I love bananas because they force me to bake something yummy once in a while (or I can throw them in the freezer until I’m ready to deal with them)! This banana cake recipe came from my friend Tammy and I absolutely love it. The cake is light and the icing is fabulous!
I also love the blue star plate that I got in Target a while back. It’s my tribute today to my American friends – Happy 4th of July!
Banana Cake
1/2 cup butter or margarine
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp. baking soda dissolved in 4 tbsp hot water
1 cup mashed bananas (I use 3)
2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
2 cups flour
Cream butter and sugar. Add eggs. Mix soda and water and add to mashed bananas. Mix dry ingredients together. Alternate dry and wet ingredients. (Or if you’re like me and have a Bosch, mix all your wet ingredients and then throw in all your dry ingredients.)
Bake at 350 for 25-35 minutes in a 9×13 pan.
Icing (I double it!)
1/4 cup butter
1/2 cup brown sugar
2 tbsp milk
3/4 cup icing sugar
Melt butter – add sugar and milk. Remove from heat and add icing sugar.
Pour over your cake when it comes out of the oven.
Oh doesn’t that look delicious?
I recently used the cake recipe without the icing and made it into banana bread. I used two tin foil loaf pans and it worked wonderfully. Loaves seem to cook more evenly when they’re baked in tin foil pans – and it’s so much easier to get the loaf out of the pan when your pan is flexible! Next time I might throw in some chocolate chips, or chopped walnuts, or coconut too!
Okay all you happy campers out there – I have to share this campfire treat that is so much better than marshmallows (and I love me a few marshmallows burned over a campfire!).
We were at Young Women Beehive camp last week and roasted wieners wrapped in Pillsbury dough strips for dinner. I thought they tasted so much better than regular hot dogs! Anyway, we had lots of strips of dough left over, so Sis. F. went and got the strawberries we were going to have for breakfast, and invented this:
Strawberries wrapped in dough and roasted over the fire. They were soooo delicious! They best way I can describe it would be: it tastes like a little bite of warm strawberry pie on a stick. You have got to try this!!!
When I went camping with my family a few days later, we made them too.
Here’s how to create these tasty morsels:
Cut your dough in strips (ignore the Pillsbury lines in the dough). I believe it was the Crescent Rolls we used. Wrap your strawberry well. We learned a few tips as we went along:
– strawberries like to turn on the stick as they get heated, so use some dough to anchor the top and bottom of each strawberry to the stick.
– pinch the ends of your dough to other dough on your strawberry, or it may unwrap as it cooks.
Roasting time depends on how hot your fire is, or how high you hold it. But it cooks pretty quickly. Once the dough isn’t doughy, it’s done!
Give it a moment to cool down and then enjoy!!!
And if you don’t have dough, even just plain roasted strawberries was delicious. And so are grapes, and pickles – just not together! We found these dollar store sticks worked best for the strawberries because you could easily bend the wire ends to fit your strawberry. Having it anchored on two sides was so much better for roasting, but a little trickier to wrap the dough around.I love a little charcoal on my campfire cooking!
If you weren’t a happy camper before, you will be now!!!
Or maybe you don’t have to camp at all – backyard fire pits are perfect for roasting these beauties too! Enjoy!!!
(Edited to add: This year we discovered that roasted cherries are delicious too – either with the pit, or not. My guy liked to cut a cherry in half and remove the pit then embed it inside a marshmallow, and roast it that way. The somewhat sour cooked cherry mixed with the sweet marshmallow was a fantastic flavour combination.
Another new treat was roasted mandarin orange segments. They don’t need long over the fire but the outside turned crisp, and the inside tasted like sweet warm thick juice. Let it cool down a minute before you bite into its deliciousness!)
So if we do the math, today is Canada’s 144th Birthday!!!
One thing I admire about our neighbours to the south is how patriotic they are. They LOVE the Fourth of July and go all out in decorating and partying to celebrate their Independence Day. I don’t think we do half as much celebrating as they do.
I have a few Canadian decorations like this garden stake that sits in the garden all summer.
And I have this wooden flag on my porch. The other side of the board is a little house with the words Simple Life on it. I usually have that side showing all summer and then rotate it to the flag side for the holidays.
My porch animals keep moving – they’re alive!!!
But one of my favourite sights on Canada Day is this . . .
. . . our Flag!
The youth in each ward in town have an annual fundraiser. We pay $40 and they will put a flag up in our yard for every holiday from Victoria Day in May to Thanksgiving in October.
I love to see all the flags flying around the neighbourhood on all the holidays, but they look especially grand today, on Canada’s Birthday.
This is one of our families all time favourite desserts. And I love it because it’s easy – kids can help!!! And you can make it as big or small as you need so it’s great for feeding a crowd.
All you need are these four ingredients.
And you don’t need this much whipping cream. It was nearing expiry date and I needed to use it – so we just made our Black Forest a little more creamy than usual.
Bake your chocolate cake – we often do this the night before. And you don’t need to grease your pan or anything either.
Have one of your children rip apart the cooled cake into bite size chunks and line all the edges of your bowl. We’re using the lovely huge stainless steel bowl – the one that got dented when Lee used it as a toboggan!
You’ll notice we still have some cake left in the pan once all the bowl edges are lined. We’ll use that later, or eat it!
Make one package of instant chocolate pudding.
Have another kid whip up the whipping cream.
The first batch of chocolate pudding gets poured on top of all the chocolate cake. I find it easier to pour in before the pudding has set too much. Let it set in the pan between chunks of cake.
We put a layer of whipped cream over the pudding because we had all that whipping cream, but usually we don’t – tastes great either way. Now find another kid to spread the cherry pie filling over all the whipped cream. (Lee noticed that her dress matches the dessert!)
And find another kid to rip up the rest of the chocolate cake and throw it in on top of the cherries.
This helps fill up the hole in the middle of the bowl.
Now for the final package of chocolate pudding poured over top of the new layer of cake.
And the rest of the whipped cream goes on top. We added a few chocolate shavings. Cherries also look lovely on top.
We fed twelve people on Fathers’ Day and used just over half the bowl – and they were pretty generous portions. The leftovers tasted great the next day, so no worries!!!
We also love the vanilla version – white cake, vanilla pudding, banana slices, whipped cream and Skor bits. Give them both a try!
End of school rolls around and suddenly I have three kids who need treats for the parties they’re having in their band classes. Why couldn’t they play the instruments that are assigned to bring a bag of chips?
Then, suddenly, I remembered something wonderful!!! I remembered that I had pinned something on Pinterest that would be perfect for class parties. You can check that post out here at How Does She. And you really should check it out because she uses Rolos instead of Macaroons and has other yummy ideas too.
The first step is to find a slave willing helper to place all the pretzels on the cookie sheet.
Next you’ll want to give your baby a pretzel so she doesn’t grab some from the perfectly placed pretzel platter. (Skip this step if you don’t have a baby.)
Then you place a chocolate of your choice on each pretzel. Notice I have two different kinds of Macaroons. The light coloured ones I bought but then ran out. So I had to raid my food storage stash where I happen to have a case or two of Macaroons (must have comfort food in storage, and nothing is more comforting than chocolate and coconut!!!).
Okay, this should be the first step – set your oven clock to 8:29 and your oven temperature to 350 degrees. You’re gonna pop these trays in the oven for about three minutes – just enough time to get the chocolate soft, but not completely melted. To save energy, I suggest you might want to do this when you’re baking something else, or you could put them out in the sun if it’s hot out – hey, a new camping recipe!!!
Gather your slaves troops to press the peanut M&M’s into the chocolate while it’s all soft and pliable.
Work fast as they cool down pretty quickly.
You could press anything on top – peanuts, almonds, skittles, smarties, gummy bears, radishes, jujubes, peas, marshmallows, etc. Do specific colours to match special occasions (like Valentine colours Smarties for Valentines Day). Oh the possibilities!!!
Aren’t they cute? And they’re delicious eaten warm or cold. I love the little bit of saltiness from the pretzels mixed with all the sweets.
Now I know what you’re wondering: how did the kids like them at the band parties? Well, Lee reported that they were the biggest hit at the grade 7 party. Min said the kids in the high school band would skeptically ask what they were. After she explained and they tried one, they kept wanting more!
Now here is the rule: You’re welcome to make these for your kids’ parties too unless I have a kid in your kids class. If that’s the case, sorry, but you’ll have to come up with your own treat!!!
Now, once again, I know what you’re wondering: that’s only two band parties, I thought you had three parties that needed treats? Well you’re right, but Jo needed a gluten free treat. But not to worry – I had another pin on Pinterest!!! This one was called Peanut Butter Corn Chip No Bake Cookies. I forgot to take pictures but you can check that out here at Skip To My Lou. Mmmm – so good!
I home-school my kids from Kindergarten to Grade 3. So, I like to have educational things around, but I don’t want my house to look like a classroom (unless it’s the actual “school room” like we had in one house). But most of our learning seems to happen right on the couch so the old teacher can be comfortable!!! So, a Map of Canada Pillow seems like the perfect addition to our home school – comfort and education in one!!!
Somewhere in blogworld, I’ve seen two maps of the USA. They were both wall hangings – one was fabric and one was paper. (Sorry, this was before Pinterest so they were only “pinned” in my mind and I have no link to send you to!). But they were my inspiration to make a map of Canada. Let me just say that 10 provinces and 3 territories is just a wee bit easier than 50 states!!!
The first step is to find a map you like. I found a ton on Google and any regular person could just print a map out. I’m not a regular person and decided to make this project take a little longer by tracing a map off my daughters school agenda.
(Actually, I don’t have a printer right now!)
Now, listen carefully: I used Heat and Bond (my second favourite thing after Mod Podge!), and the image you trace on the Heat and Bond needs to be backwards. So, I traced my map with a marker that went through the paper, so I had the reverse image on the back of the paper. And then I copied it, but you don’t need to do that.
You trace your reversed image onto the paper side of the Heat and Bond and then roughly cut it out.
I initialed the provinces because when they’re backwards its easy to get mixed up. These are all pressed now onto the wrong side of the fabric (follow the instructions on your Heat and Bond!)
Now you cut them out properly.
Place them in their proper spots. I kept the little Prince Edward Island to the last because I didn’t want to lose it. I’d love to visit PEI someday (yes, I’m a big Anne fan!)
Once everything was placed in its proper spot, I peeled the paper backing off the fabric and put the piece back in its place.
I double checked the exact locations of those east coast provinces with my map. Gotta teach my kids correct geography! When everything was exactly right, I ironed it all on – again, be sure to follow the instructions on your package. It’s probably only for a few seconds and if you over iron, it won’t stick.
My family likes to throw around pillows – crazy I know and they most certainly don’t get that from me! So I knew that I had to do some reinforcements to my pillow before it goes flying around the room.
I slowly stitched around a lot of the edges – not every edge, that would have driven me insane!!!
Each piece has enough stitching on it to securely hold it in place. I even changed to blue thread to stitch around the Great Lakes!
Hey, that could be a new puzzle: where did mom start sewing with the green thread, and how did she do it in one continuous line?
I sewed my blue piece to a green piece and sewed all that onto . . . a drop cloth!!! Drop clothes are pretty amazing and can be used for a ton of things – like curtains and chair covers, or, even to throw on the ground to protect your floor while you paint!!! Sorry, got distracted by drop clothes. Back to the pillow – I clipped the green and blue edges and sprayed them with water to rough them up – a rag look.
Looking good, but still a little wet! The edges did curl up nicely.
Here’s another distraction – a cute distraction, but still a distraction!!!
She has to be right in on all the action . . .
. . . and have the best view of everything!!!
Yeah, nap time is definitely craft time. And now I’m often crafting on my bed because she can’t climb up there yet!
The clipped and frayed edges.
To sew the pillow cover, I just did an envelope style. I even used the finished edges of the drop cloth so I wouldn’t need to finish any edges. So easy!
And there is the finished back view!
And the finished front!!!
And yes, we’ve already had a geography lesson and I sewed everything in the proper place!!!
I made these wonderful Dinner Menu and Message Boards a while ago – you can read all about that here! Anyway, the boards are working exactly as I hoped they would – meaning that we use them all the time and are all getting trained to check them for messages. And there are no more annoying little pieces of paper floating around with messages on them, or no messages scribbled on that important paper I needed.
However, the colours weren’t quite working for me yet – probably because I got a huge book of lovely new scrapbook papers. I figured out that it was the pale yellow I didn’t like – so it was time to rip it apart!!!
After much deliberating, I chose this pretty light teal colour and simply glued it on over the yellow. (Yes, that is my bed I’m working on, mostly because my baby hasn’t figured out how to climb up on it so I can work in peace, not like at the kitchen table!)
Yes, I’m loving these colours much more – not that I have anything against yellow (unless I’m supposed to wear it – then I look jaundice!).
That “I Love You Message” has been on there for months. I can’t bring myself to erase it!!!
Notice the little strip of new paper right below the green – that’s over yellow too, and just ties the boards in nicely to each other.
And there are the two boards side-by-side.
And here they sit in my temporary kitchen – very convenient right by the phone.
And to wrap it up, I really recommend these boards!!! The Dinner board makes me plan ahead somewhat! (I can do better – notice the empty, unplanned spaces! I just find that my days go so much smoother when the dinner menu is already planned.) And the Message Board . . . let me compare it to Pinterest – how did I ever live without it???
Can this really be me doing a post about food? Well, this one intrigued me. I saw a picture of this in blogworld (before Pinterest so I don’t remember who to give the credit to – sorry) and wondered how in the world they got the noodles through the wiener. I was so eager to find out how they did it that I didn’t really stop to think about it – just sped read the blog to figure it out. And then I must admit that I felt a little silly!!!
Do you have it figured out?
Looks kinda scary eh?
Okay, I know you’re all smarter than I was! Here we have the wieners and noodles cooking together in the pot. And here’s the way they looked just before going in the pot.
I broke my noodles in half, but if you want them to look more like squid, leave them whole. I shoved four noodles through each wiener.
Here’s another tip: don’t get distracted while you’re cooking them. I over cooked mine a bit which made the noodles pretty soft, so some of them were breaking off at the point where they came out of the wiener.
So since the wieners are already meat (yeah, right!), I just made up some meatless spaghetti sauce to serve with our spaghetti dogs.
So, go ahead and cook it for your family and see if they can figure it out!
My friend Heather had a son get married and I was able to help her decorate (she planned everything, I just helped with setting things up and taking things down). I love helping to decorate because I love to see the transformation of a gym to something beautiful. Anyway, for this reception, the church gym was transformed into An Evening Garden and it was so pretty!
Branches spray painted white with flowers glued on. They were used first without the flowers at a winter themed wedding.
The little gazebo where the bride and groom stood during the receiving line.
Mostly decorated but still missing centerpieces and a few other things.
Each table had a different colour flower tucked in the bow that was tied to the chair – I loved this!
Such pretty chairs!
See, I really loved them!
More trees and flowers set up near the gazebo.
The Mason jars filled with rocks and a tealight candle added a lovely romantic evening effect.
It was such soft pretty lighting.
And there are the centerpieces. The bride collects tea cups so tea lights glowing inside tea cups on the table added a pretty effect.
And the cake made by the grooms 16 year old sister.
It really did turn out like An Evening Garden!
Now, who’s wedding can I help at next? Gotta get lots of ideas for our seven daughters’ weddings!!!
Paint chips! Yeah, I have a few lying around, but that’s okay because we’re building and I need to choose from these myriads of colours the few colours that will be perfect for my house. Any tips?
Anyway, when we’re finished painting and I have all these leftover paint chip samples, now I know what I’ll be doing with them. I saw an adorable paint chip flower wreath at Ali.Lilly and decided to sort of copy her flowers. I didn’t need a wreath, but I did need a wedding card asap!
I dug out my heart punch and started punching hearts out of the paint chips. My punch keeps getting stuck though – any hints on how to fix that (like punching tin foil or something?).
If you don’t have a heart punch, just trace and cut out hearts by hand like Ali.Lilly did. I’m not using the most exciting colours here – I’m using paint chips that I had duplicates of. Imagine what some pretty coloured hearts would look like!
Then it was just a matter of arranging the hearts into a flower shape, and gluing them onto the card that I had previously distressed and stamped a greeting on. This was my first attempt at making a flower. Next time I’ll make another smaller layer on the inside like Ali.Lilly did, but I literally ran out of time.
Stamped a heart onto a circle for my flower center. Not too bad – the idea has possibilities. I’m always shocked when I happen to look at the prices of cards these days – crazy!!! So I like to mass produce cards once I find an idea I like. But . . . I leave the stamped greeting off until I know what I need a card for (birthday, wedding, get well, congrats, thanks, etc.). Then I’ll grab the card, stamp on the appropriate greeting, and we are good to go! The stamps used on this card are all from Stampin’ Up.
And by the way, I’m not suggesting you run off to the local paint store and clean out all their paint chips. Nothing bugs me more when I need paint chips and there are some empty slots in probably the exact colour I was looking for! This is strictly for recycling those paint chips you legitimately needed!!!
My guy came home and found my stuff and he got creative too. First he made . . .
. . . the phases of the moon, and then . . .
. . . a lovely new wedding ring! Isn’t he the cutest thing evah?
I also love the blue star plate that I got in Target a while back. It’s my tribute today to my American friends – Happy 4th of July!
Banana Cake
Oh doesn’t that look delicious?
