The Famous Schmidt Cookbook

My dad comes from a family of nine kids. I have lots and lots of aunts, uncles and cousins! I have first cousins who are closer in age to my parents than to me. I have first cousins once removed that are closer to my age than my kids' age. (And, yes, I'm using that first cousin once removed thing correctly. I looked it up.)

Back in 1986, my aunt collected recipes from all our family members and combined them all into a cookbook. The original Schmidt Cookbook is full of all our favorites. There are little remembrances and quotes interspersed amongst the recipes, and handrawn artwork on the section dividers. This book was so popular, that even people who aren't Schmidts have copies of it.

However, after 20 plus years of constant use, those yellow cookbooks were starting to look a little ratty, and an original family of nine kids can do a heck of a lot of multiplying over 20 years! There began to be dreams of a new cookbook.

Putting together a cookbook is a big task! Or at least it was back in 1986. Fortunately, I found a company that does all the designing and layout for you. You just check the happy little boxes on the order form! So, for the new Schmidt Cookbook I used Morris Press Cookbooks. It completely simplified the entire process and they are very nice people to work with!

All I had to do was collect the new recipes and type them into their system. It was time consuming, but not hard. And, since everyone's old keepsake books were falling apart, I agreed to put all the recipes from the first book into the new one, so we could preserve our first book.




And, this is what we ended up with! Such a pretty book, although not as unique as the version a couple of my cousins and I first envisioned. We wanted it to have an outhouse on the cover. My husband wanted me to call it various versions of "Tastes Like Schmidt", but I lost my nerve.

The most important thing is that all of our family recipes are again preserved. There are 409 of them (recipes, not books). I know, because I typed each of them myself!

We "unveiled" the new book at the Schmidt Reunion in July. Everyone was thrilled with it, although a few were disappointed that I didn't go with Roger's more colorful title.

There are still copies left over, so let me know if you want your own! They're $6.50 a piece. That's only 2 cents per recipe!

Yarn People & Bears

I have been a crafting dervish the past couple of days!! I've been in a crocheting mood, so I finished this bear for Sally:

And, I made this doll for my husband's co-worker Lydia who collects "ugly dolls".

I'm most proud of the curly hair on the doll, because I used the instructions from another pattern and did some project specific tweaking to make it work. And it did! My crochet skills aren't perfect yet, but hey! Look at me go!

Last night, I sat down and worked on a fabric pennant banner for a baby shower I'm hosting on Thursday evening. It's looking pretty good! I was very glad that I went ahead and purchased that equilateral triangle quilting ruler last year. Made cutting out the triangles for the banner much, much easier! I'll try to post pics of the finished banner later.

Or, I may just disappear for a couple months like last time!

Robot Battle

I've been doing quite a bit of amigurumi crocheting lately. (Not much blogging, though, obviously!) Everytime I make something, Mr. Kay says, "Can I take it to work?" Apparently, his co-workers don't quite understand what I do. This "making stuff" thing just doesn't make sense to them! I'm pretty sure they think I wear long skirts, no shoes and quilt all day, possibly while wearing a bonnet.

I finally decided that I should make something that he could take to work, so I crocheted him a robot for his birthday. The robot was a sweet little thing, unfortunately, after being at my husband's office for a couple weeks, something bad happened...

Latest Addition

I've recently discovered that I am totally in love with vintage sewing machines. Unfortunately, sewing machines are kind of a large item to collect! So, I've begun a collection of vintage toy machines. Mr. Kay collects tin toys, so these little machines fit in quite nicely with that collection, too. I have my machine from when I was a girl, and I've been keeping my eye out for others to add to my home.

A few weeks ago, Mr. Kay and I were browsing in a local antique store, and I ran across this little cutie. I ended up paying about $10 for her. She's missing her hand crank, and I haven't tried putting batteries in, but it doesn't matter if she works or not! I love her!

Give a Hoot!!

These chubby little cuties were another couple of swap projects. The pattern comes from Lollychops, and they were super-easy and fun to make! If you've never checked out the Lollychops blog, you absolutely MUST! It's fun and funny and full of clever little projects!

I received this little owl from a swap partner! He's got cute little feet and the prettiest sparkling eyes! I adore him!

Amigurumi

I haven't been blogging much lately, partly because I've been kind of busy and partly because I'm overwhelmed by the number of things I want to blog about. I start to worry that stuff will be old or out-of-date by the time I get to it, but frankly, you all don't know when I did stuff, so it doesn't matter if I blog about something that happened yesterday or six weeks ago! (That was a really long sentence!) So, I'm going to start just throwing stuff out there!


One of the main reasons I wanted to learn to crochet was so that I could make all the cute amigurumi figures I've seen out there. I was constantly seeing them on Etsy, only to find out it was a listing for a PATTERN and not the actual toy. I figured I better learn how to use those patterns! And, oh my goodness!, it is so fun and relatively easy!


I made this little guy in a couple of evenings for a swap. The pattern came from the book Amigurumi Two! by Ana Paula Rimoli. I was so pleased with how quickly he came together. And look how he can even come out of his egg shell! The cuteness is positively overwhelming!

It's Spring Time!

Well, it's supposed to be spring time. Saturday was the first day of Spring. We had snow in Kansas. Not that we're not used to bizarro weather in Kansas, but really? Snow? I'm over the snow. I'm ready for daffodils and tulips. I have seen a few ladybugs lately, though! This one came in my mailbox as part of a swap. Isn't she adorable? And her maker has an Etsy shop here. I'm finding Swap-Bot to be a fabulous way to expand my softie collection!

As I said in an earlier post, I hosted my very first swap - a pincushion swap. This is the little cutie that I sent to my partner. I made it using this tutorial. I made mine a little bigger than the one in the tutorial. Very, very easy little thing to make. Somehow, it took me four tries to get it right. I was ready to throw ladybugs across the room! Seriously, this in no way reflects on the creator of the tutorial. This was just me and my sewing mojo!

Anyhoo! Enjoy your Spring, wherever you are! We have sunshine today, and I hope you do, too!