Sewing Updates: Seeing Blue

Hello fashionistas,

I trust you all are superb.

I have been busy doing the usual...

My friend was getting married and requested I make her Bridesmaids dresses as her wedding present. It was a bit of a short notice so I got to work immediately and took a trip to purchase the fabric.

She wanted royal blue and after trekking for hours I finally found a suitable fabric that was just barely enough for the number of girls.

And two days later, I was done with the dresses.

Here are a few pictures

And a close up of the rhinestone belt detail 

The bride was happy, the bridesmaids were happy and so I was happy too. Lol

I did manage to make an outfit for myself to wear at the ceremony as well. And surprisingly not at the last minute X_X

Here's a picture

And a fun shot with DH

Oh yeah, my hair was styled by my lovely sister...she has inspired me to 'want' to style my natural hair more. I tend to do just two things with my hair; The Bun and The Puff.

Until next time, God bless you.

Love,

Preye.

What I Ate: Minced Chicken Sandwich

Hi everyone,

I trust you all had a productive day. I for one wouldn't have minded a few more hours today...but thank God for the useful ones I had.

A couple of days ago (2 days to be precise) I woke up feeling at a loss for what to make for breakfast. The Saturday prior to that I had gone shopping and found some minced chicken in the frozen foods section. I picked up a pack to try out as I had never cooked with munched chicken.

I had cheese which I wanted to use up so I decided on a sandwich and this was the surprisingly good result. I knew it would taste good of course but the combination of the ingredients just took this sandwich to a whole different level. So I have a new "TnT" breakfast meal to add to my collection.

Would you look at that! I feel hungry just looking at it. Lol

So where were we...ah the recipe.

Here we go

Ingredients:

Fresh loaf of bread (I prefer unsliced)

Minced chicken (about a half kg)

Bell peppers (Red, Green, Yellow and Orange sliced into long strips)

White Onion - sliced

Mozzarella cheese - sliced about a quarter of an inch thick)

Ginger - half an inch size finely minced

Seasonings/spices (ground garlic and curry powder)

Salt and black pepper

Worchestershire Sauce

White Balsamic Vinegar

EVOO

Mayonnaise 

Directions

If your minced chicken (you can substitute with beef) is frozen set it out to thaw a couple of hours prior to when you plan to use it.

Step 1: Place your chicken in a bowl, season with salt, black pepper and Worcestershire sauce. Mix thoroughly, and with your hands form half inch thick patties and set aside. If you are using beef you may need to add an egg (or half) to enable it bind.

Heat a tableapoon of Olive oil in a non-stick pan. Also turn on your oven as you will be needing it shortly.

When the oil is hot, add your patties and allow to brown on both sides turning once after about 2-3minutes.

Remove pan from heat, place slices of cheese on each pattie and pop in d oven to allow the cheese melt. This should take between 3-5minutes. Remove once the cheese is melted

Step 2: Heat two tablespoons of Olive Oil in a fresh pan, add the onions and ginger and allow to soften for a few minutes on low heat. Add the peppers, season to taste and add two tablespoons of the vinegar. Allow to simmer for about three minutes and remove from heat.

Step 3: Slice your bread and spread with mayonnaise lightly on both sides, spoon some of the bell peppers on the bottom half of the bread; with a spatula, scoop out one of the chicken patties with all it's cheesy goodness and place over the peppers and then top with the other aide of the bread. You can secure the sandwich with a toothpick.

Serve with tea if that's your thing, I like water. Enjoy and thank me later :D

I hope you give this a try...it's well worth the effort and comes together in very little time.

Until next time, remain blessed.

Love, Preye

Sewing Updates...Lots of Sewing Updates

Before I started blogging I was (and still am) an ardent "blog reader", and I remember visiting my favorite blogs and the disappointment I'd feel when there were no new updates. I'd be like; One month and no post? (with one eyebrow raised)  ONE MONTH???

The height of irresponsibility (Nose turned up), don't they know they have faithful readers eagerly waiting to read their posts? What could keep them so busy that they'll do the unthinkable? And I'd continue in my vexing until a new post goes up, then and only then would I forgive them. Lols.

Well today I am in those same shoes, and I have learnt the reason why blogs sometimes go "un-updated" for weeks on end.

Life!

Yes life, you sometimes get so caught up in the activities of your day to day life (I know I did/do) that blogging takes the back burner.

So to my hundreds of readers ( Only about five readers actually contacted me but I am prophesying hundreds and indeed thousands of readers "unto" this blog)...where was I?/ Ah yes, to my hundreds of readers who have missed my posts, I say a big, "I am Sorry" I shall try to do better going forward.

And to show how sorry I am, I'll be posting lots and lots of pictures today and less of words (Lol, the ones above don't count)

And in addition to that, the first person to comment on this post gets a FREE LACE PEPLUM TOP. Yippee. This is technically my first give away so I guess I should put a disclaimer and more deets.

• The top will be made to fit
• Winner will make arrangements for pick-up
• What else? Yeah my favorite, "Terms and Conditions Apply" (Just don't ask me what the terms and conditions are. Lol)

Without further ado, here are the pictures of about a quarter of the clothes I have made since my last post.

Apologies for the quality of some of the pictures...they are a "mismash" of pictures from my phone, Ipod Touch and Camera, some taken in the dead of night! 

Lace top: I made this to attend a wedding...one of those 20minutes rushed sewing that end up turning out great.

Tunic: made this for date night cos I felt like wearing a new dress.

Close up. 

Bridesmaids outfits. Also made my own dress the morning of the wedding...as usual (becoming a bad habit I say!) 

The Maid of Honor dress: This is a two piece dress as the flared part is detachable and can be used as a maxi skirt while the main dress can be worn as a simple straight "less weddingy" dress 

BM 1

BM 2

BM 3

And BM 4

This dress was inspired by the half yard of stripe fabric I had left over from making a jumper for DH. And was made on a Sunday morning before church (I know...chronic). Here's a close up pic taken before service. 

Bright sunlight.

Next up velvet dresses. My sister and her friend wanted to "wow" at the wedding they were attending. And I was given the near impossible task of creating these extra long dresses out of one and a half yards of fabrics each. Whew! Many a sleepless night later, I was able to meet their expectations (I actually cried at one point during the construction of this dress...velvet is a pain to make)

Back view

Full view

Tunic: This was a RTW order so I made several pieces and colors. P.s the back is green like the sash

And the babies weren't left out

Jumpsuit 

Skirt...with a matching top which I didn't get to photograph clearly

But here goes all the same

Tunic...ignore my tired face...I woke up early to make the dress in time for service

Dress with button details

Fooling around with instacollage

Lace top (And yes, the lace top to be given away will be similar to this)

Lace peplum top

Another lace peplum

Beaded jacket

Ankara and lace combo top

Close up of details

Exposed zipper 

Another exposed zipper dress 

Pencil skirt 

Pleated peplum dress with a belt

And finally, random RTW dresses made for a client.

I have a lot more pictures to post but I am already beginning to doubt if MTN will  even "agree" to upload these many pictures

Let me leave you with one final shot of my journey through "Internet Modems"

I searched all over...from MTN to Starcomms to Etisalat, even Airtel (not pictured) and finally realized that they are all the same! So I am back to MTN (far left) at least they give free data. Lol.

Until next time, remain blessed.

Love, Preye

Meal Upgrade: Bread and Eggs

Hello friends, How are you all doing? I am great :D

Now lets talk about breakfast. And specifically the all time classic; Bread and Eggs! I don't know about you but I find the basic omelette with tomatoes and peppers quite boring. So at every installment, I try to switch things up a bit.

So without further ado, Bread and eggs: my way.

For the Bread, I toasted them same way I did Here and cut them in half into triangles.

And now for the eggs; You'll need the following ingredients 

Ingredients:

• 3 Large Eggs (Cant have an omelette without eggs now can we? :D)
• One Small white Onion sliced
• Celery: About two sticks sliced
• I medium carrot, peeled and cut into half inch cubes
• About a quarter of a stick of Leeks, thinly sliced
• One Sausage, diced
• One Clove of Garlic finely chopped
• I Tablespoon Extra Virgin Olive Oil
• I Teaspoon Worcestershire Sauce
• Salt and Pepper to Taste 

Cooking Instructions

Start with a nonstick pan on medium heat. (also turn on your oven as you will be needing it shortly) Add your vegetable oil and when hot, add the sausages and allow to brown for a few minutes. Add the Worcestershire sauce and a pinch of freshly ground black pepper for some flavor. Once browned, remove the sausages and set aside. Add the sliced onions to the pan and allow to soften, add the rest of the vegetables leaving the garlic for last. Stir continuously and season. Remove from the pan.

Reduce the heat to the lowest and pour your beaten eggs into the pan and top with your vegetables and sausages making sure to spread evenly. Optional: Top with about a table spoon of chopped parsley.

Pop into the preheated oven at medium heat for about 5 minutes and you've got yourself an omelette.

I like to cut min up into pizza style wedges. This recipe serves two and the serving in the picture is actually half of the prepared omelette.

Give this a try, and I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

Until next time, remain blessed.

Love, Preye

Brooch Marathon

Hi everyone, I know its been a gazillion days since I last posted. Activity level has been high and I kept waiting for things to slow down a bit so I could update the blog...Alas that never happened...or is yet to happen; so I'll just take it one day at a time and maybe one day in the not too far future I'll catch up with my line-up of posts.

So first post for today...brooches! Lots of brooches.

Brooches glam up an outfit, add a splash of color to an otherwise dull ensemble and in some cases can serve as an identifier when worn by a group of people. They are cute and bright...but after making over 100 of them over a cumulative three day period, I can think of some other words to describe them...words I will desist from speaking out loud. lols

Anyways, here are a few pictures I took of the brooches before delivering them.

A Rose with leafs

Lace Bow

Kind of a Bow

A Flower

And More 

All packaged and ready for delivery.

Apologies for the sideways pictures. My laptop seems to have a mind of its own today.

I hope I don't get to use my glue gun anytime too soon because my fingers need some time to recover from the burns. whew!

Nonetheless this was an interesting experience, I learnt a bit more patience, and got a sneak preview into the world of "manufacturing" (term used lightly) and assembly line processing.

Until next time, stay blessed.

Love, Preye