Sicilian Streets

You just never know what you are going to see when you are driving in Sicily. We just happened to drive by this horse and cart. Who knew that people still used a horse and cart?

In Love

This is one of my favorite statues in the Keukenhof Gardens in Holland. I did a little photoshopping with some sepia tones etc. I'll be posting some of my pictures from my overseas visits soon. Some photoshopped, some raw. I hope you like them.

A Quick Way to Fix a Cake

From disaster to success.

My sister was make a star cake and had a bit of a problem as you can see. So how were we going to fix it? Easy. We still had some cake that we had used to cut the star out of, so we mixed that with some icing - cake pop style - and molded it around the star points. Voila! Fixed.

Make an Easy Heart Scarf

Valentines was coming up and I thought I would make a scarf with hearts on it. I've seen some fabric painting projects on pinterest and I thought I would try one of my own. I wanted red paint and white scarf. I was lucky and found a plain white scarf on sale at Michaels for $5.00, half price, not to shabby. I got the paint at AC Moore. They only had metallic so I got that. I don't think it made much difference. I didn't have a heart stencil, so I made one from a heart punch and the lid from some nuts. That worked out nicely. I used a cheap foam brush and got to work. I measured every four inches or so and marked it with a pencil. If I did it again, I would do every other row of hearts upside down. It took about 2 and a half hours, a little longer than I thought it would take mostly because I wiped the back of the stencil after every heart. Otherwise, I would have ended up with red paint everywhere. I have another fabric painting project in mind and I think I will start on that in a few weeks. I'll take a picture with it on, so you can see what it looks like.

I Mustache You if You'd Like Some Cake

My son loves mustaches. I have absolutely no idea why, but he does and now everywhere I go, I seem to spot them. I asked him if he wanted a truck cake or a mustache cake for his third birthday and he said a mustache cake. He's quite funny for a toddler. Anyhow, I saw this one on Pinterest and decided to make it. It was super easy.

I only used one 8"round cake pan and then put the rest of the batter in mini loaf pans. No muffin pan at the moment, otherwise I would have done cupcakes. I was on a time crunch and screech...made a box cake. I did however make homemade chocolate buttercream icing, which everyone thought was delicious. I thought some individual mustaches on the mini loaves would be cute. I added a little too much cream to the chocolate chips, but they didn't turn out too bad. I meant to leave some buttercream plain, because I thought the chocolate would show up much better on white icing, but I forgot. O well. Next time. 

Since I'm a bit anal, I used a template to cut out the mustache, so it would be even. Thank god I did, because my first template was lopsided. I traced the cake pan, then folded the circle in half and in half again so the mustache would be even. Although maybe I should have centered it on the tray. My son didn't seem to care and no one but me noticed. 

How to Make an Old Sweater Look New Again

I bought a sweater last year and within a few washes it looked like it was 10 years old. I still wear it, but lately I've been thinking that I see nicer stuff at Goodwill. At least that was the case until I was introduced to the sweater shaver. I did one side and you can see the huge difference it made. I've been doing all my sweaters, wool socks, the lining in my jacket. Maybe slightly obsessed, but it just works so darn good.