coconut cupcakes...

I've talked before about the Scrappy Girls and how one of our group of four moved to North Carolina last year... well, she's back (even if it's only for a few weeks)!

Friday we all met for lunch and then went to Cathy's scrap loft to work on our annual "25 Days of December" project. Dinner was appetizer potluck so everyone brought something to snack on- which leads me to these coconut cupcakes (girls gotta have dessert!).

If you or someone you love is a fan of coconut cake, you've got to try them. They're SO good.

Barefoot Contessa's Coconut Cupcakes

(warning: not for lightweights, these are dense and delicious!

Bring your stretchy pants.)

3/4 pound butter, room temperature
2 cups sugar
5 extra large eggs, room temperature
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla
1 1/2 teaspoons almond extract
3 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup buttermilk
14 ounces unsweetened shredded coconut
   Preheat the oven to 325 degrees.
   In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy, about 5 minutes. With the mixer running on low, add the eggs one at a time, scraping down the bowl after each addition. Add the vanilla and almond extracts and mix well.
   In a separate bowl, sift together  the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt. In three parts, alternately add the dry ingredients and the buttermilk to the batter, beginning and ending with the dry. Mix until just combined. Fold in 7 ounces of coconut.
   Line a muffin pan with paper liners. Fill each cup to the top with batter. Bake for 25-35 minutes, until the tops are brown and a toothpick comes out clean. Allow to cool in the pan for 15 minutes. Remove to a baking rack and cool completely. Frost with cream cheese icing (recipe follows) and sprinkle with the remaining coconut.
Makes 18-20 large cupcakes

Cream Cheese Icing

1 pound cream cheese, room temperature
3/4 pound unsalted butter, room temperature
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 teaspoon almond extract
1 1/2 pounds confectioners' sugar, sifted
   In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, blend together the cream cheese, butter, vanilla and almond extracts. Add the confectioners' sugar and mix until smooth.

P.S.
Don't blame me if you end up eating a half dozen yourself. You've been warned.

more collage fun...

It's official... I've got 'collage-itis'!  My girlfriends and I are having so much fun creating these. By the time I get halfway through one, I'm already dreaming about the next one...

This time I thought I'd put one together to represent 'The Scrappy Girls'. Even though we are spread between California and North Carolina, we try to Skype on as many Tuesdays as we can. It's a really fun way to still be able to play together, although you sure can't beat a real hug & kiss from your friends in person. This helps fills the gaps, though!

I love these girls- they make me smile. Always.

BTW- these are party hats, not dunce caps (although sometimes I wonder.........)

collage class

The scrappy girls and I have embarked on a new path... collage! Oh my gosh- is it ever fun. We signed up for the online course from Teresa McFayden called Paint, Paper, Paste so that we'd have some kind of baseline instructions. So far as it turns out- we've decided that collage is just whatever you think you want to slap on at the time!

Yesterday afternoon we were all on Skype together between California and North Carolina (first time we've been in 3 different places using it and it was fabulous) laughing and talking while we each worked on our own collage project.

Mine was a small 6"x6" canvas which I ended up calling 'collage class'.

To begin, I covered the bare canvas with strips of old book paper and sheet music, using ModPodge matte medium, then just started layering from there...

Vintage images, a heart cut from corrugated cardboard, stamps and stamps and more stamps...

Smudges of color using pastel artsticks, india ink pens for shading, a Sharpie black journaling pen for doodling... it was SO much fun. In fact, it ended up being one of the most fun projects I've worked on in a long time- it was so intimidating for me at first since my comfort zone is 'orderly' chaos and I find it extremely difficult to slap things on without a plan. I like things in grid-fashion, neatly wrapped & tied. Well, what I quickly figured out was that collage is totally the opposite of all that!

And I loved it.

Here is our 'club'... Cathy, Kandy & myself... ha ha ha

birthday banner swap... part deux!

Here we go with part 2 of the 'Great Birthday Banner Swap'! The thing that makes these banners so very special, is the fact that my friends made them just for me... putting their own personalities into them, thinking about what my favorite things are and then putting their time and patience and love into them- I hope you enjoy them as much as I do. The first beauty up is from Cathy. She always makes me think of happy colors. She also makes the most fabulous little mini-banners and I was lucky enough to get one on my own banner!

Next we've got Barbi... she's a lover of vintage and pin-up girls, just like me. (whoops- I don't mean I'm a pin-up girl. I meant that I love them too!)

The tiny scalloped edge you see there on the sides? Well those are individual little circles, pain-stakingly glued onto the back to make the fancy edge. Guess she really likes me! ha ha ha

The last one is from Kandy. She's an embellishment wiz. Totally fancy and feminine, loaded with detail.

Check out the pocket she built into the point of the banner- that was a darling idea. She filled it with those pretty little fancied-up tags. Love the sparkly button!

So whad'ya think? I'm a pretty lucky girl to have these friends, aren't I? Yeah, I think so.

birthday banner swap...

It seems it's been about a gazillion days since I last updated my blog (well, OK, maybe not quite that many, but it's close...). No good excuse, just that life sometimes gets in the way of best intentions!

Many months ago, one of the Scrappy Girls had a birthday (yeah, YOU Cathy!) and the rest of us decided that instead of making cards to go along with the gifts, we'd make banner pennants. Actually, I kind of instigated this because I am soooo not a card-maker. My friends make beautiful cards- full of detail, artfully crafted, made with love. Me? Not so much. In fact, not only do I usually not make their birthday card, I've always got the ugliest gift-wrapping. No kidding- if there were a pile of gifts sitting there, they could probably each pick out the one that I brought. Anyway... a banner-maker I most certainly AM!

So here's the deal- we took a standard size of 5"x7" so that there would be continuity. Each one of us made her a birthday-themed pennant that she could string together and hang up. The theory here is that by the time she's about 100 years old, she'll have a lovely reminder of how much we love her. Not just on her birthday, but always! She loved the surprise of the banner pieces and we all decided that this would now replace the handmade birthday cards. Whew! Good news for me. The other bonus? We all decided that it was so much fun, we'd make them for all holidays!

Barbi's was a mix of my very favorite bird image, sheet music (of course) and the striped paper from My Mind's Eye that I used on about a dozen projects (I just couldn't get enough of that paper!)...

Kandy's just reminded me of her- she's so girlie and I'm pretty sure she might actually have a magic wand. Really. I also loved that the paper had her birthday number on it (sorry, there wasn't a 29 in sight) and the book paper I used was the title page from 'Much Ado About Nothing'!

Unfortunately, when I made Cathy's banner way back in September, I never took a picture of it. Next time, I'll show you the banners that my girlfriends made for MY birthday!

let it snow...

Here are my apothecary jars from yesterday...

No brilliant new idea here but the epsom salts do give a nice "snowy" effect, and again, the glittered snowflakes were too hard for me to resist.

I pulled out all the mercury glass I had- there aren't many pieces- but when gathered all together on the tabletop it had a nice sparkle.

Mixed with a really old crocheted tablecloth from the thrift store and some extra Christmas balls, the table was all ready for lunch with The Scrappy Girls!

feeling a little patriotic...

Oh my gosh- I can't believe it's been so long since I posted... I've turned into one of those blogs that drives me crazy (you know, the ones where you keep looking but they're not posting anything and you wonder- what the heck could be more important than keeping me entertained whenever I feel like looking at their blog? Yeah, I'm one of 'those' blogs now). Although, I suppose I'm lucky anyone is even reading this after I've been gone so long.

I don't even have a great excuse for being gone. School is out for summer vacation and we've just been home, hanging out and having fun. There is a new scrapbook store in town that I'm just totally in love with and I can't get enough time in. My scrappy girlfriends and I have been scrapping away together. The laundry is piling up, the garden needs to be weeded, my scrap room is a total disaster (going through yet-another-redo), yada yada yada.... basically, you know, life is happening!

So Tuesday the Scrappy Girls all got together for our weekly crop and we had a patriotic theme going on. It was really my turn to host, but being as how I can't even see the floor or a single tabletop in my studio at the moment, one of the girls graciously offered to let me have it at her house and I just brought the stuff with me. That was a genius solution- thanks Kandy!

I brought along some goodies for us to create with- chipboard stars, lots of vintage images to play with, patriotic-themed flashcards and some hand-dyed seam binding. Over the last couple of weeks I've also been doing some canning and I brought everyone some blueberry-lemonade jam. Hope they liked it!

Blueberry Lemonade Jam

7 cups crushed blueberries

3 1/2 cups sugar

1 pkg. low-sugar powdered pectin

1 Tbsp. lemon zest

1/3 cup fresh-squeezed lemon juice

Pour crushed blueberries into a stockpot. Mix pectin with 1/4 cup of the sugar and stir into blueberries. Add enough water to the 1/3 cup lemon juice to equal 1/2 cup total fluid. Stir lemon-water mixture into berries. Bring to a boil then add the rest of the sugar. Return to a hard, rolling boil and boil for 1 minute. Remove from heat and stir in zest. Pour hot mixture into sterilized jars and process for 10 minutes.

Makes 9-10 half pint jars

We had Pulled Pork sandwiches, iced tea and brownies. Kinda like a picnic, only in a really beautiful house instead. with no ants. or flies. or frisbees to duck. and the air conditioning kept us nice and cool. Basically, I think I've decided I like indoor picnics better than outdoor picnics!

meet the scrappy girls...

I'd like to introduce you to The Scrappy Girls... we are a small group of close friends who get together every Tuesday to play!

We all met at a LSS many years ago. When the store closed, there was a large group of us, originally there were about 10, who decided to get together once a month and scrap together. But... kids in school, finding work outside the home and other committments eventually whittled us down. Another store opened up and as the group got smaller, we met there weekly instead.

Through the years we have become a group of four. These women are true sisters- there is nothing that we can't talk about, or laugh about, or cry about with each other. They are fun, fiercely loyal and free-wheeling! They have become such an important part of my life- I can't imagine being without them.

We were once all part of a design team and had to make a sample representing our personalities and our own personal 'style'... even though they are years old, these are still pretty acurate...

We decided to stop getting together at a store and return to the more intimate setting of our own homes. Each Tuesday, one of us is the hostess of the party. And I do mean P-A-R-T-Y. I'm not sure how it became what it is... it just happened! There are 'themed' days and some days when the hostess might decide to teach us a class- with a new technique or a project. There are always generous gifts of supplies and little goodies for everyone.

And the food.

The food is fabulous.

We joke about the stress of coming up with something new each time it's our turn to hostess, but to be honest- we love it and we still look forward to it every single week, whether we're the hostess or the guest.
I hope this tradition carries on for years to come.

I love you girls!!!

some pretty storage...

Tuesday was my day with The Scrappy Girls. We went on a field trip to our favorite scrapbook store in Berkley, Scrapbook Territory. Afterward we had lunch and did a little snooping around Crate & Barrel and I found this. It's a cupcake stand but I thought it could hold embellishments in my studio instead (although it wouldn't be too bad if it was always filled with cupcakes, either). And yay! It was on sale for only $19.99. Sold!

I felt like it was just asking to be painted black, so all-too-eagerly I grabbed the spray paint. I might actually need some kind of 12-step program for spray paint. It's just soooo much fun. Maybe in another life I was a tagger? who knows. I wish I had an actual spray booth but had to settle for my large deckbox covered in plastic- it's not pretty but it does the job. I'm sure my neighbor thinks I spend way too much time out there humming to myself and spray-painting things!

Next I had to find little containers to hold the embellies. After a dozen unsuccessful attempts (everything was either too big or too ugly) I grabbed a canning jar. I have a million of them. Perfect! The little baby ones nestled right inside the wire 'cups'.

This is how it looks now...

... sooooo loving it...