Seakettle

St. Patrick’s Day is just a week away, but there’s still plenty of time to whip up a pretty Irish flag cake! You just need round cake pans and a little food coloring to turn a boxed cake mix into a green, white and orange celebration cake.

Just divide the white cake batter into as many bowls as you’ll have layers (three for the Irish flag) and color it.

Bake as directed. After the baked layers cool, they need to be leveled so they can be stacked nicely. My mom bought me a fancy schmancy leveling tool, but a serrated knife or dental floss also work. I used whipped cream frosting between layers and on the top, though you could use a tub of frosting instead.

Part of the fun in colored cakes is the disguise! An innocent looking white cake is surprisingly festive inside. (Perfect for parties to reveal baby’s sex!) This cake also served as a bonus birthday cake for my friend Jill.

I love cakes with tons of layers and with three round pans, I can cut the layers in halves and make a six layer cake! Though I haven’t tried it yet. I can’t wait to make a cake with varying shades of the same color, or a whole rainbow inside!

Here’s where I wish I had a photo of a piece of the cake! The slices look even more like the flag than the cake itself, as the surface is rectangular and the stripes are in the proper orientation (if the piece is set on its side).

All in all, I was so happy with how the flag cake turned out. Party desserts should always be this much fun to eat!

I love, love, love Oreos. Highlight of my junior prom? Not my date or my shoes or the venue, but the Oreo cheesecake. And while I’m still searching for another Oreo cheesecake that can live up to my memory, the Oreo truffles and Oreo-stuffed chocolate chip cookies I’ve made are both fantastic. This Oreo treat is considerably quicker, but also fancy enough for the (rare) times when bringing a package of cookies to the party just won’t do.

For starters, this bark can be made with just 2 ingredients — 10 oz. of white chocolate and 18 Oreos. TWO ingredients! This is a great relief for someone as incapable of cleanly measuring powdery ingredients as I.

In short: line an 8×8 dish with wax paper, melt the chocolate, mix 15 of the chopped Oreos into the chocolate, pour mixture into the dish and sprinkle remaining 3 chopped Oreos over the top. Chill for 10 minutes, then break into pieces. For more details (and photos that actually do the bark justice!), see the recipe on Bakers Royale .

Definitely serve this in small pieces and with milk. I found it to be over the top in sweetness, but that might be solved by using the recommended Ghiradelli chips. It was addictive, nonetheless!

Update: Perfect timing! Happy 100th Birthday, Oreo!

I’ve made a couple of these butcher paper wreaths, and I just love them! Despite the elegant appearance of the finished product, the steps are very basic. It’s the perfect project to work on during a movie (and it will even be finished by the time the movie is over!).

You only need butcher paper, a wreath form and a willingness to freehand a bunch of circles! (Oh, and hot glue and scissors. The essentials.)

The paper flowers are cute on their own, too. They look great with all papers — scrapbook, copy, tissue — and fill in perfectly for bows on presents!

I made my first ever batch of macarons this week, and they were pretty cute and delicious! They weren’t perfect, but I think I know how to fix them for next time.

Camellias and bougainvilleas are both blooming in Southern California — perfect for Valentine’s Day arrangements. I also picked up a pretty set of mercury glass candle holders at a thrift store.

I made a felt fortune cookie for Greg. It only took two lines of stitching on a felt circle + a little note inside. The fortune cookie went perfectly with the surprise food tour that a girlfriend and I took our husbands on. And I love that I can swap the fortune anytime!

My mom sent us a batch of her iced sugar cookies and chocolate peanut butter cookies (though I couldn’t keep from eating the peanut butter ones ahead of time!). After dessert (first!), appetizers and chocolate wine, Greg made steaks with butter and shallot sauce (which we first made at last year’s Valentine Dinner Party). Love it.

And then we exchanged gifts — books! A tide pool encyclopedia for Greg and the Coralie Bickford-Smith version of Sense & Sensibility for me. It was a lovely Valentine’s Day!

I love typographic decor, from 3D letters to Helvetica prints to letterpress pieces. When I spotted a wire word wrapped in yarn over on Family Chic, I immediately knew I’d have to try it. We can only have so many J’s and G’s decorating our house, after all! This Christmas, I finally had the word, the time and the occasion.

I chose “Luckiest” because Greg and I danced our first dance to Ben Folds’ The Luckiest. Perhaps it would have been a better as an anniversary gift, but oh well. Now we can enjoy it five months sooner! A similarly meaningful word would make a great Valentine’s gift.

Supplies:
14 gauge primary wire*
Thick yarn
Hot glue

* I basically bought the thickest flexible wire I could find. The original directions called for wire-reinforced clothesline, but I couldn’t find that at our home improvement stores.

1. Firmly bend the wire into cursive letters just as you would write them. Some of the letters won’t hold their shape until the yarn is added.

When you need to double back with the wire, for example, at the top of the “c”, put the second layer of wire behind rather than next to the first. This keeps the letters from getting too wide.

2. Trim wire.

3. Cut a piece of yarn 18-20″ long. Don’t use a strand that’s too long, or it will be difficult to wrap through loops. I learned this the hard way!

4. Start by holding the yarn end in place about an inch from the end of the wire. Begin wrapping at the end of the wire and continue all the way down, covering up the end of the yarn.

Use this technique whenever you need to start a new strand of yarn, as well. Leave about an inch of the old piece unwrapped and add an inch of the new piece of yarn, then wrap over them both.

5. Wrap criss-cross at the joints to secure the two strands of wire together and hold the shape of the letter.

6. At the very end, attach the yarn to the back of the end with a dab of hot glue.

7. Trim any excess yarn.

8. Hang your lovely word with a few small nails!

Happy Super Bowl Sunday! I hope you’re headed to (or hosting) a football bash tonight. (Wait, this afternoon!? Silly California.) Honestly, I have no attachment whatsoever to today’s teams, so I’m just looking forward to good food with friends and hopefully some fantastic advertising.

We made a few brownies and dipped pretzel sticks to bring to the party we’re attending. I just used a cookie cutter on a regular tray of brownies and added white icing laces.

Greg cut pretzel rods into numerals with a serrated knife, and then we dipped them in red candy melts + shortening (to thin it). And added sprinkles, of course.

The bed of green coconut grass is also super easy to make — just put coconut and a few drops of food coloring into a jar, seal and shake!

Go blue and red!

Valentine’s Day is approaching, and I still have several Christmas craft projects to share! I won’t be writing tutorials on every single one of these, so I thought a quick summary would be nice.

First up, is a candle holder for my brother and his wife. You might recognize the piece of wood from his wedding decorations. We wanted to give them a small keepsake of their beautiful day, so Greg drilled a hole for a votive, and I wood-burned their initials onto the side.

We gave Greg’s mom a set of stationery in her favorite color and featuring her favorite dog. Meet Checkers, the most spoiled of the Watsons’ four dogs.

For Greg, I made a yarn and wire version of the word “Luckiest,” in honor of our first dance to Ben Folds’ The Luckiest. We still need to hang it, but I’ll do a follow-up post with instructions and photos of it in situ.

For several of our friends and co-workers, we made white clay ornaments. Some ornaments had names or initials, others simply said “joy.” We used a variety of shapes and types of string and had a great time cutting and stamping them!

We gave our friends and family with pups a few homemade dog biscuits. This was the only homemade gift that we managed to finish well in advance of Christmas and, because they’re perishable, we had to freeze them!

I also painted a toy dinosaur for Greg. “Why?” everyone asks. “Why not?” I say. Because it looks cool and I knew that Greg would like it. He keeps it on his desk at work.

My sister-in-law had Nanaimo bars on her Christmas wishlist, and Greg and I are always up for a food challenge (like the In-N-Out burgers on last year’s round up or our Creme Brulee Cheesecake). I’d never heard of Nanaimo bars, but apparently they’re popular in Canada (and quite tasty). Too bad I forgot to take a photo until only one remained! If following the same recipe again, I’d add more butter to the crust and more milk to the custard.

Finally, as you already saw, we made this bird seed snowman for my mom! I’m tempted to try giving all handmade gifts next year, but I’d need to get started on them now. Just giving a few handmade presents keeps us crazy busy at Christmastime!

In honor of the week’s snow storms, I have a snowman you can make from the comfort of your warm and toasty home. Your feathered friends will love you for it! But then you should head outside to make a real one — you know, for those of us who will go without!

Greg and I made this bird seed snowman for my mom as a Christmas gift. She, like many of us, has a few categories of gifts that she is always happy to receive. My dad loves Notre Dame and beer, my sister-in-law loves all things Anthropologie, and my mom loves snowmen and birds. In fact, my mom already has a snowman bird feeder — he’s a cute little statue that holds food in the brim of his hat. But according to the windowsills and walls of my parents’ house, there’s no such thing as too many snowmen!

The little “Let it Snow” banner was purely decorative. It can’t withstand the elements (it’s just Sharpie on copy paper), but it makes a nice addition to a gift bird feeder. The hat is also optional — we made it from an odd piece of foam that’s half cubical and half cylindrical. I’m not sure how easy it is to find that sort of vase foam, but we got everything but the bird seed at Michaels.

(Did anyone else notice the crazy dive-bombing bird on the right side of this photo?)

Supplies:
3/8″ wooden dowel
7″ Round wooden disc
6″ foam ball
5″ foam ball
4″ foam ball
Vase foam — a cubical section of foam attached to a cylindrical section.
2 12″ twigs
White paint
Creamy peanut butter, about 1/2 a container
Bird seed, mixed for the body, sunflower seeds for the hat
Wood glue
3/8″ drill bit (and drill)
Hand saw (any saw will work)
File

1. Using a 3/8″ bit, drill a hole through the center of the wooden disc.

2. Paint the disc white.

3. Cut dowel down to about 17.5″

4. Sharpen one end of the dowel with a file or razor.

5. Put glue on the flat end of the dowel and insert it into the hole at the center of the disc so that the end of the dowel is flush with the underside of the disc. Set aside to dry.

6. Cut both ends of the vase foam with a serrated knife to create the hat. A thin square section of foam serves as the brim and the cylindrical part serves as the top.

7. Use the pointed end of the dowel to skewer the center of each foam ball and create a hole through its center.

8. Using a knife or icing spreader, spread peanut butter over the entire surface of each foam ball and the hat.

9. Spread the bird seed out on a tray or in a shallow dish. Roll the foam balls to coat. Fill any holes by pressing seed into the peanut butter with your hands.

10. Once the glue on the dowel has dried completely, slide on the snowman body parts from biggest to smallest, followed by the hat. Apply pressure to the top and bottom to squish the foam balls together a bit. They’ll flatten out a little for a more natural snowman shape.

11. Cover the hat with sunflower seeds and add it to the top of the foam balls.

12. Add two branches to serve as arms.

13. Optional: add cute banner!

January
2010 Christmas Cards

February
Say it in Brownies

March
Tissue Paper Pom-Poms

April
Easter Egg Cake Pops

May
Glazed Magnets

June
Passport Cover

July
Fabric Appliques

August
Paper Rosette Banner

September
Burlap Favor Bags

October
Easy Halloween Cupcakes

November
Thanksgiving Table Setting

December
Chocolate Leaves

I hate taking down Christmas decorations. Ours are going to stay up for a while longer (it’s only the 9th day of Christmas, after all), but I’m still dreading the imminent boxing-up and cleaning-up that signifies the end of a holiday in the same way that a long and tiring drive home signifies the end of a vacation.

But I’m not even home from visiting my parents, yet! I’ll just share my decorations here and keep the Christmas celebration going a bit longer.

Sea urchin shell snowman and other natural elements.

Jute string for hanging Christmas cards.

Roses from the yard and my succulent tree.

Homemade advent calendar from Greg’s childhood.

Paper chains.

A juniper branch in a burlap-wrapped baby food jar. The entryway corner with our skinny branch/tree and Christmas countdown.

The entryway at night.