Wowie cake!

Wowie cake is a family favorite. The recipe dates back to the Depression, and is super easy to make and is vegan friendly! I haven't been grocery shopping in almost two weeks, so my kitchen cabinets and fridge are pretty bare but I've been jonsing for something sweet so I whipped this up with just a few kitchen staples.

Wowie cake

1 1/2 c flour

1 c sugar

1/2 tsp salt

1/4 c cocoa 

1 tsp baking soda

1 tbs vinegar

1 c cold water

1 tsp vanilla

1/3 c oil

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Combine dry ingredients. Make sure you sift the cocoa! Normally I don't bother sifting, but after baking professionally and completely ruining a 10 pound batch of chocolate cookies because I didn't sift the cocoa, I will never make that mistake again! Add the wet ingredients and pour into an 8" square pan. 

Bake for 35 min.

Either insert a toothpick to see if it comes out clean, or poke the middle of the cake. If it's spongy and pops back up after you poked it, you're good to go!

p.s. The cake batter tastes pretty good, too, and because it contains no raw eggs, it's totally safe to lick your spoons.

If you try this recipe, please let me know! It can be used when you're low on supplies, but it's good enough that it could easily become your go-to chocolate cake recipe. You can frost it with buttercream, or do a simple chocolate glaze over top. Another family favorite is to make these into cupcakes, and drop a mixture of cream cheese, an egg, sugar, and chocolate chips into the center before baking and frost with a chocolate glaze. mmmm...

May the Fourth be with you.

Well, I am in the thick of finals week! Ironically, when I have the most school work to do, I have been the most productive with my sewing. It's my coping method for stress, just hop on the machine for a little bit and give my brain a rest. I finished up three new small (4"x6") zippered pouches today, which are now for sale in my Etsy store.

 

cat lady pouch

mushroom pouch

kitty cat pouch

I think the cat lady pouch is one of my favorite. I'll have to make one for myself. It even has hot pink and white heart lining to go with it! It's so cute. Well, I guess I should probably get back to studying now...

The sale is still going on until May 17th! The coupon code is "summer11" for 15% your total purchase.

Summer sale!!

I'm trying to clear out some items in order to make room for a bunch more that I will be making over the summer so from now until May 17th I'll be running a sale at my Etsy shop! Use the coupon code "summer11" when checking out to get 15% off your total purchase.

EVEN MORE, check out these two other items I've marked down to clear out. You can still use the coupon code to get an additional 15% off the sale price!

Pink woodland zippered pouch- WAS $10.50, NOW $7

Owl necklace- WAS $9.50, NOW $6.50

Putting the Pyrex to use

I wish I could supply a recipe for my blueberry muffins, but unfortunately I was lazy and bought a mix! I know, I'm just terrible.

4/19

Well, the zinnia has started to bloom, and I'm a little disappointed it only has one layer of petals! You can see the little bits of fuchsia on the yellow petals that gives it the candy stripe name. Maybe more will come up later, or the next flower will be full size. The petals haven't opened up all of the way yet, so there might still be enough time for it to develop more. Either way, I'm still pretty proud of myself for growing this from seed.
I also made a polka dot bow for myself in red and white. The polka dots are actually little hearts! It's pretty cute. This is the same fabric I use to line my sock money and hedgehog zippered pouches. I keep meaning to make more of those zippered pouches, but for some reason I can't make myself sit down and focus long enough and end up making little hair bows like this instead. But I really like my bows, especially in the red and white. It's a little retro and a little Minnie Mouse but all sorts of cute. What do you think?

Exciting things (to me, anyway)

Do you see that little guy up there? It's a bud! I planted candy stripe zinnia seeds a bit ago, and they've been growing and growing, and now one is about to flower! I' so excited about this. I thought it was exciting enough when the seeds germinated, but I honestly expected to kill all of them before they started to flower. I have five plants about 10" tall and it makes me so proud. My tomato plant has been pretty happy, too, and I have a bunch of tomatoes on it. Last year I had zero luck with tomatoes, so I'm hoping this year I will get a nice harvest off of my two plants. Thinking about all of the fresh produce makes me get excited for canning again. I won't have a big garden this summer so probably no more pickles, but hopefully I will get stuck with so many tomatoes that I can make pasta sauce to can, and I can take advantage of the cheap summer berry prices and make some more jams. Canning is a whole lot of fun. I love that there's always enough to go around so you can share with everybody.

New products!

I have made two pairs of hair bows for sale on my etsy shop! I made these after being dissatisfied with the bow hair accessories I had bought at the store that would kind of look saggy whenever I clipped them into my hair. These bows are hand made by me, and are thick enough and have permanent glue so they stay straight when you clip them into your hair and don't sag off the hair clip and make your hair look sad and frumpy. I'm really quite pleased with them. Right now I only have the purple and blue polka dot ones, and the pink heart polka dot, but I have some other fabric lined up to make more if these get a good reception. I have them priced at $6.50 for a pair, which I think is just about what you'd pay at a large chain store for commercial made hair accessories. I think the first line of business once I make another sale will be to invest in a new stapler for my packaging.

My current one constantly jams and drives me insane. All of those discarded staples are from trying to staple up this ONE package! I go through this every time I package things up, I don't know why I haven't gone to get a new stapler yet!

What I wore today (4/6/11)

I'm not even going to bother trying to list where I found my cardigan and dress because they're so old that I can't remember anymore. I normally try to keep my blog very upbeat and light, but today has been really rough for me, so I'm not able to write much. I just wanted to share this outfit, and this wicked awesome vintage Pyrex bowl my mummy bought me!

She's the best! I love vintage kitchen things, and Pyrex is definitely a favorite. She also found me a 4 quart yellow bowl with daisies, as well as a green 8x8 pan! I was previously using a cheap $1 plastic bowl for all of my mixing and I'm so excited to be able to get rid of it, because it was terrible. I'd like to post a recipe for Wowie cake (a really easy chocolate cake recipe that just happens to be vegan), and get back to sewing more things. I've kind of gotten off track this past week but I promise I'll be back!

Unicorns and glitterrrrrr

Alright, so, I never do this, but I discovered this nail polish a couple weeks ago and it's just so amazing that I thought I MUST share! It's called Milani One Coat Glitter, and it's just that, total glitter in just one coat!

I picked it up thinking that it would just be like all other glitter nail polishes I find, just a top coat that gives your nails a little bit of glitter. I was so wrong! Just about everyone who knows me knows that I LOVE glitter, so this nail polish is a total dream come true. Just look..

I'm solid gold, I've got the goods!

Swoon!! I found another blog that has a review for all of the colors available, right here. If I recall, this nail polish wasn't all that expensive, I think just under $4? Next time I'm back in Houston I'm definitely going to go pick up the purple glitter one! It takes about two coats to get the glitter nice and thick, but it actually stays on my nails reasonably well. Part of that is due to this awesome top coat that my mom got me. I have no clue where she found it (and she can't remember, all she remembered was that it was glittery so she "had to buy it" for me).

I've only had it for like two months, and it's already almost half gone! You can see how much I love it. Thanks momma!

Finally an update

cardigan: Charlotte  Russe

dress: Forever 21

tights: Target! My favorite score for only $1

I'll start off with a What I Wore post! I think this outfit ended up looking spring-time-ish, but really the only reason I threw together all of these things was because most of my laundry was still in the dryer this morning and these were the leftovers in my closet. It ended up being REALLY windy today, which is terrible for both bangs and dresses!

The reason I haven't made any posts in the last week is this little girl. I found her on March 25th, and have been running around to try to take care of her, find a new home for her, and get her to her vet appointments. This past Friday I went to Emancipet to get her spayed. Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays they offer free neuterings/spays and rabies vaccines, but you have to get there incredibly early to get a spot. I ended up waking up at 4:45am to get her in the car by 5:15 so we could get in line right at 5:30am when they first start taking names. We ended up getting there at 5:32 and were number SEVEN! So it fills up really fast. After she got our names down and I filled out some paperwork, I had to wait until 7am to turn her over to the clinic, and then didn't get to pick her up until 5:30 that night. I also had them test for FIV/FELV because I was planning on fostering her until I could adopt her out (and I have another cat), and unfortunately she came back FIV+. Because of her FIV status there were some complications with her surgery, but she seems fine now. It also means that I absolutely cannot keep her, because she can give it to my cat. Cats with FIV can live pretty normal lives, and while it's related to HIV, it doesn't affect cats the same way HIV affects humans. She doesn't have to be on medication, and can live a fairly long life (10+ years), but she has to be a strictly inside only cat and an only cat (or with others cats with FIV). Since I don't have any potential adopters, I will be forced to bring her to the animal shelter later this week. I was very upset about it at first, because I spent all of this time, effort, and money to try to care for her, and now I have to put her in the place I was specifically trying to keep her out of, but the woman on the phone said they still adopt out FIV+ cats (none of the no-kill shelters I called would take her because of it) and there's a good chance she'll be adopted.

So that's pretty much all that has been going on here! Next week I'll probably be able to get back on my normal posting schedule.