When it gets below 100 out its baking weather!

(Imagine a dog laying by a couch)

Izzy wiped out by the heat



This summer it has been crazy hot!  We have not had any rain in our part of the country in weeks so I have been to hot to bake.  But we had a few days where it did not reach 100 until late afternoon making me believe that it is baking time!  A baking weekend was declared!

Friday
I found this fun recipe for these Chocolate-frosted Peanut butter Cookie Bars on Our Best Bites.   I believed them when they said they are quick to make only 15 min and with things found in your own pantry!  Yea!  lol so this was about 7pm.  I went to my pantry and quickly found that I did not have many key ingredients (read: peanut butter, butter, vanilla) so off to Walmart.  Then as I was precisely following the directions apparently just dumping all the ingredients in the bowl.  Lets just say many things happened between starting and pulling the finished product out of the oven around 9:50pm.  Just a note I found that I needed to add more water to the icing to make it spread and I needed to cook the cookie about 7 more min to get it to set up enough to put anything on top.  I must say it was worth it they are so yummy!

Saturday

I decided to try out a vanilla cake from scratch.  This was my first scratch cake that is not one of the tried and true recipes in my mother's recipe box.  Lets just say it did not go so well. This time I actually followed the directions.  Something was off.  I had more of a cornbread consistency that was a super yummy batter but a not so good cake.  I also had some trouble with the crust.  It was super thick and started popping off so I pulled it off made a lackluster frosting and called it good.

So I think I am going to work with the vanilla cake.  Make sure I have the ingredients on hand for the peanut butter cookie bars because they are oh so good!  And try out a cinnamon roll recipe this week.

What yummy quick recipe do you whip together when you have company on the way?

Where did July go?

Hello!  It seems like July just zipped by so quickly and I was side tracked with so many summery things.  

I have not got to be very crafty in July but I did go to a Harry Potter Marathon and got my very own Harry Potter 3-D glasses!! So I'm chalking July up as a success! 

Moving on to August! 

I have been working on several ideas for embroidery so I thought I would start out with a simple kitchen towel project. So with out further ado.  I used the light box and draw it on with pencil method.  I used a drawing from the book Rainbow of Stitches. 

 

So here I used the Stem Stitch to outline the blender and the mixer following the tutorial from Needle 'n Thread

So here is my final piece.  I really like how it turned out. 

And because I am always nosey and want to see here is the back of my piece.  I messed up a little on the first one I worked on so I am going to go back and tuck in the threads.