Subway Art

It didn't take long. It was definitely inevitable. But I admit it. I am addicted to Pinterest. It is a great way to see what's out there on the internet, specifically the blog world, regarding food, crafts and decor. (There is a TON more on there but that is what I am particularly interested in.)

I came across Subway Art on Pinterest. I've seen this style of artwork all over but I did not know that it had a specific name until seeing in on Pinterest. I really love it and it can be made completely personalized to look however you want and to say whatever you want. When I saw different Halloween and Seasonal versions online I immediately thought of Picnik.com. If you have never been over there, try it out, because if nothing else, it is FUN. I just created a collage without adding pictures. I had a blast using all different fonts and colors. And conveniently, Picnik makes it's seasonal items free during that season. So there were loads of Halloween and Autumn fonts and pictures available for a free subscriber like myself. I want to make a Christmas one also, but I am going to wait until those items are free also.

Once I created and saved my art, I printed onto photo paper and framed in cheapy Wal-Mart 11x14 frames I paid $5 each for. Quick, cheap, easy and FUN! It really adds to my Fall Decor, I LOVE how they turned out!

Bacon Mac

I am loving MyRecipes.com! I used to be an allrecipes.com girl (well, I still am) but this site includes recipes from several major publications including Cooking Light magazine, which I LOVE! It also has tons of food slide shows for inspiration and ideas. It's easily searchable and I have tried several recipes from it. This macaroni and cheese is one of those recipes. It came from Cooking Light and it lists the nutritional information, but it does have pasta and cheese so it's not exactly low calorie and I doubled the amount of bacon it called for so, I am not including this as a "diet" meal. But it was delicious, leftovers were good, and the picky baby ate it! I served it with the butternut squash soup for a very wholesome, well rounded meal.

Bacon Mac

This is the recipe exactly from the website. The only change that I made was I used 4 slices of bacon instead of 2. Otherwise, I followed it exactly. You can find the original posting of the recipe here. For the pasta, I used Barilla Piccolini Mini Penne.

3 1/4 teaspoons salt, divided

12 ounces strozzapreti or penne pasta

4 teaspoons all-purpose flour

1 1/2 cups skim milk, divided

2 cups finely shredded sharp cheddar cheese, divided

1/4 cup sliced green onions

1 teaspoon hot sauce

1/4 teaspoon pepper

2 slices center-cut bacon, cooked and crumbled

Cooking spray

1. Preheat broiler.
2. Bring 6 quarts water and 1 tablespoon salt to a boil. Add pasta; cook 8 minutes or until al dente; drain.
3. Combine flour and 1/2 cup milk in a saucepan over medium heat. Gradually add 1 cup milk; bring to a boil. Cook 1 minute, stirring constantly. Remove from heat; let stand 4 minutes or until it cools to 155°. Stir in 1 1/2 cups cheese. Add 1/4 teaspoon salt, onions, hot sauce, pepper, and bacon; stir. Add pasta; toss. Spoon into a 2-quart broiler-safe dish coated with cooking spray; top with 1/2 cup cheese. Broil 7 minutes.

Milk, cheese, green onions, flour, hot sauce, salt and pepper.
The track lights in my kitchen make for a lot of shadows. I do try to avoid them as much as possible.

The cheese sauce on the stove.

Mixed up with the pasta in the casserole dish.

Topped generously with more cheese.

Out of the broiler.

Ready to eat!
I really love the crispy crust on top from the broiling process.

Look What I Made!

I don't sew. I have sewn. I know the basic logistics of sewing. I have a sewing machine. But I don't sew.

But I want to.

I have seen pillowcase dresses all over the internet. I didn't have an extra pillowcase but I did have this lovely damask fabric I bought last year to make a baby carrier (but never did).

There are a TON of pillowcase dress tutorials online. I made mine using a combination of two. I used this one to get the measurements, basic pattern, and bias tape instructions and I used this one for the neck line.

I thought it came out pretty good. I used the fabric to make my own bias tape to use for the armholes. This was something I wasn't sure that I could do, but since it turned out pretty good, I feel more confident for future arm holes and neck holes. So my baby dress making career can begin!

I really wanted to use some pretty satin robin's egg blue ribbon for the tie but it was about 2 inches wide and therefore did not work at all.

Finally, the fabric is not as wide as a pillowcase so the dress is more narrow than it should be. Normally, in a pillowcase dress it is gathered more on the top and therefore will flair out more towards the bottom. Mine is a bit more straight down. It think it looks great on Miss E and I think she likes it too!

Butternut Squash Soup

Hooray for Fall! It is my favorite time of year even though it stayed in the 90s throughout September and has been in the 80s so far this month. Still, with Football on TV and Halloween around the corner I am determined to make the most of October. I am a little bit obsessed with pumpkins anyway, so everything about this month suits me. Butternut Squash ANYTHING is the perfect flavor for fall (second to pumpkin, that is) and a comforting soup is just what you need to compliment that crisp, cool, fall air. I mean of course, if you don't live in Texas. Like I do. But that crisp air is sneaking in here and there and this soup can help you pretend it's Fallish outside even if it's not.

I knew I wanted to make this soup although I've never made it before and it's been probably ten years since I've eaten it. But I knew what I wanted it to taste like so I scoured the internet for recipes and ingredients that inspired me and came up with this recipe. It came out exactly as I wanted it to, which is rare for me on a first time trial. It keeps really well and tastes great as leftovers. If the heat has got you down and not feeling this autumn season, this soup will be the cure for that! Serve with an Oktoberfest brew (I love Shiner's) or a Pumpkin Ale (Sam Adams' is my favorite) to really get in the fall spirit.

Butternut Squash Soup

1/2 tsp each:
  garlic powder
  cinnamon
  ginger
  nutmeg
  turmeric
  curry
1 TB olive oil
1 small onion, chopped
1/2 small apple, peeled and chopped (I used gala)
1 TB brown sugar
1 Butternut squash, diced and steamed
3 C chicken broth
1 C milk
Salt and Pepper to taste
2 slices bacon

To prepare your squash:

Peel the outside with a vegetable peeler and slice in half.

 Scoop out the seeds with an ice cream scoop.

Dice roughly in cubes and steam on stove for 10 minutes or until fork tender.

A lot of recipes online suggest roasting the squash in the oven as the easiest way to cook it. I disagree and think preparing it this way for steaming is the easiest and quickest. You may disagree, in which case go ahead and roast away. Once done, scoop out all the squash and set aside.

Directions:

1. Saute apple and onion in olive oil for 2 minutes.

2. Add spice mixture, stir well and continue to cook until it is all incorporated. Add brown sugar. Stir well and cook until onions are translucent.

This smells amazing!

3. Add the squash and chicken broth to your pot. Season with salt and pepper. (I started off in a saute pan and had to switch to a dutch oven. I should have used a big pot to begin with!) Cook on med/high for 10 minutes.

 

4. Transfer to a blender or food processor and puree in small batches until smooth. How smooth it is is totally up to you.

I love a messy food processor!

5. Transfer your blended soup back to the stove and heat to a simmer. Add the milk. Stir a lot.

Blending.

6. Chop up 2 strips of bacon (or more if you'd like) and cook.
7. Serve up with a bacon garnish!

Fall in a bowl!

Cake Fail

Okay, okay, I keep talking about how poorly the birthday cake and cupcakes turned out. I am probably exaggerating and overreacting but the one thing that did not turn out the way I wanted and expected, OF COURSE is the one thing I am going to focus on.

I decided to buy all kinds of cake decorating tools and watch all kinds of cake decorating YouTube videos so that I could go ahead and start fulfilling my dream of being a cake decorator in my retirement. I mean really Duff and Buddy and the DC cupcake girls and the Cakedivas and ALL the rest make it look SO easy. Yeah. It's not. :( Apparently it takes more than watching some videos. The good news is that I think what it truly takes is practice. So there is time to perfect my skills before I retire.

The other good news is that I served cake pops which were a hit so I'm not it's not a total failure.

First I made a 6" mini smash cake for Everleigh. The cake was really yummy. I made a pumpkin cake from scratch. I had intended to make a healthy cake for her. I had intended for it to be more of a pumpkin bread kind of cake and I was going to make it with applesauce instead of oil, flax instead of eggs, and whole wheat flour instead of white all purpose. I had gathered a few recipes and somewhere in the bunch was this pumpkin cake recipe. I was planning this party for weeks. So when I actually went to bake her cake I was going through the recipes I'd gathered, grabbed this one, knew I had the ingredients and went to work. Basically, I totally forgot my plan to go healthy. At the end of the day, E ate less than one adult size piece of cake so it really and truly did not matter. And this pumpkin cake was yummy. I used canned cream cheese frosting because I don't make my own frosting. Although, in the future, I may.

I baked the cake in two 8" pans. It was my first shot at a layer cake. Once I had put the layers together, I cut around the circumference of the cake about an inch in. This left me with a 6 inch cake. I watched this one YouTube video over and over to learn how to get smooth frosting on a cake. I thought it turned out pretty good.

You can see the pieces I cut off in the background. Don't worry, they didn't go to waste!

And here is where it started to go horribly wrong for me. The frosting started melting. Immediately. It pooled around the bottom of the cake, ruining all the work and concentration I'd put into getting the sides smooth. Mind you, this was in August. The hottest August on record for the state of Texas. The high temperature on the day of her party was 106 and that was typical for the week/month/summer. But I was inside. My cake was inside. It's stays 75 and below inside. It's a head scratcher.

But I pressed on and stuck it in the fridge. Now for the decorations.

I made marshmallow fondant. It was my first time to do it and it was SO easy. I really enjoyed it. But, you are dealing with mounds of melted marshmallows which makes holding a camera while prepping the food impossible. So, no pics.

But, basically, you melt mini marshmallows in the microwave with a little water and then add powdered sugar until you get a play-doh consistency. And then it is oh so fun! I separated my mixture into 3 parts and colored each with food coloring. My final result was a little swirly and tie-dyish but I think that's because I did not knead the "dough" enough after adding the food color to thoroughly mix it in. But I liked the look. I cut flowers out with cookie cutters. I rolled a bunch of pink out and shaped it into a swirly E for the top.

Everything I read about marshmallow fondant said to NOT put the decorations on the cake until it is ready to be displayed. With my mess of a melty cake this was great advice so I stacked each flower and the E in a plastic container separated by parchment paper and stuck it in the fridge.

As far as the cupcakes go, I frosted them the night before and had the same turnout as the cake frosting. Totally melted away. I used white frosting that I dyed blue and orange with food coloring and I used pink strawberry frosting. Strangely, the strawberry held up pretty well and did not melt. I think maybe there was something defective about the white frosting. I was also extremely short on frosting. Once I ladled it into the pastry bag and squeezed it out in a cute little swirl, I only had enough for 5 or 6 cupcakes. And the swirl on the blue and orange disappeared right away. So cute swirls were a lost cause making for ugly cupcakes. :( I used a boxed funfetti cake mix for the cupcakes and they turned out terrible, I don't really know why but in addition to ugly cupcakes, they just didn't taste good. Total fail. I stuck the toppers in at the VERY last minute. They are scrapbook stickers that I stuck to toothpicks. It really helped with the overall look.

On the day of the party I randomly placed the flowers on and around the cake on the cake stand. I put the E on top and completed it with a glittery "1" candle.

The total presentation.

As the party started, my cake was out on display and the flowers on the side were already sliding off and melting away. It was put in the fridge. Below is what the cake looked like by the time we were ready to serve it and we sang Happy Birthday. Frosting melting everywhere.



But Everleigh loved it!

She even liked the marshmallow fondant:

So, clearly, it was not a TOTAL fail!

Everleigh's First Birthday! Cake and Presents!

Photobomb!!!

Sweet face. Waiting for cake!



Kiddos waiting for cake.

 Singing Happy Birthday:

First Bites:

Her cousin is trying to show her how to use her fingers to eat it!

Really digging in now:

Once it got in her hair we were about through!

She had a quick bath and outfit change and then it was time for presents!

Such a fun day for a beautiful little girl!