Fresh Diet Pink Lemonade

The weather has been ah-mazing here.  Upper 70s, lower 80s.  I love it.

With the warm temperatures, I've been craving some yummy, cold, refreshing drinks.  Like lemonade (the real stuff!)  Aldi's happened to have lemon's on sale for $.99 a bag!  Then, I rounded the corner and found the $.79 strawberries!  I snagged a few of each the other day and decided to make some pink lemonade this week. 

I don't know if I'm just a lousy searcher, and I don't use the right keywords when looking for things.  Or, if there truly wasn't a good, yummy, fresh homemade recipe for Strawberry Lemonade (that didn't include club soda or simple syrup) on Pinterest.  Either way, I searched and searched and couldn't find one.  So, I made my own.

The awesome part about this lemonade?  Its diet and it only cost me $1.92 (with tax!) to make the entire pitcher.

My Fresh Diet Pink Lemonade

Ingredients:
6 Lemons, room temperature
1 16 oz package of Strawberries (washed)
7 packets (or more to taste.  I like my lemonade kind of tart) of Stevia (though Splenda would work well, too)
1 cup of water (and about 1.5 quarts added at the end)
Ice
Sprig of mint

You'll need a lemon juicer and a knife to cut your lemons and strawberries

*Wash and cut your strawberries. 

*Put into your 2 quart drink container and set aside.  I mashed mine a little bit with my pampered chef mixing do-dad.  But, you can mash yours with a fork a little bit if you want.  

*Roll each lemon back and forth a few times before cutting it.  I read something somewhere (isn't that the way it always is?  I can never remember WHERE I read it.) that you get more juice from your lemon if you roll it before cutting and juicing it.  It seems to work well.

*Juice each lemon half.  (I absolutely LOVE my lemon juicer from Pampered Chef.) 

*Pour the lemon juice over the strawberries and let them sit together for a while.

*Meanwhile, heat your cup of water up per your method of choice. I  put mine in the microwave for about 1.5 minutes. 

*Stir in your packets of sweetener. 

*Pour water/sweetener mixture over strawberry and lemon juice combo.  Stir well.

*Add extra water and ice until you have 2 quarts of lemonade.

*Pour into your pretend-I'm-on-a-tropical-island-alone-glass, garnish with a lemon slice and a sprig of mint, that you took from your neighbor's herb garden, and enjoy. (You could even go further and do a little sugar on the rim of your glass if you wanted to be super fancy)

I did find that wasn't super pink the first day, but the second day it was a glorious color!  I'd recommend making it a day ahead to achieve a beautiful color pink.



It was so.stinking.yummy.  Normally E doesn't really care for my low-calorie re-dos.  However, even he raved over this, saying "its very refreshing!" 

There you have it.  Diet Pink Lemonade.  Yum!

Pintrest FAILED me! *gasp!* (a small tutorial)

I have been wanting to make Eliza a headrest for her car seat that would not interfere with the safety of her seat.  (Technically, anything, after market, that goes between the baby and the car seat could be a potential safety hazard.)  Yesterday, I had a few hours free, while Isaac was in MMO, set aside to tackle this project.
Except, well, I couldn't find a tutorial for what I wanted.  In fact, I couldn't find ANYTHING  that didn't include that back part of the headrest that goes behind the baby!  I scoured Pintrest for hours a while, hoping to find something that would give me the faintest idea on what to do, where to start, etc.

Nothing. I didn't think it was possible. But, Pintrest failed me! 

So, I decided to get to work myself.  I took my old headrest, and did some funky measuring with my handy dandy measuring tape.  From that, I enlarged the measurements a bit to make room  1. for my seam allowance and 2. I wanted Eliza to be able to grow into it. 

Here's what you need if you're following along.

• 1 piece of minky, or other equally soft and luxurious fabric, measuring 21" x 10" (Our car seat is a big one, that goes up to 30 lbs.  if you have a smaller one, I'd probably only do 19 inches in length.)
• Coordinating thread, (or neutral color if you're lazy like me and don't want to swap it out. it doesn't really show on the minky)
• stuffing (I used some of the insides of an old pillow that I was going to through out anyway.)
• scissors
• an absurdly cute baby to model finished product

First, take your minky fabric and measure the length and mark with chalk (or a pen.)

Then, measure and mark your width.

Take your sharp scissors and cut your fabric.  (If you're using minky, like me, hold the fabric kind of tight. Minky is slippery.)

Next, fold your fabric, like a hot dog, right sides together. (bumps on the inside. ;) )

 Now sew the edges together, being sure to leave a small opening somewhere.  I left my opening right in the middle of the longest side, since the seam will be pretty much hidden when the headrest is in use.  (I normally re-enforce the front and back of the opening so that it doesn't come apart when I'm turning the fabric inside out or stuffing it.)

As a quick side note, I never pin minky.  I've tried and tried, but it always works out better for me if I just go with the flow of the minky.  When I try to pin it down, I always end up with a crinkly/wrinkly spot somewhere.

I failed to take pictures for the next few steps.  Sorry! 

*trim any excess fabric

*Take your tube-like fabric and turn it right-side in. You can use the eraser end of a pencil (if its sharpened) to help you get into those corners.

*Next up, the fun part!  Stuffing!  Take your stuffing and push it through your opening, taking care to get it in each of the corners.  Stuff as little or as much as you'd like. 

*Hand stitch the opening closed.

Wah-lah!  You have a safe car seat headrest!

Cue the cute baby:

I think she likes it.