Death by Ruffles

Last Labor Day weekend, Taylor went out of town to see his family while I stayed behind to work over the weekend. I was not very happy about the arrangement, but I decided to make the best of it and knock out a couple of crafts while I was busy doing nothing else.

My first attempt was what looked like a very straight forward and simple t-shirt refashion. Take a white tee, cut the bottom off and use it as a ruffle to sew onto the top. Then, cut one of the sleeves off and boom. You have a one shouldered, ruffle shirt. 

Except that you really don't. This project was such a disaster. I painstakingly sewed and resewed that dadgum ruffle so many times, but it never looked right. And once I had cut the sleeve off to make it one shouldered, I was left with a giant gaping hole. I tried sewing that up to make it more fitted, but it was still too low. The shape was all wrong and in the end, it just looks like a homemade shirt. 

I took a picture of it and had it on my computer for a while but I guess since it was such a disaster, I deleted it. 

Verdict: Just don't.

Cupcakes: Emphasis on Cup

When I left my job back in April, I wanted to do something for all of the kind people that I had worked with over the past year. I know food is the way to my heart, and I hoped the same would be true for them. So I baked.

Unfortunately, we had already packed up all of our belongings and moved in with a friend so I had to get creative with my baking. I really didn't want to buy an entire bottle of vegetable oil or a dozen eggs just for a simple box cake. (Let's be real here: I'm too scared to attempt a from-scratch cake so I use the excuse that I don't have all of the ingredients needed.)

I knew that I had seen a recipe somewhere on Pinterest that boasted a recipe that included a box cake mix and soda. I wondered if this could be the answer to all of my hopes and dreams and decided to make it happen.

Just to be safe, I hadn't mentioned to any of my coworkers that I was planning to bring baked goods in case my attempts went down in a fiery mess.

I searched all over for the recommended cake mix and soda flavor (they should complement each other) but I had no luck so I decided that I would try a white cake with Sprite as my soda. Plus, my mouth started watering when I thought of drinking a Sprite and I knew I could drink the leftovers.

Pros: 

• Holy cow was this recipe easy
• It tasted like a cake!
• Did I mention it was easy to make?

Cons:

• Kind of thick like it was almost too moist. 

Verdict:

Via

I would definitely make this again, especially if I was in a pinch for ingredients! 

Now, for the cup emphasis of cupcakes.

Also on Pinterest, I saw what looked like an adorable way to package these cupcakes. It sounded easy enough, buy some clear plastic cups, plastic lids, and voila! Sounds easy enough, right?

Via

However. I ran into three problems. First of all, my Wal-Mart didn't sell lids in increments less than 1,000 so I thought I would wrap them up with individual cellophane wrappers. Second, those cellophane wrappers are expensive so I bought those plastic fold over sandwich bags. Third, I bought cups that were too tall. 

Also, in hindsight, I should have iced the cupcakes before dropping them in the cups. I had a way too high icing to cupcake ratio. 

My cupcakes only partly filled up the cups, but not enough to put a third cupcake in there so they looked a little strange. 

If I had to do it over again, I might have either followed the directions for the cupcakes in a cup or just handed people their cupcakes. 

Oven Baked Garlic Parmesan Pickles (Sort Of)

My first recipe! I'm starting at the bottom of my Pinterest page and working my way up.

Oven Baked Garlic Fries 
(You'll notice the title of this post and the title of the recipe are different. I'll get to that in a minute...)

Some of these recipes are from our time in Del Rio. This is one of them. I used the boys as guinea pigs to my attempts at baking and cooking. This was on of my first attempts and luckily it turned out pretty well. Which is good because it doesn't take many failures at something for me to completely give up on it.

I have a really bad habit of skim-reading. I frequently pick up Sour Cream instead of Cream Cheese at the store, buy strawberry-banana yogurt instead of strawberry, and in the case of this recipe, I looked at the picture and thought they were baked pickles instead of potato chips. So I bought lots of pickles.

It ended up not being a problem and I just watched them closely and took them out of the oven once they were brownish.

Pros:

• They were fantastic! (Which is really all that matters)

Cons:

• I used an entire jar of pickles and the boys devoured them in record time. Kind of a lot of work for not much output. (I count work as preparation, assembly, wait time, and cleanup)
• The parmesan didn't stick to the pickles. An expensive decoration if you ask me.
• Parsley is always useless.

Verdict:

I think I will make these again. Like I said, I didn't get a lot of results for the work but what we did eat was delicious.