Go Bananas {and Nuts} - Banana Nut Bread Recipe

This family recipe for banana nut bread is to die for! I'm usually not a huge fan of banana nut bread, but this recipe has the perfect ratio of banana to nuts to bread. This is a great recipe for a delicious breakfast or snack on-the-go. I like to make it into a loaf, but I've also made it into muffins before. 

Let's get crackin'

Ingredients

1/2 cup corn oil

1 cup sugar

2 eggs

3 bananas, mashed (preferably on the brownish side)

3 Tbsp milk

1/2 tsp vanilla

2 cups all-purpose flour

1 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 cup chopped nuts (I like to use pecan--pronounced pea-CAN)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Combine corn oil and sugar. Beat in eggs, milk, vanilla and mashed bananas. 

In a separate bowl, sift together flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt.

Combine flour mixture with egg mixture.

Stir in the chopped nuts (I used some I got from my papa's pecan tree, but you can buy store-bought ones already chopped)

Pour delicious mixture into a greased pan.

Bake at 350 for 23-35 minutes. 

When the sides start pulling away from the pan and it cracks down the middle...that's when it's perfection.

Let me tell you...if you could smell pictures, you'd be in heaven.  I promise you'll go NUTS over this recipe (and yes, pun intended)

That's a Wrap{ped} Wreath

I can't take credit for this masterpiece, except for the photography. My aunt is a wreath & bow mastermind. So this posting is dedicated to her creating a wreath for my brother's new house and my semi-paying attention to her directions. 

Here's the before picture. It was just an old vine wreath my mom found in our craft room.

First she started wrapping a burlap ribbon around, leaving a little room between each pass.

Keep wrapping

Once she got to the end, she just tucked the ends under the vines.

So this part is a little murky for me. She can tie like the BEST bows, but I haven't ever done one myself. And she was on her lunch break when she did this so she didn't have time to give me a tutorial. She promised to give me one later, and I promise to post the results. Apparently the trick is to twist after every loop.

Tie the bow to the wreath by using some twine

We added a "R" to add a little somethin-somethin to keep it snazzy.

And BAM, we have a recycled rustic wreath (try saying that 5 times fast!)

How the Cookie Crumbles

In honor of it being my best friend's birthday today, I had to make her a cookie cake. It's a tradition of ours to celebrate with cookie cake. I can even remember a time in college when one of our roommates made us a stick figure cookie cake labeled in Spanish in honor of both of us acing our Anatomy and Spanish tests that week. A few years ago I made her a Despicable Me minion cookie cake (pictured below). But with this being a bigger and better year (#25), I had to outdo myself. Lately she's been obsessed with Doctor Who...I mean OBSESSED, so I decided to make her a Tardis design. I forgot to make pics of the steps of the cookie cake being made, but it's super simple. I can't take credit for coming up with the recipe - I got it from my Kitchenaid mixer's recipe book. It hasn't failed me yet, and you shouldn't fix somethin that aint broke. 

B-day Minion Cookie Cake

 Ingredients:

Cookie Part

1 cup white sugar

1 cup brown sugar

1 cup (2 sticks) of butter or margarine, softened

2 eggs

1 1/2 tsp vanilla

1 tsp baking soda

1 tsp salt

3 cups all-purpose flour

12 ounces semi-sweet chocolate chips (I usually add a few extra for better taste...those calories don't count right?)

Icing

*note, I doubled this recipe because I was covering the entire cookie cake and using different colors. Usually the listed amount will be plenty (again, these extra calories don't count right?)

1 lb powdered sugar

1/2 cup Crisco

1/4 water

pinch of salt

Steps:

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Place sugars, butter, eggs, and vanilla into a bowl. Mix all of them together. In a separate bowl, mix together flour, baking soda, and salt. Slowly add the dry mixture while the batter is mixing. Add in chocolate chips and stir together. After this point you can drop spoonfuls onto a greased cookie sheet to make individual cookies, or glop it all together for a cake. Bake either choice for 10-12 minutes.

Here's the final product!

 Make sure when you make the icing, you add the water slowly - you might not need the entire water amount, just depends on how thin you want the icing.

Fun fact: I named my Kichenaid stand mixer Amelia (I name a lot of my stuff)

 When adding colors, it's a good idea to use gel colors, that way the colors are nice and vibrant without using a lot of color, which tends to make the icing runny. 

I knew the Tardis colors were blue, black, and white so I took out some icing and put it into two different plastic sandwich baggies. (Just cut a SMALL hole in one of the corners for piping - I didn't feel like getting out my entire decorating kit so I decided to skip corners this time)

Since blue was the main color and it didn't need to be piped, I left it in the mixer.

Covered in blue icing.

I piped out a black strip at the top where the writing will go in a minute.

It just wouldn't be a successful event if everything went smoothly...while making the windows, my cheap icing baggy busted and a huge glop of icing fell out :(

But no worries...I'm an expert fixer so I just smoothed it in and decided to put black lines for the windows instead.

The finished cookie cake! I can't wait to dig in!

Here's what the actual Tardis is supposed to look like, for all my non-Whovians out there. 

Happy birthday best friend! I hope you have a wonderful day! 

Dress to Impress

My brother is getting married in a few months!! Me being the genius I am, I volunteered to help out with a lot of the wedding stuff since I used to work in the wedding industry and I'm so crafty. Plus they want the whole shebang to be fairly budget-friendly. One of the things I got roped into doing (because I can't say no to people) was making the flower girl dress. What was I thinking? They decided on having a rustic country wedding so I thought a pillowcase dress would be precious. Welllll...I've never made a pillowcase dress before so I figured it would be a good idea to make a prototype. I started out looking for what do to from Pinterest, but ended up making my own. Here's my version...

I'm going to go ahead and warn you that it was my first time making this dress so I made a few mistakes. But hey, we learn from our mistakes right? 

Disclaimer: This isn't really a tutorial so much as a "what I did to make this" kinda thing...

My fabric and ribbon (from the sale bin)

The adorable flower girl (the bride's niece) is 5, so I measured the fabric to be 23" in length, plus 2" to allow for seams. The width is about 36" 

If you fold the fabric in half to be 25" x 18" you can see about what size the finished product will be.

Fold under the bottom to make a seam and sew along the edge.

At the top of the dress, you will need to fold down a larger seam allowance (big enough for your ribbon to run through the entire length) 

Showing the ribbon allowance

Next I folded the fabric in half and made it inside out to sew it. Make sure to start directly BELOW the folded ribbon part from the top! If you sew it up, the ribbon won't have a hole to go through.

I went back to where the ribbon hole is going to be and put about 4 stitches in the top so the hole would be finished off. 

This is what the dress looked like at this point...not much to see, but it'll take shape in just a minute.

I almost forgot the arm holes!! That would have been hard to get into without them. 

I cut a triangle-shaped hole into each side. It was about 2" across by 5" down.

I turned the dress inside out again and carefully folded down the seam to sew the arm holes.

I forgot to take a pic of me putting the ribbon through the holes (I'm only human). But it's really simple to do. Just measure out about how long you need the ribbon for each side. Take your two pieces of ribbon and lead them through the holes. Kinda scrunch it together to form a neck hole. Then tie bows and PRESTO you have a fabulous pillowcase dress!! 

I can't wait to make the munchkin try it on! I'll post pics when I can manage to wrangle her into it. 

Using Your Head{board}

I recently decided what I wanted to do for my "big girl job." Yay me, but I have to go back to school to get my Masters degree. I moved back in with my parents to save money while going back to school...yeah, I'm THAT person. When I moved back, I decided to make my own headboard since I didn't have one in my tiny apartment. The rest of my room is kinda country/rustic, using aqua, yellow, gray, and white colors. I wanted to do something original. I love Pinterest, but I don't like stuff that everyone else in the world has. I like to be different. So I found this really cool broken arch that had been out in our garden forever. As you can tell, it's only half of an arch and wasn't salvageable to do it's original job anymore. It was white in a previous life, but after 20 years outside it was looking a little gray.

First, we had to sand it down a little to make sure all the sides were smooth, and to get off all the moss that had found a home on it. 

I frequently give my dad puppy dog eyes to help out on my projects. I'm infamous for guilt tripping him, but he's a good sport. Plus, I'm kind of a klutz and would probably staple my finger if left unsupervised.

Next, we got out the spray cans and painted that puppy white. 

(I'm rocking my camo hat & boots this day)

While the paint was still tacky, we used an old rag to take off some paint to give it a bit of a "weathered" look.

Finished product.

We (mostly my dad) hung some small "L" brackets on the wall to secure the headboard.

The finished product!

The best thing about this project was that it was FREE! I'm a cheapskate, so the cheaper the better. We already had the sandpaper and white spray paint so we just had to add a little elbow grease and love. 

*An important message: if you have anything that's been outside for 20+ years, it's a really good idea to spray it down with bug spray. I possibly had a few ants crawl out after we hung it. We sprayed it then and HUNDREDS of ants came out and died on my bed. I freaked out and washed my bedding about 10 times before I would sleep on it. Even now I sleep with one eye open, just waiting for an ambush.