Fall Fabric Sneak Preview

Yesterday Cami and I took a trip to the fabric store and got a killer deal stocking up for fall, thanksgiving, and of course Christmas goodies. I really love the color themes of fall and we got some very cute fabrics, and some basics to match vintage and up-cycled pieces we already had. We've got a lot of idea in mind and I'm really excited to get started bringing them to life. In the mean time, here's a little sneak peak of what you'll be seeing in our shop soon.

Up-cycled Green Plaid Linens and Retro Leaf Print Cotton

This leaf print is from the fabric store, and I was so thrilled when we got it back and realized that it matched these green plaid linens. We've had them sitting in our stores for quite a while now, and I was convinced we'd never find something that matched.

Vintage Turkey Trim, Cotton Leaf Print, and Burnt Orange Linen

We were given this awesome vintage turkey and pumpkin trim from our grandma last spring when we visited our family down in Florida, and I have been waiting to use it ever since.

Green Wrench Print and Black Canvas

I don't know if this really fits into fall themes, but I love this print and I think when it's finished it would made a good Christmas present.

Retro Leaf Print, Burnt Orange and Mustard Linen

We've had that mustard yellow linen hanging out for a while, too, like the green plaid, it just isn't easy to match. But if any season is perfect for mustard, it's fall and I love this combo of yellow, orange and the leaf print.

Keep an eye out in the Seasonal section of our shop for fall aprons, and you can still find out Halloween aprons there as well.

Sandwich Bag Freezer Smoothies

I recently made a pretty exciting purchase while browsing the kitchen wares isle at Ross, there was a nice Black and Decker blender sitting there all alone, for just $15. In hindsight it seems a little strange that it took me so long to buy one, since they're so very useful. Naturally to celebrate the awesome blending opportunities I also bought a huge tub of plain yogurt and two big bags of frozen fruit for smoothies. On my first attempt I made almost an entire blender full of smoothie trying to balance fruit and milk and not kill my blender.

So I was very excited to find this idea via Pinterest for bags of smoothie goodies ready to just pop in the blender. Not only are these a perfect way to save time on preparation, you don't have to worry about yogurt and fresh produce going bad if you go smoothie-less for a week. The first step is to make yogurt cubes.

My boyfriend helped me out on this step with the genius idea to go piping-bag-style with the yogurt. So I dumped a huge tub into a quart freezer bag and snipped the end off to squeeze even amounts of yogurt into the ice cube trays. Stick these in the freezer and wait a few hours.

Originally I bought frozen strawberries and frozen peaches, because they were extremely cheap at Grocery Outlet. To these I added fresh bananas and kiwis and frozen blackberries, there's a world of possibilities out there.

It's not exactly easy to measure chopped and frozen fruit, but you want roughly 1 1/2 cups in each bag, and 3 yogurt cubes. Each bag is enough for two smoothies, just dump into a blender and add milk or juice until you reach the consistency you like.

I did combinations of blackberry-peach, strawberry-banana, and strawberry-kiwi. I even had one bag that ended up strawberry-blackberry-banana because I ran out of strawberries and bananas, but it was eaten right after I made it. It was clearly the weakest member of the herd.

This post in entered in the Pinterest Challenge: Round 3, you can vote for it here between Oct. 28th and Nov 3rd.

Where Have I Been, You Ask?

Sick, still sick. As you may recall from about two weeks ago I mustered enough energy to make Apple Cake even though I was sick. I thought I was on the up and up, I made cake, so I must be getting better. Unfortunately as you may also recall from this post, I am a pediatric home health nurse. I work day shift, which means that every Wed-Fri I spend 7 hours in an elementary school (aka germ cesspool). As a result I have been feeling crappy for pretty much the last two weeks straight, even spiking a 100.4 fever. So I hope you can forgive me for not blogging.

Purple Chiffon Spiderweb Apron

Today I wanted to celebrate with you guys a little excitement, one of our Halloween aprons has been featured in three treasuries in the last two days! How cool is that?
This is an awesome collection of Whimsicle Halloweenery from the April's Army team.
I love this bunch of cool and creepy stuff, especially that bloody bowl, spooky!

This last one is just purple for the sake or purple, which is great, because I love purple!
I never get over the sense of flattery and what an ego boost it is that someone else, most times a total stranger, like our work enough to put it in a treasury. And maybe I should just take it as a compliment to my photography skills, but even that is a boost when I'm feel sick and congested. So thanks very much to everyone who's featured our work, it really means a lot.

Occasional Vintage: Hazel Hues

Normally I would have titled this post a "Weekly Vintage" but then I realized that it's really not fair to call it weekly if I don't do it every week... None the less, here is my latest find for our vintage shop. When I saw these I had to get them, it's a set of 70's ceramic corn dishes.

Set of 4 Ceramic Corn Dishes

Genius! How have I never heard of this idea before? Perfect little plates just the right size for corn on the cob, and I'm always down for some 70's brown and cream glaze. These would be a great decoration item for Thanksgiving, even if you don't use them for some delicious corn on the cob, slathered in butter... mmmm.. But I digress, these lovely dishes were also featured in a beautiful treasury which highlight pretty much the only fall color we were missing: brown.
Another treasury with a harvest theme feature our Stalk of Wheat Mug. After living on a hazelnut orchard for 10 years, I still have lots of fond (and some not so much, heh) memories of harvest time, so I really like this one.
I still haven't decided on a Halloween costume for this year, but I've been doing a lot of inspiration searching on Etsy and Pinterest. We'll have more Halloween aprons coming out this week in our shop, including a few more sexy designs, I'm excited to get them posted. I'm also excited to go eat some more of the delicious apple cake I made yesterday. Who needs real food?

Mandy's Bytes: No Cinnamon Apple Cake

I know I promised this post to be yesterday... but you'll have to forgive me because I've spent my first two days of a four day weekend with a cold. So I was too busy having a pity party about being sick to bake a cake yesterday.

The original recipe for this cake was one I found on A Whisk and A Spoon, I made some slight adjustments this time after making it last fall as well. My favorite part about this apple cake is that it doesn't use cinnamon! Cinnamon and apple are such an overdone combination, so this recipes use of vanilla instead is a nice change.

No Cinnamon Apple Cake

aka Fresh Apple Cake with Brown Sugar Glaze

Cake:
- 3 cups flour
- 2 cups sugar
- 1 tsp baking soda
- 1 tsp salt
- 3 eggs
- 1 1/2 cups vegetable oil
- 2 tsp vanilla
- 3 cups chopped apple
Glaze:
- 1/2 cup tightly packed brown sugar  - 3-4 Tbsp butter
- 1/2 tsp vanilla                                       - 1 Tbsp half and half

The first thing I do when making this recipe (besides preheat the oven to 350 degrees) is to chop up the apples, because it's the messiest part, and I like to get it over with. I used honeycrisp apples this time because, well if you've ever tried them you already know, and if you haven't tried them, you should. They're amazing. I actually only ended up using two apples to make three cups chopped, but obviously this will depend on the size of apples you use. You can also add chopped nuts to this recipe if you like, the original recipe calls for pecans or walnuts. In a medium bowl, combine all your dry ingredients: flour, sugar, baking soda and salt. Mix these together with a fork and set aside.

"Foamy" Eggs

In a large bowl you will now need to "beat the eggs until pale yellow and foamy." Now in the original recipe they suggest that this can be done either with a mixer or a wooden spoon. Big hint: DON'T try to beat eggs with a wooden spoon. I don't know what kind of Hulk-like upper body strength the person who wrote this recipe had, but trying to make eggs foamy by hand with a wooden spoon sucks! Of course I was much too stubborn to give up and transfer over to my mixer, resulting in eggs that were bubbly at best.

Once you eggs are nice and foamy, thanks to a mixer, you will add in the oil and vanilla. Fortunately these are easily mixed in with a wooden spoon. To this mixture add in the dry ingredients from the other bowl. Stir the dry ingredients into the liquid until the flour just disappears. The resulting batter will be very thick and, coincidentally, look quite a lot like applesauce.

Now you can stir the apples, and nuts if you choose, into the batter and mix until they are evenly dispersed. Mine ended up very wet, I think because of the apples being so juicy, but you'll be thankful later when you cake ends up super moist and delicious.

You can make this cake either in a 13" x 9" sheet cake, two 8"-9" rounds, or three 8.5" x 4.5" loaf pans. Whichever you prefer, grease it with butter or cooking spray, and spread the batter over the pan using your wooden spoon or a spatula. The dough is pretty sticky, so it needs a little coercion to get into all the corners.

The cake will need to bake at 350 for 45-50 minutes, or until the cake is golden brown and the edges begin to pull away from the sides of the pan. About 5 minutes before the cake is done baking you'll want to prepare your glaze. In a medium saucepan combine all of the glaze ingredients: brown sugar, half and half, vanilla and butter. The original glaze recipe is actually double what I have listed here, but in my opinion it was just too rich. Bring the glaze to a boil and let cook for about 5 minutes. When the cake is done, take it out of the oven and immediately pour the glaze over the top. Use a spoon or spatula to evenly distribute the glaze.

Pre-glaze Cake

Post-glaze Cake

Let the cake cool completely before serving. This is important for two reasons: 1. the glaze is very hot (hot sugar=burnt mouth) 2. the apple chunks are also very hot (hot juicy apple chunks=burnt mouth). You get the idea, you won't be able to enjoy the cake if you singe all the taste buds off your tongue with the first bite. Believe me because, being the impatient type, I'm speaking from personal experience.

Once the cake is cool, dig in! It is moist and sweet, but not too rich, and the edges have a perfect amount of crispness. I imagine it would also be great served with some vanilla ice cream on the side. This cake will be a hit, and is not too difficult, for a yummy fall dessert.

T.G.I.F. + Giveaway Winner!

Thank god it's fall! You see what I did there? I bet you though I was going to say Friday, and well.. that too, haha. Fall is one of my favorite seasons, and I'm enjoying it so far, but this last week and a half lasted forever! I worked five days on, one day off, and four days on, TGIF indeed. So in the spirit of enjoying a lazy Friday evening, tonight's post is going to show off some of the beautiful fall treasuries we've been featured in this week. The colors and ideas that are going around are just lovely.

This first treasury highlights the bright yellow, rich oranges and deep reds of fall. It was curated by Karen of Facets Jewelry, a fellow Washingtonian.

Our next featured treasury showcases, as the title states, the Stunning Reds of fall. This treasury is by Christie, a fellow member of April's Army, who runs the shop Sophisticated Lady Jewelry.

Last but certainly not least, is this gorgeous collection of purple hues for fall, my personal favorite items are the purple glass pumpkins. SqaureJane created this treasury, and is also a fellow April's Army member. Go team!

Tonight's post does have another, arguably more useful, purpose, which is to announce the winner of our giveaway sponsered by AnOptimisticCynic.

 Congratulations to Michelle from Aisle 3!

  

I promise tomorrow I'll have a delicious fall recipe for you, just to tease you it involved apples and caramely goodness.

Our Sewing Pegboard: Round Two

Last month, after the drawn out process of preparing and mounting our peg board, I wrote a nice long post about how we did it and declared the pegboard project "done." But as you can see from the picture at the end of the post, I was kidding myself, we were far from finished, the whole middle was blank! I realized that I really had not planned out what all should go on it, and where things should be placed, so it took me a while to mull over what would be most helpful.

Now that it actually is finished I've procrastinated taking more pictures, so shame on me. But now I present to you documented proof that it finally became the wonderful thing we had hoped for! Before it gets all messy from the holiday season....  And really, I'm hoping that having the pegboard will eliminate most of the messes that used to occur while we were working before.

My personal favorite parts are the thread racks. I do all of the serging on our aprons, and having all the threads I use frequently literally right next to me is a lifesaver. Before they were in three different plastic cases, which were terrible, and as a result the threads mostly got thrown in our catch-all "supplies bin" where I would have to dig them out from the next time. So I'd say we've improved on that area. Along the bottom edge are small bins that hold everything from needles to extra sewing machine feet and all of our small tools for machine maintenance.

The regular thread rack is great for Cami too, since her old thread box was just as bad as the ones for our serger thread. But Cami's biggest problem with our old digs was never being able to find a pair of scissors (or other sharp tool of choice). So now she has hooks for the fabric scissors, regular scissors for snipping threads, and our good rotary blade. She also has the quilting ruler within reach, and a bin where she likes to keep the binding to be used on our current project, and the case of bobbins is right next to the thread racks.

Up top we have all of our ribbons on a dowel for easy access, as well as a set of jars that hold our buttons. To tell the truth we really don't use that many buttons, but I just love the way they look and hey, it's my pegboard, so there!

We also have a larger bin that holds all of our colorful pens and card stock for writing thank you notes and care tags, as well as our fabric marking pens and pencils. Next to this bin is also a hook for our single hole punch.


Lastly I also wanted to show off our new fabric organization, we used to keep all of our fabric in large Tupperware bins, the kind that are everywhere this time of year. They're great for storing decorations. They are, unfortunately, not very good for storing fabric that you need frequent access to. No matter how often we folded and organized, they were constantly being pawed through in search of this or that fabric and were always a total mess. Our solution was to use these simple closet organizers that hang from the rod. Not only is it much easier to keep our colors separated and well folded, you get a lot more inspiration from an open display of fabric than from staring at a plastic bin, that's for sure. And that what is all comes down to, isn't it? Inspiration. How can you expect to create inspired work in a workspace that doesn't enable your creative process? You can't.

Tell us about how you make your workspace inspired.