Posts Tagged ‘Penelope’

Lemon Berry Birthday Cake

April 30th, 2013

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Penelope is now a grown up 5 year old! It’s nuts to think that I’m mother to a 5 year old. We enjoyed some delicious cake together and blew out candles, nothing terribly special. Her real birthday party is yet to come.

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Nagging in the back of my mind, I’ve had an idea for a tasty cake. Not knowing it would work out, I decided to give it a try. Divine is the only word that comes to mind.

Coffee cake batter + the best berry jam I could find at the grocery store + lemon zest frosting = the perfect blend of tart, sweet and mellow.

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Currently, I’m a little tired of all the cupcake/dessert places that make “the most amazing insert dessert here” that are all coma-inducing sweet with no substantial flavor. Maybe this explains why the whole “put bacon on it” is a thing? Which, by the way, is totally delicious. I love the bacon maple doughnut place just down the street from me.

Using my tried and true coffee cake recipe for the cake part added a neutral base for the flavored frosting and jam. And this frosting is tart and sweet. Had I made a lemon cake, it would’ve been completely overboard. The other nice thing about making coffee cake as a base: it’s a known quantity. I’ve made that recipe hundreds of times so I know it works. And it works well in cake form.

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I spread a jam between the two cake layers (I didn’t have time to make my own – so I bought the fanciest stuff we could find). It was a blueberry blackberry blend, which pairs deliciously with lemon. The lemon frosting is my mom’s melting moments frosting recipe multiplied by 2 and a half. YES. I wanted to make sure I had enough to cover the whole cake. And I had just a little bit left over.

Below is the whole franken-recipe put together for your convenience, should you ever choose to make this. And you should.

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Lemon Berry Birthday Cake

makes 1 2-tier 8 inch diameter cake

1/2 cup greek yogurt
2 tablespoons oil
2 eggs
1 cup milk
3 cups flour
1 1/2 cup sugar
3 teaspoons baking powder
2 teaspoons salt

Preheat your oven to 375F and grease 2 8 inch cake rounds. Cut out parchment paper in two 8 inch discs and place on the bottom of each cake pan. In a large bowl; whisk yogurt, oil, egg and milk. Sift flour, sugar, baking powder and salt. Stir and fold into batter until smooth. Pour into cake pans. Bake for 15-20 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. Remove from oven and let sit for a minute or two before taking out of the pan to cool. Cover in cling wrap and store in the fridge until you’re ready to frost

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Frosting

6 cups powdered sugar
3 T lemon juice
3/4 cup butter
grated lemon rind

Whip.

Grab your cake rounds and stack one on your desired cake plate. Generously spread about 1/2 cup of the best jam you can find, preferably seedless. Carefully place the second cake round on top. Quickly frost one layer (the crumb layer), it’ll look ugly, but that’s okay. Place in the fridge for a couple minutes, then frost again. BOOM. You’re done now, eat it like a rock star.

Penelope the Artist

April 26th, 2013

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Penelope draws things and tells me to frame them or to make things inspired by them. I’m loving this phase in her life.

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See the drawing above, the girl on the lower right? Penelope wants me to make me a dress with see-through sleeves and a button down front. Who is this girl? The next big designer.

And I need that dress in my closet.

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She also made this rad creature. The ears all over her head are awesome.

And speaking of ears, we’re up to our ears in all of her awesome artwork. The dilemma we’re having is what to keep, how to keep it and how to clean out the extra art without hurting her feelings.

Right now we call her stash place (a flat storage drawer in my studio) her collection. We have her put her completed art projects in her collection and then we’ll typically sort it all out from there. A few pieces (like Penelope’s monster above) goes straight in a frame. Goodness I love this girl’s style.

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I started teaching Penelope how to use my dip pen (top left). I love seeing her experiment with holding the pen different ways. It’s hard to see her scratch and pull the nib on the page, but she’s so willing to learn and I’m more than happy to teach her.

It’s a few days past her birthday, but I still plan on turning one of our utility closets into a special studio for her. I can’t wait to see that excitement on her face.

Sewing: Floral Dress for Penelope

March 5th, 2013

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I was pricing out some fabric for a youth activity for church and I came across this floral fabric at JoAnn. It’s cute but perhaps a bit too much for something for me (I’m such a selfish sewer, I rarely think of projects for Penelope and Felix before projects for me). I had to buy it, though, the colors and drape were so nice. So a project for Penelope it was!

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Penelope certainly has a shortage of church-appropriate dresses these days. She has been growing by leaps and bounds. The travails of growing up! I wanted to make a cozy transitional spring dress that could work on cold spring days. It’s about 10-20 degrees colder on the mountain where we live than down in the valley, so I’m trying to boost all of our wardrobes with light-weight long sleeves in preparation for spring.

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With her recent spurt in mind, I made her a simple jersey dress that hits just below her calf. This should fit her for at least the next year. I hope!

I used one of her shirts to draft up the top, but I just estimated around the sleeves since I made just a batwing sleeve so I wouldn’t have to inset sleeves (I’m lazy, I know). I then attached the batwing top to a rectangular skirt (about 4x Penelope’s waist).

This fabric has a four-way stretch so to keep it from losing its shape, I reinforced the waist seam with narrow elastic. It’s all on the inside, so you don’t see it. It’s soft enough that Penelope doesn’t even notice it.

For the hem finishes, I just made bands at the neck, waist and bottom hem. It was easy enough and I had enough fabric left over to do that.

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She’s pretty thrilled with her new outfit. Her reaction when I showed her the finished dress was just priceless. I really wish I had it on camera. I can’t help but feel so giddy to see her say, “Oh mommy!!! It’s for me?!? *gasp* It’s so beeeauteeful!”

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The success of this project has really gotten me excited for Easter outfits. I have the perfect fabric in mind for all of us. I’ll have to upload sketches soon. Growing up we had a family tradition of new church outfits (matching, sewn by my mom) and I plan to try to keep that tradition as long as I can. Do you do that? What are your plans?

Sewing: Leggings for Penelope

February 18th, 2013

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It was another bust of a weekend. It’s like we’re never going to get out of this flu season alive. I’m sure we will, I’m just having a hard time seeing the light at the end of the tunnel.

Felix is now sick, which put a stop to all of his birthday festivities that I had planned. I’m hoping we can celebrate at some point this week. At least Felix is at an age where he has no idea when his birthday is – let alone the day of the week – so he’s not disappointed one bit.

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I found this sweet fabric at Fashion Fabrics Club and got so excited to make a little dress for Penelope. I thought it would’ve been a regular tshirt knit (like it was described), but I should have taken better notice of the fiber content. It’s not really suitable for blouses, it’s more suitable for activewear. It’s like a swim suit fabric. Disappointing, yes. But, the fabric also reminded me of my favorite dance pants in high school, so I made lemonade and whipped up leggings for Penelope. They’re shiny, so it kinda goes with the whole liquid legs fad. Right? I don’t care. They’re super cute.

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I told Penelope to show her dad her new leggings and she said, “Mommy, no – these are not pants, they’re leggings. I need to go put my pants on.”

Well, now I see where she stands on the whole are leggings pants thing. She’s still wearing them, though.

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Not really wanting to participate for the photo shoot, I bribed her with her phone. I’m such a good mom, letting her watch her phone all day.

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I used a pair of old leggings for the fit of these, but I had to alter the pants a lot afterwards. I’m going to start from scratch for her next pair. For how to make baby leggings (9-12 mo pattern included) click here. For mama leggings, click here.

Fabric provided by FashionFabricsClub.com

Flu Season Wins

February 11th, 2013

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I’ve been popping pills like an addict to stave off the pain and fever basically all weekend. I’m pretty sure this is how I felt when I had strep throat many years ago, but we won’t find out for sure until later this afternoon.

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I feel like at least one of us has been sick at any given time since the end of January. No reprieve for us. Penelope has been hit the hardest, poor girl. Seriously, look at that face. It stinks, but it could always be worse. We are counting our blessings.

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And then there’s Felix. He seemed to be least affected by all the bugs flying around our house. Look at this guy! He’s so happy and cuddly, it doesn’t matter what’s going on (unless Penelope takes away one of his toys).

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On a more positive note, we got rid of a bunch of old furniture that has been cluttering up our hallway. It’s only taken us 3 months to do it. No big deal! Our hallway feels so empty without the headboard and six foot desk propped up against the walls. It’s time to put artwork up there instead.

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I’m planning on taking it relatively easy this week and focusing on hanging art in the hallway and living room. We’ve got an expansive blank wall above our couch, something needs to be done about it. Stat.

We were very pleased to get our new vacuum last week (huge splurge) – it actually works unlike our last one. It’s got so many beautifully engineered bells and whistles I’ve actually enjoyed vacuuming the floors (!!). P has even joined in on the fun, too.

We also got the most lovely wool rug from Dash & Albert. I’ll show more pictures once this space is complete, but you get the idea. I won it at Alt Summit – I’ve been eyeing it for months, so I couldn’t be more thrilled about our new piece. It definitely makes the living room look more posh.