Blueberry Coffee Cake

What do you do on a lazy Sunday afternoon when it is too hot to go outdoors? (After almost melting riding bikes to the park to play!)
Make a blueberry coffee cake, of course! LOL
I had some fresh blueberries from a farmer's market that I needed to use and this sounded oh so good after our bike ride.
This turned out moist and soft and delicious! We ate dessert before dinner (and after). I hope you'll try it. (Frozen blueberries should work, too.  Toss them in a bit of flour before folding them into the batter.  Frozen berries will often turn the cake a little greenish...don't worry, that's normal!)

Blueberry Coffee Cake

Ingredients

1/4 cup butter

3/4 cup white sugar

1 egg

3/4 cup milk

1 tsp vanilla
2 cups all-purpose flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 cups blueberries

1/2 cup brown sugar

3 tablespoons all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/2 cup chopped pecans

3 tablespoons butter

Directions

Preheat oven to 375 degrees .Grease and flour a 9 inch springform pan. Sift together the flour, baking powder and salt. Set aside.

In a large bowl, cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in the egg and vanilla. Beat in the flour mixture alternately with the milk, mixing just until incorporated. Stir in the blueberries. Pour batter into prepared pan. In a small bowl, combine brown sugar, 3 tablespoons flour, cinnamon and chopped pecans. Cut in butter until crumbly. Sprinkle over the batter.

Bake in the preheated oven for 35 to 45 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean. Allow to cool and enjoy.

Happy baking!

Tinkerbell cake!

Abby turned three and we had a small fairy party to celebrate.  Happy birthday, Abby!

Ruffled t-shirt

How to prepare for two birthdays (Jeremy will be 35 and Abby will be 3) and three house guests(my parents and my sister) with only 24 hours to spare:

1. Make a giant list of things to do and clean (including clearing a path in the guest room, cleaning the bathroom and baking a Tinkerbell cake).
2. Ignore list and decide that your adorable little girl (who's going to be three tomorrow!) needs a t-shirt refashioned.
3. Trim off bottom of a too long and stained t-shirt that is too cute not to wear.
4. Hem t-shirt (uh...I really need some tips on this part!) and pin on fabric strips (see Elizabeth Kartchner's blog for my inspiration) to cover stains.
5. Decide an impromtu outdoor photo shoot is in order after getting less than desireable results with basement lighting.
6. Play baseball with children while the baby naps.
7. Ignore list some more, heat up a cup of coffee and decide a blog update is still more important (uh-oh....will I ever be ready for tomorrow???)

**Seriously...I need to get to work now! LOL

Power toast & homemade almond butter

Thanks to Diana at The Chic Life, the kids and I are hooked on our own version of Power Toast.  The kids like it with half almond butter and half dark chocolate peanut butter (soooo yummy.) I had mine with a TBS of almond butter and a small smear of the chocolate good stuff.  We sprinkled Chia seeds on it...a new thing for us (again thanks to Diana).

This piece was way too big for Abby...she only gets 1/2 slice now. Joshua always eats his crust first...on toast and sandwiches.  He likes the good stuff in the center the best so he saves it for last.

I have had this huge bag of whole raw almonds from Costco in the fridge forever so we decided to make some homemade almond butter.  All we did we throw a bunch of almonds into the food processor(about 2-3 cups) and mixed it to death until it was creamy and delicious.  We added a little bit of salt since they were unsalted. I read online we can store it in the fridge for up to 4 weeks. Power toast for weeks! :) I think a TBS of almond butter is 2 WW points.  (At least that's how I count it.)

Nothing new on the scrappy or crafty side here. :( I never seem to have the time!!!  Gotta find some time...I am having withdrawls!

Wooden Summer Blocks

Jeremy cut some wooden blocks for me awhile back and I have used them for a couple of projects.  I wanted a new table decoration for summer and I thought these would work but the word is too long for the table center. Oops.  Anyhow, they still look cute up on one of the plant shelves. :) I used one of the TSR kits from March. Joshua helped me paint the blocks. :)

Have a great weekend!  We hope to hit the Farmer's Market tomorrow...yippeee!!

It's finally done! Picnic quilt and a table runner

I finally finished this little picnic quilt for the girls. Abby picked out the fabrics several weeks or so ago and it has been hard to find the time to work on it.  The "quilting" gave me the most trouble because I really didn't know what to do or how to do it.  I just have a small sewing machine (which is an AMAZING sewing machine actually, just hard to "quilt" on since it doesn't have a long quilting arm) so learning how to manuever the quilt around to do the quilting was a challenge.  I ended up buying a walking foot and that helped a lot.  Despite numerous mistakes and re-do's, I am anxious to make another one.  I think I want to get one of those feet that lets you free quilt.  Because I didn't have one of these, I could only do straight stiches on this.  Oh, and I decided to finish the binding by hand and I am so glad I did! I think it looks much better than a machine finished binding and it really wasn't hard at all.  It only took two nights of movies/tv watching after the kids were in bed to finish. :) (Or, maybe it was three nights actually.)

I just could not get everyone to stop and take a nice photo. LOL

Here's the best I could get.

Next up is either a denim rag quilt (which I already have all the fabric for...old jeans and some pretty plaids for the back) or this one- http://obsessivelystitching.blogspot.com/2010/04/first-quilt-ever.html which I probably have most of the fabric for as well.

Another quick project we did last week was to dress up our table for the fourth of July.  The reverse of this table runner is a pretty everyday fabric...cream with soft maroonish flowers.  I will share a picture once we figure out a fun centerpiece to go along with it. Any ideas the kids can help with??

Two more layouts

I got two quick layouts done yesterday during naptime with my TSR kit.  They have a fun challenge every month to try to use the kit (there are actually four small kits in the one kit-each one very different) and yesterday was the deadline. I finished my other two pages with the kit earlier int eh month...I still have most of the kit left to scrap with-woohoo! Here's what I accomplished in the very short amount of free time I had.  :)

I hope you get some time to scrap!!
Stacey