Tag Archives: ribbon

Quick and Easy Air Freshener

I love fresh air. I’d rather be cold and have the windows open than be boxed in a stuffy house. And commercial perfumes tend to aggravate my asthma, so if I can avoid them I will.

Spring is ALMOST at hand in Newfoundland, but the days when I can justify turning off the heat and leaving the windows wide open have yet to come. And having an active dog and an active man in the house, coupled with the variety of things I cook, means our house could use a bit of fresh air during the winter months.

I saw this post from Smashed Peas and Carrots a while back and I thought it might be worth a try.

Basically all you need is a small jar, some baking soda, and some essential oils. The original post required a mason-jar style lid, where the lid itself could be replaced with perforated scrapbook paper, a great way to personalize the jar. I don’t have any scrapbook paper, so I decided to use fabric and elastics instead.

I also didn’t have any spare jars at the moment, but I had some large ramekins that were sitting around so I thought I’d use those instead.

So it’s simple: take about 1/2 cup baking soda and plop it in your jar. Or bowl. Or whatever.

Shake about 8-12 drops essential oil of your choice onto the baking soda.

Affix your lid, which could really be anything, provided it has holes for air to flow through. I have a small patch of fabric here (charming thrifted vintage handkerchiefs) that I fixed in place with an elastic band. Give the contents a gentle shake to mix them up a bit.

I made four separate bowls, for the main activity rooms in our house: tea tree for the bathroom, lavender for the bedroom, and orange for the living room.

As an experiment, I also tried some rose water in baking soda and put that in my office. I doubt it will last as long as the ones with the essential oils in it, but it still smells lovely!

Keep the jars or bowls out of the sun in a place that gets good air circulation and I think they’ll probably last you at least a month, maybe two!

This one is on the table by the entrance to the dining room. We walk past this all the time, wafting air to and fro.

Adding Festivity, the Lazy Way: Paper Wreath

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Seeing as we’re in Ottawa and not St. John’s for the majority of the holiday season, the Pie and I rarely trouble ourselves to decorate Elizabeth for Christmas. But this little thing was so easy, and so quick, and the days here in St. John’s have been so very gray, I needed a little festivity … but I was too lazy to do anything too complicated.

So I have here some rolls of wrapping paper that I picked up from IKEA about seven years ago, and which I rarely use (seeing as I still have a chunk left). The nice thing is that the wrapping paper, since it came on a roll, has a natural curve to it that I used to my advantage. I also have a large paper plate with an extremely ugly design on it. I don’t even know how I came to own these things, but I was cleaning out a cupboard and there they were … You will also need a pair of decent scissors and some tape. Any kind, really, as you won’t see it. A ribbon is optimal but also optional.

First, we need to make a wreath form out of the paper plate. If you want something bigger (or less ugly), you can make your own ring out of cardboard or whatever is handy. With the paper plate all I had to do was cut out the middle section.

Then I cut about a 5″ wide strip from the roll of wrapping paper. I folded it in half lengthwise, so it was then about 2.5″ thick, and then folded it across itself widthwise a couple times, until I had a small rectangle about 2.5″ x 5″. Or whatever works for you. This just makes it easier to cut a bunch of leaves at once. This is where having a nice sharp, strong pair of scissors comes in handy.

Then I cut a leaf shape out of the rectangle, leaving the bottom a little flattened (for optimal tape-age), and ended up with a handful of little leaves. I did this twice for each colour of wrapping paper I used, so six times in total. I have no idea how many leaves it was, but it was exactly enough for the size of my project, which was pretty convenient — almost like I had a plan.

Then I started taping them onto the plate, putting a wee bit of tape at the flattened end of the leaf, and making them kind of flow around the circle. Don’t worry about making them arrow straight, and try to pick up different colours at random.

When you put on the next haphazard row, it overlaps the first and hides the tape (this is called imbrication – like the layering of scales or roofing shingles).

Imbrication … (I learned the word today so it’s rather convenient that I have this project for you)

When you come full circle (and I don’t mean that metaphorically this time), just fold up the leaves already there and tuck the new ones into the space to fill the gap.

So that’s the whole thing.

I had a scrap of blanket binding leftover from the baby blanket I made for the Incredibly Little Hulk way back when, so I tied that on as ribbon.

Then I added another ribbon to hang it on my door.

This took me half an hour, from start to finish. Change the colours of the paper leaves and I’m sure you could apply this wreath to any season (black and orange for Hallowe’en, purple and green for spring …). Easy peasy, blamo kablam, it’s done!

Imbricaaaaaaaation: an overlapping of edges as in tiles or scales.

Cardigan Cozy

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We know that I’ve done things with cardigans, and I’ve done things with cozies. And now for something completely different.

My mother is an artist, and she spends many long hours perched in her chair, leaning over her drafting table. That can lead to a sore back after a day of drawing, and, in the wintertime, a cold backside.

In her living room, she has a new fireplace, and so spends a lot of time cozied up to the flames. But upstairs in the studio she has no such luck.

Now, this sweater was knitted for her by my grandmother eons ago. It no longer fit her, so she gave it to me, because it’s beautiful. She even switched all the buttons for me and make all the buttonholes fit properly with the new hardware.

Alas, I’m a little longer in the torso than my mother and so the cardigan doesn’t suit me at all.

But here’s my idea. We all know about “magic” bags, those sacks filled with buckwheat or rice that you microwave that keep you toasty. The Pie and I use them nearly every night in the winter, to heat up the foot of our bed.

Why not turn this cardigan into a heating pad that will fit on the back of the chair? It will slide over the back of most, and for the ones where it doesn’t, well, you can always use the arms of the sweater to hold it in place, right?

So first I had to come up with the heating pad itself, because I’m not going to stick this sweater in the microwave. This heating pad is going to be removable, something I can button inside the cardigan.

What I need is a big, flat, rectangle, which I will fill with rice. To keep the rice from falling to the bottom when the pad is in place inside the sweater, I’m going to sew it into little pockets. I’m basically quilting, but instead of using batting, I’m using rice.

To make the bag, I measured (roughly) the inside of the sweater.

Then I cut out a square of folded fabric.

It was my goal to sew ribbon loops into the four corners to serve as button holes. I messed it up, but I also fixed it later.

So here I am, sewing up three sides of the folded cloth, including the fold side.

Turn it inside out, and sew again to create the frame for the rice.

Sew up towards the opening, in equal spacing. These will be the columns for the rice.

I scooped 1/3 cup uncooked rice into each column.

Then pinned each column shut.

And sewed it up — to make a quilted pocket.

Continue that way all the way up.

The finished pockets.

Then I sealed the top, added some more loops of ribbons to attach to more buttons, and sewed that under.

Now, because I’d made the loops too small, I used the loops instead as an anchor for another ribbon, which I tied around the buttons, which I of course sewed into the sweater.

I used extra buttons along the top edge because I was concerned about the weight. All that rice is nearly 4lb!

Then I sewed a velvet ribbon into each of the sleeves so that I could tie them together and they wouldn’t dangle. I figure if this cozy ever goes onto a chair where it can’t slide over the back, you can always use the ribbons to tie the arms to the chair.

So here it is on a chair. Gren is not impressed. He’s a hard one to please.

My mother’s studio chair is a bit more substantial, more like my office chair. So here is how it looks from the back.

And the front. Cozy, huh?

Ivy Vanilla Wedding Cake

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On Saturday my best friend Chel got married. To Invis. For the second time.

Photo by Kurt Heinecke, http://www.khstudios.biz

My wedding present to the lovely couple was their wedding cake, which they wanted to be vanilla flavoured, white on the outside, and have ivy trailing over it.

I practiced ahead of time. I got the recipe down with the Pie’s birthday cake last summer. Then I worked on my fondant technique with my own birthday cake, and adapted the fondant flavourings with the moose cake. I even made my own vanilla for the occasion.Was I ready for this? I had never made a wedding cake before. Chel and Invis wanted it simple, but a wedding cake is still a definite challenge.

First I had to figure out how much cake I needed. I had an 8″ springform pan, an 11″ springform pan, and then a gigantic 16″ aluminum pan (which I think my father now covets). So I did some mental math and decided to quadruple the recipe that I had for the Pie’s birthday cake and go from there.

That’s a lot of cake.

Four kilograms of icing sugar, 2 of white chocolate. Two litres of whipping cream. One and a half pounds of butter and the same in shortening. Two kilos of cream cheese. Sixteen eggs. Two bags of flour. Lots of mixing.

I gave myself three days to make this cake: the first day to do the actual baking and prepare the decorations; the second day to ice the cakes, and the third day to put the cake together. So that means you get to have three days of posts, because otherwise you’d be reading the world’s longest essay on cake. I gotta break it up a little. Shall we begin?

DAY ONE:

Preheat your oven to 350°F.

Butter your pans generously and dust them with flour, knocking out the excess.Of course, the whole selling point of a springform pan is it makes removing cake from it so ridiculously easy. Unfortunately, you’d be hard pressed to find a springform pan bigger than 12″ in diameter. So for the 16″ pan, which wasn’t springform, I had to cut out a circle in parchment paper for it and then butter and flour that as well.Separate 12 eggs and bring the whites to room temperature. Save the yolks for making custard.

Then you want to do some sifting. A lot of sifting. More sifting than you actually want to do, to tell the truth. I started out with a regular sifter.Then I got bored and my hand got tired so I switched to a fine mesh sieve instead. In any case, sift together 13 cups flour (I used cake and pastry flour because it’s fortified with a bit of cornstarch, which helps you maintain volume in your cake) with 4 tablespoons baking powder and 4 teaspoons baking soda. The sifting process helps to eliminate lumps and also serves to add a bit of air into your flour, making it lighter and fluffier. Volume is key.Now set that aside. In a larger bowl, beat together 2 cups softened butter with 2 cups vegetable shortening until fluffy and creamy.And I’m talking creamy.Add in 7 cups granulated sugar and 1/2 cup pure vanilla extract.

Make sure you’ve also got all those precious vanilla seeds in there too.Beat that up until it’s fluffy, and make sure to scrape down the sides of the bowl. Now crack in 4 whole eggs and mix that up as well.Okay so this next bit you mix in your flour mixture, as well as 6 cups ice water. But WAIT.You gotta do it a bit at a time. You want to add the flour in three separate increments, and the ice water in two. So you start with the flour, then add water, then flour, then water, and then the rest of your flour. And that’s how that is done.Once you’ve done all your adding, scrape down the sides of the bowl and just keep mixing for a further minute or so. Isn’t that lovely and smooth?Now, in yet another bowl, you want to whip up those nice warm egg whites. Add in 1 teaspoon cream of tartar to firm things up a little and beat the whites until they are at the soft peak stage, shapely but not dry.Plop those whipped whites into your batter bowl.Gently, ever so gently, fold those whites into the batter. This is what will give you the majority of your fluffy cake.Now distribute the batter between your three pans and smooth the tops.Now we bake. Unfortunately the day I did this, Ottawa was in the midst of a heatwave. So this is what I look like when it’s hot and I’m leaning over an oven: hair in pins, shorts, dishtowel tied around my waist, and a jaunty wet scarf on my neck to keep me cool. Super sexy, I know.

Self-portrait of the baker in a heat wave.

In terms of baking times, I baked the first two tiers for about 50 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in the centre came out clean. I used a convection oven, so it might take a little longer in a regular oven. The bottom tier took about 60 minutes to bake, but just keep checking on them to make sure they don’t burn. The 16″ tier BARELY fit in the oven.When the cakes are all golden-brown and lovely, put them on racks to cool completely. When they are completely cool, remove them from the pans, wrap them tightly in plastic wrap, and put them in the fridge overnight. It is much easier to decorate a cold cake than a warm one, trust me.While the cakes are doing their thing, you can make the fondant and frosting, as well as the gum paste for the ivy leaves.

For the fondant, I creamed together 1 cup softened butter, 1 cup vegetable shortening, 2 cups lily white corn syrup, and 6 teaspoons almond extract.When it was all creamy I was ready to add in the icing sugar.By the time I had the texture right, I had added almost 3 kilograms of the stuff (I’m Canadian, so forgive me for switching back and forth between Imperial and Metric. It’s just what we do). I had also neglected to take my rings off before I kneaded the stuff. Shame on me. Then wrap the fondant tightly in waxed paper and chuck it in the refrigerator overnight.For the frosting, start off by melting 4lb white chocolate, chopped. I know, it’s a lot. But it’s necessary.While your chocolate is becoming liquid, cream together 6, 250g packages of cream cheese.Really mix it well to get out all the lumps.Pour in 2 1/4 cups each whipping cream and icing sugar. Add in 3 teaspoons vanilla extract as well.Whip that extra good until it’s super smooth and creamy.

By now your chocolate should be all melty.Pour that white goodness into your other white goodness and whip it up to create more white goodness.Now put plastic wrap on the surface of the icing and chuck that in the refrigerator overnight.

For the gum paste, I didn’t want to tempt fate (I know my own limitations, folks) so I purchased gum paste mix from a cake decoration store.The instructions on the package are to mix 16oz of the mixture with 1/4 cup water.Then you stir like crazy, eventually using your hands to knead it all in.Then wrap it tightly in a bag and leave it at room temperature for 15 minutes.Now you can dye it. I used two different shades of Wilton icing colour: moss green and juniper green.It’s a good idea to use gloves when you do this, unless you want green hands. Apply the colour with a toothpick. Just remember that a little goes a long way.Then, with gloves on your pretty little hands, knead the gum paste until the colour is thoroughly mixed in.Okay, so now put a bit of spray oil on your rolling pin and roll that sucker out flat.We’re cutting out ivy leaves here, so I thought, what better template than a real ivy leaf?