Z as in Zebra

I’ve had this blue polka dot cover ready to be made into a book for a while. The trick has been figuring out what to do with it.

Then, I came up with an idea: A custom-made journal with tabbed sections!

I used this retro leaf motif for the inside paste pages. I loved the way the sage-y green paper contrasted so beautifully with the bright blue cover.

I used Adobe Illustrator to make a template for the tabs and divided the book into 5 sections, alternating blue and gray tabs.

Each divider is also a pocket…perfect for storing photos, receipts, ticket stubs, napkin sketches, etc.

Since this book was a chance for me to experiment, it doesn’t yet have a home. If you are interested in buying this FanTABulous journal, it can be yours! For more details or to purchase, click here or leave a comment. First-come, first-served!

In September, I started a cupcake adventure. If you haven’t read about it yet, you can do so here.

***

My cousin Claire asked me to help her with a school fundraiser by making several batches of cupcakes. Since I have several more recipes to work through, I was happy to oblige. These S’Mores cupcakes were a slight departure from the classic graham cracker/Hershey’s/marshmallow sandwich, but they lived up to their name where taste was concerned!!

Naturally, the recipe started with creaming butter, sugar, eggs, and vanilla.

This recipe was different from most in the sense that it used very little flour. Instead, crushed graham crackers made up the majority of the dry ingredients.

These dry ingredients were added to the wet ones.

And made a luscious graham cracker batter.

Next, a healthy scoop of chocolate chips was added. And by “healthy,” I mean generous, not good-for-you ;)

Mmm…look at that batter!

They baked up beautifully.

Next, egg whites were whipped with sugar until frothy and corn syrup was drizzled into the mixture.

The ‘icing’ was beaten until it formed peaks and resembled marshmallow fluff. Mmm.

Cute! Reminds me of my sister’s old Kewpie dolls.

Chocolate sprinkles rounded out the look:

Here’s what a S’Mores cupcake looks like before being bitten into…

…and after. Mmm.

I’ll be making these again for sure! The leftover marshmallow topping was also delicious as a dip for fresh fruit. Ask me how I know.

Yesterday I posted Sam and Candace’s wedding guest book. Today, I’m featuring the books I made for their groomsmen.

I LOVE making lots of books at once. It’s so satisfying to make an entire collection, knowing that although they are alike, each book will be given a different home.

I made six books for Sam and Candace: one for each of their 5 groomsmen and one for Sam himself.

The books were black suede covers with an antique crackle paper for the facing pages.

Each one had a personalized place inside the front cover with space for Sam to write a heartfelt note.

The inscription color alternated for each guy and coordinated directly with their ribbon bookmark.

The best part was seeing them all together and day-dreaming about all the amazing thoughts and observations that would fill their pages.

Sam and Candace: Thanks for asking me to make these. May they bless the guys who received them!

Last year, I had the privilege of working through a 12-week program called The Artist’s Way with two amazing people, including Sam DuRegger. Because the journey of AW inspires you to take action in making your dreams come true, it’s no surprise that many things changed for the three of us in the group. My friend Emily got a boost towards a home improvement project she’d been wanting to complete, I quit my job to pursue my artistic passions, and Sam quit his job, moved to Iowa, and got engaged!

((Note: The Artist’s Way is NOT for the faint-of-heart or for people who are content to live their lives in a state of ‘comfortable complacency’. It’s terrific, but it’ll rock your world!))

Anyway, back to the point. Sam and Candace got engaged and in doing so asked me to make them a one-of-a-kind guest book as well as gifts for their groomsmen–come back tomorrow to see those.

I made a 6×6 hard-cover book with a photo of the couple on the front.

Their wedding date was showcased in a label holder–complete with heart brads, aww! ;) on the book’s spine.

Candace likes the type of floral patterns you’d seen on Anthropologie’s website, so I gave them several options and they chose a muted blue, green, and sage motif for the paste pages.

To match the paste pages, I used blue, green, and cream colored cardstock for the book’s guts.

A silver satin ribbon tie enclosure completed the look.

Sam and Candace: Thank you for allowing me to be a part of your very special day. I wish you all the best of God’s blessings as you two embark on this wonderful journey called Marriage together!

In September of 2009, I started a cupcake adventure. If you haven’t read about it yet, you can do so here.

***

The following are terrific to make if you want to eat cupcakes for breakfast without feeling (too) guilty. They are more like a muffin and actually incorporate some fruit, so they aren’t as bad for you as the really yummy ones.

First, I mixed together the dry ingredients, which included nutmeg, one of my all-time-favorite spices. Mmm. It just smells like autumn, doesn’t it?

I measured out the applesauce called for in the recipe.

I zested a lemon.

And we mixed all the yummy goodness together with some (what else?) butter and sugar.

While my mixer was doing the hard part, I combined all the topping ingredients: sugar, flour, a diced apple, and chopped walnuts.

I also measured out the walnuts and cranberries for the batter.

The batter resembled a nutmeg-y cookie dough. Mmm!

The cranberries and walnuts were thrown into the mix before they knew what hit them!

A little bit of batter was blopped out into 24 muffin papers (the recipe says “Makes 18″, to which I reply: HA!)

A little bit of butter was melted down…

and the topping ingredients were added…

to make this lovely mixture:

I put a small dab of topping on each blop of batter and the cuppies prepared themselves for the heat.

Mmm. If raw eggs weren’t so risky, I’d probably just eat them like this:

But, they are EVEN BETTER if you can wait for them to bake. Mmm. I might have to make these again soon!

A while back, the lovely Felicia asked me to make cupcakes for a baby shower. A friend of hers at work was expecting a baby girl, and the whole office wanted to celebrate.

I made 48 cupcakes: two dozen vanilla and two dozen chocolate. The guest of honor loves cream cheese icing, so that was my frosting of choice. The project pretty much invaded my kitchen for the whole day as I got an assembly line going.

For every dozen, I made 6 chocolate and 6 vanilla with the same topping.

White swirl with pink sugar crystals.

Pink swirl with white nonpareils.

White iced with pink sugar pearls and pink jumbo heart sprinkle.

And pink sugar-crystal-coated with a white jumbo heart sprinkle.

I lined some Xerox paper box lids with heavy-duty foil so Felicia could easily transport the cupcakes to her office.

They all looked so cozy next to their cupcake neighbors.

And, being a lover of all things bulk, it makes my heart smile to see mass quantities of anything, especially cupcakes.

I LOVE LOVE LOVE the color of the hot pink ones.

All in a day’s work!

Want to know the upside to doing cupcakes instead of a regular cake at a shower or party?
1: You can have several flavors.
2. You can get various designs.
3: You don’t have to guess on serving size
4: You don’t need utensils or plates (which saves the hostess money!)

After getting a book of her own, Amy asked me to make a similar sketchbook for Taunda: an 8.5 x 11 hard-bound book with blank pages for sketching and journaling.

Taunda’s favorite color is purple, so I started there. I found some pretty cotton fabric in lavender, with a dark purple crackle effect.

It made a perfect cover material!

I added a white satin ribbon bookmark so Taunda could save her place at the end of each writing/sketching session.

I included a placard with her name inside the front cover.

And a verse that Amy had personally selected.

I love how these books turn out and I’m hoping to add some to my inventory very soon!

In September of 2009, I started a cupcake adventure. If you haven’t read about it yet, you can do so here.

***

The ingredients for these cupcakes look more like breakfast ingredients than anything, so I suppose the following could also be classified as muffins. And as such, you can eat them for breakfast!

Here are the batter ingredients:

And here are the topping ingredients. Not too different.

Ahh, here we go. The infamous creaming butter and sugar shot.

Oatmeal is obviously a critical part of this recipe, given the title and all.

And when you combine oatmeal with brown sugar and butter…

You get a yummy, crumbly topping!

Once your ingredients are creamed together,

a little bit of oatmeal makes for a nice batter.

But before they are ready for the oven,

A dab of strawberry jelly must be added.

And covered with more batter.

Look at those. I should’ve KNOWN they would overflow in the oven. They are already full! Have I not learned ANYTHING?! Somebody slap me.

But they just look so pretty! Too bad we aren’t done yet.

What did I tell you…overflow. Sheesh.

At least when something looks this goofy, it still tastes good. If I make these again, I’ll probably divide the batter to twice as many liners!

In September of 2009, I started a cupcake adventure. If you haven’t read about it yet, you can do so here.

***

It’s cupcake post kind of week, and since I used my blog as a virtual birthday treat for my cousin Zoe yesterday, today I’m doing the same for my friend Jacee. Only her birthday will be celebrated in past tense, since it was in December.

Below are the cupcakes I made for Jacee’s birthday…a baked version of one of my favorite (pre-pregnancy, that is) drinks: The Cuba Libre (rum & coke).

The first step is to boil a stick of butter in some cola (sounds healthy, no?)

Then, you get the dry ingredients ready…

and pour in the coke/butter mixture,

along with some cream or half-and-half (depends how naughty you are feeling).

I bought these shaped muffin papers a while back and wanted to see how well they worked. I realized later that using carbonated batter wasn’t probably the best time to try them out.

I was careful to not over-fill them, since I wasn’t sure what would happen as the batter baked and expanded.

While they baked, I cut up some candied lime slices for decoration.

And, as I should’ve suspected, these bubbled and caved much like the Root Beer Float Cupcakes did, only this first attempt wasn’t a total disaster. It must be due to the carbonation in the pop. That’s the only culprit I can think of.

But they were still moist…and there’s nothing a little icing can’t fix.

A couple tablespoons of rum and some powdered sugar made up the icing.

And, naturally, each cupcake was garnished with a lime wedge…like a real Cuba Libre.

And, my cute papers worked fairly well with the batter, even though it wasn’t ideal. I’d be curious to see how well they work with a commercial cake mix…

Bottoms up!

In September of 2009, I started a cupcake adventure. If you haven’t read about it yet, you can do so here.

***

Today is my cousin Zoe’s birthday. For my entire life, she’s been one of my very best friends. Since she lives in Seattle and I can’t be there to bake her a birthday cake, this blog post will have to do.

I love you, Stinky!! Happy 28th!!! Try to imagine these cupcakes on the screen are real…just for you!!

Let me say this up front: these cupcakes were WAY fussier than anything I would normally make. But, since we’re pretending these are for Zoe’s birthday, they were well worth the fuss.

The first step was to put a vanilla bean in some milk and boil it just slightly, then let it cool for a while.

While the ‘cooling’ was happening, I got to work creaming the butter and sugar.

Next, the recipe said to split the vanilla bean and scrape out its insides.

That’s vanilla, not pepper.

Dry ingredients were combined with the butter and sugar.

And the vanilla milk was added to make mashed potatoes!! (only kidding).

While the batter was baking inside it’s cute little papers, I was boiling a cocoa/sugar syrup for the icing.

Once it reached the appropriate temperature, the syrup was removed from the heat, placed in a pan of cool water and whipped with a hand-held mixer. (Are you seeing the fussiness yet?)

The result:

So I had these lovely cupcakes with no topping:

And I dressed them up with some cooked chocolate fussy-pants icing and some chopped peanuts.

In all, they were really cute and pretty tasty…but they were sure a lot of work. There has GOT to be an easier way to make chocolate icing!