Covering the Assets - DIY Nursing Gear

I had a minor nursing in public (NIP) "incident" a few weeks ago. We were taking our toddler to the park and the baby needed to eat. You gotta do what you gotta do, so if you're a nursing mom who doesn't want to or can't be home all the time, you need to NIP. I fully support NIP and the way the mom chooses to do it, covered or not. But I'm shy, man. I have GOT to be covered.

To illustrate my point, while my husband took the toddler to the park, I was across the street facing a water tower, hidden from park view behind a large tree AND covered with a nursing cover. NOBODY was seeing these boobies. However, it was extremely windy and as I was holding down my cover on the left side, a huge gust of wind blew the right side right off. And there it was. A boob in the open. 

Since I was behind the tree, I felt pretty safe from view but I looked up anyway to make sure nobody saw my little mishap. I saw a truck driving right by me on the way out of the park. There was no way the driver didn't see. I drew attention just by being a person sitting up against a tree, facing away from the park. I looked away as quickly as possible, not making eye contact with the driver. I totally wanted to die of embarrassment. 

I'm still going to have to NIP from time to time so I wanted to make sure that I don't have any more of these boob sightings occurring. Before little O was born, I found a few things on Pinterest that might help, so I went ahead and made them. 

The first was this nursing shawl. I was taken in by two things. First, the beauty of the model. Man, I love red hair and she is gorgeous. Surely, I would look JUST like her if I wore one ;) Second was the simplicity of the project. Cut, pin, sew a short line. That's it! Knit fabric doesn't fray so you don't have to worry about finishing the edges so the project goes quickly. 

Needless to say, I do not look like the lady modeling the shawl in the tutorial, but it's going to do the job. Mine ended up a little shorter than I would have liked, but I didn't have the full 30 inches as recommended in the tutorial, I was working with 27. It's still functional and I think it looks good enough anyway. Gotta work with what you have! And my toddler wanted to know what was going on under there. That's proof of good coverage :)

So that took care of the boob coverage, now I needed some for the gut. I'm not just embarrassed of the boobs :) I also found this tutorial to make your own nursing cami. I can't believe they charge 25 bucks for those! I got 2 cami's at Old Navy for $3.50 a piece, so I'm saving some serious cash here. You wouldn't think so, but normally, sewing doesn't really save you all that much money on things. My husband is always shocked at how much I spend on fabric, so I'm glad these projects were such money savers. The knit was on sale at Fabric.com. 

The cami's were also quick to put together, but since the area being sewn was so small, I made a huge mess of it. It doesn't look anywhere near as good as the tutorial, but I'm covering that part with the shawl, so who cares?

Below is an "action shot". You're welcome for not being in this one :)

Now I'm all covered for my adventures in NIP. I can lower the cami and the post baby gut is still under wraps and the boob is all covered up by the shawl. Easy peasy projects, money saving, boobs and gut covered. Loving it! Try them out and go get your NIP on! Or go uncovered if you like!

Baby Got...Pie

It's been a crazy few weeks around here. We put our house on the market and bought a new one. With all the fixing and cleaning required to put our house for sale, my husband's 34th birthday quietly came and went. No big deal he said, we can celebrate a few days later when the craziness dies down. So a Father's Day/Birthday celebration it would be. I was getting excited because since the baby was born 8 weeks ago, I've completely neglected my other blog, Baby Got Cake. Without being at work and having people to eat it for me, I needed a real reason (other than something like, "It's Tuesday! Yay!") to make a cake.

But my husband decided to break my heart. He's told me this before, but no matter how many times he says it, it just doesn't compute. "I don't really care for cake." Every cake making occasion that rolls around for him, I ask because I really can't comprehend someone NOT liking cake. What's wrong with you? But it's the man's birthday and he's a great father, so I say give him what he wants. French silk pie it is.

Please don't mind the bad pictures. They are (gasp) cell phone pics. The real camera is packed away. Oh, and for that matter, so are my piping bags so excuse my Ziploc decorating. This moving stuff is really cramping my style...

Anyway, it's not quite your typical french silk pie. It's a graham cracker crust (not homemade per my husband's request and I was happy to oblige). Most of the time, these are made with a nice flaky pastry crust. You may also notice that the whipped cream is chocolate. More on that later. 

The base recipe is from the Pioneer Woman. She NEVER lets me down. But in my typical fashion, I managed to screw up a very simple recipe. I used some leftover Ghirardelli baking chocolate I had in the cabinet, but it was missing the wrapper. I figured that each square was an ounce like the other brand I normally use. I figured out later, I was wrong. I gave the beater to Nate to taste and he asked, "What flavor is this?" It's a French silk pie, so it's obviously chocolate flavored. This was his way of telling me he couldn't taste it. I got all offended and stormed off to continue to make my pie. How dare he question my baking ability?!

But then I put it in the crust and noticed it looked a little...light colored? I had thrown out the label on my baking chocolate so I looked it up online and sure enough, each square was only a half ounce. It had half the chocolate flavor it needed. Don't tell my husband he was right, he still doesn't know.

I had to fix it somehow because I didn't have extra ingredients and was already invested time-wise. I thought maybe I'd put chocolate shavings on the top and bottom of the whipped cream and make the whipped cream chocolate instead of white. As usual, I asked my Baby Got Cake blogging partner for advice and she concurred so that's what I did. I swear, if I had my own baking show, it would be called "J Saves the Day".

So there it is with the shavings on top. I meant to do curls, but the bar was too frozen at the time. No matter, this worked out better anyway. I'm learning :) The chocolate whipped cream recipe comes from  The Joy of Baking. This stuff is good enough to eat with a spoon. Not saying I did. But I might have. 

So, I hope my cake hating husband loves it. If I remember later, I'll take another lovely cell phone picture of a piece and update. Happy Father's Day!