Weekend To-dos

1. Plant watermelon seeds out back.
2. Tidy up the yard. DONE
3. Really clean up the kitchen.
4. Mail out one friendly hello.
5. Start starfish pillow. DONE
6. Finish starfish pillow. DONE
7. Bake something... bread, pretzels, something fun and yummy but maybe not super sugary. DONE
8. Catch up and keep up on daily Bible reading (trying to read through the Chronological Bible in six months).
9. Clear off the buffet and dining room table (much bigger job then it sounds, sadly).
10. Weather permitting, GET OUTSIDE BUNCHES! We spent a TON of time outside during April, not so much in May however and we need to get out there more again. DONE
11. Look through June's budget and set spending goals. DONE

Bonus
   12.  Tackle my bedroom closet; ooh, scaaaary!

7. Bake something

I finished number seven tonight. I was thinking of baking bread or pretzels but I strayed from the plan and started looking up donut recipes. I settled on THIS ONE for baked strawberry donuts BUT I don't have a donut pan so I ended up making mini strawberry glazed muffins in my mini muffin tin with the donut recipe.

I think this recipe turned out really well but I tweaked it quite a bit and I don't see how this mini muffin is anything like a donut at all. Maybe the non-resemblance is just because of the muffin shape but I tried to convince myself this was a donut hole and still no, totally muffin. It's a rather moist yet airy muffin and again I really liked the way they turned out but no resemblance to a donut.

In case anyone cares my tweaks were: coconut oil in place of the butter, apple butter syrup in place of the maple syrup, also apple butter syrup in place of the vanilla in the glaze and I added a little cinnamon to the glaze. I also halved the glaze portion of the recipe because 3 cups of powdered sugar seemed absurd to me for the amount of mini muffins I ended up with (one full mini muffin pan worth). Also, these glazed strawberry mini muffins are perfection topped with a fresh raspberry. 

5. & 6. Start and Finish starfish pillow

I'm not totally happy with how my almost entire days worth of work Saturday (or half a day at least) turned out BUT it's FINALLY done! I am happy about that. Side note: I can't use a sewing machine. Apparently I don't know how. Every time I've ever tried I end up spending more time monkeying with the machine then what I do actually sewing so I always sew by hand. I like sewing by hand anyhow but it sure takes more time.

I made a plain white insert for this so that the cover could be more easily washed/ thrown into a washing machine (instead of just making a solid decorative pillow) and this little project is the first time I've ever made a pattern or used a pattern for anything (except for a pair of pants I started to make for my sister once and never finished). But the insert is just a bit too small or the cover is just a bit too big so that the finished work of art is a bit more wrinkly than I'd envisioned. I purposefully made the cover just the tiniest big bigger because I thought if the cover and insert were the exact same size then it would be too snug. Sigh.

Well, I marked 6 out of 11 things off my weekend to-do list. I'll wrap up a few more tomorrow. Over half done isn't bad for me.