So You Think You Can Sew

Sometimes I don't know what posseses me to try things like this. I'm really not that great at sewing. I can do some basic things and make some (almost) straight seams. But sometimes I get a little overly ambitious and wooed by lovely pictures, like the one in Tone Finnanger's Sew Pretty Christmas Homestyle book, where I found the pattern for this bag. I saw her beautful bags and thought I'd give it a try. And here it is.

Truthfully, I'm extremely pleased with myself. On the whole, the bag wasn't hard. I'm just not great with my sewing machine. But I had some gorgeous fabric from an outing to Cottonweeds in Freeport last weekend and a pattern I was dying to try.

I resolved to follow all the directions exactly but therein lies my primary problem with sewing - I'm not great at following the directions. But I really did try and I really am very happy with the bag, though there is no closeup photo for a reason. There are a plethora of errors and not-so-perfect seams but on the whole, I'm happy. I even plan to take this baby to work with me tomorrow. Proudly.

Hope you had a nice weekend.

Cozy Time

It's snowing again. That means it's a good time to get cozy. I'm about to sit down with two of my favorite things: a hot cup of coffee and my new heating pad.
To my utter delight, and my checkbook's utter chagrin, I discovered that Candlelite Quilts carries a fantastic selection of Moda fabrics. Among them was this delightful flannel (Cornwall, by April Cornell) and when I saw it I knew it was destined to become a heart-shaped heating pad.
I got the idea for the pad from a Martha Stewart project where they made heating pads and filled them with dried cherry pits. (Yes, you can actually buy dried cherry pits. Who knew?) So the project was on my mind because I thought it seemed very useful and cozy, a good winter project. And then when I saw this flannel I thought "why not make it a heart shape?". And why not, right? So here it is. My kids are loving it too. The novelty of heating it up in the microwave and having a toasty thing to cuddle up with is really floating their boats. Annika has selected several fabrics and would like me to make one of each. We'll see.
For now, I'm going to do what my great-grandmother used to do and "sit a spell" with my warm heart (both literal and figurative) and my hot coffee - that is until the kids come barreling back in from the snow.
Have a cozy day! - Kate

These Are Hearts - Trust Me

My very creative friend had a great idea - red velvet heart-shaped whoopie pies. Outstanding! As soon as I read her email I started mulling over the idea. I've never been all that successful with red velvet but then again, I've really only tried once. I saw a recipe on the Better Homes & Gardens site at Christmas so I decided to give it a go. I made the cake recipe here and it makes a rather thick cake. If you tried my chocolate whoopie pie recipe you know I'm partial to something a bit more light. But what the heck, I plowed ahead. The batter tasted delicious so I put it in a pastry bag and piped hearts with it. Trust me, these are hearts and not butts. My color is slightly off, probably because my only cocoa on hand is dark chocolate and that is too dark for these. I'd recommend the regular cocoa. I couldn't make the filling recipe that BHG suggests because I didn't have any marshmallow fluff/creme on hand so I turned to Magnolia and used their red velvet cream cheese frosting recipe. My lesson there is that the frosting is too thin to work well as a filling for a whoopie pie. Overall I rate these as a semi-success. They taste good but I need to work on creating a lighter cake and a fluffier filling to get the textures right for a whoopie pie. This is a project that I will certainly make again, with a few modifications. I hope you try these and please let me know how yours turn out!

A Failure

Pride goeth before a fall? Yes. Good grief. I fell. Not literally, thankfully. In the kitchen I figuratively fell in quite a big way. I recently learned about the amazing cake pops that Bakerella makes. Amazing! Have you seen them? See them here. True baking genius. I so desired to be that fabulous that I thought "I can do that" and I set about fantasizing that I would make these lovely morsels for everyone I know and that soon I would be getting calls from Bakerella herself asking if we could be best friends. It was a short-lived fantasy. I baked up a cake. Burned it around the edges. Oops. Made some frosting. It was gross. I'm still not sure why. Mixed the burned cake and gross frosting together in the wrong proportions and ended up with these. Cake turds. Oh sigh. I hate when things go horribly wrong. I made a second attempt two days later and this time the cake and frosting were much more edible, downright tasty even, but then I remembered that I absolutely stink at dipping things in chocolate. I can't even bring myself to show you the results. I haven't decided yet if I'm calling this a permanent defeat and accepting that I'm no good at chocolate dipping or if I will persevere. Right now I'm going to just sit on the couch and nurse my wounded pride with a cup of hot tea. I hope you are having a nice warm drink right now too.

Dissertation on the Whoopie Pie

If you said to me "What is a Whoopie Pie" I would say, silently to myself "really?" in an incredulous tone, and then out loud I would say "It is whipped sugary perfection sandwiched between two decadent layers of chocolate cake. It is portable soul food. It will cheer you up no matter what your day was like." And then I would invite you over and make you a batch of them.

Growing up in Maine, and with the excellent baker of a mom that I am lucky to have, I ate lots and lots of the very best whoopie pies. Here I will share with you her recipe. I don't know where she got it from originally but after making them for the last 30+ years she has perfected even the nearly perfect recipe with which she started. Here it is in it's fully modified glory:

For the cake:

1/2 c. shortening (embrace the shortening, it's worth it for this recipe)

1 c. sugar

2 eggs

2 1/4 c. flour

1/2 c. cocoa (I find the dark chocolate kind is most decadent)

1 tsp. salt

1 tsp. baking soda

1 tsp. baking powder

1 c. sour milk (add 1 tsp vinegar to your milk and let sit a minute or so)

1 tsp. vanilla

When I took the recipe from my mother, I wrote down "beat and bake at 325" - my how helpful! What I found actually works is to cream together the shortening and sugar, then add eggs and beat until fluffy-ish. I'm exceedingly lazy with baking and don't like using multiple bowls, however, I will make the exception on this recipe. In a separate bowl, mix together all of your dry ingredients. Dump them into the main mixing bowl and add the milk and vanilla. You can alternate dry with wet here but like I said, I'm lazy so I do it all at once. Beat this mixture until fully blended and there are (almost) no lumps left. You should have batter that is like a cake batter on steroids - it should be slightly firm so that will stay mounded up when you put it on a cookie sheet.

Next you bake - I bake on a Silpat but parchment works well too, or just use a lot of cooking spray on your cookie sheet. I use my small cookie scoop to make the cakes and over fill it for each one. My mom prefers a larger scoop. You choose what works for you. A regular spoon will do the trick too. Pop them in the oven for 12 min. on 325. Check them with a toothpick - if it comes out clean they are done.

While those are cooling, mix your filling. There are so many kinds of filling but this is our favorite.

Filling:

1/4 c. soft unsalted butter

1/2 c. shortening

2 c. confectioner's sugar

2 tsp. vanilla

milk

I can't give you an exact amount on the milk. Sorry. Cream the butter and shortening and add the vanilla. Then mix in your confectioner's sugar and you will have a lumpy mess. Don't give up. Add milk just a splash at a time and before you know it you will have a creamy delicious concoction. When you get to that point, turn your mixer up to high and let it go for about 2 minutes and it will whip your concoction up into a light fluffy filling that you will want to eat all by itself.

And then the real magic happens. Pair up your cakes and spread some of that heavenly filling on the bottom and stick on the top. Eat the first one for quality control. Then finish the rest. I recommend wrapping them in individual plastic bags because the cakes become very...non-dry...after a short time and will stick to anything they touch. (I loathe the word "moist", if you are wondering what that was about.)

Why are you still reading? Go make them!

Sending Love (to myself via beautiful paper)

Nothing says "love" like sparkly red and white paper. It makes my day. And what makes my day even better is that it's a perfect day for crafting. If you have read my last posts you will guess that it must be snowing, my favorite kind of day, and you will be right. We have a lovely fresh dusting over everything. It's the kind that sticks to all the tree branches and makes the world look like a winter wonderland. I can call it that because my wonderful husband did all the shoveling while the kids and I are celebrating by having pajama day and watching movies and, of course, crafting.


I thought I would share some Valentine cards that I've been creating with the sparkly delicious new paper from Stampin' Up! - Sending Love. (You can find it in the Occasions Mini catalog). I would eat it if I could. I also got the I {Heart} Hearts set and I DO {heart} hearts! This combinaton is really floating my boat right now.


The second card features more of the amazing Sending Love glittery paper in a different pattern and I used the small curly label punch. Both cards are accented with pink pearls from Memory Box.



Speaking of Memory Box, I adore their new Valentine Studio line and I picked up a few stamps at Ink About It over the weekend. I'm off to the craft room now to see what I can do with my new treasures. I will keep you "post"ed. (Haha, cheesy play on words, forgive me.)

Baby It's Cold Outside

It's another snowy Sunday here. My favorite kind of day! The kids are begging to go use their new sleds and we have a pot roast going in the crockpot for a classic Sunday dinner. I have a mountain of laundry and cleaning to do to get us ready to go back to school and work tomorrow, but before I tackle that I thought I'd share one of my favorite snowy day cards. I made the pom pom out of some soft and inexpensive yarn from the local A.C. Moore. The striped paper is from K&Company and the card stock is my favorite Stampin' Up! Pretty in Pink and textured Old Olive. The snowflakes and sentiment are from My Favorite Things and of course I added glitter with Stickles. Does it get better than fuzzy pom pom hats and glittered snowflakes? Not for me. And now to procrastinate even more, I'm going to curl up with a hot chocolate and watch the snow fall for a little longer. Happy Snow Day!