Squeeee - S.N.O.R.T Auction Winner

So I just got a ton of pictures of Frank, the cute little up whose mom bid her heart out to win him a LPH Fancy Pet Bowtie.  The bowtie had a fun time not getting delivered to them. I'm fairly convinced the mail man just drove around with it in his car for an extra week just to develop the suspense.  The waiting was worth it, just CHECK OUT how stinkin' cute Mr. Frank is. He's so smiley!! And just, I can't take it.  

Thanks Frank's mom, for donating $35 to S.N.O.R.T and for sending me these ridiculously cute photos. My week has been made!!

Ode to the Blood Orange

A lot of Cuban recipes call for blood oranges so they're something I've always heard of, but that's it.  These fancy oranges seem to be a bit illusive as I've never actually been able to find them in any grocery store I've ever been too - and I've lived all over the country. Apparently a lot of them are grown in California so I'm even more confused as to why I could never find them. Go figure.  So what does a blood orange taste like? Well, they're an orange that is both a bit sweet and a wee bit bitter so they're usually used in marinating and cooking pork - yum!! Since they're so difficult to find we usually substitute a combination of oranges with lemon and/or limes to mimic the flavor. Last week I was running some errands and stopped by our local fruit and vegetable stand and, lo and behold, they had mounds of blood oranges!! It turns out that blood oranges, like clementines, are a winter fruit so this may be why they've been so hard to find. How Cubans have them on hand for all their recipes is a bit more confusing, but I'll let that one go for now.  These oranges are really beautiful with their orange and red colored rinds.

Once I had the blood oranges I tried eating one like you'd eat an orange. I ripped into it with my fingers and not only was the red of the orange a bit off-putting (maybe like blue ketchup would be?) and the flavor was not to my liking.  I guess, even though that I knew they were not supposed to be super sweet, they were more bitter than I was expecting.  I now totally understand why a combination of oranges and lemons are used as a substitution though - it's exactly what they taste like!!

See how the red varies from photo to photo? I'm guessing that this has to do with the maturity of the fruit itself.  The photo in the top right was the freshest blood orange - its peel had less red on the outside and interestingly the red color seems to be spread throughout the fruit.  You can see in the top left photo that the orange is the deepest red, and the color seems to have spread to the outer most part of the fruit. 

Once I had my blood orange booty I was contemplating what to do with them. I purchased about 12 of these beauties so they weren't all going to be used for marinating pork. I decided that regardless of what I was doing with them, I'd zest and juice them all and then go from there.  If you look at the photo below, no, I didn't kill something, that's what blood oranges look like - intense, right?  Halfway through juicing the oranges all I could do was laugh. It was a red blood orange mess and if you didn't know I was juicing oranges you'd think I was butchering an animal. Oy!  

Fun fact: I usually buy a bag of lemons at a time because I find it to be less expensive than buying one at a time. I don't always have a use for that many lemons at a time so I zest them, juice the lemons, and then freeze the juice.  That way I always have lemon juice on hand!! I just pull it down when I need lemon juice, defrost it, use what I need, and then refreeze the juice.  I zest my lemons (using my favorite kitchen tool - the microplane featured on the left side of the photo below) to up the lemon flavor - you don't have to, but I love citrus so the more flavor the merrier in my book.

I took this as I was cleaning up - it's a bit frightening, no?

The color of the juice is really beautiful though once you separate it from the mess.  

These would make really beautiful mimosas!! I had other plans though. I was doing a lot of baking in preparation for Easter and I knew that my cake recipe called for egg whites, but then I would be left with 6 yolks. I hate throwing them away if I don't have to so I suddenly knew exactly what I was going to make - Blood Orange Curd!!  

I've made clementine curd before using a Jamie Oliver recipe, and it was pretty easy and exceptionally tasty so while the cakes were in the oven I whipped up some glorious pink blood orange curd. I used this easy and straight forward recipe from the blog Use Real Butter and after 10 minutes of whisking (with the help of my husband who took over while I cleaned up the blood orange mess) we had glorious pink-orange blood orange curd.  The only changes I made to the recipe was using salted butter, because I didn't have unsalted on hand - and it tastes just fine.  The recipe only called for 3/4 of a cup of blood oranges (and I only made half a recipe) so I've got a cup and a half to two cups of blood orange juice in my freezer!! I've already got plans to add some of the curd to ice cream later in the summer (I found a recipe for that from the blog Scoop Adventures) and depending on how much I have left, the Blood Orange Tart over at the Bonjon Gourmet looks pretty glorious as well.  In the meantime, I think I'm going to whip up some biscuits to slather it on next weekend!   

Now on to Easter!!

Rose Cake - White Cake, with Strawberry Filling and Buttercream Frosting

I was in charge of making the cake for Easter this year and my Sister-in-Law requested almond cake with strawberry jam filling (the same flavors as our wedding cake!) and shortly after her request I am Baker posted a fantastic looking recipe which was a white cake with almond flavor.  Perfect!  She also also has a great rose cake tutorial that I've wanted to try since I stumbled upon it so it was an I am Baker day inspired cake all around!! 

The cake batter for this recipe was glorious. It was thick and luscious and I was really excited when I was mixing it together.  Her Buttercream Frosting recipe (I used the half butter half shortening recipe listed) was also really easy - make sure your butter is really at room temperature before you start mixing or you will never get it to mix with the shortening - trust me.  

I think next time I would also take the cake out of the oven a bit earlier than I ended up doing this time; a couple of minutes seems to really make a difference.  The only things I might change was to paint on some simple syrup before assembling the cake, and then taking it out of the refrigerator for several hours before serving.  I'd followed her directions to put the cake in the fridge after frosting, but didn't realize how long it would need to come to room temperature before serving it.  The cake was still rather cold when we cut into it and it make the cake seem really dry. I thought it was a disaster. After it came to room temperature (when I had some later that night for dessert - again) it tasted MUCH better and much like it was supposed to.  Oy - that's what I get for using a bunch of new recipes all in one day, but now that I know the recipe will be glorious going forward. 

*Ignore the frosting and crumbs on the plate - this was a rushed shot. 

The rose frosting technique was also pretty easy and while I think I can make it prettier next time (and remember to make a batch and a half recipe of frosting), I was also happy with my first attempt.  I think I need to overlap my flowers more next time and remember to finish the rose at the top so it is hidden more. Here's a video on how she does it: 

S.N.O.R.T Auction!

HUZZAHHH!! We did it!! The S.N.O.R.T Facebook charity auction this weekend was really successful!! They had over 300 fantastic items listed up for auction and they had everything from puppy umbrellas, collars, leashes, and cute puppy themed items for humans too. It looks like they have raised a LOT of money to help out the foster pups that the organization takes care of.   Our donated Lavender Paper Hearts bowtie had some fierce bidding and ended up raising $35 by the time the auction ended!!  

We were also exceptionally honored to have been THE ONLY item that was singled out by S.N.O.R.T and shared on their page!!  Bailey clearly brought it home and helped out little pups just like him. 

Eek: Fancy Bowties for Your Favorite Pet!!

Okay, I promise PROMISE I'll have more posts lined up a bit more regularly soon, but things have been really crazy and I just can't find the time. Please take these RIDICULOUSLY cute photos of the in-house model as penance for my neglect.

I had a request about a month ago for a pet bowtie in a more neutral everyday-wear pattern.  This person also (wisely) requested that the bowtie be the color lavender. While I was at the fabric store I also stumbled across some adorably cute blue seersucker in the remnant bin (and everyone loves a good bargain on fabric) so I snatched it up!!

I've sold a few more of these now but had yet to actually take a picture of them in action for my Etsy shop and Facebook Shop page.  I'm donating a bowtie to a local-ish animal rescue organization called S.N.O.R.T. (small nose only rescue team - so for dogs just like my in-house model). They're holding an online charity auction in a few weeks and I wanted to be able to help them raise a little money.

So I popped over to my SIL's house to sweet talk the in-house model, Bailey, into taking some photos for me. I must say, he was in top form today and I was able to bang out three different bowtie looks in about 10 minutes. This pup knows how to work the camera and get things done!!  (Which was nice, because I had some other stuff on my list of things to do today, AND  it even left us time to play in the snow, because Bailey LOVES to play in the snow.)

Now for your viewing (and squeeing) pleasure...

First up is the Lavender Bowtie: I ended up using this cute photo for my ad for the bowtie that I'm giving to the charity auction!!

You can find the lavender bowtie here. 

Now, a Blue Seersucker Bowtie with a bit of side-eye from Bailey!!!

You can find the Blue Seersucker Bowtie here. 

And lastly, my sister mentioned that one of her friends was possibly interested in a bowtie for her dog to wear to her wedding and I'd just found some navy satin in the remnant bin (to fix my sister's shirt so it's, like, full circle here). I thought the satin would make an AWESOME and extremely fancy bowtie.  Bailey brought his A-game and really upped the charm for this photo:

 You can find the Navy Satin Fancy Bowtie here. 

Have a great week!!

Holiday Coat Makeover

Sorry for the lack of posting the last few weeks. We moved 2 weeks after getting back from holidays in California and things have been a bit bananas ever since then.

I thought I'd share a quick post to show a coat makeover I did for my sister over the holidays. My sister had stockpiled a bunch of sewing & mending projects for when I arrived and she kept me busy!! I'd found this coat on Old Navy on super-mega-discount sometime in early December and being a good older sister I sent the info over to my sister Nikki.  I just so happens to be in her favorite color, and that girl is always in the market for new coats, so I knew she'd be an easy sell. (Plus, I'm pretty sure I found it when it'd been marked down to $27, free shipping, and 4% cash back from Ebates - for a WOOL COAT. I told you it was a good deal!!) The only thing I wasn't thrilled about were the coat's GOLD buttons. Seeing them in person they were actually much better looking, but still, after the DIY coat makeover post we knew we could find something much more fun!  We dragged my husband into a few Joann's Fabric stores all over Santa Monica before we found buttons we liked. Then we had to call around to another store near my mom's house (where we were staying) so that we could find a few more to make sure we replaced ALL the gold buttons on the coat and not just the buttons on the front.  There were two buttons on the back, and of course the first store only had 6 buttons.

Here is a photo of the coat.  You'll notice that the coat's original buttons are on the right side of the photo, and the oval shaped buttons we chose (they looked like wood) are on the left side.  Nikki also wanted the thread on the buttons to pop a bit, so she picked a bright lighter blue colored thread! It added a really nice subtle touch to the coat.

Here you can see the thread a bit better (but it's still blurry - cell phone picture):

Here's the finished coat: 

Ta-da!!  See, it's so easy, and it really changes the look of a coat from it's original look and then you can easily change it up from season to season!!

I'm hoping to get my craft room set up sometime this coming week and when I get some free time I'm going to work on a few new hair piece ideas to add to the shop.  Stay tuned!!