Don't hate me! (plus tutorial for basic pillow cover)

I should be ashamed of myself. I didn't do any cooking today (besides making eggs-in-a-hole for breakfast). And we even had Taco Bell for dinner (now we did walk the 1.25 miles there and the 1.25 miles back to make up for the fact that we were eating fast food). I don't know what was wrong with me. I did do a little bit of sewing, but most of that was yesterday too. At least let me share with you what I made for dinner yesterday (my first recipe out of the Southern Living Cookbook). It was the Stewed Tomato Bake on pg 492. Here is before baking:

 

Then after adding the topping and baking again:

 

And finally all together. I made some rice and we had some left over cauliflower and then my homemade bread from the other day:

 

It was good, but I didn't use stewed tomatoes since I had cans and cans of diced tomatoes. I think it may have tasted better with a more cooked tomato, but Mike really liked it. Maybe next time I will stew my own tomatoes before making it.  

Mike and I picked out this fabric at JoAnn's to use for covering pillows for our couch:

 

Isn't it cute!  Here is a basic tutorial for covering pillows. I had a bunch of ugly pillows that I wanted to cover and use for my couch. Now two of the pillows had forms inside that were contained so all I had to do is remove their previous covers and put mine on. One of the pillows was just filled with stuffing (in that case you can either just cover the entire pillow or pull the stuffing out and use it in your new pillow). First remove the cover from your previous pillow:

 

Use this cover as a pattern to cut out 2 pieces of your fabric (this pillow had a 1 inch fringe border, I did not do this but I still cut the fabric the exact same size and it worked): 

Now line up the two pieces, right sides together, and pin. Sew a 5/8 inch border all the way around leaving at least a 10 inch opening (or larger or smaller depending on the size of your pillow):

 

After you have sewn all the way around. Clip the 4 corners at a 45 degree angle:

 

Since the seams are sort of large, I ironed them flat against either side so they sit nice once you put the pillow in (if you aren't worried about that then don't bother):

 

Insert pillow:

 

Pin opening shut (try and smush the pillow down as far as you can- you can fluff it later- so you have about 1 inch between your pins the the edge):

 

Top stitch as close to the edge that you can making sure to stich through both sides:

And you are done! Here is one done pillow next to the two others I needed to cover:

 

When the rest are all done I will share the wonderful pictures with you.

Until next time, please enjoy this picture I found in a folder on my computer. It's in a folder that is a bunch of old family photos. I don't know why we had this one. I don't ever remember having a baby raccoon in 2004?!?