Make-It Monday: CAKE!

The men were going to do all of the cooking for Mother's Day, but I have been wanting to bake a cake for a while now and can't just bake one for the fun of it since Matt doesn't eat cake and I can't eat a whole cake myself (well...I can...but I shouldn't). So...I decided to bake a cake for yesterday, while Matt did the appetizers.



While perusing blogs a while ago I found this blog and LOVED what she did with cake! Lots of colour and who can resist a rainbow cake! So, Mother's Day would be my perfect excuse to bake a rainbow cake!



Except...I only have one round 8" cake pan (or so I thought, I have since found another while putting the one I used away!), and of course Noodle to tend to! So Saturday night at 9:30 I started on the cake. I thought 6 layers might be a bit much for me to tackle - it would probably topple over! So I decided on 3 layers so I would only have to do 3 oven watches before I could get to bed!



First, I mixed up the french vanilla batter and divided it into 3 bowls and added the dye (warning: I can't take a decent picture in our dim-lit kitchen at night!). I did one layer of blue, one of purple, and one of pink! Fun!


I wanted to be sure it was nice and cooled so I waited until yesterday to ice it. Just a fluffy white icing! Yum! I also added raspberry jam (seeds removed) between the layers and a few raspberries on the outside for decoration.

Looks like a pretty regular white cake, right?!

So imagine everyones surprise when my Mum cut into it and found this:

Tasty!

I think I might do this again, but tackle all 6 layers for Sloan's 1st Birthday! It was so fun and cheery!

xo JBM

Make-It Monday

This past Christmas Brad sent us a great craft gift! Paint-it-yourself paper lanterns! How neat! However, I have a strange fear of doing crafts like this - I'm afraid I'll crack open the box, plan what I want to do, start painting and then hate what I have done and then be disappointed that I have ruined the craft I was so excited about doing and since there is only one chance with this sort of thing I am then left with nothing! So the box sat unopened in Sloan's room since I knew I wanted to paint it for her room.

However...Make-it Monday gave me the idea to finally just do it! Imagine my surprise when I opened the box and found two lanterns - a back-up in case I mess up! Yay! This gave me a sense of relief and let me just get to it!

I have wanted to paint pottery for a while now since seeing this cute idea of "dottery" but since we don't have a pottery painting place anywhere near here I thought I would try the dottery on my lantern and look how cute it turned out (which you could see better if I could take a decent picture)!

I also made Make-It Monday muffins! Yum!

I can't throw out bananas...just can't. My freezer is overflowing with black bananas...or I should say WAS overflowing! Boneless skinless chicken breasts were on sale this weekend so I bought 15 (for the price I normally pay for about 4 or 5!) so I had to make room in the freezer! I threw out a few of the bananas that were on the bottom of the pile, but my Mum also called with a recipe for simple banana muffins at just the right time!

Easy Banana Muffins

1 egg

3/4 cup brown sugar

1/3 cup softened butter (not melted, but almost)

3 large ripened bananas mashed

1/2 tsp baking soda

1 1/2 cups flour

1 tsp baking powder

chocolate chips

Combine in the above order and bake at 350 for 14 min or until a tooth pic comes out clean.

*my changes*

I also added a dash of vanilla...just because. I didn't put a measurement for chocolate chips because you can use however many or little you want. I only had a little more than 1/2 cup (because yes, I am still eating chocolate chips out of the container for a chocolate fix Elsie!) so that's what I used this time, but I will be using more next time for sure - at least a cup...maybe a cup and a 1/4. Also, I cooked my muffins for 18 minutes, but I only made 12 large muffins, you could probably make 15 or 16 regular sized muffins but I didn't feel like having to watch the oven twice!

xo JBM

edit: I can't seem to fix the spacing!!!!

Make-It Monday

On top of Wordless Wednesday's (which I should try harder to keep up with), I'm going to start a new weekly addition of Make-It Monday's. Every Monday I'll do a post about something I have made - whether it be a craft, food....etc. Should be interesting!

When we were in Waterloo this past weekend I picked up some supplies to make some pacifier lanyards. I am planning on making a bunch of things to set up a table at the local market in the park this summer to make some extra dough. I have grand dreams that it will take off and I can start selling online and never have to work again....but in reality I'm not that great of a seamstress so we'll see how it goes!

So, here is the first one! I will make them with only one fabric, but for Sloan's I couldn't decide which fabric I liked best so I thought I would just use both of my fav's! I was in FabricLand for a loooong time (especially long considering Matt was waiting in the car with a napping Noodle), but it was SO hard to decide on which fabrics I liked best! I got 5 different patterns so stay tuned to see the rest!

I need to make it a little more narrow to let it fit better on the clip and through the soother handle part.

So, what do you think? What would you pay for such a thing?

xo JBM