Tackling the half bath

This room is a hot mess. It's all wrong, pretty much in every way.

Paint the color of nasty ground peas? Check.

Tacky, cheap wooden frame? Check.
Gold, bare bulb vanity light? Check.
Small, old porcelain sink? Check.

Know what there's no check for? Storage. There is zero place for extra towels, toilet paper, anything! Bad.

I'm not quite sure where I'm going with this yet. But I've stripped everything out and I'm almost done putting a base coat on. Here's what I'm thinking so far:

The base color is leftover from the master bath upstairs - Glidden's Eloquent Ivory in eggshell. I know I want to stencil on a pattern, but I can't decide what color to make it. I like the blue/grey look, but I wonder if it's too contrast-y for such a small space? I kinda like the metallic champagne color. Or perhaps tone-on-tone? I could do something very close to Eloquent Ivory, except in high gloss?

Then I've got to track down lighting, mirror, vanity, and sink/faucet that I can afford!

Happy Pi Day

A very, very happy Pi Day to you all. We (and by we, I mean Hans) couldn't let this day go by without pie. But he ended up doing most of the work himself - go him! Isn't it loverly?

And here's the very easy recipe:
1 pie crust (I like the Pioneer Woman's)
5 cups fresh or frozen blueberries (thankfully, still working through all those in my freezer from picking last summer!)
3/4 cup sugar
3 tablespoons flour
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon (or a little extra, if ya feel like it)
A dash of lemon juice

Mix blueberries, sugar, flour, cinnamon and lemon juice in a bowl to coat. Pour into prepared pastry shell. Roll out top pastry, place on top and secure edges. Add vent holes. Bake at 375 for approx. 50 minutes. Allow to cool or it will be soupy! Warning: This pie tastes ten times better the second day. Cold.

Let there be light!

Remember a few posts back when I revealed my beautiful new closet, and joked that all it needed was a chandelier? Well, here it is! My beautiful Valentine's day gift. And I adore it. It's shiny. And bright. And wonderful. :sigh:

You asked for it

All Hans can think about right now is getting a new iphone. For his birthday, he got an iphone.... cake.

About the cake:

1. The inside is chocolate. The recipe is from Milk and Cookies. It's good. Not great, but good. If you're looking for a basic chocolate cake recipe, this'll do you just fine. I thought it was a little drier and a bit crumblier than I'd like, but tasty. The whipped cream filling was a big hit.

2. The Milk and Cookies recipe called for chocolate buttercream icing with malted milk powder. I did not have this and for some inexplicable reason, could not locate it at our HEB. So I made different butter cream. It has four sticks of butter (!!), a bunch of powdered sugar, some vanilla, and about six ounces of melted chocolate chips. It was also just ok. Maybe too much butter.

3. Fondant. Oh, the fondant. I made three batches (which was one too many). That's three bags of mini marshmallows and three bags of powdered sugar. And a big mess on my kitchen counter. Hobby Lobby was having a sale on Wilton baking supplies a few weeks ago, so I stocked up on black, red, blue, and yellow dyes. I did some mixing to get the other colors.

4. Putting it together. It took six hours. And I didn't photograph any of it, because it was a grand old mess all over me, the counter, my hands, every where. And I certainly didn't photograph any of the many, many imperfections. Like how the black fondant kept tearing and chocolate buttercream would come peaking through. Most of the app buttons were pretty easy, but cutting letters was hard. I'm sure there's an easier way to do that. The angry birds app is my fav.

This was fun, but took sooooo loooooong. I don't know how people do this on a regular basis! Maybe it gets easier with time? And oh, I STILL have dye on my hands. Four days later. I look diseased. Hot.

Layers of pretty

I saw this Neapolitan Cake on Sweetapolita a couple weeks ago and couldn't deny the itch to make it. Isn't it beautiful?

Mine's not quite so beautiful, but I still patted myself on the back for it. It was exhaustive to make, though.

Bake yellow cake following this recipe.

Bake chocolate cake following this recipe.

Bake strawberry cake following this recipe.

And here's what you need for the icing:

1 1/4 cup unsalted butter, softened
8 cups icing sugar (confectioners’)
120 ml whipping cream
2 tablespoons pure vanilla extract
1 tablespoon water

Beat the butter and icing sugar in an electric mixer on low with the paddle attachment for about 2 minutes. Add the vanilla, water, whipping cream, salt, and strawberry oil, and whip on high speed until fluffy and smooth–about 4 minutes.

I wrapped 'em and left 'em in the freezer over night. Unfortunately, I did *not* pull them out of the freezer soon enough and that made trying to cut through them with my leveler a pain in the rear. Note to self: Give time for thawing.

I got to use my knifty new Wilton angled spatula for the icing - I will never use a knife again. And I attempted to make a star pattern around the top, but I think my icing was a little too soft for that. And I was in a hurry. Darn.

As for the cake itself, it was ok, but definitely not my favorite. The Yellow cake was a little more dense than I care for my cake. The chocolate was pretty good, but had a slight bitter aftertaste. The strawberry I can't decide if I liked - the jello flavoring was very strong.

Given that I wasn't over the moon about any of the flavors and that it took so long, I probably wouldn't make it again. Maybe for a special occasion where I need something primarily pretty. Cuz it sure was that.

Birthday surprise

Hans walked into his office today and saw this:

His co-workers wrapped everything in his office in tin foil. Happy Birthday!

Little improvements that make a big difference

After the closet project wore us out, we've been focusing on little things we can do around the house that make us feel more organized and more... clean.

Project #1: 

Spruce up the nasty trim and hardware in the bathroom. Actually, the trim EVERYWHERE in the house will need to be re-painted. For some reason, the builder thought this nasty, yellow-ish white looked nice. It doesn't. It just looks... dirty. Grungy. Grimy. So! We tackled the master bath first - all the door jams, doors, baseboards, everything. Now it's all clean and bright. We replaced all the chipped gold door knobs with brushed nickel, too. The difference is subtle, but makes the room feel cleaner and brighter.

Before -

After - 

We also finally got around to tackling our bathroom drawers. They were... a mess, to say the least. Thanks to some plastic drawer organizers from Target, the mess has been contained.

You can pick up Hans' six-compartment single tray organizer for around $4. I opted for the removable, mix and match trays so I could pull my makeup out as needed. You can nab that at Target for $12.

Before (mess!) -

After (ahhhh. That's nice) -