Sweet Strawberry Cake

I've seen this on a few blogs over the summer and it caught my eye every time. I ate the whole thing myself!

*I am NOT pregnant. I'm an idiot and had part of this typed up last summer when I was!*

Adapted from Jam Hands

Ingredients:
3 tablespoons butter
3 tablespoons unsweetened applesauce
1 1/2 cups flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup plus 2 tablespoons sugar
1 egg
1/2 cup milk
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 lb strawberries, hulled and halved

Preheat oven to 350. Spray a 10-inch pie plate with non-stick cooking spray.

Mix flour, baking powder, and salt in a medium bowl.

Put softened butter and 1 cup sugar in another bowl and mix until pale and fluffy. Add in egg, milk, and vanilla. Gradually pour in flour mixture.

Transfer batter to pie plate. Arrange strawberries on top of batter, cut sides down and as close together as possible.

Sprinkle remaining 2 tablespoons sugar over berries.

Bake the cake for 10 minutes. Then reduce oven temperature to 325 degrees.

Bake until cake is golden brown and firm to the touch, about 1 hour.

You can smell the cake baking and you'll get so hungry! It was fabulous!

DIY Sew a Vinyl Play Mat

Babies are messy. They drool, they spit, and they poop. Connor loves to hang out on the floor and play, but we try to keep his mess contained to a small area that's easy to clean. I came with the idea of a vinyl play mat and it works really well for an easy clean up!

I bought a cheap tablecloth, washed it, and cut it down into a small rectangle.

To finish the edges, I used a zig zag stitch in light blue thread.

Just to make it more cute, I printed out these little animal silhouettes and traced them onto some white fabric. This wasn't vinyl, but it was vinyl-ish and kinda soft, so it worked.

I did some simple hand-embroidering for the eyes and ears.

I pinned the animals to one corner of the vinyl. The vinyl is hard to get completely flat and you can't iron it, but I did my best.

I used a tight zig-zag stitch to applique them onto the vinyl.

Here's Connor showing off his new play mat!

Like a proud mom, I had to take a million pictures!

Happy Little Pleasures - Summer Style

It's been too long since I've done one of these! In case you've never read them before, I originally started this blog to remind myself of the little things that make me happy and I wanted to share them with others. Here's my current list of things that help make me happy or make my life easier...

Red Velvet Ice Cream
We saw a commercial on tv and then we couldn't stop thinking about it until I finally brought some home one night after work. SO good and there's little cake chunks in it!
No socks
The summer is the best for this reason. I love going barefoot or wearing sandals! And who wouldn't want to show off their cute summer sandals, wedges or flats? (image from here)

Starbucks Refreshers
I try not to have too much caffeine, but sometimes I need a little jolt. Somehow, because this has juice in it, it seems healthier, so I don't feel so bad. I love the strawberry lemonade flavor!
Pacifier Clips
If you have a kid who thinks his pacifier is his BFF, I don't know how you could live without on (or three) of these. We have one that lives with the carseat so it's with him wherever he goes. The one time we didn't have it, I had a really hard time! This thing is a great lifesaver! BTW, Alicia Keys' son has the same one - I was happy to see the photo in People Magazine. Looks like some celebrities are just like us!
Oxy Clean
I had quite a mess when we spilled amoxicillin on our beige carpet in our bedroom. When we used some carpet cleaner on it, it stained the carpet pink! I freaked out and tried everything I could to lighten that stain. It took 3 attempts with the Oxy, but it finally came out! Now I love this stuff! I started using it in the dirty baby laundry and it's helped so much to get out those fun spit-up and diaper blow-out stains.

What are your current Happy Little Pleasures?

Craft Room Reveal

This room was been a work in progress for about 2 years and then I suddenly realized I never shared it with you! If Hubby can have a man room, I get a craft room, right? It also doubles as a guest room when people stay over, but I can share : )

Here's what the room looked like before. Nasty window treatments and just a place to hold random crap that didn't have a home.

It was hard for me to do crafts in such an icky room!

Goodbye ugly old fan!

Hello bright and colorful room! My vision with this room was fun & energetic with lots of bright colors. It's the only room in our house that's girly and filled with color.

The striped bedding was the influence for the rest of the decor. The curtains are actually made from the bedskirt fabric that came with the bedding set. Since we have trundle beds, we didn't need the bedskirts, so I recycled them into fun curtains. See the tutorial for this style of curtain here.

This bookcase is a leftover from college, but it works perfectly as a nightstand. A lot of the items here are fun crafts I worked on during the past year.
Easy Fabric-covered lamp shade
Flowers in a Coffee Mug
Fabric Tissue Box Cover
Mini Canvas & Easel

I love all the fun throw pillows that coordinate with the bedding. I couldn't resist buying them!

No craft room of mine is complete without a tv because we all know I'm a tv addict. The dresser is a hand-me-down that my sister got and then it was passed to me and begging for a makeover. It was ugly & brown so we repainted it a couple summers ago.

Here's the sewing area and my little chair cushion makeover. The chair cushion was refashioned from a throw pillow I bought for the bed.

Dorky, but I love our new closet doors! These used to be ugly mirrored doors that made the room look so dated. We updated all the hallway doors to white 6-panel doors, so we decided to coordinate all the closets too.

Not everything in those closets is for crafts (I also keep some older clothes in there), but about half is filled with supplies and I love having them out of the way. The removable labels
were a fun project I did last summer and, of course, they match the bedding too!

Our closets had the Elfa system in them when we moved in, so these wire drawers are perfect for storing fabric. It's so nice to have it all organized instead of in piles and boxes!

So this is my little girly hideout and I love it! It's so fun to work in there with the sun shining in, Kitty sleeping on a bed, and I can watch tv while I work!