Lemon Ruffled Curtain

Not long after posting pictures of my Japanese kitchen, I finished up a project that had been a long time in coming. As I mentioned, I really don't have very much storage in my kitchen, so my metal rack pantry has to do a lot of overtime in the storage department.

I love how convenient it is, but I just wasn't in love with staring at my cans and Kitchen Aid every day. So I created a ruffled curtain to add some color and hide my extra storage.
I'm going to share a little of how I made it, mostly in words with a few pics thrown in.

First I measured the size I wanted for the curtain space. I used an old white sheet, cut it to size, and hemmed all four sides, leaving the top side open on either end to put a curtain rod through.

Then I figured out how wide I wanted my ruffles and cut enough strips to cover the length of the curtain. I hemmed the ruffles on 3 sides (leaving the top side unhemmed).

I ruffled the unhemmed top with this awesome tip I picked up somewhere. I just set my stitch length to the longest and the tension to the tightest and it ruffles the fabric for me. Such a time saver! But you do have to know your sewing machine fairly well. Then I pinned the gathered strip to the top of the white curtain.
After I stitched it on, I added the next ruffled row underneath the bottom of the top row so that the stitching couldn't be seen.

For the first couple rows I pinned and then sewed.

But I found that it was too time consuming switching back and forth, so I ended up pinning the entire thing and then sewing after it was all pinned.
At the top, I stitched on a bit of ribbon to cover up the top ruffle layer's unfinished hem.
I'm not going to lie. It was a pretty tedious project after awhile. (Read-repetitive!!)
But I think the end result is so worth it!! Every time I walk into my kitchen I just love seeing those bright lemons.

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Have you had any projects you've made that you love to look at every day?

Valentine's Day Heart Waffles

Since moving to Japan, I've had to get a little creative when it comes to Holiday treats. As you may have seen from my kitchen post, I do not currently have an oven.

I've since acquired a tiny toaster oven (think Easy Bake!) but any holiday treats requiring baking are usually put on the back burner. Literally.

When I started seeing all the fun waffles on Pinterest, I knew I was on to something! We *love* breakfast at our house and especially waffles. While I was laying in bed last night I thought it would be fun to make strawberry waffles in the morning. Then it hit me that with a few simple cuts, we could make them into hearts for Valentine's Day.

After making these this morning, my husband turned to me and said, Oh, this is something you saw on Pinterest, right? (Can you see how it's changed my life??) I told him that I'd thought of it while falling asleep last night. He said this was "totally Pinterest-worthy", so here it is!
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All I did was cut a small V shape in the top center and then shave the rounded edges off the bottom half.

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For this one, I didn't add quite enough batter to fill the waffle iron, so I didn't really have to trim the bottom half. I just added the V cut at the top.

We added strawberries into the batter and made a simple strawberry syrup on the stove top. The only thing we were missing was some yummy whipped cream on top! Next time, right?

Hope you all have a WONDERFUL Valentine's Day!!

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