feeling fancy

Last Friday was pretty festive for us.  I have two friends with the same birthday, so I went to lunch with one and we had the other over for dinner! 

 

Robert made an amaaazing chocolate cake.  It was so moist that it kept falling apart when I was trying to ice it!  I had to use extra icing to make sure it wasn't too uneven looking, and to hide the hole in the middle where the cake stuck to the pan!  What a shame.  Sometimes we're a baking team -- he makes things delicious, and I make them pretty.

Sweater: H&M (thrifted), Dress: Target (thrifted, ha!), Print: The Black Apple

Oh look!  Outfit photo.  I was feeling fancy.  I really like this ruffly dress because it's good at hiding my little post-baby-belly. 

Ruffles and icing can cover so many flaws!

P.S. Thank you all for the sweet comments on the birth story.  I assure you, I was not looking so hot the day after!  Robert has agreed to be a guest blogger here occasionally and share his experiences as a new dad.  I'll be posting his version of the birth story soon! 

happy halloween!

Here's the project I was working on yesterday! I finished it and was able to hang it up just in time. Robert didn't even notice it when he came home, but when he did he thought it was something I bought! I'm going to choose to take that as a compliment.


This was an easy project that took probably 2 hours total. I wasn't planning to do anything like this yesterday, but when the creative mood strikes I like to go along with it! I won't go into too much detail, but to make this sort of thing you just need:

• bias tape (or any long strip of fabric)
• felt (any color you like)
• needle & thread

I finally got out my sewing machine-- I realized it hasn't been used since June! I also realized I'm not entirely sure what all the knobs do, and the settings definitely weren't right. However, I'd already started sewing and I figured it didn't really matter much, as long as the thing got sewn together! (I am definitely not a perfectionist.)


First, I cut out a bunch of black triangles from felt. I didn't use a template - to be honest, I just kept thinking they needed to be about the size of a small tortilla chip. Next thing I did was pin them all in a row in between the folds of the bias tape. Then came the part with the sewing machine! I suppose you could do that by hand as well, but for a long, straight line sewing machines are a time saver.

I cut out the letters and ghosts from felt, and sewed those on by hand. I was running low on time by then, so the ghosts are held on by their faces (used french knots for eyes and mouths), and I attached the letters with some big, loose stitches. I figured any messiness would only lend to its vague spookiness! It's fairly cute and it should last a long time! You could do the same sort of project with paper, but I like how cloth looks. I want to make a birthday banner as well, something that can be used over and over for anyone.


One other thing that must be mentioned: pumpkin cookies!! Robert introduced me to these last year, and they're soooo good! Somehow a combination of pumpkin, oats, and chocolate chips just works really well together. Add some simple vanilla icing... so perfect. And we like to decorate them with candy corn! But this is definitely the kind of thing that can only be eaten once a year.

I hope everyone is having a lovely weekend! We've already started our scary movie marathon... just taking a break now. :)

cake and presents

I'm still recovering from my birthday! Not physically or mentally, but just catching up on chores around the house that I'd been ignoring because it was my "birthday time." What a fun excuse to be lazy.

Thanks again to everyone for the lovely birthday wishes! It was a nice day, and I took so many pictures that I'm going to break it up into a couple of posts. Not only can I stretch out the birthday cheer, but this post won't be overwhelmingly disjointed and crazy. So today: cake and presents! Good stuff! I'll try to let the pictures do most of the talking.

Fresh homemade vanilla ice cream!

Gigantic cake! Recipe from smitten kitchen - though we didn't think the icing was sweet enough and tampered with it until it became something evil and delicious.

Presents! Wrapped in baby paper! Thanks, Robert. <3

I admired this at the grocery store one time, so Robert bought it because, as he said, "I knew we would definitely need it."

Necklace from my lavaliere

Ring also from my lavaliere

Clock from decoylab

Apple canister from ModishVintage

Anyone notice a trend with the presents? This is what happens when you refuse to tell people what you want and give them a link to your Etsy favorites! Not such a bad idea; I think it went fairly well. However, I did find it funny that both my sister and Robert gave me jewelry from the same place, and I just got that headband from the same shop... I feel like I'm starting a collection of their business cards!

Robert took the afternoon off work, and we walked around downtown. Mostly we strolled around looking at antiques, but we got tired of that after a while. After presents and some cake and an afternoon nap at home [perfect birthday trio], we ventured out again and walked around the cemetery across the street. Pictures from our adventure will appear in the next post [whenever that may be].

blueberry buttermilk cake

You know what I like? I like it when I email Robert a link to a recipe and then, 2 days later, come home from work to find he's made it for me. You'd be surprised how often this happens. This week it was a recipe for raspberry buttermilk cake. I found the link to it from this blog post (in which cherries were used). Robert used blueberries! The cake is so fluffy and light and just the right amount of sweet!

Speaking of recipes and neat things found on blogs, this is the coolest idea I've ever seen for putting together a collection of recipes: using an old encyclopedia and gluing your favorite recipes in alphabetically! I'm thinking that I'll begin a similar project when I have a little more time on my hands-- except I think I'll just make neat pages for our favorite recipes and then put them in plastic pages in a binder. Cookbooks around here tend to get really messy.

more, more!

I was happy to see all the positive comments about the dresses in yesterday's post! I think the general consensus was "we want to see more!!" Patience, friends! There will be more. I actually photographed them all yesterday, but seeing how I was in a rush to try everything on, I made some silly faces which shall not be shown here. Check this one out!

I think this one's a keeper. I love the neutral colors and the drop waist, and I can imagine so many cute outfits using it. This is actually what I'm wearing today. And I was meaning to update my Etsy shop this afternoon, but I'm so distracted... We decorated some cookies today.

Ghost and duck cookies. These are mine.

Robert's cookies looked a little more.. crazy.

And although we've already had a big sugar rush, I heard that Maggie Moo's is giving away free ice cream scoops for tax day. I think we might have to investigate that. There's a shop half a mile from our apartment - if we walk that will make it healthy, right? Plus maybe I could get some sun on my legs [wait- I just realized it's kind of cold outside. Stop that, weather!]. I'll let you know if any cute dresses make it into my Etsy shop!

cookie party

I feel so incredibly accomplished. After close to 12 hours of editing today, I finally finished going through my husband's book and helping him get it ready to send out! My brain is completely fried. But it wasn't a bad way to spend a day - listening to The Breeders and reading a good book. I never made it out of my pajamas, and now it's nearly bedtime.

Here are some sugar cookies we made last night!

This one was mine.

Sleep is going to be so good tonight. I barely slept at all last night, but my insomnia did lead to some incredibly creative ideas. I'm excited about having tomorrow to myself to work on making things. I'm so appreciative that we're in a position to be unemployed by choice for a while. I do look for jobs everyday, but I've stopped clicking on anything secretarial or even vaguely corporate/office related. I keep finding things that I KNOW I'm qualified for (with nearly 3 years of experience working for a lawyer), but the job descriptions alone already have me bored to tears. I need to work on my real goals. Keep making dreams to run toward.

peanut butter cookies

I made peanut butter cookies last night, and I forgot how easy and yummy they are. So now I will force my recipe upon the general public, and demand that you make some!

Ingredients!!

* 1 cup butter
* 1 cup crunchy peanut butter
* 1 cup white sugar
* 1 cup brown sugar
* 2 1/2 cups flour
* 1 teaspoon baking powder
* 1/2 teaspoon salt
* 1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda

Before baking!

If you want to know the secret, it's no eggs. I was just making regular peanut butter cookies one time and left out the eggs accidentally (how? It Happens). I made those cookies anyway and they were super crumbly and delicious. You can mess up like me; failure tastes great! Removing the eggs can also be a dietary thing (sure!) and I bet it'd be easy to make this into a vegan recipe if you replaced the butter with something else.

They generally taste the same before and after baking, if you play your cards right.

Directions!!

1. Mix together butter, peanut butter and sugars really well, preferably with a mixer.

2. In a separate bowl, sift together the rest of the dry ingredients. Mix them with the rest of the batter. Put it in the refrigerator for 1 hour!

3. Roll the dough into 1 inch balls and put them on a cookie sheet. Squish them with a fork, making the criss-cross pattern.

4. Bake them [oh yeah, preheat your oven to 375 degrees Farenheit] in the oven for about 10 minutes. I don't even like mine to get brown.

Ballerina? I really wanted to decorate *something* with it.

And then - why not? - you can put silly decorations on your cookies. I just scored a big bag of old plastic cake decorations from my childhood. This ballerina is missing a hand. I bet it was a dancing accident.

oatmeal cake

I spent my afternoon baking a cake! It's been quite a while since I've done any baking on my own, though it used to be my primary hobby along with cake decorating. Since my husband's been around we do all our baking together because he's far superior to me in the kitchen. Luckily, I seem to have soaked up some of his knowledge over time - this was the most organized I've ever been while baking!

I based this cake on ingredients we had in the pantry; we're moving soon and don't need to buy any extra food.

Sneak peek! Yum yum!

I was trying to figure out what to do with oatmeal and coconut, and I came upon this recipe for Coconut-Topped Oatmeal Cake. It sounds a little crazy, but when you look at the ingredients (lots of brown sugar and butter) it begins to sound appealing. As far as I know, the batter was delicious and the topping tastes pretty good; the real test will be to see if anyone likes it tomorrow night (I'm taking it to a clothes swap party!).

It looked so pretty in my bundt pan!

For future reference, it was supposed to be made in a rectangular pan. I realized afterward that the purpose of serving it in the rectangular pan was so that the cake would soak up all the buttery coconut topping. I baked it in a bundt pan because I thought it would be prettier that way. I always like round cakes better. I am a round cake elitist. Oh well.

It's kind of terrifying. But it should taste good!

Pro-tip: After you bake a cake, leave the oven open for a while and it will be all warm and cozy and delicious smelling in kitchen! But do not be tempted to climb in the oven.