Last weekend, Tracy came to visit and, among other things, we had to make time to shop for some upcoming projects. I decided I need to recover the glider for the new baby’s room and that involved shopping for acceptable fabric. We found some cute green ticking that should go great in the room and still be classy when not used for little babies!

While at the designer fabric store we came across some fabric sample books that were no longer being used. The styles were probably discontinued, updated, or otherwise no longer needed.

I asked about the price with my big baby belly poking out and the sales lady said “$1.” Needless to say, we stocked up. We ended up with four but that will last us through many fun projects!

To prep the fabric for said projects, we had to first remove the fabric from the binder (Tracy had fun ripping them apart!)

Then we removed the sticky labels from the back of each one. For that task, we decided on soaking in lukewarm water:

Once they were wet enough, we were able to pull the labels off fairly cleanly. We were also multi-tasking by adding some laundry soap and cleaning the pieces of fabric.

After we felt like they were clean and no longer sticky, we hung them on a drying rack to dry:

Now what are we doing with these fabric samples? Well, we have a few ideas up our sleeves. One, I want to make fabric baby blocks. The different textures will make it look fun and is great for young kids. (I’ve actually already made one so I’ll post that soon!) We’re also thinking about doing some taggie fabric books as well. Any more ideas for uses for this fabric??? We’d love to hear them!

This dessert is not one you make when you are trying to impress your friends. Instead, it’s one you make for family – or just for yourself when you want something yummy and easy. The great thing about it is that, if you’re like me, you just might have all the ingredients to make it in your house!

I just happened to have a sample pack of Oreos (6 cookies), some french vanilla jello, some butter, milk and a chocolate bar. What I made can only be called: perfection. Or at least, delicious enough for seconds!

To make the crust, food process the 6 Oreos (or more if you have them – I think 10 or 12 would have made a nice thick crust!). Add a little melted butter (1 T or 2) and press it into the bottom of a pie plate.

Make your jello according to the instructions on the side of the box. It will start to solidify right away. pour it on top of your Oreo crust and refrigerate for about an hour. When you’re ready to serve, shave the chocolate bar into pretty little shavings on top of the pie. Cut. Serve. Eat.

Yum!

The second Superhero cake I made was a Batman Cake. I have a feeling a similar cake will have to be made one day for my own son!

The cake was Vanilla with Strawberry Cream filling. It was iced and covered with yellow fondant. To get the right color, I used some premixed yellow fondant and added a lot of white. It worked well with just a small amount of yellow fondant to cover the entire 10″ round cake!

The batman logo and buildings are also fondant. I traced the logo off of a license plate my husband owns onto some parchment. I then used the parchment as a stencil to cut out the bat signal. The buildings were all irregular sizes and the windows were individually “glued” on with icing.

I used the gray icing from the Spiderman cake for the writing. Voila! Two superhero cakes and, hopefully, two happy birthday boys!

Last month I did a couple of Superhero cakes that made my husband jealous of 3 year-olds! I figured I would break them up into two separate posts so you can get the fullness of them.

The first is Spiderman:

The cake was actually Red Velvet so I bet it looked great being cut into! I wish I could have seen that! The filling was a Vanilla Cream mousse.

The whole cake is iced and then covered in the baby blue fondant. “Happy Birthday Franco” and Spiderman’s face are red fondant. I decided a while ago that if I ever need red fondant, I will buy it. It is too hard to make and get the right color. I also decided that with black and brown. Satin Ice makes great fondant if you are ever in the market! If only they sold it anywhere near me…

The spider web is gray icing that I was able to use for both this cake and the next one.

I used white fondant for his eyes as well. The border along the bottom is the same tip with the gray icing with squiggles all the way around. I didn’t want anything formal as I thought it would take away from the toughness of Spiderman. I liked the way the final product turned out.

It’s hard to tell in the pictures but this cake is 2 10″ rounds – it was huge and heavy! I hope Franco enjoyed it!

I’ve been trying to do more making since the end of 2009 – stitching, sewing, cooking, baking, writing – all those sorts of things and so far have had some good successes and some not worthy of photographing.

We stayed in for New Year’s Eve, and I made this spinach quiche from Smitten Kitchen. I forgot the cream cheese, so we substituted some yogurt and Gruyere. Turned out really great, actually, which compensated for the not so great spoon bread I tried to make. I pulled the recipe off of a recipe site (not sure which one, but I did leave a detailed comment about how the recipe did not work for us). If you have never tried spoon bread you really should – it should taste like buttered corn but be soft and creamy. If you have a recipe for spoon bread – please share! I will try again someday soon.

Did anyone else set a resolution to bring their lunch and not eat so much take out? I’ve done pretty well so far – actually bringing it every day I have been in the office so far this year. I spent the Sunday before going back to work making lentil soup (which explains the ingredients above – needed curry powder – recipe for soup and powder from Mark Bittman),  yogurt, and a big pot of oatmeal (for breakfasts). Not having to think about what to have for lunch made it so much easier to pull my lunches together.

Have you tried any new recipes this year?