Pesto Pasta

So I know I usually just post crafty things on here but once in a while I like to post about something yummy, and today is one of those days. I was hungry and rummaging through my cupboards to see what I wanted and realized I need to go grocery shopping ;) but I did have some pasta. Pasta, my faithful friend; I always keep pasta and rice handy, because even with just butter salt and pepper it's delicious. Today I chose pasta because I had a little bit of pesto sauce left, and decided to throw onion and garlic in there just because. A lady I work with told me that if you add garlic to your diet, like every meal add to your diet, it will keep mosquitoes away from you during the summer, and since I usually turn into a giant bug bite in the summer and I love garlic, I've been adding it to every meal I can. And I like onion. I chopped half an onion, put in maybe a tablespoon of garlic (I have an jar I bought from the grocery store that's all natural, but you could use any type you like)and and a spoonful of butter into a frying pan to cook it up a little bit, on medium heat. When my pasta was finished cooking (I put that on to boil first), I added the rest of my pesto sauce, it was close to a quarter cup, to the onion and garlic mixture to heat it up, drained and rinsed my pasta, and added it all together. It was delicious. I will probably never eat pasta and pesto by itself again! I ate it so quickly that I totally forgot to take a picture of it...oops! Update on the tree of life...this one's not so great either. It's better than my first one, but I was going for an ombre look, so I had to use different types of beads to get that look and I don't really like the look of different beads. I'm going to finish this one as well, but the next one I'm just going to use one type of bead and I think I'll have it down pat. :) Happy crafting!

Tree of Life

So I've crocheted myself out for a while, I have one headband to finish for somebody and then I'm going to take a break and focus on some jewelry I think. I'm edging my way there even now though and I've been working on a project for the last few days I thought I would share here. I made a tree of life, I've been seeing them everywhere and thought it would be fun to make. It was, but you can definitely tell this is my first ;). Unfortunately the site I originally found instructions at no longer exists and all the other sites were selling them not giving out instructions so I had to wing it based on my memory of the instructions I read, oh, a few months ago. For having virtually nothing to go by I think I did fairly well, but I'll definitely be making another one (that will hopefully turn out much better) and I'll try to do a tutorial along with that one. For now, here's a picture of mine: I used earthy colored stone chip type beads, with a couple purple and red ones thrown in, and I wrapped brown, gold, and green seed beads along the outer edge. To make the basic "form" I guess you'd call it, I wrapped 20 gauge wire around the bottom of a coffee thermos (mostly because for the size beads I wanted to use it seemed like an appropriate size circle, my next one will probably be smaller because I'm planning on using smaller beads), and I used 24 gauge wire to make the tree and wrap the seed beads around the circle. I also formed the loop at the top with the 24 gauge wire. I need to find some leather or twine so that I can hang this up in my window, as soon as I do I'll take a picture and post that as well. Anybody else out there making a Tree of Life and have any tips for those of us winging it? Would love to have you share them!