Door Latch Cover Tutorial

I've decided to make a full tutorial on the door latch cover. I've noticed that several of the searches people have found my blog with are for the words "door latch tutorial," and after doing a search myself, I found that a true step-by-step tutorial didn't exist.

Here's what you'll need:

Fabric

Heavy iron-on interfacing

Elastic headband

Cut two 3x5" pieces of fabric and one 2x4" piece of interfacing

Iron the interfacing in the middle of the wrong side of one of the pieces of fabric

Fold each short edge back 1/2".

 Iron and pin to make a 3x4" rectangle. 

Sew about 3/8" from the edge.

Place fabrics right-sides together

pin and sew at the edge of the interfacing, or 1/2" 

Turn right-side out and press flat. Sew the casing by sewing 1/2" from each long edge. Be sure to back-stitch to make it secure

Look at your headband. You should be able to see where it is glued together. Cut it near the glue to keep at least one side from fraying

Put a safety-pin through the elastic on the end with the glue. This will help your elastic go through the casing.

Put the elastic through both casings. 

Pin the ends of the elastic together and fit them over your door handles to make it the right size for your door and door handles. Paint the end of the elastic with clear nail polish to stop any fraying.

Sew the elastic together. I've tried to do this on the sewing machine, but it doesn't work. It's much easier to do a few hand stitches. Pull the elastic through the casing to hide the stitching.

Pop it over the handles of the door, and you're done!

I hope this tutorial helps!

Buzz Lightyear Cookies

Katie went to Girl's Camp this week as a counselor. Her group name is Buzz Lightyear; all the groups have light-themed names. I made cookies to send up mid-week as a surprise. I hope the girls like them!

Add caption

Happy Birthday Evelyn!

Today is my nieces birthday. Since I couldn't be there to bake her a cake I sent decorated sugar cookies instead!

She lives in Hawaii and loves the beach, so I went with tropical colors and shapes. I tried to pick shapes that would break less (I hope!) 

YAY! for the Solar Eclipse!!

Jonathan made a cool device to look at the eclipse. He stacked two welding masks and added a pair of sunglasses to reduce glare. It was really cool to see.

Mom modeling the fantastic goggles

After we all had a look, he took them to the neighbors across the street so their little boys could have a look too!

YAY! for Brownie Torte!!

This is what we had for dessert tonight. It was a small and rich chocolate cake.

This was a fast recipe to put together.

6 oz semisweet chocolate, divided
2 1/2 T butter
1 large egg
1/4 sugar
pinch salt
4 T AP flour

Set oven to 350 F. Melt together 4 1/2 oz chocolate, chopped, with the butter. Let cool slightly. Whisk egg with sugar and salt until frothy. Whisk in chocolate. Fold in flour then remaining chocolate, chopped. Pour into greased 6" pan. Bake 20-30 minutes or until a tester comes out clean. Let cool 10 minutes before turning out. Dust with powdered sugar. Serve with ice cream.

Door Latch Cover

**UPDATE**

Click here for a picture tutorial.

I've been working on a quilt and ran into a problem (the blocks won't line up right). I needed to take a break from the quilt problems so I picked a new sewing project.

I started with 5x3" pieces of fabric and a 2x4" piece of heavy interfacing. I decided to make casings for the elastic along each of the long edges and cut one piece of elastic (from a cheap headband) to make it easier to loop over the door knobs.

The fabric and interfacing keep the door from latching so it can be opened and closed more quietly. I'm sending it to Elizabeth to put on Evelyn's door.

Nazook?

The Daring Bakers’ April 2012 challenge, hosted by Jason at Daily Candor, were two Armenian standards: nazook and nutmeg cake. Nazook is a layered yeasted dough pastry with a sweet filling, and nutmeg cake is a fragrant, nutty coffee-style cake.

I chose to make the nazook. The dough was easy to put together and rolled out smoothly. I'm not sure I would make it again. My family seemed to like it (they disappeared quickly!) but I thought they should either be crispier or softer and more moist. They seemed a little like a dry cinnamon roll to me. Maybe I made them wrong? The pastry dough reminded me of rugelach, so maybe I should have picked a filling to match?. Not really sure.