Ladder Shelf

This ladder shelf was the second of my two big projects this summer! The adventure started out with finding a ladder that would fit the bill. My mom and I went to Barrett's Antique Market about 2 minutes from my house and found this beauty. It was a great size and in great shape, it even still had the original Sears, Roebuck, and Co. sticker on it!!

The next thing to be done was the sanding and priming, which evolved into scraping and chipping paint off of the ladder. Next, I primed the ladder and let that dry.

I went to the hardware store and picked out my paint, I eventually decided on "Tahitian Sky" and I couldn't have been happier with the way it turned out! It is simply the cutest, most fun blue, plus it complements the color my chair quite nicely! While waiting for it to dry after painting and repainting the ladder, I turned my attention to the actual shelves. My dad and I went and bought the wood (and I learned about all the different grades etc. of wood!) and then started assembling the shelves.

Initially I was under the impression that you could just buy wood that was wide enough for shelves but apparently that was not the case! My dad explained that we would have to cut the wood and then join two pieces together using a wood joiner, wood glue, clamps and biscuits. The wood joiner is sort of like a saw but it just makes groves on the side of wood so that the biscuits and wood glue can be inserted into them and hold the wood together. After gluing the boards together we clamped the wood until it dried. Once the shelves were complete I painted them and cut them to size.

Here is the finished product all set up and assembled in my dorm at UVa! A special thanks to Dad for helping me with the project! Can't wait until I get home and can think of another fun project to do together!

Carrot Cupcakes

I've been wanting to try out a carrot cupcake recipe for a while and finally just chose a recipe and went with it. The recipe I used produced a lighter, fluffier cake that contrasted the traditional dense base of carrot cake. I was pleased with the lighter cake batter, but at the same time it made it that much harder to just eat one (or two). The recipe I used included raisins, which I feel are vital to carrot cake, but if you're not a fan they can be omitted. I frosted the cupcakes with a cream cheese frosting and added fondant carrots to the tops.

Ingredients:
1 pound carrots, peeled and grated
3 large eggs
1/3 cup buttermilk
2 cups sugar
1 1/2 cups vegetable oil
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla
1/2 cup golden raisins
3 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon each of salt, cinnamon, + ground ginger
1/8 teaspoon ground cloves
Preheat oven to 325 F. Whisk together carrots, eggs, buttermilk, sugar, oil, vanilla and raisins. Mix the dry ingredients in a separate bowl and then combine with the wet ingredients. Divide batter evenly among the cups and bake 23-28 minutes, rotating half way through, until a toothpick inserted into the centers comes out clean. Transfer to wire racks to cool.

Cream Cheese Frosting
1 cup unsalted butter, room temperature
12 ounces cream cheese, room temperature
1 pound confectioners sugar, sifted
3/4 teaspoon vanilla extract

Beat cream cheese and butter until fluffy, about 2 minutes. Add sugar 1/2 cup at a time and then vanilla, and mix until smooth.

To finish the cupcakes, make a batch of fondant, color it orange and green and then shape the fondant into miniature carrots. For detail, I added little lines to the orange part of the carrots with the dull side of a knife.

Ladybug Cupcakes

I made these ladybug cupcakes for a party I attended. The ladybugs are made out of fondant that was dyed black and red. I made the fondant using mini marshmallows, water, and powdered sugar. To make the fondant you put 8 oz. of mini marshmallows and 2 tbps. water in a microwave safe bowl and microwave for 1 minute and then stir. If there are still lumps you can put the marshmallows back in the microwave. After the marshmallows are smooth, add in 4 cups of powdered sugar a little at a time, then knead the fondant until it is the desired consistency, adding more powdered sugar as necessary. If you are just making one color, you can add the food coloring into the melted marshmallows before adding the powdered sugar, but if you want to make more than one color then wait until after you knead the fondant and the add the coloring. This recipe makes alot of fondant and was way more than necessary for my 24 ladybugs, but it can keep for a while in the refrigerator to be used for something else.To assemble the ladybugs simply make 24 red ovals and 24 black balls and then add the desired amount of spots using small balls of black fondant. To give the appearance of grass, I used a Wilton #233 tip (with multiple openings) and piped on the green icing.

Embroidered/Appliqued Pillow

After sewing my slip cover I gained some confidence in my sewing abilities. I made this pillow to go with my chair that I covered. To make the pillow I started by working on the applique. I cut out the various pieces of fabric and then cut out matching pieces of "Bondaweb" which is an iron-on fabric fuser. I ironed on the fabric and then went back and machine stitched around the outside of the fabric to secure on the fabric. After sewing on the various pieces of fabric I hand embroidered some detail on the bird and leaves. Next, I cut up little pieces of fabric to make the nest and then sewed those onto the fabric. Once all of the applique was finished I sewed the fabric onto a blue background to provide contrast and bring out the blue in the bird's eggs. I then sewed the front onto the two back pieces and then stuffed it with the pillow.

Rainbow Cake

I saw this Rainbow Cake on a blog and instantly knew I wanted to make it! The cake is just a white cake that is dyed with gel food coloring ( the gel is the key to making the colors so vibrant). Having the cake be white also helped to make the colors stand out. In order to make sure that all of the layers were the same size we weighed the batter (subtracting out the pre-measured weight of the mixing bowl) and then divided that by six to get the weight of each layer. Next, we put a bowl on the scale, zero-ed it out and then weighed out the correct amount of batter, then we repeated it for the next five layers. Once the batter was evenly divided between the six bowls we colored each one, then put them into six parchment lined and greased pans. After they were baked they were allowed to cool for 10 minutes in the pans and then taken out to cool more. We used a butter cream frosting and stacked the layers and then iced the outside of the cake.

Slip Cover!!

Since I found out that I would be an RA for the upcoming school year I had started thinking about how to decorate my dorm room. RAs are given standard double rooms but I won't have a roommate, therefore will have some extra space in my room! I had been on the hunt for a while for a good chair and then it turned out that my Grammy had this chair that needed a home! My mom and I started our slipcover project by going to the fabric stores and perusing the fabric for something that would suit my chair (Criteria: comfy, washable, light enough to not show tons of lint, dark enough to not show tons of dirt, and inexpensive).
Meeting all of these requirements proved to be harder than I had anticipated. Fabric can be so expensive, especially when working on a large project!! After looking at about 4 different fabric stores and going back to a couple of them, I ended up ordering my fabric from JoAnn's fabrics online store and used a 40% off coupon!! Even with the shipping, the fabric cost way less this way, plus the store didn't have enough of what I needed in stock. My mom and I started to use a pattern that we got from the fabric store that seemed pretty basic. The pattern instructed us to seam together the lengths of fabric that we calculated would be needed for our chair. Next, the pattern called to make ties that would attach to this giant rectangle that would somehow give this "slipcover" the proper shape...we got about 1/4 way through and decided that this pattern was not exactly what we had in mind so decided to make a change in plan (or CIP as my dad likes to say).
We decided to go back to square one. Square one = public library. Public library = best friend. The public library was a HUGE help in this project!! We got 7 books and 2 VHS tapes from the library and saved a whole bunch of money! We started out by watching the videos, one was more helpful than the other. The first video we watched was pretty much just showing different slip covers and how to use them to decorate, but it was well worth the time watching it for all of the shoulder pads and big hair do's of the early 90s. The second video was very helpful and showed step by step instructions.

Here is what the chair looks like to start with! The chair is really comfortable but the fabric just didn't go with the rest of my decor, thus the slip cover project begins.

The lady on the video suggested that we start with the cushion so that we could get a feel for how to cut out, sew, and put everything together, plus, this way we could say we finished something. We decided to put a zipper in the back so that it could taken off and washed.

To make the cover we had to measure all of the different pieces and then measure and cut out the fabric into pieces. After all of the pieces were cut out to size we pinned them onto the chair to make sure they would all fit together. We started out by sewing the front of the back to the back of the back, then sewing the deck to the front of the deck. Next, we sewed both of those things together, and then sewed on the two arms. One thing that we did not think of and had to do a little fixing was making sure the nap all went to same way. It was definitely a lot easier using fabric that did not have a pattern, especially since my sewing skills were a little rusty (but I have definitely become a lot more comfortable with the sewing machine after doing this project!). Once all of the pieces were sewn together we had to try it on the chair, find what needed to be fixed and then take it off and make the appropriate adjustments. After we were happy with the cover we had to add the skirt. We decided that a soft ruffle would look the best. To make the soft ruffle, you have to cut out the fabric and then near the top sew two parallel lines using the sewing machine on a setting with a wide and long stitch size, enabling the fabric to be bunched up slightly. Next, you have to change the sewing machine setting back to the regular stitch size and go back over the lines that you made before so the ruffles stay in place. After the various pieces were ruffled we sewed them together and then sewed the skirt onto the cover.

Here is the finished project!! It took about 30 hours for my mom and I to complete the project but it was a lot cheaper and more fun than getting it professionally covered!

Care for Some Pie?

My cousin came over the other day and we baked these "pie" cupcakes. The cupcakes are vanilla with vanilla frosting. To make the frosting look like pie crust we added a couple of drops of yellow food coloring and about a tablespoon of hot cocoa mix! The recipe actually called for cocoa powder but I improvised with hot cocoa mix since we didn't have any cocoa powder. The "fruit" in the pie are M&Ms!!

To decorate the cupcakes we sorted the M&Ms into colors and then topped the cupcakes with them. After the M&Ms were placed (M side down) we put the icing in a pastry bag and piped the rim of the crust followed by the lattice.