Cake and Cake Wrecks

Sometimes you try really hard to do something meaningful. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. This didn't.

This was our Valentine's dessert on Saturday. I didn't want to take the time to find my good buttercream icing recipe so I tried this one instead. The kids (except Stauney) hated it and cut the icing off (Logan just found some undecorated ones and had one of those instead).

I also saw a cute picture of some chocolate dipped fortune cookies on top of cupcakes, so I bought some chocolate melts for that purpose, but never got around to buying the cookies. I did have these marshmallow Peeps though and combined the two ideas! Yes, I know - they're not cute. We all really liked them though in a weird let's-take-a-bad-food-and-make-it-unhealthier sort of way. You know, like deep-fried Twinkies! So overall, the dessert was not a huge success like last year's fabulous Molten Chocolate Cakes. I'm okay with that and willing to post it on my blog anyway.

I have definitely learned in life that sometimes the mistakes are way more interesting than the masterpieces. So to prove my point, you have to take a little side-trip to a hilarious blog I came across called CAKE WRECKS. I have been laughing so hard I've been crying while reading it tonight. Just be sure to come back for the cake recipe below (which did turn out) that has been in our family for as long as I've been eating chocolate cake. Which, judging by the gray hairs I've (sadly) been discovering lately, has been a pretty long time.

WILMA'S BEST CHOCOLATE CAKE

2 cups sugar
3 heaping Tbsp. shortening
2 eggs
1 cup milk mixed with 1 Tbsp. vinegar
3 cups flour
6 Tbsp. cocoa
2 tsp. baking soda
1/4 tsp. salt
1 tsp. vanilla
1 cup boiling water

I have no directions on my recipe (which is the way my Mom usually gives them to me) other than bake at 375 degrees for 30-35 min.
Just mix it all together using your current cake-making skills.

My Mom got this recipe from a lady in our Ward growing up named Wilma ? Mom, if you can figure out how to post a comment then you can let us know her last name. All I know about her is that she made good cake.

I also have another favorite chocolate cake recipe that uses boiling water. I got it from an American lady named Nina Smith in our Ward in Japan. (She also introduced me to Japanese recycle shops - and I've got to post about that sometime). It's late so I won't post that recipe now, but I'll add it later (since most of you that read my blog already have Wilma's recipe). I told my Mom once that I thought it was better than Wilma's. She tried a bite and told me it's not. I think sentimental recipes always taste the best.

Now, I just have to figure out what to do with the 4 cups of discusting frosting left over in my fridge. Stauney won't let me throw it out because she loves it and wants to eat it all on graham crackers! I think that by Saturday I will be justified in saying it's not safe to store it for longer than a week.

Now if you haven't gone to Cake Wrecks yet, you have to go. I know I have some photos that would probably go on there if I made them public. But at least I'm not a professional.

The Bucket Hat

With all of the frequent snow storms we have been having, I have been spending a lot of time outside either shoveling or snow-blowing.

Here are my problems with that:

1. The coat that I wear for this purpose doesn't have a hood.
2. I have naturally curly hair. Lots of it. When it gets wet, even if I've straightened it, it goes back to curly.
3. I HATE knit hats. They are usually too tight and just really look dorky on me.

I was browsing blogs one night last week and I found this cute hat pattern on the Purl Bee blog. Here's the link to John's Favorite Bucket Hat. It didn't look tight, and the pattern looked easy, so I decided to give it a try.

The yarn they recommended was out of my price range, but I really liked this yarn that I found at Michael's that is 25% wool and SO soft and only $5/skein. I thought 1 skein would be enough, but I ran out with 1 row left, so I had to go get another. The pattern was really easy to follow and nothing hard in it. All you need to know are chain, single-crochet, slip stitch and how to count. I worked on it on-and-off one day while picking up kids, but I think from start to finish it took me about 2 hours. Now that I've done one I think I could do another in 1 hour.

Although I made this hat for myself, Logan made a much cuter model.

I think I got a bit reserved with the yarn when I started running out of my first skein near the end, so my stitches may have been tighter than they should be, it doesn't flare out as much as the one in the instructions.

I love my new hat. I even wear it around the house sometimes when I'm cold because it warms me right up. My family also loves my new hat because they have all asked me to make them one too.

Hershey's Nugget Boxes

I start browsing on one blog and link to another, then another, and so on until I forget where I started. There is so much creativity out there it just amazes me and I get lost in it - usually much too late at night. So I'm not sure what blog I heard about Nugget boxes on, but after seeing how cute they were Stauney and I decided to make them for teachers for Valentine's Day.

We found the patterns on a Split Coast Stampers thread. This lady has made all sizes of them from 3 up to, I think 24. If you look through the gallery on this site you can see pictures of tons of them in various sizes and styles. If you want to watch a video of how to assemble a 1/3 box you can go to this blog Chic n' Scratch. This is a WONDERFUL blog full of so many cute things!

The patterns do not print out full-size. So be aware that you are using them just to read the measurements off of. We did the Short 6 pieces box.

I decided to use my digital scrapbook stuff to make it easier, quicker, and cuter. This is how I printed off the wrappers to wrap around the Nuggets. You make each wrapper 1"x3" and print them on a regular paper, not cardsotck. Then I used the same papers and printed them on full sheets of cardstock to make the boxes and the sleeves to go around them. You could get 3 boxes this size from one 8 1/2"x11" piece of paper, and another for the 3 sleeves.
Stauney and I had a lot of fun designing these and I think they turned out a lot cuter than if we would have just wrapped plain pattern paper around them. I get almost all of my digi-scrap stuff free. There are many sites out there for free downloads. I have been signed up on Scrap Girls daily newsletter for years and they give you a freebie daily (two a day during Dec.), so that's probably where I got these papers and embellishments. I usually use Photoshop with my digital stuff, but for something simple like this I just used Microsoft Publisher to design the wrappers.

This photo shows them all finished. The gold wrapper Nuggets have almonds in them, the silver are plain, and the top middle one is the back of one of the pink boxes. Noah's teacher is a man, so he gets the red/black ones. You can also fit 1 small Kit Kat in the place of 3 nuggets. I also saw some really cute longer boxes, like a 1x6 with a full-sized candy bar in them.

I finished them off by adding a contrasting band of paper around the middle to keep it from opening in transportation and then hooking the tag on top of the band. They were pretty quick and simple to make once I got the hang of it. We are now planning boxes for other seasons. Be sure to check out the blogs I mentioned above for tons of more ideas for dressing up candy.

Now the only problem is they are too cute to eat! Noah's teacher probably won't have a problem with that though. He is a man after all.

I'm not afraid to admit it...

...I am a bargain shopper. I get a rush when find a great deal, and I found some that I have to share. Not all are done yet, so I'll post them later.

Last week I was reading my new favorite blog, Just A Girl, and found some very inspirational ideas. So after a trip to D.I. and one of my other favorites, Hobby Lobby, (oh, and Robert's too) I came home with the stuff I needed to copy two of her ideas:

Here's the link to her BE MINE? project where I got this idea.

My D.I. is just overflowing with old wooden cutouts from everyone's past projects. Here are the ones I found. I paid $1.00 for the little one and $2.00 for the big one. Seems a little steep for a bargain hunter like me, but if I waited to cut them out myself I would never get it done, so it was worth it.
I stripped the stuff off them, sanded them with my handy-dandy sander (that I love too) and re-applied new paint to the little heart (kind of a peachy-pink that I mixed). I liked the color I got after I sanded the big heart, so I left it.
Next, I traced some scrapbook paper a little bigger than the hearts and glued it on with Aleen's Tacky Glue. Then after it was good and dry I sanded the edges again with my sander to antique them. Then I applied 3 coats of Mod Podge over the paper, re-attached the wires when they were dry and - tada!

Aren't they cute? I only bought 2 pieces of paper for them. The stripes are the reverse side of the bigger flower paper. I tried putting a tag on the bigger heart, but I couldn't stand to cover up any of the paper that I love, so I just added the little bow.

The second idea I copied was from the I Found Something! idea.
So while I was at Hobby Lobby I was browsing the clearance section and found these candle stands for 60% off. I got both of them for $13.00. I was so excited because I needed something taller to put next to the clock on the basement fireplace mantle. I then looked at the prices of candles and wasn't happy (even with them 50% off). I was going to check Tai Pan later for candles, but then went to D.I. and found these candles for $2.00 each! I just wanted red ones and wasn't really picky about the smell or look of them because I knew I was going to wrap most of them with paper. But they were in perfect shape, still wrapped in plastic and even a smell I liked.

I couldn't find any black/white toile scrapbook paper to match my curtains, but I liked this pattern that I had in my digi-scrapbook files, so I printed it out. The ribbon is little b/w checks. I should have taken a close-up, sorry. The greatest part about this idea is that I can change the paper and ribbons anytime I want to.

You'll have to check out Just a Girl for more great ideas. I already have been inspired to do more, and check back later to see what else I found on this productive shopping trip (don't you love those!). As soon as the weather warms up a bit I will be back to work in my garage with my sander!