Lombardo Lagniappe

18 Months of Cakes

2016-08-17T14:22:00.001-05:00

Eddie is not so sure that he likes me writing blog posts. Just when I think I have him all comfy on his pillow so that I can sit down to type, he decides he'd rather be held. Lucky for him, I am more than happy to oblige. Before bed last night, Jack wanted to hold Eddie and he just kept giving him kisses. Until he decided he was done and thought Eddie should go to his swing haha. We'll take what we can get :)

Right now Eddie stays up pretty late with Joe and I, but I'm hoping to start having him go to bed a little earlier soon. If I end up getting more cake orders in the near future, I'll need him in bed at a decent time so I can work! I do have an order of cookies to deliver next weekend, so we'll see how that goes, now that I have two little guys to tend to instead of just one.

Over the last year and a half I have been lucky to get several orders for cakes, cupcakes, and cookies. While each order seems to have its own challenges, I do still enjoy the baking and decorating. I also feel like certain decorating skills are starting to get a little easier for me, which takes some stress out of the job.

On to the pictures! There are quite a few for this post so I'll just put any specifics for the cakes under the picture. Enjoy!

My only wedding order over the past year and a half.

Star Wars baby shower cupcakes!

Baptism cake for a friend's baby.

The octopus body was a rice krispie treat.

A simple design with A LOT of little pieces.

Twin 1st birthday smash cakes!

Wedding shower cake for a friend. My first attempt at ombre buttercream.

There were matching cupcakes for these but I didn't take a picture.

1st Birthday smash cake and cookies.

The hat is a cupcake in disguise :)

The baseball stitch writing was simple yet time consuming.

Matching baseball cookies.

Mickey Mouse Clubhouse cake with 1 dozen of each type of cupcake.

I think that's it for today! Time to get a few more things done while both boys nap.

One month as a family of four!

2016-08-12T15:03:00.000-05:00

Not sure if anyone noticed, but it's been well over a year since I posted on the blog! Needless to say, a lot has happened since then and we've been busy. I'm hoping to post about of few of the projects that we've done around the house separately, so I won't bother talking about them in this post. For now I want to introduce the newest member of our family and give you glimpse into our new life as a family of four. We found out last November that we were expecting baby number two. We were excited to find out in February that we would be having another boy. I'm so happy for Jack to have a brother!

After what felt like a VERY quick 9 months, Edward Robert Lombardo made his appearance on July 7th! At almost 2 pounds lighter than Jack was when he was born, Eddie felt so tiny but he is quickly catching up.

Jack wasn't so sure at first about this new baby that I was constantly holding. The first several days at home were a little rough, but Jack has adjusted more every day. These days Eddie has more brotherly love coming his way than he knows what to do with! Jack is excited to see "Eh-eee" every morning, and showers him in snuggles and kisses. The only problem is Jack is a bit of an aggressive snuggler. We're working on that though.

While we were in the hospital and for our first 2 weeks at home, we had either my mom or Joe's mom in town to help us out and they were lifesavers! Having an extra set of hands to hold Eddie or play with Jack was such a huge help. Now that I'm home with both boys on my own during the day, we're still working on settling into our new normal. Lucky for me, Jack is typically very helpful and has become more patient when Eddie decides he wants to eat off and on every 10 minutes in the morning. Eddie is also very "helpful" in the sense that he is very laid back for the most part, and happy to rest on a pillow or in his swing. He is also a good night time sleeper. He still gets up once or twice a night to eat, but he goes back to sleep almost immediately after eating.

As for Jack, he's 19 months old now and is chatting up a storm. I swear he learns 2 new words a day. Too bad he won't hardly talk in front of anyone but Joe and me! He loves trains, picking tomatoes, picking up walnuts with daddy, reading, playing with his kitchen, and helping out with anything he can. He's still a mama's boy and gets a little nervous when new people come to visit, but I'm hoping he will get better about that as time goes on.

Overall, we're doing really well over here! We've had so much support from family and friends to help make the transition as smooth as possible. These two boys are keeping me busy but in the best way possible. I can't wait until Eddie can interact with Jack a little more so Jack can get some love in return :) Now on to the best part: pictures!

Fresh from his first bath

Jack had his hands on his ears because he was asking for a phone to watch a train video :)

Stranded at the picnic shelter at the park during a rain shower.

"Trainspotting" in downtown Olathe

Tummy time pro!

Three Months with Jack

2015-04-07T21:54:00.001-05:00

And just like that, another month has flown by! I had every intention of posting non-baby related things on here in the last month but we were so busy that it just didn't happen. We were busy with lots of fun things though! Jack's third month was filled with lots of visits and love from family. First Joe's parents came to visit for the weekend, then the day after they headed home, Grace came to spend her spring break with us. Jack and I did some running around town with Gracie and then spent the later half of the week getting ready for an even bigger crowd to come in town for Jack's baptism. Instead of listing everyone out here, I'll just do it on the actual pictures. :) Then the day after the baptism, Sara and Elsa came in town for a week! While they were here, my Grandparents came in town to meet both Jack and Elsa for the first time. After our visit with Sara and Elsa (and Andy for a night) we had a little down time before Mary and Michael and my parents came in for Easter! Now we're home alone again once more and Jack is re-adjusting to not being held and played with constantly :)

On the medical side of Jack news, we found out today that his repeat EEG came back normal and we get to start weaning him off his medicine! The doctor was very pleased with his EEG and with the results of the genetic test so we're hopeful that after being weaned off his medicine, Jack will be done with all of this. I'm looking forward to having no medical updates for Jack!

The rest of our spring and early summer is shaping up to be busy already. With more visiting with friends and family as well as a couple of cake orders for me. One thing I'm super excited about is meeting our newest niece! Joe's sister Abby just gave birth to little miss Adeline and we just can't wait to meet her!

Here's what Jack is up to at 3 months:
- Loves chewing on his own hands. And everyone else's hands for that matter.
- Enjoys talking and "singing" when I play the piano for him.
- Still waking up at least once in the middle of the night to eat :(
- Loves "flying" with dad
- Is beginning to be much more interactive with his toys
- Likes sitting up to play (while being supported of course)

Well I guess it's time to get to some pictures!

This is at the beginning of month 3. When he had MUCH more hair :)

Us with Jack's Godparents, Grace and Josh. Also, Father John Charles.

Mom, Dad, Me, Jack, Joe, Grace, Mimi

Lance, Liz, Me, Jack, Joe, Maria, David

Rocking the tummy time

Fun at the zoo!

Mimi, Me, Jack, Sara, Elsa, Mom

Sara, Dad, Jack, Grandma, Grandpa, Elsa, Me

Happy cousins, Jack and Elsa!

Just chillin' at the winery.

Jack's first Easter

Jack with Aunt Mary and Uncle Mike on Easter.

Two Months with Jack

2015-03-08T14:06:00.000-05:00

This is a few days late, but our little man is two months old now! And really, he's not so little. At his 2 month doctor's appointment last Friday he weighed in at 14 lbs., 10.5 oz. and was 24. 5" long! That puts him in the 90th and 95th percentiles respectively. As you can see, he doesn't miss a meal! Jack's 2nd month was MUCH less eventful than his first. Joe and I are very thankful for that! At his first follow up appointment with the NICU clinic, they told us that we could take him off his supplemental oxygen and heart rate/apnea monitor during the day. Now he just uses those 2 things at night and during the day we just have to spot check his blood oxygen levels with a pulse oximeter monitor they sent us home with. (The stickers you'll see on Jack's cheeks in all these pictures are what we tape his oxygen tube to at night.) This has made it much easier to care for Jack during the day because I can bring him around the house with me instead of him being tied to the living room. Jack has been doing great, with the exception of coming down with RSV a couple weeks ago. For those who don't know, RSV is a respiratory virus that can be very serious for infants. Many end up being hospitalized. With the help of a breathing treatment and frequent suctioning of his nose, Jack got over his coughing and stuffiness without having to go back to the hospital. He had to miss his first 2 birthday parties that he was invited to, but he is feeling much better now! Before I get to the photo roll I'll give a little list of the things Jack does and likes at 2 months. (This is really more for me to remember!)

Jack at 2 Months:
- Wearing size 3-6 month clothes
- Smiles and coos when in a good mood (or when you make funny noises for him)
- Does a great job at tummy time until he gets mad
- Has rolled over from belly to back several times. Thanks to his big head pulling him over when he lifts it.
- Loves being carried around on his belly in a "football" hold.
- Has started discovering his hands
- Will follow you around the room with his eyes
- Loves looking at anything shiny and gold in the house.
- Is a pretty good sleeper at night, but still wakes up a couple times to eat.
- Enjoys sitting with Mom and playing the piano

Now for some pictures!

Just chilling with friends on Valentine's day. Jack, Allie, and Warren.

Yes, I made us all coordinate for Valentine's day.

Old man / heart breaker :)

Dad is so silly :)

He had absolutely zero interest in the toys I gave him.

This is the face he gave me after pushing out a big squishy in his diaper!

Just snuggling with Mom before bedtime.

Jack got to hang out with his Grandma and Grandpa Lombardo this weekend and will have a steady stream of guests and visitors for the next two weeks. We're looking forward to all the company! And help :) We're also excited about the amazing weather that is forecast for this coming week. There are lots of walks on the bike trail in our future! I think that's it for today. Have a great week!

Orange Almond Whole Grain Muffins

2015-03-02T14:09:00.000-06:00

Happy Monday! While my little Jack bear is napping, I've got a chance to share a recipe for some very tasty muffins I made recently. This recipe if a slight adaptation from one in the April 2014 issue of Better Homes and Gardens magazine. I made these for Joe to take to work when it was his turn to bring snacks to his team's weekly meeting. I was a little worried that they would be super dense with the quinoa and whole wheat flour, and that the guys on his team would be put off by the appearance since I used red quinoa. But I shouldn't have been! The muffins were nice and fluffy and Joe says that everyone really enjoyed them. Now as I said, these are slightly changed from the original recipe. They used walnuts instead of almonds and did not use any vanilla or almond extracts. Here's how I made them:

Orange-Almond Whole Grain Muffins
Makes 12 muffins

1 cup regular rolled oats
1 cup cooked quinoa, cooled (I cooked the quinoa and used it while it was still very hot, and it worked fine)
1/3 cup slivered almonds, chopped
1 T olive oil
1 cup all purpose flour
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1/4 cup sugar
1 1/2 t. baking powder
1/2 t. baking soda
1/2 t. salt
1 orange
1/2 cup buttermilk (or 1/2 cup milk with 2 teaspoons of vinegar mixed in)
1/2 cup sour cream
2 eggs
3 T. butter, melted
1 t. vanilla extract
1/4 t. almond extract

1. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Place oats, quinoa, and almonds on a baking sheet lined with parchment or a non-stick mat. Toss with the olive oil to coat. Spread in an even layer and bake for 10-12 minutes. Remove and cool.

2. Grease or line 12 muffin cups with paper liners. In a large bowl, stir together all but 1/4 cup of the quinoa mixture, the flours, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Set aside

3. Finely shred 2 t. of peel from the orange. Then juice the orange to get about 3 T. of juice. In a medium bowl or large measuring cup, whisk together the buttermilk, sour cream, eggs, butter, orange juice, orange zest, vanilla and almond extracts. Add to the flour mixture and stir until just combined. The mixture will still be lumpy.

4. Divide between the prepared muffin cups and sprinkle with remaining quinoa mixture. Bake for 15 minutes or until golden brown.

According to the original recipe, each muffin has 238 calories, 10 g fat, 43 mg cholesterol, 267 mg sodium, 31 g carbs, 3 g fiber, and 7 g protein. That's a good amount of protein for a muffin!

These are great to have on hand for a quick breakfast of you're rushing to get out the door.

I think that's it for today! I'll be back later this week for a 2 month post on Mr. Jack. He's been doing great and is growing like crazy!

One Month With Jack

2015-02-08T11:58:00.000-06:00

As you can see, Jack chose not to participate in his 1 month photo shoot :)

We made it a month! And what a month it has been. Thankfully, the last 2 weeks have been MUCH less eventful than the first couple weeks of Jack's life. These days we're enjoying being at home with a happy, hungry, sleepy, fun little baby. I think most of you reading this already know the general story of whats been going on with Jack, but I'll still try and give you a little overview. Starting with when he was born!

Jack decided that he wasn't ready to come into the world on his own, so my doctor and I set an induction date of January 5th. Joe and I arrived at the hospital bright and early that morning and started the process to finally meet our little man. When I went in to the hospital, I wasn't 100% sure that I would want an epidural, but after a few serious contractions I was more than ready for one! After settling in with the epidural I was able to take a nap while labor progressed. The labor and birth were honestly pretty uneventful, and Jack made his grand entrance at 5:00 pm on the dot! He weighed 9 pounds, 3 ounces and was 21 inches long. We got in a little snuggle time then he got his first bath and hair wash which he thoroughly enjoyed.

We spent the next couple days at the hospital just holding and getting to know Jack while also trying to catch little cat naps in between. It is amazing how someone so small can have you wrapped around their little finger so fast! Needless to say, Joe and I were in love with him the second we saw him.

We made it home on the evening of January 7th with plans to settle in to life at home with a newborn. I actually don't have any pictures from our one day at home before we went back to the hospital! On the night of Thursday the 8th, we were hanging out with several family members who were in town and my mom was holding Jack while he slept, when he suddenly pulled his head back and had a seizure. After the seizure, he stopped breathing and his lips started turning blue. By this point we had already called 911 and were trying to stimulate Jack to get him to breathe again. Luckily, he did start breathing again on his own before the ambulance got here, but we still decided it would be safest to ride in the ambulance to the hospital in case he had another seizure on the way.

I won't go into too much detail about our 2 and a half week stay in the NICU, but basically Jack was monitored 24/7, had every kind of test possible run, and tested medicines until we found the right type and dose to control his seizures. Joe and I were very lucky to be able to get a room in the Ronald McDonald family house every night until Jack "graduated" to a private room that had a bed we could sleep in. Thanks to tons of help from our families, we were provided with a steady supply of clean clothes, supplies and food. We made it home from the hospital for the 2nd time 2 weeks ago and are very happy to be here! Jack is still on some supplemental oxygen as well as a heart rate and breathing monitor, but we are able to take him out of the house to run errands and go on walks. Thank you so much to everyone who called, texted, emailed, came to visit, and prayed for Jack. We can definitely feel the love over here!

Now for the real reason you are probably checking out this blog post... pictures of Jack! He's growing so much already and makes us laugh every single day without even meaning to :)

Happy to snuggle with mom after a whole day of not being able to be held

The many emotions of Jack while he falls asleep

This is one of my favorites :)

Watching hockey with dad

At one month old, Jack weighed in at about 12 pounds! He skipped right past newborn diapers (and clothes) into size ones. He's changing and growing so fast! I can't promise that I'll get around to posting much non-Jack related things on the blog in the near future, but I will try and keep up the monthly baby posts. Thanks again for all your thoughts and prayers, I know they're being heard :)

26 Dozen and 39 Weeks

2014-12-26T15:08:00.002-06:00

Merry (belated) Christmas! It's been a while since I posted on here and we've been quite busy since then. Back in November, we had a few awesome baby showers hosted by family, friends and even coworkers. Then we visited with both sides of our family over Thanksgiving weekend and celebrated my Grandparent's 60th wedding anniversary. The trip to St. Louis for Thanksgiving was our last road trip before the baby gets here which means we didn't get to travel to be with our families over Christmas. However, we've still managed to have a jam packed holiday season. Between Christmas parties, last minute shopping/wrapping/shipping, and visiting with friends we haven't had much time to just sit around! It's been fun though. I hope you all had a nice Christmas are finally relaxing now after what I'm sure has been a very busy season for you as well! Today I went to Target with a friend and scored some half-priced Christmas goods including the cutest little diapers that look like elf pants or something. I can't wait to use those next year!

One other big thing we had in the last few weeks was a GIANT order for wedding cupcakes. I booked this wedding before I was even pregnant and decided to go through with it even though it was dangerously close to my due date. A couple months ago I finally reached out to my friend, Chase, who also has a little side job baking and she agreed to drive in from Wichita on the weekend of the wedding to help me bake. Or possibly bake, ice, and deliver all 26 dozen cupcakes by herself if I ended up in the hospital to have the baby! Obviously, I didn't end up having the baby that weekend, but Chase was still a lifesaver in helping me knock out the order! We baked and iced all the cupcakes on a Saturday, then Chase headed home on Sunday and Joe and I delivered and set them up on Sunday afternoon. Everything went as smoothly as I could hope for and I was very relieved when we got it all done. I told the baby that he could come at any time now but he seems quite content in there. Oh well. Here are a few pictures of the wedding set up:

There were still quite a few cupcakes in a box that didn't fit on the table, but this is the majority of them.

As for an update on the baby front, as you may have guessed from the title of the post, I'm at 39 weeks and anxiously awaiting the arrival of our little guy. I think we have everything in order around here to bring him home. Our bags are packed and we're just waiting for go time! I've been really bad about taking any sort of consistent "belly" pictures throughout this pregnancy, but I do have picture of Joe and I at my work Christmas party that shows off my enormous belly! Now, this picture was taken a few weeks ago, and I was really sticking my belly out in it, but this might be a more accurate idea of how I look now versus then haha.

I'm surprisingly not miserable yet, but I am looking forward to being able to reach down and put socks and shoes on without struggling! It's nice to know that at SOME point in the next couple weeks he'll be here. Until then, Joe and I are just going to enjoy the last of our quiet time together :)

Oh, and here's one more cake I did for a coworker's retirement that I wanted to share but that didn't really merit it's own post. It's a big cake but was fairly easy for me to make and the man of honor was very surprised and happy with it!

Well I guess that's it for today. Stay tuned in the near future for a baby announcement! Thanks for reading and have a Happy New Year!

The Mostly Completed Nursery

2014-11-16T20:23:00.000-06:00

It's been a busy several days since I last posted but I feel like I've accomplished a lot since then! The nursery decorations are pretty much all done and I've been checking other things off of my "get done before baby" list. Today we went to our birth prep class and I actually do feel more prepared after that. Now we just have several weeks to wait to put what we learned to use :) Yesterday while we had some snow flurries, we got some other "nesting" things done. Mainly cleaning out the basement storage rooms, which obviously won't get used by the baby, but it made me feel better!

Last weekend was when I got most of the shopping and projects completed for the baby's room. Joe was out of town in Washington DC on a trip with his Dad, so I took the opportunity to get as much done as possible. I guess I'll just jump right into pictures of the room now and talk about the different parts/projects as I get to them. First up, the same view you saw last time when I was talking about the dresser makeover:

As you can see, the large canvas got hung, as did a mobile, mirror, and two pieces of "sun art". I'll get back to the sun art in a minute. I also added a crib skirt to the bed (or as Joe likes to call it, a crib kilt). The lamp on the dresser was an estate sale find from a couple years ago and the brass pig is a bank that I found at one of my favorite vintage shops last weekend. The mirror is one that Mom and Dad had sitting in their basement that was no longer being used. Here is a closer up picture of the mobile which is made up of 3 wooden whales connected by brass wire semi-circles. It was a gift from my Uncle Charlie to Mom a long time ago and I love the way it looks in this room!

Close up of the "crib kilt".

Now about that sun art I mentioned. I first heard about this project on this blog and decided it could be a fun idea for some additional art for the baby's room. All you need for to make these prints is some special paper that you can either buy online or at a craft store. (FYI: if you go to look for it at Hobby Lobby, the employees will most likely have no idea what you're talking about. So just know that the paper is located in the "science and education" section.) The first time I tried making these a few weeks ago, I just used some leaves from a tree for my print. This time I used actually photos that I printed in black and white with the colors inverted, as shown on this blog. All you have to do is lay your objects or photo on top of the sun art paper, then lay the provided piece of plexi glass on top of that, and set the whole thing out in the direct sunlight. Depending on whether you're using objects or a printed negative, the paper will have to stay out there anywhere from 3-30 min. Once you can see that the sun has done its job, just bring the paper inside and rinse it in a tray of water and lay it flat to dry. It's pretty amazing to watch the colors switch places as you rinse the paper off! I was very impressed/surprised with how well the paper developed with the printed negatives on top. Here are my final products:

The top picture is of some plants from the San Francisco Botanical Gardens, and the bottom picture is of jellyfish from the aquarium in San Francisco.

Ok, now for the view you haven't seen and a few more projects. This is what the room looks like when you're standing in the doorway.

No one can say there is a lack of color in the room!

Now the first thing you may be thinking is that the chair we chose is not your typical nursery rocker or glider. That may be true, but I searched high and low for a more traditional rocker or glider that I liked, but couldn't find any that weren't WAY out of our budget. This chair came from Ikea and it truly is VERY comfortable and I've found myself sitting and rocking/swiveling in it just about every day since we bought it. The other things I like about it are that the leather will be easy to keep clean and it will be easy to move into another room in the house once we no longer need it in the nursery. The extra high back is also nice for me and Joe since we can lean our heads back on it. Enough about the chair. The little cart is another estate sale found that I cleaned up and spray painted. Those plants on top won't both be staying there by the way. Joe just wanted them to get some sun. The pillow on the chair is one I made and the blanket & small ottoman are more vintage finds from this past weekend. The blanket is super warm and cozy! The last 2 things on that wall are the new window shades and the little piece of art on the right.

The window shades are another DIY project. They are made from the "skeleton" of a very cheap set of mini blinds that get combined with new fabric. I mostly followed the tutorial from this blog with a couple changes. It took a little trial and error, but I finally got them to raise and lower nicely while keeping the nice folds that are characteristic of Roman shades. I added blackout curtain lining to the back of the bright green corduroy to really help block out the light.

The little piece of art is something I made using a kit I bought several months ago. The kit included a piece of fabric that looked like notebook paper, and dark grey embroidery floss. I decided to stitch the "ABC / I love you" print that I've seen online so I simply wrote the letters out in pencil then stitched over them.

Finally we have the closet. I slapped on a quick coat of white paint 2 weekends ago, then we put in a small shelving unit from Ikea. Now we just need to add a bar for hanging clothes and get the whole thing organized.

Well that's about it! With the exception of possibly adding some book ledges to the wall between the closet and the bedroom door, I'm calling the nursery done! Of course we still have to put sheets on the bed and a changing pad on the dresser, but those aren't exactly "projects" and will be easy to add soon. It is quite a relief to have all of this done now, especially since the holiday season starts next week with Thanksgiving and things will only get busier after that! Not to mention I'll just keep getting bigger and probably won't feel like doing much :) Pregnancy is still going well and I'm happy to say there have only been 2 nights when I had to get up in the middle of the night to pee haha. I do have almost daily heartburn, but Tums work wonders and I just hope that the heartburn means this baby will have some glorious hair! Ok, I've let this post drag on a little too long. Thanks for reading, have a good night, and stay warm!

Double Wedding Cake Weekend

2014-11-03T19:59:00.000-06:00

Hi there! I don't know about you guys but I sure don't like how it gets completely dark at 5:30 after the time change this weekend. When it gets dark outside, I seem to get much less productive inside. Luckily I got a lot of chores done this past Sunday, so I suppose relaxing a bit this week after work won't be so bad. So while I sit here and watch The Voice I might as well write a blog post!

A few weekends ago, right after I got back from my work trip to West Virginia, I had back to back wedding cakes and cupcakes to do. To be honest, it was a mistake on my part to take both these weddings on the same weekend! I agreed to them at different times without double checking what I already had going on that weekend. Luckily, the first wedding was on Friday and it was a cupcake wedding plus a small display cake. Cupcakes are much quicker for me to make and I was actually able to get all 120 of them baked on Thursday night before the wedding. Friday was spent baking and decorating the display cake as well as decorating all of the cupcakes. I took a day off of work on Friday to get all that done. After setting up the cake on Friday night I came home and baked ALL the cakes for the Saturday wedding. But before we get to that, here is the cupcake wedding setup!

In case you can't quite tell, those are supposed to be trees :)

Lots of cupcakes!

The cake for Saturday was more of a traditional wedding cake. The flavor of all the tiers was a copycat recipe of Chantilly Creme cake from Whole Foods Market. The cake itself isn't that special but the icing is! It is a combination of fresh whipped cream, powdered sugar, cream cheese, and mascarpone cheese. The filling of the cake was the same icing mixed with some fresh berries. It is a delicious flavor combination! The bride had lots of cake designs that she liked so I came up with a combination of several of them for the final cake. I think it turned out great and she liked it too! I had to add the flowers at the reception, and needless to say, I am no florist haha. I just tried not to go overboard with them!

The cake before the flowers.

The toppers are fox salt and pepper shakers.

Well since the last time I posted, I've gotten a few more updates done in the nursery but I will post about those separately later. The room is really starting to come together now though! Only a few more DIY projects to complete and then we just have to get everything "installed". Unfortunately I don't have much to post about other than baby things, so you probably won't hear from me till next week sometime. Until then, have a great week!

30 Weeks and Nursery Updates!

2014-10-25T15:27:00.003-05:00

As I write this there seems to be a little one man rave going on in my belly. This baby sure knows how to wiggle! I don't mind though :) This past Wednesday we hit the 30 week mark and things seem to be moving along right on schedule. My only pregnancy complaint so far is WHY ARE THERE NO MATERNITY PANTS IN LONG SIZES!? What are tall ladies supposed to wear?! Sorry for yelling, but I'm pretty fed up with searching for a pair of pants that aren't high-waters.

Anyway, before I get into nursery updates I'll give a quick rundown of what we've been up to lately. This isn't in exact chronological order but I'll try my best! Back in September we had Joe's parents in town for the weekend and had a nice visit with them, including a failed trip to our newly opened IKEA. We'll try again next time though! We've gone to a couple baby showers for friends and family and Joe and also went on a tour of some historic homes in the "Hyde Park" neighborhood in Kansas City. We saw some really cool places and did some serious walking! I took a 2 day business trip to Charleston, WV then came home just in time to make back to back wedding cakes. (Those will get their own post soon enough.) Before, after and in between all these activities I've been spending LOTS of quality time in a respirator mask while working on painting projects for the nursery. These projects include stripping and repainting/staining a dresser, as well as painting EVERY surface in that room at least twice. But it's done and I couldn't be happier with the results!

This thing really does work well! When I'm wearing it I can't smell anything!

Luckily this pregnancy has been very easy on me, with the exception of a week or 2 of back pain, so I've been able to get a lot of work and projects done. I knew I wanted a dresser for the nursery that would double as a changing table wasn't sure what kind to look for. One option was to use the campaign dresser that we bought on Craigslist a couple years ago. I'm sure it would have worked great in the nursery, but honestly I love it where it is in the entrance and didn't really want to move it. So I headed back to Craigslist and eventually found this beauty for $30. Sold!

That dresser in the background is another Craigslist makeover from the beginning of this year that I've never posted about on here.

I wanted there to be some natural wood on this dresser, but I knew the top at least had to be painted since it was just plastic laminate. So I decided to leave the draw fronts natural wood and paint the rest in a satin black to match the crib. To strip the paint I used a product called Citristrip which I'd heard good things about on other blogs. Even though it claimed to be safe for indoor use with no harmful fumes, I still wore my trusty mask. Even when I did catch a whiff of it, it just smelled like citrusy cleaner. It worked very well for taking the paint off the drawer fronts, and I decided to go ahead and try to remove the paint from the dresser frame as well. For some reason, this paint was more stubborn than on the drawer fronts.

Painting on the Citristrip.

After waiting an hour or so, the paint started to bubble and ripple up.

Using a couple different scraping tools, I managed to easily scrape off most of the paint.

I didn't try TOO hard to get all the paint off the dresser frame.

The paint on the top of t he dresser really did not want to come off. Even with multiple coats of Citristrip.

The drawer fronts and frame all got a good sanding before paint or stain. For the drawer fronts I used Restore-a-finish and the wax that goes along with it to color and protect the wood. There were little bits of paint stuck in some of the drawer fronts around the raised part where the handles go, and I just could not get it off. So I grabbed some brown acrylic paint and just painted over those spots :) Probably not the RIGHT way to handle the problem, but it is the easy/lazy/pregnant way to handle it haha.

Looking much better after sanding.

And even better after adding a coat of restor-a-finish!

When it came to painting the frame of the dresser I used some black satin paint that we already had on hand from a different project. Using a combination of a brush and a foam roller, I gave the entire frame 2 coats of paint. After a couple of days it became apparent to me that the paint on top of the dresser wasn't really sticking and could easily be scratched off. As much as I would have loved to just leave it, I decided to scrape the paint off the top of the dresser, sand it down again, then start with a coat of oil based primer before putting on more coats of black paint. This time it seems to have stuck! We got the dresser moved into the freshly painted bedroom and got the crib set up as well. Now it's time to finish up the little details, which honestly are the hardest part for me. I've got a couple months though so hopefully I'll get it finished!

This was after having to scrape off the first round of paint from the top and adding back on a coat of primer.

All done! The little circles under the feet are just furniture moving pads that we were using.

Well it's just about time to go carve some pumpkins! I've got a lot of little projects left for the room, but I can't promise that I'll get them documented on the blog. I will post about the 2 wedding cakes soon though! Have a great weekend!

DIY Otomi Artwork for the Nursery

2014-09-15T21:46:00.000-05:00

Hello again! Tonight I have the first of hopefully many baby room projects to share with y'all. I mentioned in the last post that I had started on a piece of artwork for the nursery. Well this piece has been in my mind for years actually!

It all started a while back when for some reason I was looking at baby bedding on a website called Serena and Lilly that featured embroidered animals and shapes. I thought it was so pretty and told myself that if I ever had a baby then I would make something similar for the crib bedding. Here is the bedding I am talking about:

http://weedecor.com/2010/02/gender-neutral-nursery-bedding-serena-lily/

Eventually I discovered that the design of the bedding was based on a much more colorful version of embroidery made by the Otomi tribe in Mexico. Once I saw these colorful versions, I decided THAT was what I wanted for a future nursery, not the beige and white version that I had originally seen haha. Below is an example of actual Otomi embroidery.

The problem with these authentic embroidered pieces from Mexico is that they are quite pricey. Even with scouring Ebay and Craigslist, I couldn't find anything in the size I wanted for less than $200. Now, maybe my little bundle of joy that is on the way is worth that much money, but I like to think he'd be more happy with the fact that I saved a little money to put toward his college (or some really cute clothes for him haha). Once I decided to DIY a version of the Otomi embroidery I had to find a something to trace or use as a stencil since I did not want to have to freehand the animals and other shapes. Luckily, I stumbled across these stencils and new they would be perfect! With the stencils figured out, I just needed to buy a large canvas and a variety of acrylic paints. The canvas I chose is 36" square and is from Hobby Lobby. I used a 40% off coupon for the canvas, and all the paints were already on sale. You'll also need some contact paper for this project. The total for paint and supplies was probably around $50. I did end up also buying some Polycrylic sealer to finish the painting off, but that part isn't absolutely necessary. Now for the steps to create the painting!

The first thing to do is trace the shapes onto the contact paper and cut them out. If you're using clear contact paper, then you can just lay the printed animal stencil underneath and trace them right onto the contact paper with a maker. Cutting all these shapes takes a while, so maybe pop in a movie or start a Netflix marathon and get to work! Once you have all the shapes that you want cut out, arrange them on the canvas before peeling off the backing of the contact paper.

Once you got 'em where you want 'em, peel the backing off piece by piece and press the contact paper into place.

This next step may not be essential but it was quick and probably helped a little bit. I used a small foam paint roller to apply a thin coat of primer over the entire canvas. My hope was that it would seal the edges of the contact paper shapes in order to prevent the colored paint from seeping under.

I waited overnight for the primer to dry, then got to work on the next step of marking out and drawing all the lines that I would be painting. Instead of painting stripes on the animals like the inspiration embroidery, I decided to leave the animals white and have the background be striped. My stripes were each 1" wide.

When it came time to fill in each stripe with paint, I just used a small craft paint brush. I skipped around on the stripes so that I was never painting up against a freshly painted stripe. To help the process go faster, I lined up the paint bottles in the order I wanted to use so that I didn't have to stop and decide on a color each time. Also, each stripe got 2 coats of paint.

The shapes on the left have had the contact paper removed, and the shapes on the right still have the contact paper that has just been painted over.

As I went along I started to peel off the contact paper to reveal the white canvas underneath and it became apparent that the coat of primer I did was not super effective.

Once all the stripes were done, I went back with white acrylic paint and touched up any bleed through spots. Then I painted the edges of the canvas with gold craft paint. The final step was to brush on a coat of semi-gloss acrylic sealer to give a nice sheen to the painting. The craft paints I used had a matte finish and just looked kind of chalky. Then it was done!

Having this painting done is making me even more excited to get the rest of the work done on the baby's room! I'm already working on the 2nd project which is refinishing a dresser that we bought on Craigslist. Tonight I finished removing a few layers of paint from all the drawer fronts, and tomorrow I'm hoping to remove the paint from the frame of the dresser. I'll be sure to share the dresser on here when it's all done! Until next time, have a great week!

French Stripe Love Seat Makeover

2014-09-01T20:40:00.002-05:00

Well I was on a blogging roll for a couple weeks but then I fell off the wagon. In my defense, we were out of town 2 weekends ago then last weekend I was busy working on this love-seat project as well as making some "taste-test" cupcakes for a wedding that is coming up in October. But a few nights ago I finally finished the re-upholstery job on the love seat and I'm really happy with how it turned out!

This didn't start out like my usual makeover post with a piece of furniture I picked up from the trash. I actually paid for this one! haha. This little settee came from an estate sale that I visited back in January. I loved the shape and style of it and the caning on the back was in perfect condition. The super fluffy down cushion was another selling point. Lucky for me, it fit perfectly in the back of my old Subaru, so it came home with us and then sat in the basement untouched for the next 6 months. Not my quickest furniture turn around, but definitely not my slowest either! I knew that it needed to be recovered but wasn't sure what type or color of fabric to get. Thankfully, the frame of the settee was in very good shape and did not need any work.

The makeover got kicked into gear when I found some fabric I liked while down in Houston in July. I had originally thought I'd use a solid color cotton velvet fabric since that's what it was already covered with. But when I saw this heavy blue and white stripe, I knew it would be perfect since it had a French country look that would play nicely with the French style of the love-seat. Without knowing how much fabric I really needed, I made a guess and bought 3 1/2 yards. It ended up being just enough! (with a little help from another fabric) The first step in the re-upholstery project was to un-stitch the cushion. There was no zipper and I couldn't just cut it apart since I needed to use the pieces as a pattern for my new fabric. I also wanted to re-use the piping that was around the edges. So I carefully ripped open all the seams to get my pattern pieces and removing the cording from the velvet piping fabric. This part wasn't exactly fun, but it made making the new cushion cover much easier. I don't have any pictures of the cushion making process, but if you have specific questions about that, just let me know!

When it came to re-upholstering the bottom part of the settee I had to start by ripping the fabric off from around the edges and removing all the upholstery nails. Then I had to un-stitch that fabric from the under layer. I tried to remember how this was done since I'd have to try and replicate it with the new fabric.

Even after removing the nails around the edge, the middle was still sewn down.

You can see here it was sewn from underneath into a gap left between two sections of batting.

Next it was time to add my new fabric. For the middle section of the seat upholstery, I used a piece of scrap fabric that I had since there wasn't enough of my new fabric to cover it. I sewed the striped fabric around the edges then used a round upholstery needle to sew the piece down. I sewed along the seam between the white and striped fabric, and tried my best to match it up to the gap between batting underneath.

That rectangle gap between the middle and the edge is where I sewed the new fabric down into.

Upholstery needles are curved to allow you to sew through layers of fabric when you can't reach underneath to push the needle back up.

All sewn down around the edges of the white fabric.

Then I pulled the striped fabric down around the edges and used the pneumatic staple gun hold it in place. As usual the corners were the most difficult part to cover. They turned out ok though.

The final step was to add trim around all the stapled edges to give it a finished look. Since I didn't have enough striped fabric to make double chord welting like the love seat had originally, I bought some twill tape that had a little bit of gold thread mixed in to use as trim. My plan at first was to attach the twill tape using large decorative upholstery nails, but after trying to nail a few in, I decided it was not worth my time and probably wouldn't turn out well. So I turned to my trusty friend the hot glue gun! That turned out to be much easier/quicker. Now for some final pictures!

For these pictures the love seat is in front of the built-ins in our front room, but I think it's permanent home will be in the little window bump-out in our master bedroom. Adding this to our bedroom will inevitably make me want to do a complete makeover of our bedroom, but that will have to wait.

In other news, this weekend my parents came to visit us and we kept them pretty busy :) On Saturday we took a little tour around Kansas City including Chez Elle Creperie for breakfast, then the City River Market where there is lots of great local produce and hand made goods. After that we headed to the WWI Memorial and Museum. The museum is HUGE so we only made it through half of it before heading to lunch at a local BBQ place. Then we drove back to the museum to finish seeing the other half. By the time we finished it was almost 5:00 pm so we went home to take a little break before grilling some burgers for dinner. On Sunday, Mom and Dad helped us with a few projects around the house. Mom and I got started on clearing out the guest room that will be turned into the baby's room. Now I'm ready to really get moving in there! I started little craft project for that room tonight that I'll be sure to share on here (as long as it turns out good). I guess that's it for tonight! I hope you all had a great Labor Day weekend and I'll talk to you later!

Crockpot Chicken and Sausage Creole

2014-08-11T21:59:00.000-05:00

Hello! I'll just go ahead and put this out there for those who haven't heard yet. Joe and I found out today that our baby on the way is a BOY!!! :) We're pretty excited and happy to stop calling him "it" haha. Once I finish a few current projects I'll be able to start on the baby's room. Hopefully I'll remember to keep you guys updated on that.

For tonight I just have a recipe to share. But it's a good one! I found this recipe earlier this summer and have probably made it 3-4 times since. As the weather gets colder in a couple of months, I imagine that we'll be having it for dinner even more often. The other nice thing about it is that it makes enough for 3 meals for us. I just freeze two containers and it reheats great. This recipe is from a blog I've referenced before called Pinch of Yum and as with every other recipe from that site, this one is fairly simple and always turns out great! If you want to see her exact recipe as well as some beautiful food photography then definitely click on the link and check out her post.

I made very minor tweaks to this recipe based on things we had available at home. Also, if you're not lucky enough to live down south where you can get some real andouille sausage, then I recommend the Johnsonville version that you should be able to find at your regular grocery store. They make a couple of versions and they're both very tasty! Here is how I make it:

Crockpot Chicken and Sausage Creole

2 green peppers, diced
1 large white or yellow onion, diced
2-3 cloves of garlic, minced
1 lb Andouille or smoked sausage, sliced
1 lb boneless skinless chicken breast, whole, frozen
8 oz. can tomato sauce
15 oz can diced tomatoes (I use fire roasted tomatoes from Aldi and they give a really nice flavor)
3 T tomato paste
2 cups chicken stock
1 can black beans, drained and rinsed
Cajun Seasoning to taste (probably start with a couple teaspoons)
Rice for serving (I was thinking today that this would also be AMAZING served over cheese grits. Just sayin')

I usually start this dish the night before we're planning on having it for dinner so that there is less prep work in the morning. All I do the night before is chop the onions, peppers, garlic and sausage and put it all in a large container so it will be ready to dump in the crockpot in the morning.

All the "pre-chop" ingredients

When you're ready to get the crockpot going, add the pre-chopped veggies and sausage, tomato sauce, diced tomatoes (including juice), tomato paste, chicken stock, cajun seasoning and black beans and stir to combine. Then add the frozen chicken breasts and kind of nestle them down in the liquid.

Everything else (minus the chicken broth and Cajun seasoning)

Pre-cooking

Put the lid on the crockpot and set on low for 8-10 hours. After the 8-10 hours of cooking, use a couple of forks to shred the chicken breasts right in the crockpot. Then you can either turn the crockpot off or set it on warm while you make some rice. Serve over rice and enjoy!

Post-cooking, but before shredding the chicken

All done!

Like I said, we really love this dish and I plan on making a few batches to add to my freezer "stash" before our little man arrives. If you wanted to stretch it a little farther you could add more liquid, another can of black beans, or more veggies. It's a pretty versatile recipe.

In other news, I got a wild hair this weekend and decided that the shower in our master bath needed to have the tile grout resealed and all the caulk removed and redone. (Is this what people mean when they talk about "nesting"? haha) So I sat and scrubbed on Sunday and started trying to cut out the old caulk tonight. After about 2 minutes of trying to remove the caulk, I started to second guess myself. Maybe this wasn't the best idea, but I'm too far in now and it has to be finished! I just hope that in the end I have a shower that looks nicer and stays clean a little longer. There will be no before and after on this project because well, it's just a shower. But if I'm away from the blog for a bit, you can at least guess why. I think that's it for tonight, thanks for reading!

Homemade Chicken Stock - a.k.a Liquid Gold

2014-08-07T21:16:00.001-05:00

Disclaimer: The pictures in this posts aren't exactly pretty, but they do show the steps to make some delicious chicken stock :)

I used to buy boxed chicken broth whenever I needed some for a recipe but it didn't have a whole lot of flavor and I always wondered how many questionable ingredients were in it. I knew that chicken broth could be made at home but I figured it would be some kind of laborious undertaking requiring me to stand over the stove for hours stirring a pot. That changed when I stumbled across a blog post one day that talked about making chicken stock in a crockpot. It looked super simple but it required having some pre-cooked chicken bones to use as the base of the stock. Since we always buy boneless/skinless chicken breasts, I had no bones available. However, after roasting a couple of whole chickens and saving all the bones from each one, I finally had enough to make a batch of chicken stock.

I first made this last summer and have made it a couple times since. In the last year we haven't had to buy boxed chicken broth at all! Quick side note: I just looked up the difference between stock and broth and apparently stock is typically made with bones and cooked a long time to get some of the gelatin out of the bone, giving it a thicker consistency. Broth is made with chicken meat and not cooked as long. Anyway, back to the recipe. Once you've got the chicken bones saved up, it really couldn't be easier to make a whole bunch of broth. It's kind of a "set it and forget it" recipe.

Homemade Chicken Stock
makes about 4 quarts

Tools needed:
- Large crockpot )I think mine is 6 quarts)
- Slotted spoon
- Mesh strainer
- Cheese cloth
- Containers for freezing chicken stock.

Ingredients:
- Bones from about 2 whole fryer chickens (probably about a pound of bones). The ones I use typically still have bits of cooked meat and skin on them, but that's fine. Just gives it more flavor!
- 1 carrot
- Small onion, or 1/2 an onion
- 2 cloves of garlic
- 1 tsp. whole peppercorns
- 1 bay leaf
- small sprig of rosemary (optional, we just happened to have some)
- water

You'll notice I don't add any salt. I figured there was some on the chicken from when I seasoned and cooked it originally. Plus not adding salt will keep the sodium of the finished stock lower so that you can just add salt to the dish you're using it in instead.

To start, dump your chicken bones into the crockpot. I freeze the bones until I'm ready to make stock and then just use them right out of the freezer without thawing them. Next, pour approximately 5 quarts of water into the crockpot. You probably want to keep the water level to within an inch or 1/2 inch from the top. I like to use hot water so that the frozen bones will break apart from the big clump they're in.

Then give your vegetables a rough chop. No need to peel the carrot or anything. For the garlic just smash it with the side of the knife.

Add caption

Add the vegetables, peppercorns, rosemary, and bay leaf into the crockpot. Give everything a little stir then put the lid on, plug the crockpot in and set it on low.

Let the stock cook on low for a full 24 hours. Just a word of warning, this WILL make your entire house smell like roasted chicken. So if that doesn't sound like something you want, maybe consider setting the crockpot in the garage or something. Although if you're making this on a cold winter day, it might be kind of comforting to have something so tasty smelling cooking all day :) After cooking for 24 hours, turn the crockpot off and either let it sit for a little bit to cool, or you can go ahead and start straining it out.

To get the stock ready for storing, start by using a slotted spoon or "spider" to scoop out all the bones and large chunks of vegetables.

Then set a mesh strainer over a large bowl, or in my case an 8 cup glass measuring cup, and line the strainer with some cheese cloth that has been doubled up a couple times.

Using a ladle, begin scooping the stock from the crockpot and into the strainer. If you see any chunks or things getting through the strainer, you may want to add another layer of cheese cloth. In the end you should have a strainer full of nasty bits, and two big bowls of liquid gold :)

I like to divide the stock up in a few different ways. With this batch I ended up with 3 pint containers, 1 quart container and 24 "pucks". To make the little pucks of broth I use flexible silicon cupcake holders that we found at Walmart. They work amazingly well for this! Once the stock is frozen you just peel each flexible mold off and place the puck into a Ziploc bag. I like having these if I just want to add some stock to a sauce but don't need very much.

This homemade stock is also really nice to drink when you have a cold. I've taken out a couple of the pucks before and heated them in the microwave just to drink. It may sound a little strange but it tastes great and some people swear by the healing properties of this "bone broth". It's worth a shot, right?!

Well, like I said, not the most appetizing pictures today but maybe it got you thinking about making something at home that you'd usually buy at the store. Also, if you're thinking you'd like to roast a couple chickens at home in order to get the bones for the stock, there are tons of good tips and recipes online. Just do a quick Google search. In the next couple days I'll share a recipe that I've been making a lot recently and that will use some of this stock. Thanks for reading and have a great night!

Trash to Treasure - Retro Chair

2014-08-04T22:36:00.000-05:00

Tonight we finally got around to taking some pictures of the chair that I mentioned in the last couple posts. It's all finished, and Joe and I are quite happy with it. This really was a tag team effort between the two of us. Joe offered to take on the refinishing of the wood while I handled the re-upholstery of the seat and back. I'm not sure which of us had the more difficult job but I do know that we got the ones best suited to us :)

The story of this chair starts with me first spotting it at the end of someone's driveway on trash day. I actually drove by it in the morning while it was drizzling, and thought about stopping right then to pick it up. However I was already running late for work and thought that the rain might be ruining the wood. So I didn't pick it up then but instantly regretted it haha. I thought there would be no way that the chair would still be there when I was coming home, but lo and behold it was! This time I stopped and gave it a quick look over. Besides needing some love it seemed to be in good condition, and it passed my "shake test". Basically I tried to shake and wiggle the chair to check for structural stability. It was solid! So into the back of my car it went. This is the first piece of trash furniture that my new Subaru has had the honor of hauling :) When I got it home and showed Joe, he was of course less than thrilled that I had brought yet another piece of furniture into the house that needed work, but he did admit that it was a cool chair and that it seemed solid.

A quick background about this chair. It had a couple tags on the bottom that told me it was made by the Sikes Furniture Company in Buffalo, NY. There was not a date of manufacturing, but the model of the chair was 1954. I have no idea if that correlates to the year it was made, but maybe so. Another tag on the bottom let us know that the wood was walnut. I did a little research but couldn't find too much information about the Sikes Furniture Co. or the value of the chair. So we decided that we would keep the chair for ourselves once it was fixed up. I would call the style of this chair either "Danish Modern" or "Mid-Century Modern". As implied by the name, this style of furniture was made around the middle of the 20th century and was often modeled after Danish designs that used clean, modern lines, slim legs, solid wood, and minimal excess decoration. I'd say the defining characteristics that make this chair fall into that category are the interesting angles on the arm rests, the solid walnut frame and the brass tips on the narrow front legs. If curious about other examples of this style, just Google either of the terms above.

On to the makeover! It started with me removing the seat and back cushions which were conveniently attached with screws from the back and underside. Then I began the very tedious removal of hundreds of upholstery tacks. I had to pop each one up with a flat-head screwdriver then pull it out with some needle-nose pliers. You can kind of see in this picture how there were layers of fabric and piping that were tacked on on top of each other. Removing each layer revealed another row of tacks.

After removing all the old vinyl (or leather, I'm honestly not sure) covering I needed to check and see if the padding underneath was usable. I really wanted it to be so that I didn't have to bother replacing it. I veeerrrrry cautiously gave one of the cushions a little sniff and didn't smell anything. So I sniffed a little closer and a little more haha. Miraculously the padding didn't have any bad smells and I was able to keep it. It must have been sealed in really well under the vinyl all those years.

A couple weeks after that I finally got to work on recovering the cushions. I cut pieces big enough to wrap around the cushions with plenty of excess to pull on. I started out trying to just use a hand held staple gun but the wood base of the cushions was so hard that the staples wouldn't go in all the way. After trying to hammer a few of them in the rest of the way and failing miserably, I decided to consider getting a pneumatic upholstery stapler to use with our air compressor. We found one on Amazon for $25 and it was the best money we've spent on a tool in a long time! At least as far as I'm concerned. It made the rest of the upholstery job so easy. I still used the hand held staple gun to kind of tack the fabric in place since it was very simple remove those if I needed to re-position the fabric. While re-covering the cushions I tried to keep a couple things in mind. First, keeping the fabric centered on the chair and second, pulling the fabric very tight so that there wouldn't be any wrinkles on the finished top. I think I was pretty successful!

First I covered each cushion with the main top piece of fabric.

Then I sewed a bunch of piping to use around the entire seat cushion and the top of the back cushion. Once that was made, I was able to attach it using the air stapler as well.

When stapling the piping around corners I snipped some notches into the fabric to reduce the bulk at the corner.

Only the top edge of the chair back needed piping.

The back of the chair back also had to be covered with the main fabric since it shows through the back of the chair frame. I had to attach the top edge of that first from underneath so that the staples would be hidden. I did it very similar to the how the old backing was attached which you can see in one of the old pictures above. For the bottom of the seat I used a coordinating piece of fabric from my stash to cover everything and give it a nice finished look.

While I was working on all the upholstery, Joe took care of the chair frame. When he started there were lots of areas that had surface staining, scratches and gouges.

He started the re-finishing process by hand sanding the entire frame with 80 grit sandpaper. Then he moved on to 120, 180 and finally 220 grit. The difference when he was done sanding was amazing!

The wood looked awesome and I could start to see the beauty of the finished product. After sanding he did a little research on how to finish the wood. Options include, polyurethane, lacquer, wax, oil, and who knows what else. We decided to use Danish Oil which is a common finish for mid-century modern furniture. The dry wood really soaked up the oil and Joe ended up applying a few coats over about a week or so.

I loved seeing the beautiful grain of the walnut shine through!

The final step in the makeover was to polish up the brass tips on the front legs. To do that I just used some Brasso and old t-shirts scraps. They polished up pretty nice. Now for some finished pictures of the chair.

A little detail of the cool fabric I found.

Here you can kind of see how I covered the bottom of the seat to hide all the edges of the stapled fabric.

As you can see I didn't quite get the fabric super smooth along the edge of the seat but I'm still happy with it.

Here you can see the cool flared arm detail.

Sorry for the picture overload but I'm just happy to share it I guess. I hope you all had a fun weekend and are enjoying the last few weeks of summer. I've got one more furniture makeover in progress that will hopefully be done soon if my sewing machine will cooperate. In the mean time I'm hoping to share a couple recipes this week. Until next time, have a great night!

DIY X-Side Planters

2014-07-31T21:13:00.002-05:00

Tonight I'm finally getting around to showing you some awesome planters that Joe made for us earlier this summer. I had flagged the idea for the planters on a blog called Centsational Girl over a year ago with plans to have Joe make a couple to place on the deck on either side of the sliding door. After building the nice new deck last year, and the table earlier this spring, we decided that it would be a good time to make the planters. Joe took a look at the pictures from Centsational Girl then drew up his own plans for ours. Ours are made with pressure-treated pine boards that are more rot resistant, and once they have had time to completely dry out we plan on painting these with a semi-solid colored stain to help them stand out a bit from the deck boards.

One planter is filled with lavender and rosemary, and the other has parsley, basil, and mint. I love having all these herbs right outside our door! And the plants are much happier than they were in smaller pots on the window sill.

The material list to make one is this:

One 1 lb box of 1 1/4 inch exterior screws
Four 8ft pressure treated 1x6s
One 8ft pressure treated 1x4
One 8ft pressure treated 2x2
One 6ft pressure treated 1x6 fence picket (rough cut)
One sheet of pressure treated privacy lattice (the kind with the tighter weave)
Landscape fabric

Some of this we already had on hand from other projects, but if you were to buy these materials, Joe estimates that it would cost between $30 an $40.

So the first step is to cut all the lumber to size. This requires some rip cuts, which are much easier with a table saw. Much to Joe's chagrin, he does not have one. But we do have a Kreg rip cut jig that attaches to a circular saw, and it worked out just fine. Here are the cuts you'll start with:

Rip the 1x4 and one of the 8ft 1x6 boards in half
Cut the remaining three 8ft 1x6 boards into four 20" sections each (you'll have about 16" left over, but save these...we'll use them later!)
Cut the 2x2 into four 2ft pieces

Once you have these cuts made, set one of the 20" sections from each of the three boards together and measure their width. This will make the sides of our planter. Take this width and cut the ripped 1x6 board into eight pieces that are this length. Ours were about 17.5" long.

The next step is to start assembling the frame of the planter. To do this, Joe first used our Kreg Jig Jr to make two pocket holes in each end of the pieces of the ripped 1x6. With the pocket holes drilled, Joe used some of our larger clamps to hold two of the pocket holed pieces between two of the cut 2x2s. One of the boards is lined up with the top of the 2x2s, and the other is placed so that it is 4 inches from the other end of the 2x2s. Then you drive screws into the pocket holes to attach it all together.

Repeat this process to make the other side of the frame, and then you attach the two sides together using a similar process. Now you have a frame! Time to fill in the rest.

Use three of the 20" long pieces of 1x6 for each side and attach them to the inside. You'll want to start the screws from the inside so the heads don't show on the outside. Joe pre-drilled two holes at the top and bottom before attaching them with screws. Do this for all four sides.

Now the fun/hard part! Making the Xs on each side. These are made by making angle cuts on the ripped 1x4 pieces from earlier. One thing you'll notice is that since each side isn't a perfect square, you can't just use the 45 degree mark on the miter saw to cut the ends. Joe being Joe needed to figure out EXACTLY what the angle was and how long each piece had to be. He worked out the math and plugged the equation into his trusty TI-83 calculator to find his answer. He was oddly proud of this part of the project... You could probably just measure it and estimate the length and angle to get close enough :)

Cut the ripped 1x4 pieces into 8 pieces of the appropriate length and the correct angle. Place four of them in each side to represent half of the X for those sides. Then cut the remaining four pieces into two pieces so that they fit into the other two corners to make the X!

Once you have the Xs set into each side, Joe used painters tape to hold them in place. The reason for this is because he wanted to fasten them from the inside of the planter so there weren't screw heads showing. Once the Xs are taped in place, you can set the planter on its side and attach them with screws.

With the sides finished, it's time to finish up the inside of the planter. The planter needs to have a bottom to hold the soil after all! To do this, use the leftover pieces of 1x6 boards to create a ledge on the inside of two of the sides. You should have just the right length of pieces for this from your earlier cuts (hooray reusing scraps!). Then cut the rough-cut 1x6 board into pieces that will rest on those two ledges and screw them in place. We ended up using 1x6 fence boards and a piece of 2x4 because we had them on hand as left-overs from some compost bins Joe made, but you could really use just about anything you want.

The next thing to do is to make a ledge to go around the top. This isn't necessary, but Joe liked that it covered the exposed ends of the planter's side boards. These are simple 45 degree cuts that are then screwed in from the top. No TI-83 calculator required!

Almost there! One thing that Joe did that we haven't seen on other plans was that he used pressure-treated lattice to line the inside of the planter. Then he put a good, thick landscape fabric over the lattice. The purpose of the lattice is to keep the soil out of contact with the planter sides so they can air out. Hopefully this helps them resist rotting and last a lot longer! He just used a staple gun to hold the lattice and landscape fabric in place.

And there you go! Now you have a beautiful and sturdy planter ready to be filled up with soil and some fun herbs or flowers.

Well that was a lengthy post but if you should ever decide to build some planters like these, you now have some good guidelines :) I That's it for tonight, have a great weekend!

Flower Petal Wedding Cake

2014-07-27T22:26:00.000-05:00

Hi there! I'm back with more cakes. I spent the better half of last week and most of the day yesterday working on these cakes. It was a lot of work but I'm happy to say that they worked out mostly as I had planned with very few hiccups. Originally the order was just for a wedding cake, but a couple months ago the groom's parents contacted me to see if it would be possible for me to also make a groom's cake for the rehearsal dinner. I told them, "Of course!", while wondering how exactly I'd pull both cakes off in one weekend haha. Since the rehearsal dinner was on a Friday night, I knew I'd have to have it completely decorated and ready by Thursday night. That meant baking everything on Wednesday.

By the time I went to bed on Wednesday night, our fridge was filled to the brim with all the layers needed for a 2 tier groom's cake, 3 tier wedding cake, and an additional sheet cake for the wedding. After a cake order like this, Joe and I are looking into getting a 2nd refrigerator for the basement :)

The other part of these cakes that I needed to get started on ahead of time was making all of the gum-paste flower petals that were needed to decorate the wedding cake. This was something completely new for me and after watching a few tutorial videos online and some trial and error I was finally able to make a passable flower petal. In the picture below you can see what I rigged up to dry the petals with. Just regular muffin tins with foil pressed into each of the cups. It worked really well and I did the same thing with with a mini-muffin tin for some of the smaller petals. I made all of these petals on Thursday night so that they would have time to dry before using them on Saturday.

Pretty petals :)

On to the groom's cake! The design was simple, but it's is surprisingly difficult for me to make straight lines while piping on the icing. In an effort to make the straightest and most evenly spaced lines as possible around the cake, I first marked off the bottom of the cake into 1" increments then used my bench scraper to mark the lines at each tick mark. It was quick and easy! But as you can see in the final cake, my final vertical icing lines were still a little shaky. For all the little dots between the lines I just eyeballed the spacing.

I also found that making chocolate curls is not as simple as you would think.

I have to say, getting smooth sides and sharp corners on the hexagon cake was definitely more difficult than on a round cake. But with the help of the edge icing on the cake it turned out looking pretty nice. At least I think so :) I delivered and set up the cake on Friday evening after work then went home and got to work on the wedding cake.

The wedding cake itself was a super simple design. Just smooth white fondant on all the tiers. The slightly more difficult part was figuring out the arrangement and attaching all the flower petals. Since I transport the cake tiers while they're still un-stacked, I couldn't attach all of the flowers ahead of time at home. I did attach a few with the plan to fill in all the gaps once I got the cake set up at the venue.

Here you can see what the seams between the tiers looked like before filling them with icing. The icing definitely makes a big difference!

I used royal icing to "glue" the petals to the cake and it seemed to work well. Since I stuck the majority of the petals on at the venue, most of them were still drying when we left. I was just praying that no one would knock the table or touch the cake before it was time to cut it. That's pretty much my worst wedding cake nightmare, that something will happen to the cake between the time that I get it set up and when the bride and groom get there and cut the cake. So far so good though!

My final comment about this cake is that I finally "caulked" the seams between the layers with some icing to fill the gap and make it look nicer overall. That was for you, Mary :) Though I have to give Joe credit for it since he's the one who told me I should bring the icing along just in case. So, thanks Joe!

I've got a couple months before another big wedding cake weekend. Between now and then I'm hoping to finish a few little projects I have going on around the house. This weekend, Joe and I made good progress on making over my latest curbside trash find. I found a really cool chair with a wood frame and upholstered seat and back that was really sturdy but just needed some love. Joe is refinishing the frame and I'm doing the upholstery update. So far it's looking really good! Hopefully by next weekend I'll be ready to share it on the blog. That's it for tonight though! Have a good week.

Trowbridge Family Reunion 2014

2014-07-18T21:37:00.001-05:00

Hello again! I'm back tonight with a recap of our trip to Texas a couple weeks ago for the Trowbridge family reunion. You may remember from my last Trowbridge reunion post that this is the bi-annual get together of my mom's side of the family. This now includes Mimi, 12 aunts and uncles, 20 grandkids and 3 grandson-in-laws (including Joe). We didn't quite get the whole group together this year but it was close!

Everyone convened in San Antonio at Aunt Martha and Uncle Joe's house before heading about an hour northwest of town to the Roddy Tree Ranch where we had cabins booked for a few nights. People got settled in to their cabins and we checked out the pool, the Guadalupe River, and started playing some yard games. Here is the biggest cabin we had where dinner was made and we all ate/hung out.

The Ponderosa Cabin. As you can see it's more of a house, but it's easier to call it a cabin :)

Here's one of the other cabins we had. The big open area behind this cabin is where we played bocce ball, set up the corn hole games and a new game called Polish.

We had a couple other cabins, but you don't have to see all those :) We spent all our time there just catching up with family, playing games, swimming, eating (of course), and just generally relaxing. Sometimes we take little day trips during these reunions to nearby attractions or parks, but the ranch had plenty to do and we were all content to just stay there for a few days. We couldn't have asked for better weather either! Especially considering what it could have been like in July in central Texas. It was in the high 70s / low 80s and breezy the whole time. Totally bearable for hanging out outside all day. I guess now I'll just share a few pics!

Lila, Megan, Adeline, Sophia

After dinner chats - Mom, Mimi, Uncle Vaughn, Cora

Mimi, Uncle Vaughn, Cora, Aunt Carol

Aunt Carol, Mimi, Kate, Aunt Martha

Sorry about the blurry picture but this was just part of an epic game of knock out that went down one night. There were actually several games in a row and I'm happy to say I won one of them! Everyone got in on the action.

Some extreme bocce ball playing going on. L-R: Andrew, Rebecca, Uncle Dave, Selina, Joe, Grace, Aunt Martha

As you can see there was a lot of hanging out in the shade while watching yard games. Andrew, Selina, Mimi, Aunt Barbara, Megan, Aunt Martha

More extreme bocce ball. Me, Michael, Mom, Uncle Dave

Uncle Charlie, Dad, Andy, Matthew, Joe

Thomas and Selina waiting their turn for corn hole.

The whole group! In this picture we're missing 5 cousins and 1 uncle. We were lucky to find a friendly person who was also staying at the ranch to come take a big group picture for us.

I guess that's it for tonight! Joe and I don't have anything too fun going on this weekend, but I am starting to psych myself up for a big wedding and grooms cake for next weekend. I'll be doing some gum-paste flower work that I've never tried before. Wish me luck!

Update! Due to popular demand I'd like to include a picture of the soon to be great-grandchild in our family. Sara and Andy are expecting a little one toward the end of October! Here's the proof :)

Aaaaand in case your curious, here is a picture of the next soon to be great-grandchild! Joe and I will welcome our little one sometime around New Years. Sara's bump is a little more impressive than mine at this point though haha.

I'm back and I brought cake!

2014-07-14T22:15:00.001-05:00

Sorry for the 2 month disappearance! We've been traveling quite a bit since the last time I posted. First I spent Memorial Day weekend in Illinois with my 4 college housemates. As usual we had a great time and relived as many Rolla shenanigans as possible :) The next weekend, Joe and I went to my parents' home in Ohio for a graduation party for Gracie. Which means, GRACE IS GOING TO COLLEGE! When did this happen? She'll be heading to Mississippi State in only a few weeks and I already told her to plan on receiving some fun care packages. Now that I've posted it on the blog, I have to keep my promise :)

Two weekends after Ohio, we headed to St. Louis to celebrate the first birthday of our nephew, Albert. He's running around like a crazy man now and is always entertaining. We had fun playing with him and visiting with Joe's family as well. On the last weekend in June we drove to St. Louis again, and flew from there to San Antonio for the bi-annual Trowbridge Reunion (which I'll probably post about separately later). We spent 4 days hanging out by the Guadalupe River, playing lots of games, swimming, eating and catching up with everyone. It was really fun and relaxing! On the Wednesday before the 4th of July, we flew back to St. Louis from San Antonio, then left the next morning to drive to Wisconsin with Joe's parents. Joe's Grandma had planned a little family reunion up there over the 4th of July weekend, so we didn't want to miss that either! We spent the next few days playing more games, watching the little ones play, eating more good food and catching up again. Lots of good family time that week!

Finally, the Sunday after the 4th of July we drove back to St. Louis and I hopped on a flight to Houston for a week long course on the Basics of Corrosion (don't be too jealous). Now I'm home and happy to be here! Which means it's time to ease back in to blogging. What better to start with than a couple of cakes! These are from back in May. One graduation cake and one birthday cake. I had a couple other graduation cupcake orders but failed to take pictures of those.

First up is the graduation cake I made for our neighbors. Our neighbor gave me a picture of a cake she liked from a local grocery store and I tried my best to copy it exactly. Even down to the plastic graduation cap that I was able to find at the cake supply store. Funny story: I was at the grocery store buying cake supplies and I went through self checkout. The lady running self-check was especially chatty and asked what I was making since she saw I was buying baking ingredients. I picked up the same flyer from the checkout stand that our neighbor had given me with the cake picture on it, pointed to the picture and said, "this one". :) I thought it was funny. Anyway, here's the cake. The yellow writing looks extra shaky and I'm not sure why, I don't think it looked that bad in person, but maybe it did.

Next is a birthday cake that I made for the husband of a friend of a friend. She requested a Wisconsin Badgers football themed cake and after looking at several inspiration pictures she sent, we came up with the following design. The football on top is awful and that's my fault. But I was really happy with the rest of the cake! Especially the Badger mascot that I painted onto some modeling chocolate. I really liked the "vintage" version of the Wisconsin mascot that I'd seen in several inspiration pictures and knew I wanted to incorporate it into the cake somehow. There is a long skewer held between the front part of the badger and an extra piece of modeling chocolate behind it that allows it to stand up on top of the cake. Here it is!

Well, that's it for tonight! As usual, I have plenty of other things to post about, I've just fallen off the wagon I guess. Hopefully posting will be less sporadic after this. We'll be home for the next few weeks as far as I know and I've got several projects in the works. Until next time, have a good night!

I left my heart in San Francisco - Part 3

2014-05-13T22:12:00.002-05:00

Hi! Whether you've been anxiously awaiting this final post or are just glad that this series is almost over, here is the final installment of our San Francisco trip.

Before we even left for San Francisco I had planned out our first activity for Sunday morning. There is a flea market on Treasure Island (an island in the bay that can be reached from the bay bridge) that is only open on Sundays and supposed to be a good place to see some local art. Plus all the food trucks from the city are there on Sundays. Honestly, I was mostly excited about the food trucks :) The flea market was set up in and around an old naval base on Treasure Island, and I could definitely see it being somewhere I would go every Sunday if I lived in the bay area. There were tons of booths filled with vintage furniture and goods as well as hand made items and art. Since we couldn't take any of the fun furniture home, we bought some handmade soap and 3 watercolor prints that are now hanging over our piano. And of course, we hit up those food trucks! Joe got some sliders from one, and I picked up some pizza from another. A piece of banana-toffee cake from another booth rounded out our lunch. Everything was delicious! Luckily, the city buses run back and forth from Treasure island so we were able to catch one back to San Francisco after lunch and continue our adventures for the day.

Treasure Island Flea Market

Panoramic view of San Francisco from Treasure Island. From the Bay Bridge on the Left to the Golden Gate Bridge on the Right.

First we stopped back at the apartment to unload our goodies and also to book a rental car for the trip to Sonoma on Monday and our Alcatraz cruise and tour for Tuesday. With those things taken care of, we decided to take advantage of the beautiful weather and do some walking around areas we hadn't explored yet. First we took a bus to Alamo Park which is in the Haight Ashbury district. This is where the classic "Painted Ladies" houses are in San Francisco and you may recognize it from the opening scene of every Full House episode. The park was a big hill and there were some great views from it. Apparently it is also a good place to take a blanket and spend a day relaxing in the sun. We even saw several people with wine or beer out there, so I guess as long as you're not being obnoxious, they're willing to overlook the alcohol in the park. San Francisco Tip #5: Save some money for dinner one night by taking a picnic and some wine to Alamo park. We didn't do that, but I kinda wish we had. We did that one night in Italy on our honeymoon and it was one of our favorite dinners of the trip.

Some of the "Painted Ladies"

After walking around the park for a bit we decided to head down one of the adjacent streets just to see if we ran into anything else fun or cool. It was nice to know that pretty much where ever we went, it would be easy to hop on a bus back to somewhere familiar. We found some other really cool houses in the area and grabbed some coffee at a corner shop. Then we decided it would be a good time to visit The Presidio. The Presidio is a national park and former military post that has some beautiful original buildings as well the "Palace of Fine Arts" which was installed for a world's fair that was held in San Francisco. The whole park was beautiful and of course I loved all the old buildings! The big open space of the park was a nice change from the busy city.

The dome in the distance is part of the Palace of Fine Arts.

After walking around the Palace of Fine Arts, we wandered through another cool neighborhood with a completely different style of houses than we'd seen elsewhere in San Francisco. One of the houses was having an estate sale and I really wanted to go in, but they were charging just to look, plus we didn't really have time.

Some cool Spanish style houses as seen from the Palace of Fine Arts.

I'm not sure if I've got my events in the wrong order here, but I think that next we went to check out the famous Lombard Street. As you may know this is famed as the "curviest street in the world". It was crazy steep! The thing that really surprised me was there were actually houses on it. I can't even imagine having to back out of my garage every day onto that street! It was really cool though :) Definitely a must see in San Francisco. And 2 of the cable car lines have stops right at the top of Lombard street, so it would be easy to hop off there and check it out if you're already riding the cable cars.

Looking down Lombard Street. In the distance you can see Coit Tower on Telegraph Hill which is where we walked through that awesome "jungle" neighborhood.

How crazy would it be to live on Lombard Street?!

They meant to name it Lombardo Street, right? :)

By this time we were getting pretty hungry and we decided that some seafood sounded like a good idea for dinner. Joe did a little searching and found a tiny place called the Fairy Codmother that had awesome reviews. It was back down by Fisherman's Wharf so once again we hopped on a bus! Fairy Codmother was really just a trailer where they cooked the food with a window that you ordered at. Then there were a few tables and awnings around the trailer where you could sit and eat. The fish, shrimp and fries were awesome but we each got a whole order and it was way too much food! Luckily they don't mind packaging it up for you, so we took it home with us for lunch on another day.

After eating, we decided that if we rushed we could possibly make it to the far west side of San Francisco to catch a sunset. Our destination was Land's End lookout and there was really only one bus that went that way. It felt like there were 100 stops on this bus route! We literally saw the sun sink below the horizon as we stepped of the bus at the end of the line. It was beautiful, but we didn't get to sit and enjoy it like we'd hoped. San Francisco Tip #6: If you plan to go to Land's End Lookout to see a sunset (and you should) be sure to give yourself plenty of time to get there by bus. It was about a 45 minute ride from "downtown" to out there.

Now that we'd seen the two second sunset we had to wait for about 20 minutes to catch the same long bus ride back. Once again we crashed when we got home!

Monday morning was rainy again as we made our way from the apartment to the car rental place. It was pretty quick to get our car and by 9:00am we were on our way to Sonoma! The drive was about an hour and a half and there were some pretty areas but the rain and fog certainly didn't do the landscape any favors. Once we got close to Sonoma we started seeing all the beautiful vineyards though. I was getting pretty excited to try some wine at that point :) We stopped at a cafe in downtown Sonoma for some coffee and breakfast before we started our wine tour. It was still pretty early and we were worried that some wineries wouldn't be open yet. Before we got in the car to go to the first winery, we decided to stop in the Sonoma visitor center to see if we could get a map or something. San Francisco Tip #7: If you go to Napa or Sonoma be sure to stop at the visitor center for tasting coupons and tips. The ladies working in the visitor center were super nice! They asked us what kind of wineries we had in mind then gave us several 2 for 1 tasting coupons as well as making suggestions for other wineries we hadn't planned on going too. I also picked up a sticker that said "I heart Sonoma Valley". Just wearing that sticker on my coat let the wineries know we'd stopped at the visitor center and led to us getting some discounts! Unfortunately I don't have a any pictures of Sonoma since it was raining and I couldn't get any good pictures out of the car window. I'll just give you a quick rundown of which wineries we went to.

Roche Winery - The tasting room for this winery was right in downtown Sonoma and we had it all to ourselves! This was nice because we got lots of personal attention and they even took the time to teach us the correct way to taste wine. Swirl, sniff, and taste :) We got one bottle of wine there.

Loxton Winery - Another small winery where we the only people for a while. All the wines here were delicious and they had the whole fermenting and bottling operation right there in one room. At each winery we learned a little more about the wine making process for these small wineries. I did most of the tasting though since Joe was driving, so I'm afraid that I don't really remember all the things they told us :) We got one bottle of wine here as well.

Kaz Winery - This was my favorite winery we visited! It is also the smallest winery in Sonoma. Kaz is the owner and head of everything at Kaz winery and we were lucky enough that he was the one running the tasting room that day! Every wine was amazing! You could tell he was really passionate about his wines and he was also really fun to talk to. One of the fun things you can do at Kaz is bottle, cork and label your own bottle of wine. We ended up buying 2 bottles at Kaz and one of them was a variety we could bottle ourselves. So I did it and it was pretty fun :) I was surprised to learn from Kaz that they bottle every single bottle of wine they sell with that one little mechanical corking "machine". If you ever go to Sonoma, be sure to stop at Kaz! He'll even sign your bottle of wine for you.

Kaz was helping me bottle some wine.

Next we stopped at place called Ty Caton, but we were not impressed, so I won't even talk about that one :) Save us both some time.

The last place we stopped was a tasting room for the family owned Muscardini Cellars. This winery was recommended to us by a local we ran into earlier that day and it was a good tip! The guy running the tasting room let us taste and double taste a lot of the wines, and in the end Mr. Muscardini himself signed the bottle we bought. Bonus - there was super cute golden retriever named Bennie running around. A cute dog pretty much seals the deal for me :)

One thing we found at pretty much all the places we stopped was that even though the tasting fee was only supposed to include tasting a limited number of wines, most of the people let us try over the limit or even re-try ones we liked. So we didn't feel too bad about paying the tasting fees. Oh, and some of the wineries will apply your tasting fee to a wine bottle purchase. But anyway, after the final winery we had to hit the road to return the rental car back in San Francisco before 6. We made it back in the nick of time and started our bus trek back to the apartment carrying our half case of wine. For dinner on Sunday night we went to a completely different part of town called the Mission district and found a place called Pancho Villa Taqueria. It was almost like a Mexican buffet and the food was pretty tasty.

Now onto our last full day in San Francisco! We woke up to another rainy day but we had already booked our 9:30am tour of Alcatraz so we hopped on a cable car and rode down to Fisherman's Wharf where we would take the ferry to Alcatraz Island. By the time we got on the boat, our shoes were already soaked! Once we made it to the island we picked up our audio tour headsets and began our walk around Alcatraz. Despite the fact that it was a little creepy (especially in the gloomy weather) the prison and island were really cool. The guided tour is really well done and the history of the island is so much more than just a prison. I won't go into all the details but I'll just say that if you ever go to San Francisco, make sure to take a trip to Alcatraz! p.s. I may have gone a little overboard with the Alcatraz pictures :)

You can still see the writing on the water tower from when a group of American Indians occupied the island in the late 60s.

A typical cell at Alcatraz.

These were the solitary confinement cells. Cell Block D.

I thought it was interesting that some inmates had art supplies and games in their cells.

In the bed you can see the paper mache head that a prisoner made to trick the guards into thinking he was asleep. He had actually dug out of the cell and was one of 2 prisoners who escaped and were never found.

A few into the Alcatraz Kitchen. You can see the knife box with an outline of each knife. That was made like that so it could be seen at a glance if a knife was missing from the box.

After taking the ferry home, we walked down to the Ferry Building which I had heard had some great restaurants and shopping. Well they did have a bunch of delicious looking food but it was pretty pricey and we had leftovers at home anyway so we opted not to get lunch there. However we did pick up a little chocolate cake at Miette Bakery for a little dessert. So we headed home and ate our leftovers and cake! After lunch and trying to dry our feet out for a bit we decided to take a final walk down to Chinatown for a visit to the Golden Gate Fortune Cookie Factory. The factory is a little hole in the wall place tucked down in an alley where 3 people sit and make fortune cookies all day You aren't allowed to take pictures inside (unless you want to pay 25 cents for each picture) but they let you watch for a bit before getting pushed out the door with a few free samples of unfolded fortune cookies. It was a quick fun stop and we did leave with a mixed bag of chocolate and vanilla fortune cookies for $5.

Unfolded fortune cookies.

Our final tourist stop of the trip was the Cable Car Museum which was just a short walk from Chinatown and also a short walk back to our apartment. It was so cool to see how the cable cars work, and I would definitely recommend stopping there. It's hard to believe that all the cable car lines are controlled from right there in one building.

These giant wheels pull all the cables for the cable car lines.

For dinner that night we found a tasty sushi place and just tried to enjoy our last evening of vacation before getting back to reality :( We took the rest of the night easy and tried to get all of our things packed up for the next day. Then Wednesday we pretty much just finished packing and headed to the airport. I was sad to leave! We had so much fun in San Francisco and I feel like there were so many places that were left out of our adventure! I think if we were to ever go back there would be plenty of new things to do, but there are a handful of things I would do over again as well.

I think that wraps up the San Francisco trip! Finally! I hope you enjoyed the little tour and maybe it inspired you to plan a trip out there or to somewhere else that you've never been. Have a great night and thanks for reading!

I left my heart in San Francisco - Part 2

2014-04-25T22:34:00.000-05:00

And we're back with days 3 and 4 of San Francisco! As I mentioned in the last post we had a big day ahead of us on Friday with plans to rent bikes and ride over the Golden Gate bridge to the town of Sausalito. The place we rented our bikes from was called Blazing Saddles and they had several locations all over San Francisco. It was really easy to rent from them and fairly reasonably prices. They charge $8 per hour with a max of $32 for the day. We kept our bikes for closer to 7 hours and it was still only $32 dollars. What they don't tell you initially though is that the $11 ferry tickets they "give" you to come back from Sausalito still have to be paid for when you turn your bikes back in. It's worth it to take the ferry back over though, especially if you're crazy like us and attempt to ride up to Muir woods on the bikes. But I'll get back to that part later :)

First thing Friday morning we took a cable car north toward Fisherman's Wharf since there was a Blazing Saddles location near the end of the cable car line. We were able to rent bikes very quickly and get on our way. Armed with maps from the bike rental place and our smart phones, we headed out towards the Golden Gate Bridge. The ride between Fisherman's Wharf and the Golden Gate was a nice mix of coast line, parks, residential areas and some great spots to stop and get some pictures of the bridge.

One of the only pictures of us together from the trip. Proof that we were there!

Not going to lie, the ride across the Golden Gate bridge itself made me a little nervous. The side walks along the side of the bridge are kind of narrow and you have to look out for other cyclists and pedestrians. As long as we were riding I didn't focus too much on how high over the bay were were, but when we stopped at a look out point it kind of hit me and I was ready to get on some solid land ASAP! I will say that the bridge is an awesome piece of Art Deco architecture and it was really cool to see close up how it was built. Unless you're really afraid of heights, I would definitely recommend riding or walking across the bridge!

That's a lot of rivets!

I believe that's Sausalito in the background.

Once we made if off the bridge we started the mostly down hill ride to Sausalito. By the time we got there we were already getting a little tired so we decided to lock our bikes up and walk around a bit. Plus, it was almost lunch time by this point :) Sausalito is a pretty little town that is built right along the bay. There were lots of pretty little houses up on the hill and a nice downtown area full of restaurants and shops.

We walked around until we found a tiny burger joint that had some promising reviews online. The inside of the restaurant was just big enough for the kitchen area and two tiny tables at the back. Since it was still pretty early, Joe and I were the only customers and were able to snag one of the tables. The burger and fries were great! Joe got a burrito and he said it was good too. Once we refueled, we hit the bike trail again with the plan to get to Mill Valley park. We were told that we could see some giant sequoia trees there. We not only saw some beautiful trees but also some amazing homes up in the hills surrounded by these huge trees and all kinds of other plant life. It would be a pretty incredible place to live!

This is one of the Sequoia trees near Mill Valley Park.

We made it to the park relatively quick and for some reason decided we could ride all the way up to Muir Woods. Big mistake! Muir Woods is a National Park where you can see some of the really impressive redwood and sequoia trees. According to our maps it looked like it should be a fairly short bike ride from Mill Valley Park. What we didn't realize was that the ride to Muir Woods was ALL UP HILL! And not just a slight hill. A "so steep you can't even ride so you have to walk your bike up the hill" hill. We persevered for a while but eventually gave up since we new we still had to make the ride all the way back to Sausalito. Luckily after our long uphill ride, were able to coast down the hills for a bit and get some energy back. Even though we never made it to Muir woods, I'm glad we got off the beaten path for a while and saw some areas that we never even would have known existed! Below you can see the path of our bike ride that day and the ferry ride home. Joe captured this with our Garmin watch, but he forgot to turn the watch on until we'd already been riding for a mile or so. The red line is our path, the blue area in the graph at the top is our pace, and the green area is our elevation change.

So we made our way back to Sausalito and chilled out on a park bench while we waited for the ferry. We were both pretty exhausted so we had zero plans to bike back over the Golden Gate Bridge.

The bike ride from the ferry landing back to Blazing Saddles was a quick one. Oh, and I think I know why they call it blazing saddles. It's because after sitting on that bike seat all day, it hurts to sit on anything at all :) hehe. After we turned our bikes in we walked to the end of the block to the Buena Vista Cafe for one of their famous Irish Coffees. If you go to San Francisco, you have to go to Buena Vista Cafe just for the experience!

It was much stronger than I expected and I had to ask for more milk in mine half way through! After the Irish Coffees we were still hungry for dinner so we decided to head over to Japan Town and find a place to eat. We settled on a ramen place and slurped some noodles before going back to the apartment and crashing. It was a long day!

On Saturday morning we woke up to rain, but there was too much on our itinerary that day to let that stop us!

We walked down to China town to catch a bus to Golden Gate Park where we were planning on visiting the California Academy of Science (this was another attraction included in the City Pass). I was hoping the the Academy of Science wouldn't be crowded since it was a rainy day, but it was still pretty packed with families, tourists and school groups. The Academy of Science is basically a fun science museum. Different than the Exploratorium though as it was less hands on and had more exhibits. There were some awesome aquariums, a butterfly and bird dome and an amazing green roof.

All the kids were yelling about seeing Nemo and Dory :)

We were also able to get seats for a show in the planetarium about dark matter and space. It was really cool with the giant screen that wrapped almost all the way around the room. After we'd seen everything there we decided it was time for lunch so we took a short bus ride out of the park to a nearby area that looked like it had lots of restaurants. Joe and I are very indecisive when it comes to which restaurant to eat at so it usually took us a good while to walk up and down the streets past all the choices before we finally just gave in and picked one. I'm happy to report though that we never ended up with a poor choice! After lunch we decided to walk back to Golden Gate Park instead of taking the bus. This time we were headed for the Botanical Gardens. It cost $7 to get in to the gardens but we really enjoyed just walking around and seeing all the different plants and specialty gardens. Plus, since it was a rainy day the gardens were pretty empty.

I named this hill "Donut Hill" since we sat on a bench at the top and ate the donuts we picked up after lunch.

We were going to stop by the Japanese Tea Gardens, which are also in Golden Gate Park, but that would have been an additional $7 a piece so we decided one garden visit was enough. Our plan after that was to take a bus to a park called the Presidio, but our plans changed when I discovered that at some point throughout the day, I had lost my City Pass :( womp womp. Lucky for me, we'd already used all the parts of the pass that would get us into various attractions. The only thing we were still using it for was transportation. So instead of going to the Presidio, we bought me a single bus ticket and made our way to a Walgreens where we could buy a 7 day bus pass that would last me for the rest of the trip. Although I'm pretty sure we still got our money's worth out of my City Pass, I was still bummed. By this point, we were pretty tired and our shoes were soaked so we decided to head home. On our way we stopped at a Trader Joe's for a few more groceries, where I made my 2nd mistake of the day by buying whole bean coffee instead of ground. No coffee for us the next morning!

We hung out at home for a while and let our feet dry out while doing some research about where we should eat dinner. We settled on a place called Nick's Crispy Tacos, which I would highly recommend! They were delicious! Once again, we went home, drank some wine and went to bed :) Well, that's the end of days 2 and 3! Only one more installment of our San Francisco trip left. And it will be pretty long since it will cover 3 days. Thanks again for reading and I hope you all have a great weekend!

I left my heart in San Francisco - Part 1

2014-04-10T22:09:00.002-05:00

I'm so excited to share our San Francisco adventure with you guys! In order to keep the length of the posts and number of pictures to a somewhat reasonable amount, I'm going to split our trip up into 3 posts. This first post will cover the first 2 days of our trip. Some days I took a lot of pictures, other days I don't think I got any! Through out the post I'll be adding my personal "San Francisco Travel Tips".

Ok, let's get started! First off, before we ever left home for California, Joe and I did some research on things to do in San Francisco as well as buying City Passes. SF Travel Tip #1: If you're going to be in SF for 5 or more days, buy a City Pass! They're $86 per person but worth it if you plan on seeing many of the main attractions. I'll point out throughout these posts what all we used our City Pass for. We also booked a VRBO (vacation rental by owner) apartment for our week long stay. It was a little cheaper than a hotel and we had a small kitchen so we could eat breakfast there every morning and store other snacks as well. The apartment was small but in a great location and felt very safe. Now onto the trip itself.

Wednesday (day 1)
We arrived in SF around 1:00pm and took a BART train from the airport to the city. Since we had not picked up our City Passes yet (which would allow us to use the bus and trolley system) we had to walk up a couple of serious hills to get to our apartment. It was easy to find though and I was grateful that we only had to walk up those hills once while dragging suitcases. After quickly settling in, we located a grocery store near by and picked up some food basics for breakfasts and snacks. SF Travel Tip #2: Bring your own reusable shopping bags, or you'll be charged 10 cents per bag like us :( We dropped those things off at home and walked down to the SF visitor center to pick up our City Passes. Even by this point we'd already seen some of the fun characteristic things in SF like China Town, the cables cars and the steep hills. Once we had our City Passes in hand we set out on foot in search of a late lunch/early dinner. The City Pass let us ride anything within the MUNI transportation system which includes the buses, cable cars and street cars. Those rides would usually range from $2-$6 each time, and we rode A TON. So I feel like we got our money's worth with MUNI rides alone.

Our plan for dinner was to find a restaurant we'd seen on Diners, Drive-ins and Dives but it ended up being closed. It was a happy accident though since just a few doors down we found a place called Garaje that turned out to be awesome! Our first meal in SF was definitely a winner.

Yes, they are just as greasy and delicious as they look. In that glass is their version of sangria which was awesome!

We took a bus home and decided to wander up to North Beach, the Italian neighborhood, in search of some gelato :) Another bus took us up to North Beach and we walked around checking out all the restaurants and the pretty Washington Square in front of the church. We finally found some gelato and decided to walk home through China Town instead of taking a bus. Even with all the China Town businesses closed up for the evening, it was cool to walk through. We turned in pretty early on Wednesday since we were still running on central time, and planned to head out early on Thursday to see as much as possible.

Thursday (day 2)
As soon as we were ready on Thursday morning, we walked to the end of our block where, very conveniently, there was a cable car stop. We hopped on one and took it all the way north to the piers at Fisherman's wharf. Riding the cable cars was just as exciting as I expected! It was a little nerve wracking to be flying down a hill on one towards an intersection and wondering if we'll really be able to stop on time.

At the end of the cable car run there is basically a huge lazy susan in the ground where they're able to turn the cable car around. Then it can just regrip the cable underground and head back up the line!

Since we made it down to the bay pretty early and a lot of places weren't open yet, we walked out on one of the public piers to get some pretty views of the city, Alcatraz and the Golden Gate bridge. We also walked around an old military area called Fort Mason that had some beautiful homes and buildings. It wasn't something that we'd planned on seeing but it was a nice surprise.

That is Alcatraz island on the right.

One of the officer's homes in Fort Mason.

Looking back toward Fort Mason from a pier where an old ship was docked.

Then we walked up to Ghirardelli Square. Yes, that Ghirardelli :) We bought some chocolate and walked around some of the shops.

In the Ghirardelli building you can see the original process in action for making their amazing chocolate. Plus, free samples!

Then we walked across the street to the Maritime Museum. It was free to get in, but they seemed to be under construction or in some kind of transition because there was very little in the exhibits. It was still a cool building though, and like I said, it was free! By this time we were getting hungry for lunch so we headed toward the most touristy pier, Pier 39, in search of some of that famous San Francisco sourdough and clam chowder. We found that at Boudin Bakery! We got our sourdough fix and even saw some of the bread being made. Then we found our way to those crazy sea lions that hang out by the warves. They were fun to watch :)

One of the street cars that ran along Fisherman's Wharf. The difference between a street car and a cable car is that the street car is powered by electric wires overhead and just runs on rails, and a cable car is literally pulled along by a constantly moving cable that is underground.

They're so graceful in the water, and so funny when they're trying to jump up onto one of the platforms.

After lunch we went to the Aquarium of the Bay which was one of the attractions included in the price of our City Pass. It was a fairly small, but nice aquarium that showed a lot of fish that are native to the bay as well as some cool tropical fish. There were a lot of little ones running around and they were completely crowding the "tide pool" area, so poor Joe didn't get to touch any of the starfish :(

There were some fun jellyfish though. And no, this picture is not upside down. They were all just swimming/floating like that.

Looking down one of the public piers toward Treasure Island.

After the aquarium we decided to get away from the very touristy Pier 39 area and take a bus up some seriously steep and curvy roads to Coit Tower which is at the top of Telegraph Hill. The tower itself was closed for renovations, but we were able to take in some awesome views of San Francisco.

At one point there was actually a signal for ships on this hill.

Our little excursion to Coit Tower also led us to one of the coolest residential areas that we walked through in the city. The "streets" down the east side of Telegraph Hill were really just wooden walkways and stairs that you had to take to get to the homes. Huge trees were growing on the hill and completely shading the walkways and homes and there were gorgeous flowers everywhere. Then at the end of the walkway there was a very steep staircase going down to the next street. I just thought the area was so cool! It's definitely near the top of "places I'd love to live (but could never afford to) in San Francisco". haha So I guess my SF Travel Tip #3 is go to Coit Tower and walk down the hill through the neighborhood!

Joe really loved the little tower on this house. Also, that is the Bay Bridge in the background. (Not to be confused with the Golden Gate, which I often did)

This is one of the walkway "streets" I was talking about.

That little gate is someone's front entrance!

Stairs to the bottom of Telegraph Hill.

(Don't worry, we're almost done with Day 2.) After we walked down the staircase from Telegraph Hill, we found ourselves in a little square by the Levi Strauss headquarters. We kept walking and made it back to the piers hoping to go to The Exploratorium which was another attraction included in the City Pass. The Exploratorium is basically a super fun, hands-on science museum. When we got there it ended up being only a couple hours before closing, but the person at the front desk told us we could come back that night from 6-10 for their adults only event. Basically it was for adults to run around the Exploratorium and play with all the exhibits with out the kids getting in the way :) Plus they'd be serving drinks. So we chose to come back later and headed out to do some quick shopping and get some dinner. I'll skip all the details (for once haha) and just tell you that we found dinner at a little hole in the wall place called Golden Boy Pizza which was in the Italian neighborhood and the pizza was awesome, and cheap! I had the clam, spinach and garlic pizza and was able to get one huge piece for only $3. SF Travel Tip #4 Use you smart phone to search for "affordable" or "cheap" restaurants in the area. Siri on my iphone helped us find Golden Boy Pizza :)

After dinner we dropped our shopping purchases off at the apartment and headed right back down to the Exploratorium. We had a ton of fun just walking around the place and playing with all the different exhibits. I think people who aren't nerdy engineers would even enjoy it :) Joe did get a little carried away with the circuit making station and I had to peel him away from there. We stayed right up until closing then took a bus and a cable car home.

Ok, so I know this picture doesn't look like anything special, but it was a huge concave mirror and when you stand in front of it and reach out, it was like your arm was coming right back out of the mirror and you could almost touch it. The best way I can describe it is trippy.

This sculpture is made entirely of toothpicks! And it is still a work in progress. You can see the ping pong balls at the bottom. Those are there because there are actually several ping pong ball tracks built into the sculpture. It was pretty amazing.

As you can see, Thursday was pretty packed for us so by the time we got home, we crashed. After all, we needed to rest up for our planned trip of biking across the Golden Gate Bridge in the morning! Two days is enough for this post though. If you even made it this far in the post, then thanks for sticking around.

P.s. We said goodbye to Mollie bear today. She was part of our family for over 15 years, and as far as I'm concerned she was pretty much the best dog ever. I love you Mollie! Here's a cute picture of her from a few years ago.

Joe's Picnic Table

2014-04-05T23:32:00.000-05:00

Long time no post! We've been pretty busy around here lately. Between the last blog post and now, I don't think I hardly had a free night to blog! First, Joe and I went to Rolla for St. Pat's and it was just as much fun as I had hoped/remembered. Though it did make me wonder how we ever survived Rolla in the first place. As soon as we got home from Rolla, I packed my bags and headed back out the door for a week long work trip. My work trip consisted of driving around West Virginia and Kentucky. It was a bit of a mess trying to get to West Virginia in the first place because of a snow storm, but once we finally got there, the weather was beautiful. The best part of that trip for me was stumbling upon the Blenko Glass Factory and buying one of their signature pitchers. The guys I was traveling with kept giving me a hard time about being so excited about this pitcher, but ever since I saw a PBS special about Blenko Glass I've wanted one! Here's a link to what I'm talking about: Blenko Glass. (Prepare to be underwhelmed haha)

The same day I got back from Kentucky, we had some friends and family coming into town to visit for the night and the weekend. It was great to catch up with all of them and we even squeezed in some time to go bowling and do some shopping. Then Sunday, Monday and Tuesday nights were spent preparing for our trip to San Francisco and for the baby shower that we hosted last night. Since we were only going to have 1 night between the baby shower and getting home from San Fran, I tried to do as much as possible before we left. Bright and early Wednesday morning we hopped on a plane to California! San Francisco was amazing and I will most likely be devoting 2 blog posts to it soon, so I won't talk about it too much now. This post is supposed to be about our awesome new deck table that Joe built!

I can take VERY little credit for this table. Beyond some help on finalizing the design and standing on pieces to hold them in place during the building process, Joe did all the work. Which is probably good because Joe is much more of a perfectionist than I am when it comes to these types of things and that's kind of important when building furniture haha. His attention to detail paid off because this thing is SOLID. We based the design off a very similar table at Restoration Hardware. Their version is over $5800!!! Granted, it's made out of teak and ours is cedar, but STILL. If I had that kind of money laying around to spend on a dining table, then well... I don't know what I'd do with it. :) Invest it or something. Our table cost a total of about $150.

Joe started the work on this table by making a model in Google Sketchup and making different variations of lengths, leg styles, and leg spacing until we found the one that was just right. We were able to use a lot of leftover lumber from building the deck, but we did still have to buy a few boards. You can see in the next few process pictures that pretty much all of the connections are made using pocket holes that we drilled using our Kreg Jig. Joe started by building both of the X end pieces. He used various clamps to hold them all together while attaching them with pocket screws.

Then he made the table top. He separated the boards with nails to get even spacing. Then he clamped them across the width and used cedar 1x4s to tie all the boards together across the underside of the table top. These connections weren't done with pocket screws, but were attached from the bottom side so there wouldn't be any fasteners visible from the top.

Once the table top and the two X ends were done, he laid the table top down with the bottom side up, and attached the 2 "X" ends with more pocket screws. Once those were attached he was able to add the cross bracing pieces.

The final part was to trim the ends of the the table top boards off so they're all even. To do this, Joe tacked a yard stick to the bottom side of the table top to use as a guide for his circular saw. This made it super easy to get a nice straight cut.

Overall Joe said it was pretty simple construction, but making all the angled cuts and attaching the angled pieces on the Xs were kind of tricky. He also had to make sure that the end pieces where perfectly square and level so that the table wouldn't wobble or be slanted. I'd say it turned out about as perfect as possible! I can't wait to get some good use out of this table this summer. I guess we first need some chairs though.

Well, that post got out of hand pretty quick. Stay tuned for picture overload from San Francisco! I hope you're all doing well and having a nice springtime! Thanks for reading!

Put a Bow On It

2014-03-11T21:29:00.000-05:00

Surprise, Surprise. I made more cakes. Also, I'm running out of generic names for cake posts :) One of these is actually from back in January, but I figured I'd wait til there was a 2nd post to go along with it, and they both happened to have bows! Joe and I have been really busy around here lately with a few fun projects. One is an awesome table that Joe built for the deck. As soon as I can get some decent pics, there will be a post about it! The other project is a guest room makeover. Mostly because I was bored with the previous state of the guest room. It's looking pretty good but there is still work to do. This past Sunday we had some AMAZING weather in Kansas City so we took some time to trim up some of the landscaping in front of the house to get it ready for the growing season. When we were adding new mulch to the flower beds, we noticed that there were already some bulbs starting to grow. I'm pretty excited to see those bloom since we planted a bunch of new ones in the fall.

Coming up soon Joe and I have a couple of fun little trips planned. First we'll be heading to good ol' Rolla, MO for St. Pat's. It's been 5 years since we've been there for a St. Pat's celebration so I'm pretty excited about it. But if I'm being honest, the part of the Rolla trip I'm most looking forward to is hitting up a few restaurants. :) Now I know you may not think of Rolla as a foodie destination, but there is Alex's Pizza, Slice-o-Pie, Maid-Rite concrete's and cinnamon rolls at Holday Inn Express! What's not to love?! I guess I'm just easy to please.

The next trip will be to San Francisco near the end of the month and for as much as I'm excited about Rolla, I'm WAY more excited about San Fran. If you've been and you have any suggestions of things to do, places to go, and restaurants, please let us know! You can either comment on this post or shoot me an email. From the little bit of research I've done, it looks as though we won't run out of things to do. And now to the cakes!

The first one was a Hello Kitty birthday cake I made for the daughter of one of my co-workers. This was the 2nd Hello Kitty cake for me (you can see the first one here). This one was done in fondant and modeling chocolate. It wasn't too difficult and I was able to assemble the little Hello Kitty "pop" ahead of time and just stick it in the cake once we delivered it. The birthday girl seemed to love the cake, so that made me happy!

The 2nd cake was one I just delivered this past weekend and it was for a baby shower for a little boy. The theme of the shower was "Southern Baby Boy" which we brought into the cake with the bowtie and the little saddle oxfords on top. The little baby shoes might be my favorite cake topper/accessory I've made so far :) The flavor of the cake was red velvet with cream cheese frosting. This was one of those cakes that I definitely wanted to stick around for to get a piece.

I don't have any more cakes planned in the near future, but the blog could probably use a cake break anyway. I'm mostly just looking forward to having more than one day in a row when the weather is nice. These little sneak peeks of spring are just a tease! Plus, warm weather = garage sales. Though I have to complete some current furniture projects before Joe lets me bring anything new home. I better get a move on!

That's about it for tonight. Thanks for reading and have a good night!

Mardi Gras King Cake

2014-02-10T21:40:00.001-06:00

This may be the BEST king cake I've ever had, but I didn't want to put that in the post title since those are pretty strong words. Especially to anyone who has tried some of the excellent king cakes you can get in south Louisiana. But really, this cake was awesome! Part of what made it so delicious was that I filled it both cream cheese and pecan praline fillings. But even the dough was excellent and I'm sure would be delicious with a typical cinnamon sugar filling. I made this cake for the Super Bowl party that Joe and I went to and everyone seemed to enjoy it. I did have to explain to several people what exactly a king cake was and why there was a baby hidden inside though. I will definitely be making an other one or two to bring to my office on Mardi Gras.

I know I say this all the time, but this king cake was not difficult to make. The dough and icing recipes come from New Orleans chef John Besh. He has a show on PBS and he's always cooking up something tasty looking. I found the recipe from John Besh on a blog called Fleur Delicious which is probably the 2nd best blog name after Lombardo Lagniappe :) That is also where I found the recipe for the pecan praline filling. The cream cheese filling is simply some cream cheese, sugar, lemon zest and vanilla. Here's the full recipe:

King Cake with Cream Cheese and Pecan Praline Filling

For the cake:
1 cup whole milk, warmed to 110-120 degrees
1/2 cup granulated sugar
2 envelopes active dry yeast
3 3/4 cups unbleached all-purpose flour, plus more for dusting
1 cup (2 sticks) butter, melted and cooled slightly
5 large egg yolks, beaten
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp grated lemon zest
2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp ground nutmeg

For the pecan praline filling:
1 cup brown sugar
3/4 tsp cinnamon
3/4 to 1 cup pecan pieces, toasted and finely chopped (I didn't toast mine and it turned out fine)
1/2 cup all purpose flour
1/2 cup (1 stick) melted butter

For the cream cheese filling:
10 oz. cream cheese, softened
1/4 cup sugar
1/4 t. lemon zest
1 tsp, lemon

For the icing:
2 cups powdered sugar
1/4 to 1/2 cup sweetened condensed milk
1 tsp fresh lemon juice

1. For the cake, mix together the warm milk, yeast, sugar and 1 tablespoon of the flour together in a large bowl. Let stand for about 8 minutes until the yeast begins to foam and gets frothy.

I just wanted to give a visual of what the yeast should look like. Below is how it looked after several minutes.

2. Add the butter, eggs, vanilla, and lemon zest and whisk to combine.
3. Add the rest of the flour, cinnamon, and nutmeg and stir with a wooden spoon to combine. At this point, the dough will look really wet and not much like a bread dough.

4. Next, either use the dough hook on a stand mixer, or turn the dough out onto a floured surface and knead until the dough becomes smooth and pliable. If using the stand mixer, the dough should pull away from the sides.

5. Let rise until doubled in size. 1 to 1 1/2 hours.

6. While the dough is rising, make the filling. For the pecan praline filling, stir together the flour, brown sugar, cinnamon and pecans. Then stir the melted butter in. Set that aside. For the cream cheese filling, mix all ingredients together with a mixer.
7. Once the dough is risen, preheat the oven to 375 degrees F. Punch down the risen dough, and let it rest for a few minutes. Then roll it out on a floured surface into a long rectangle about 10"-12" wide but a couple feet long.
8. Spread the cream cheese filling on the dough, then "sprinkle" chunks of the praline filling over that.

9. Roll up tightly and form into a ring on a baking sheet. Try and pinch the two ends together.

10. Bake for about 30 minutes until the cake is golden brown.

11. Let cool on a wire rack until completely cooled. Before icing the cake, hide the baby inside!
12. Then mix together all your icing ingredients and pour over the cake. While the icing is still wet, sprinkle on the colored sugar.

Enjoy!

I know that's a lot of ingredients and steps, but I promise it's worth it! I'm not sure I can wait till Mardi Gras to make another one. If I were down in Louisiana I could get my king cake fix by just picking one up at the grocery store. Though they do sell king cakes at a few grocery stores in Kansas City, I can tell you they are not very good. I think they bake one batch a year and sell them for a few weeks. They're just dry and gross. Let me know if you decide to try making your own king cake this year, and if you come up with any good filling flavors!

I think that's it for tonight. Thanks for reading and if I don't get back on here before Friday, have a happy Valentine's day with the ones you love!