DIY

Peaches and Cream Cupcakes

Okay guys, first off, I need to mention… I have an odd number of photos. Yes, there are 11 photos. For some reason I hate odd numbers. I think it is because I prefer symmetry instead of asymmetrical things. Sigh! Two… wait for the rest of this post because seriously. I’m still shaking my head! Finally, happy September. Now that it’s September, can I put my Christmas tree up yet?!?! You think I’m kidding? I’m really not…. Sadly…

Truth… Prior to a couple years ago, I’d never used farm fresh eggs. Yes, I grew up on a farm. No, we didn’t raise chickens. No one I knew raised chickens. We used store bought eggs. And truthfully… farm fresh eggs kind of freaked me out. I don’t know why? I can’t explain it. It is/was just a weird quirk with me. I say was because….. Those eggs above, are farm fresh. Yes, y’all I’ve been using Farm Fresh eggs. Truth number 2 right here… I hardly ever say y’all when speaking, but I will type it. Another thing I can’t explain.

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Piña Colada Cupcakes

Were you afraid I forgot to make the July cupcake from the challenge? Never fear, here is the Piña Colada Cupcake. I really think this was one of the cupcakes everyone was looking forward too, that and last months. February’s was good too. I think May’s was the worst IMO. I have a feeling May’s will always be the worst IMO… So the way to start this cupcake was to boil my Pineapple juice. Can I tell you a secret? I had to boil it twice and I forgot about it both times. Whoops.

The first time I forgot to shake my juice together. So it really didn’t boil down to a thick syrup, which made me decide to start again. The second time I walked away and forgot again that I put it on to boil. Nothing happened either time except I came back to the above picture. No big deal.

The boiled juice was actually for the icing but I wanted to make sure I didn’t forget because it needed to be completely cool before I could use it. A few hours later I started back in on the cupcakes. This time I mixed the dry ingredients together in a bowl. It says medium bowl but seriously, I could have used a small bowl for the dry ingredients.

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Sundae Cupcakes

I’m really hoping that one thing I will gain from this Cupcake Challenge I put on myself is to learn to make the most perfect, most consistent cupcakes. So far…. It hasn’t happened, but I am getting closer…. maybe…

I truly think that out of all of these cupcakes, this is one that most everyone was looking forward to. I know I was kind of dreaming about them. And they definitely top the cake over last months. maybe top the cupcake? Would that be icing… like the icing on the cake. Okay, I’ll stop now!

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Quilt Block 25 & Putting the Quilt Together

To tell you the truth, I’ve been chomping at the bit to get this quilt put together. I have loved every minute of it, but I’m truthfully not a put it off for 6 months kind of girl. Now okay, I’ll admit, I didn’t start this challenge the first week it was out there… in fact I don’t think I got started until February some time but dang… it’s been going on for a while. Last week I thought I had all the quilt blocks done until I realized there were 25 not 24. I ran out of time last week to get number 25 done so here…

Here is Number 25. I absolutely LOVE it!

Monday I started trying to put it together. It required 167 2.5″ squares. HOLY CRAP! That’s a lot of squares. It took quite a while. Normally you sew strips together and then cut the strips and it goes faster…. but not in my case. 1) I couldn’t decide on just 2 colors for the blocks. 2) When I did decide on the colors to use, there was no making strips. So putting this thing together was going slow!

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Quilt Block 21, 22, 23, & 24

Monday’s happen to be one of my favorite days of the week these last few months, and that’s because my squirrely girly and I have gone down to sew with my grandma. A few weeks ago though, grandma had knee replacement surgery and wasn’t able to sew for a couple weeks. Sad day, but at least her knee is feeling better. Last week, Thursday became my new favorite day… I should mention at this point I’m not crazy about Thursdays. Most people think I’m nuts, but they are just a reminder that it isn’t Friday. I know… pessimistic side in deed.

Being as though we haven’t sewn in a few weeks, we had a lot of catching up to do. Now, grandma couldn’t stay up in the sewing room the whole time because her knee was hurting at one point, it was lunch time, and she ahd to do physical therapy… but that didn’t stop us! Nope, in fact, I cut out and sewed together 4 quilt blocks. I’m missing 1 block and then we can slap this baby together… oh… and 167 2.5″ squares. Boy that seems daunting!

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Quilt Block 19 & 20

The last I tried sewing I swear everything went wrong from losing material to fighting grandma’s sewing machine. I was so frustrated beyond belief I almost couldn’t see straight. But I’ve been away from working on this quilt for 2 weeks now (vacation!!) so I came back with a better attitude.

Before we left Abug and I were at Walmart and she picked out the fabric that was used in Quilt Block 19. I left the material with grandma when we left and she had all the pieces cut out for us by the time we got there yesterday.

She also had her sewing machine fixed so things were looking up… until we misplaced one of the 4″solid pink squares and didn’t have any material of the solid pink to fix the mistake. Luckily we didn’t give up and we found what we were looking for. Whew! My only other problem is I forgot where I was supposed to gage my 1/4″ seam and made a few of my seams 1/2″. Dang it!

But this is Quilt block 19 and it turned out without many problems. You can’t tell from this photo but it’s an oversized quilt block. So I present Quilt Block 19. I’m quite proud of it :). There are a few mistakes in it though. Oh well….

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Quilt Block 17 & 18

Today was Monday. Typically I LOVE Mondays because that means that Abug and I get to go and hang out with grandma, but for some reason today was different. I guess I knew it was a Monday. I struggled. I was grouchy and grumpy and everything else. I’m sorry I grumbled! Gosh.

So Grandma kept Abug entertained by making her a new “purse” even though she brought one with her.

As you can see Abug loves her great-grandma and I see the feeling is mutual!

So to add to my frustration (wonder if I should have started that with sew… haha) grandma’s sewing machine quit working. It already had quirks but something happened and it died. So we had to use the old Singer. When I got there Grandma said I’d love this sewing machine. I anything but loved it. I spent more time trying to make it work for me or fixing my mistakes because I wasn’t paying attention than I sewed.

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Quilt Block 14 & 16

Last week I stated that on Easter Grandma and I looked for block inspiration. Well, we came up with two for this week’s blocks. We chose this first picture because of my mom and the “red bird.” It is a way to incorporate some of my mom into the quilt. The second picture was chosen because one of the fabrics we bought was Minnie Mouse and I was looking for a way to incorporate it.

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