Grandma's Red Cake

Bad cell phone pic of the remnants of our red cake

One of the things I absolutely love about the holidays is getting to eat "home food."  Home food typically consists of dishes that never taste the same outside of my parents' or Grandma's house as well as a few local restaurant dishes.  One such "home food" that screams Christmas to me is Grandma's red cake.  We each have a piece for dessert after Christmas lunch and tend to fight over the leftovers in the days after Christmas.  Here's how Grandma makes her cake:
 

A Tasty Treat for the Holidays

Every year my parents and I make up some tasty treats to give to neighbors and members of the choir at church.  This year, I was inspired by my friend, HK.  She made chocolate covered peanut butter cracker sandwiches to give away as party favors for a birthday party.  It tastes great for a rather odd combination.  Needless to say, I stole her recipe and made up a bunch of these to hand out.  Want super easy instructions?  Read on.

HK's chocolate covered peanut butter sandwiches

Chef v1.5

Another shameless plug for Jeff & company:  Chef v1.5 is now available!  New features include:

• Editing of imported recipes
• Enhanced photo picker to choose recipe photo
• Ability to email recipes straight from Chef app

If you're running Windows 8 and haven't checked it out yet, why wait?

Chainmaille Gifts

My extended family does a luck of the draw system for Christmas presents, but we exchange small gifts with everyone.  This year I decided to do box chain chainmaille bracelets for my aunts.  Here are the colors I'm using:

I'm doing one of each of these color combos:  green & yellow, light blue & dark blue, pink & red, red & black, black & gunmetal.  Can't wait to see how they turn out!  To see my previous blog on box weave bracelets, click here.

Christmas Deco Polymesh Wreath

Now that we're into the holiday season, I thought I'd share my Christmas deco polymesh wreath.  I only used one roll of polymesh and made the poofs bigger than those on my last wreath.  To see my Halloween wreath and instructions on how to make your own, click here.

Thanksgiving Feast 2012

Thanksgiving was a great success at the not so big blue house.  We had food coming out our ears and spent it with great friends who are also Seattle "transplants" like us.

Oven roasted turkey.  Jeff wasn't pleased that it wasn't a nice shade of brown, but I think it tasted great.

More pictures after the break!

Thai Iced Tea

Sorry for yet another repost, folks.  Things are getting busy in the not so big blue house and I don't anticipate them getting any better before the holidays are over.  So without further adieu, here is a slightly edited repost of Thai iced tea that Jeff put together in February 2009.

One of my favorite drinks to get at a Thai restaurant is the Thai iced tea. It's the perfect drink for a hot summer day and it complements the food nicely. The one bad thing is the only place you can get a good glass of it is at a Thai restaurant or maybe at a Bubble Tea stand. For quite some time now I've been searching for a method of brewing and assembling the drink at home. I'm glad to say my search has been successful.

Chef for Windows 8

Chef is an app for Windows 8 by Downtown Bellevue(disclaimer:  Jeff is a part of this group) which became available in the Windows 8 Store yesterday.  I'm so excited that they had their app published that I decided to share here.  So, what is Chef?  It's a recipe organizing, menu planning, shopping list creation app.  Want more details?  I'll explain more after the break.

Buttermilk Rolls

With Halloween behind us, I'm setting my sights on Thanksgiving.  One of our guests' favorite things on our Thanksgiving table is Jeff's buttermilk rolls.  This is a slightly edited repost of his recipe from our old blog.  Enjoy.

White bread is a great place to start for the starting baker, it's straight forward and with careful steps pretty hard to mess up. These buttermilk rolls are soft, fluffly and have one hell of a buttermilk taste. They complement a meal perfectly and will fill your home with a wonderful smell.


The following recipe is from Peter Reinhart's Bread Bakers Apprentice (White Bread variation 2). The book is great and I would highly recommend to anyone interested in the science behind bread baking. This is my go to recipe for bread, dinner rolls, hot dog buns and hamburger buns. The same dough can be shaped into each of these and the results are delicious. This post will show you how to make the roll variation.

Pumpkin Carving!

Halloween is an awesome holiday.  One of my favorite things to do at Halloween is gather a few friends, a bunch of pumpkins, and carve it up!  Here are this year's pumpkins(in super crappy cellphone quality):

Read more about my Walter White and Gizmo pumpkins after the break!

Deco Polymesh Wreath

Deco poly mesh is so fun to work with.  I've seen people make wreaths, garlands, or even a little Christmas tree with it.  I discovered it at my local Ben Franklin and finally took a chance on it last Halloween.  Here's what resulted.  It's not the prettiest wreath, but it's a good first try coming from me.  Want to make your own?  Read on!

Rapid Track

Here's another bracelet from a kit at Blue Buddha Boutique. It's called Rapid Track and it was designed by Kat Wisniewski.

The Cellini Spiral Disaster

I've decided to tell the tale of the cellini spiral disaster I keep alluding to.  It happened last Christmas.  I saw a cellini spiral bracelet somewhere on the internet and decided it was a great idea to make one for each of my aunts.  To be sure I could pull it off, I made a first try/sample.  It looked like this:

Since this one came out pretty well, I decided to pull the trigger and buy all the supplies I needed for the rest of the bracelets.

Experiment: Garter Belt Weave

I discovered this weave on Pinterest and searched all over the internet before coming across a materials list.  The weave appears to have been designed by Dylon White and he offers instructions for sale here.  I ordered my rings from Blue Buddha Boutique as usual and quickly got to work once they arrived.  Unfortunately, this weave didn't come out quite right.  The inner rings don't fit inside the outer rings properly.  I'm planning on ordering smaller inner rings and trying again.  Second try update coming soon...

Ripple Earrings

 

These earrings are another find from Rebeca Mojica's book, Chained.  They're basically box chain using multiple sizes of rings.  I was really bummed that there wasn't a supply list included in the book and thought I wouldn't get to make them.  Luckily, the people over at Blue Buddha Boutique took this into account and started offering a kit with enough rings to make two pairs of earrings.  I split the kit with my chainmaille loving friend and we quickly worked up some beautiful earrings!

Sip and Paint, Anyone?

Have you heard about the sip and paint classes that seem to be popping up all over the place?  After seeing articles about them all over, I finally attended my first class in April at Palettes and Pairings in Kirkland and loved it.  I was initially really nervous about going because I haven't painted anything since junior high, but my painting turned out great! 



Painting 1:  "Serengeti Tree"

 

Coiled Butterfly Bracelet and Earrings

This is the limited edition large size of Coiled Butterfly from Blue Buddha Boutique.  To read more about it, click here!

Daiquiris

This is a (slightly edited) repost from our old blog from February 2009 (hence the really bad pictures):

Menu Board

Have you ever been stuck in a dinner rut?  When this happened to us, we got into a bad habit of "I don't know what do you want for dinner" before giving up and going out to eat.  Eventually, that had to stop.  We started looking at our recipe books and picking out things we'd like to try and nailing down the week's menu before going shopping.  This turned out lots better than wandering around the store hoping dinner inspiration would magically appear.  To help us with our planning, I made this wipe off menu board.  I first saw one at a friend's house and she, of course, found it on Pinterest.  It's super easy and super helpful!

Three Row Reversible Japanese Lace Bracelet

Here's my first try at Japanese lace.  It's a pretty simple weave and looks great in bright colors.  I first saw the two row version in a book, but decided I liked the three-row variation better.

You can "regrow" green onions?

While browsing the gardening pins on Pinterest, I came across one that claimed you could plant the typically unused white root part of a green onion and it would regrow.  At the time this sounded ridiculous because I'd never thought about doing anything other than throwing it in the compost bin; now I'm embarrassed I even had that thought.

Box Weave Chainmaille Bracelet

The first thing I thought of when I saw the box weave bracelet was a fancy men's bracelet that you'd see on a well-off guy on a TV show or movie.  It was too neat of a weave to pass up, so I decided to use bright colors to make it a little more girly.  The pictures made it look pretty complicated, but it turned out to be fairly easy once I got the hang of it.  Read on to see how you can make one too.

Nail String Art

This project has been on my radar for a while thanks to Pinterest.  Most of the examples I have seen use a state with a heart over a city.  I decided to do my home state, but with a twist:  an I for the University of Illinois instead of a heart.  Want to make your own?  Read on.

Patchwork Chainmaille Bracelet

Over the holidays I was perusing Mom's collection of beading magazines and came across the article "Patchwork Principle" in the April 2008 issue of Bead & Button.  It featured a bracelet made of patchwork rounds based on the Celtic star pattern designed by Amanda Shero.  I loved how different and colorful it was and chose it to be my first chainmaille project.  I put this bracelet together before I ever even thought about starting this blog, so this post is a show and tell.  If you want to know more about it, you can find the instructions and pre-made kits at the designer's website or by tracking down the magazine.