is attributed to this tumblr page. I tried to find it there, but couldn't.

Since I had everything on hand I decided to give it a try. Here's what I did:

1 cup almond milk (I used chocolate)
3/4 cup plain greek yogurt (I used actual greek yogurt, not the fake kind)
2 tbsp unsweetened cocoa
2-4 tsp sweetener (I used sugar)
1 tsp vanilla
pinch of salt

I just whipped them altogether and put it in the freezer, but I bet it should go in the ice cream maker. I would start with 2 tsp of sugar and then taste it to see if it is sweet enough for you. You can add more if you need to. Now I wait. Stay tuned!

UPDATE: As far as just sticking this in the freezer, don't. My ice cream maker is huge and I didn't want to use it for this small amount of stuff. However, I did freeze some of it in Popsicle molds. They are much like a fudgesicle. They taste pretty good too!

This is about a 2 oz fudgesicle and it has about 38 calories in it, if my math is right. This recipe will make about 8 of this size.

The downside is that they are a little difficult to unmold  from this particular mold, don't know if it is the size or the material or what. I just ran it under hot water and it popped right out.

Sweet Little Heart Cookies for St. Valentine's Day

It was cookie making day today with Ty and Patience. We made a couple dozen sugar cookies with lemon icing. Yummy!

Here are a few tiny little hearts. Aren't they sweet?

There's more to this picture than the cookies though. This plate is one of my prized possessions. It was hand-painted by my namesake, my great-aunt Georgiana Turner, in 1921. It is one of 2 that I have. I think it is very lovely.

What a fun day today eating making cookies.