Inspiration, Part 1

While I'm extremely grateful for the hard work and creative genius behind sites such as Whip-Up and One Pretty Thing, I don't visit daily simply because there's too much inspiration on these great sites. I'm extremely sensitive to inspiration overload - I want to make each and every thing I see, but end up making nothing because I don't know where to begin. So I only visit these sites about once a week, and without fail I find something I absolutely have to make.

Last week it was the fabric snack bags, ala We Wilsons, featured on both Whip Up and One Pretty Thing. The timing of this project was perfect - George had recently purchased new pillows for each of us, and the pillows were packaged in heavy duty plastic zipper pouches. He said, "I bet you can make something with this plastic," and he was right.



I've never sewed with plastic before, and have rarely used Velcro, but they are pretty easy materials to work with. I deviated from the pattern a little and sandwiched some pretty fabric between two pieces of plastic - cloudy plastic on the outside, clear plastic on the inside.



One trick I discovered along the way was gluing the Velcro in place before sewing it to the plastic to help prevent slippage.



Each of the bags measures 7" x 7". Just big enough for a handful of pretzels or dry cereal for a quick snack, or a half eaten chocolate bar that I want to hide from the rest of my family. I'm only a little concerned about whether the plastic I used is food safe.

To be quite honest, I'm more concerned these days about whether my food is food safe. I had the unique opportunity this past weekend to hear a local food activist speak about GMOs and GE, that is genetically modified organisms and genetic engineering. This topic has been on my radar for a few years now, but I had no idea how mainstream GE food had become. Chances are, our pantry, refrigerator and intestines are full of GMOs. I'm just beginning to scratch the surface of what this means. In addition to being on inspiration overload, I'm now on information overload.

Suffice it to say, our family will be making some very big changes in our diet and food shopping habits. I'd like to share a bit of this journey with all of you, so I'll be posting periodically about what we are learning about GMOs and GE, and more importantly how we are ridding our diets of these nasty products and the tasty recipes we are discovering in the process.

I can just imagine what my little brother is thinking now. First she makes her own Ziploc baggies, then she starts going wacky with reading labels. All I can say is, just wait. Inspiration and information are contagious.