Pam's Rule of Three and What's For Dinner?

Someone once said that rules were meant to be broken - I just wish I wouldn't keep breaking my own rules!

Rule of thumb when buying fabric - buy a minimum of three yards.  That's what I call my Rule of Three.  When I see some fabric that I simply fall in love with but haven't the foggiest what I'm going to do with it, I need to buy a minimum of three yards.  And even when you have a project in mind but can't remember how much yardage you need, you're generally safe with three yards.

Red/Black Print with Long Sleeves


For example, I bought this black and red print cotton fabric to make this jacket, but I couldn't remember how much I needed.  I thought 2 yards would cover it.  But when I went to cut it out and couldn't fit all the pattern pieces on the fabric, I looked at the fabric requirements and was stunned to see "2-1/2 yards" for the jacket I wanted to make.  Now that extra half yard was critical!


Batik With 3/4 Length Sleeves


So, the other night on the way home from work, as the weather forecasters were predicting another wintery blast and folks everywhere were heading to the grocery stores to stock up on milk and bread, I had to stop at the fabric store to get that last little bit of fabric to work on my project in case I got snowed in!  Never mind food - I'll find something to eat - but not being able to work on my latest project - now that's a tragedy!  (Don't tell my DH - he already thinks I have enough fabric to start my own fabric store!)

Anyway, I have made two jackets from this particular pattern (A Little Somethin' Jacket) and I am still making small adjustments each time - mostly trying to do as much on my serger as possible.  But it's a cute jacket to wear both with jeans or dressier pants.   Check out this and other patterns on their website http://www.cntpattern.com/ .  They are quick and easy and just a little different.

WHAT'S FOR SUPPER?

It's the age-old question.  I have tried to make this a little less painful by planning my menus a week in advance, then making up my shopping list based upon the ingredients needed -- less what I have on hand.  I have written out 3x5 index cards with menus complete with the main entre, salad, bread - whatever I usually put together for a complete meal.  Then on the back of the card I will write all of the ingredients needed.

Once I have my 5-7 meals for the week, I can then make a shopping list and head to the store, confident that at the very least, I will have the ingredients necessary to make those meals.

A website that I have found extremely helpful in getting new ideas for meals is the Kraft Recipes website - http://www.kraftrecipes.com/.  You can search for recipes by category, ingredients, type of recipe, etc.  And you can save them to your own personal recipe box.  You can even save your own recipes.  And, if you're so inclined, you can submit them to Kraft along with a picture for their review and possible publication for everyone else to see.  I have not done that yet.  But I'm thinking about it - Kraft Velveeta Cheese is a staple in my pantry!

Another neat feature is that you can choose a particular recipe and actually ask the site to add the ingredients to your own personal shopping list!  You can then add your own items to that list and take off items you may already have on hand.  The only drawback to this is that you cannot add items from your own personal recipes to the shopping list.  So you have to add those manually.  But I've done this a couple times and it really is a nice feature. 

If you're tired of the same old thing, give this website a look and see what new possibilities you can come up with.  I'm sure there are other websites out there that do pretty much the same thing.

More next week....................

Pam