Time Waster of the Day: IKEA Edition

{Found on How About Orange}

What is your IKEA name?

On the Pole, with Ms. Stewart

The past few weeks have been a whirlwind of terribly uninteresting drama and recurring sinus infections {lovely}, so until I feel back to "normal", I wanted to pop in and leave you with this little unexpected ray of sunshine.

{Click on the photo... you won't be sorry!}

Flickr Favorites Friday

1. baking corner, 2. Warmth, 3. Dissect, 4. brrrrr, 5. Rocco French Bulldog 1, 6. Hot Cocoa, 7. snow on trees, 8. Untitled, 9. ribbons of chihuly

A New Way to Tie One On

I am a scarf girl. Winter, summer, snow or sunshine, I'm likely to have a scarf on. I love that they instantly transform a hum-drum outfit into something that looks like it took time and thought to put together. A black cardigan, white tee and jeans **poof** becomes an actual stylish outfit.

Generally, I fall into the Parisian/European method of tying my scarf, where you fold it in half, wrap it behind your neck and pull the ends through the loop. Quick, simple and chic. That is until today, when Sarah over at Classy & Fabulous turned me on to a whole new way to get my scarf on.

Take a look at this video by Michelle from Chic Critique:

How fabulous is that?! I can tell you, my scarf tying will never be the same.

A second helping please, Sam I Am...

By most measures, yesterday's In-Law Fest was a rousing success. No fights. Lots of Prosecco and THE most delicious ham a pig has ever given its yummy, yummy life for. So good, in fact, that I had to post about it and make sure that any of you ever have to make a ham, you use this recipe. The meat wasn't at all salty and more moist than you can imagine. And the glaze, oh, the Maple-Orange Glaze is... well... Oh! worthy.

I can't post the actual recipe here, but you can head over to America's Test Kitchen and it is available for free -- you just have to register on their site. While you are there, check out the Best Drop Biscuits recipe, for what can only be described as super quick, idiot-proof buttermilk biscuits. It's all so tasty, it almost makes me want to have my in-laws over more often. Almost.

Family Dinner: Disco Balls and Xanax

Our holiday centerpiece for this year. 

Today is the last of our holiday celebrating. Most of Ed's family is coming over and will somehow cram into our fairly small living room for supper and gift swapping. In addition to setting myself up for a crazy day by making a ham (the one thing I think I have never cooked before) -- there will be mucho tension because of some things that went down over the past few months. Fortunately, we made a run to the liquor store so at least we'll have some adult beverages to dull the pain.

New Year, New Page

One of my favorite things about New Year's Day is the, well, newness of it. It's like your life is opening a blank journal to the first fresh, blank page. A few days ago, I saw the cutest set of Moleskine journals in Real Simple magazine. The twelve color coded, numbered journals are set up like a daily planner, but without all of the bulk of the ones I've carried in years past.

Available at Moleskine.com or on sale at Crate & Barrel retail stores

As luck would have it, I came across the journal set at my local Crate & Barrel store. The best bonus of all -- it was on sale for $15!! I doesn't seem to be available online, but you might be lucky enough to score one in person. Now if only I could find something that could keep me *on* my carefully planned out (and now pretty) schedule...

MWF ISO Perfect Lip Liner Pencil

Every girl has at least a couple of Must Have items in her beauty arsenal. I, for one, can not function when I know that I am down to my last tube of of Burt's Bees lip balm. Dry lips and the occasional raggedy cuticle are all no match for my teeny tube of yellow goodness.

Tip: Stock up when the holiday gift sets go on clearance at Target the week after New Years. I found them for 50-cents for a package of 3 tubes and a tin!! I am STILL working through last year's haul!

A few years ago, the product designers at Bobbi Brown had the smarts to stick a small lip brush at the opposite end of their lip liner pencils. It was handy and meant there was one less thing I needed to carry around in my makeup bag, plus the lip pencil was wonderfully creamy and not at all drying. Perhaps more importantly, it got me to fork over the $$ for its multi-tasking ability.

I have been using mainly glosses and tinted lip balms over the past few years, but lately I find myself wanting something with a little bit more pigment and staying power. Hello lipstick, old friend. So when I went to the Bobbi Brown site to pick up a new liner, I was sad to see that they have done away with my little friendly brush!

A quick check online tells me there are a few other options to try. But I'm still torn.

So I turn to you, my 2 {sometimes 3!} readers out there. Do you have a favorite pencil I should try? Am I ridiculous for making a big to-do about a silly little brush and stick with my must-have? Besides, does anyone even use lip liner pencil anymore?

Whoops! & Flickr Friday Favorites

I knew I had a busy week, so I wrote and scheduled a few funny/interesting posts for this week... or thought I did. Heck, I even remember doing it. Apparently the blog gods were conspiring against me, because not only did they not post, they are completely gone from my account! Oddness... I will certainly have time to post next week, so in the meantime, want to take a guess on what has been consuming my time??

1. Welcome to Las Vegas (178/365), 2. Peacock Plumes, 3. 03.12.09: ladies..., 4. Lace Jacket for Wedding Dress, 5. Wheel of Fortune, 6. Pristine, 7. My new 3 1/2" high heel sky blue DUNE shoe, 8. Vegas Baby!, 9. Ribbon Curls (Infinite)

Flickr Favorites Friday

1. mrcz1117, 2. Lovely Green..!!, 3. Rainbow of Ribbons, 4. STAATSGALERIE, STUTTGART, 5. rose cupcakes, 6. i don't know what's on the other side of this life

Happy Halloween... just don't ring my bell!

I am not one of those people who get all excited about Halloween. Frankly, I pretend I'm not home when kids knock on my door, grubbing for candy. Ha-ha! Trick's on you... I'm sitting right here on my couch.

My mom was not one of those crafty, creative stay-at-home moms that my friends had. She had a job and less than no time to come up with something unique for me. When I was growing up, the extent of my costume creativity was to throw on one of those flammable smock deals from the local County Discount with the plastic mask that would totally be illegal today. I did have a brief stint as a homemade She-Ra in the mid-80s, but I clearly peaked early. In high school I upgraded to less whorish versions of the Slutty Devil or the Slutty Witch but that was just about as festive as I ever got.

Not much has changed since those days. This Halloween will be just another Saturday, cleaning the house and running errands. Now, if you want to talk day-after-50%-off-candy... I'm your girl!

I think I just put Spanx on my couch.

After the pudding incident the other night, I tried a dozen different things but nothing could get the darn chocolate {mint!} pudding out of the fabric on our couch. Truthfully, I could have probably hidden the stains with some strategic pillow placements but what fun is that?! I was upset and hell bent on fixing it somehow, and since a new sofa is out of the question, I moseyed over to SureFit to go slipcover shopping. 

I had an unspeakably ugly experience with an unfitted slipcover years ago for a {three times} hand-me-down couch in our first apartment. "Never again," I swore. And one AMEX and 3 UPS shipping days later, here we are.

I went with a three-piece stretch fabric, so the couch could have some definition and wouldn't look like the Big Blob of Fabric, Part II. This super stretchy, gigantic shower cap (and two matching cushion covers) arrived today and I got right to work putting this bad boy on. I realized pretty quickly that I was putting the equivalent of Suede Spanx onto my sofa.

In the end, our sofa went from looking like this little slice of pretty to looking like this: 

Yes, it could be much worse. I know that. But after all of the huffing and puffing involved in getting the main cover on, I expected something a little more snug fitting. No idea how I got the left side straight and the right side is bunched up - and there is a good amount of fabric sort of tucked into the back, behind the cushions. Apparently, my couch is too skinny for Spanx. I, on the other hand...

But I digress. I do love how the cover accentuates the back pillow lumpiness, and gives the seat cushions the faintest hint of the couch equivalent of a camel toe. Klassy. {Could be worse... could be worse...}


Also, I clearly need to take a minute to reorganize my bookshelves. But that's another post for another time. I need a nap!

Flashback Friday: Have Mercy!

For every ridiculously viral video about cats, there exists a gem hidden in the depths of You Tube. I am happy to bring some joy to you today in the form of everyone's favorite mousse-using Uncle Jesse.



For some reason, knowing that Jessie & The Rippers exists in some semblance of perpetuity makes me smile.

Lesson of the Day: Episode 2

Did you know that throwing a poor, innocent little pudding cup 12 feet across the room might not be the smartest move? Particularly when you are aiming at a person who is sitting on a pale blue couch? I did... though someone else, who shall remain nameless, seemed to have slept through that day of Life Lessons 101.

Poor thing never stood a chance,because now my couch looks like this:

It was much, much worse (throw pillows were taken down as collateral damage) but it took me a few moments to find the humor in the situation and grab my camera. And by humor, I mean that kind of laughing you do when you are completely enraged about something but it oddly comes out in the form of a laugh. So the Resolve is working it's magic and I am hoping for the best.

And I'm still craving pudding...

Update: So the Resolve didn't lift a darn bit of it, even after 3 applications. I can (mostly) hide it with pillows, but there is definitely going to be some sofa shopping in my future. So long California vacation... it was nice knowing you.

Lesson of the Day

This morning I had a late start, so I made the call to spray in some dry shampoo to make my hair remotely presentable in public. I knew I was just running a few errands and, frankly, the people at Target don't usually look too hot themselves at 8am. So I felt okay.

Fast forward to 10 minutes ago, when I get home and discover that a sort of... umm... paste has formed on my scalp. Apparently, getting a little overheated while running around while wearing the dry shampoo is not the way to go.

Lesson Learned! Spread the word...

Guilt Free Chili... Really!

I meant to write about this over the weekend, but that would have majorly interfered with my laziness. Saturday and Sunday were gray, rainy and bitterly cold here in the Northeast and that gave me the perfect excuse to bust out my never-fail and totally guilt-free chili. With very low fat and TONS of fiber and protein, I never think twice about going for that second bowl.

Quick Recipe

• Sauté a diced medium onion and 3 smashed cloves of garlic in 1 Tbsp olive oil in a heavy bottomed pot (I use a 5qt LeCreuset).
  
• Once mixture is softened, stir in 2 Tbsp chili powder (store bought or homemade mix) and let bloom in the oil for a minute or two.
  
• Mix in 1 lb ground turkey (I like the dark meat) and break it up with your spoon as it browns.
• Once meat is browned, add 1 large (28oz) can of whole tomatoes and 2 (14.5oz) cans of dark red kidney beans.
• Let simmer for 30 minutes with cover *on*. You'll see how the sauce changes and the mixture changes from liquidy to "chili-y" an the tomatoes break down. Remove lid and simmer for another 30 minutes or until liquid thickness is to your liking.
  

 Notes

• This is sort of the base recipe I work from. Most of the time, I play around with adding different chilies or veggies. In this batch, I replaced the liquid from the tomatoes with 6 oz of a chocolate stout we had in the fridge. It gave it a great, hearty oomph.
  
• I salt everything as I go, instead of all at once.
  
• My own chili powder mix that is a rough estimation of:
• 3 parts smoked paprika
• 2 parts ground ancho chilies
  
• 2 parts cumin
• 1 part coriander
  
• 1 part garlic powder
  
• 1 part cocoa powder
• 1 part oregano
• 1/2 part nutmeg

Cider + Donuts = I love fall!

Since I am going to be talking a lot more about my photography, I wanted to start things off right. And by right, I mean with donuts.

We stopped off at the same farm that I blogged about last year, which is a 15 minute drive from my mother-in-law's new home, expressly for the purpose of eating these very donuts. We lucked into getting some from the very last batch of the day, warm from the fryer. If you try hard enough, you can actually hear my husband begging me to hurry up so he could get to eating. I was all too happy to oblige.

I *will* be back...

I'm just now getting around to sprucing up the place, so I'm asking you to please pardon the mess around here in the meantime. There have been a lot of changes over the last year or so here at Casa Cupcake - new apartment, new habits, and even a possible new career - and I am looking forward to getting back to blogging on a more regular basis. My yummy recipes and annoying observations aren't going to write about themselves, you know!

To blog or not to blog...

** I know that I am quick to unsubscribe from stagnant blogs, so if you still check in from time to time, stop in the comments and say hello! **

Once upon a time, this very blog was both funny and snarky, superficial and insightful, topical and regularly updated. Then, as it is wont to do, life happened. Month after month of complete and utter nonsense were heaped upon both Mr. Cupcake and me. Pure rubbish, of which we had no control, but were somehow responsible to clean up. But who wants to hear the boo-hoos about all that?

The good news is that, within the next week, most of it will be behind us and our lives can go back to "normal" [ha... normal]. My normal used to include blogging here and, the truth is, I miss it. Sometimes things happen and need to be shared, but my 140-character Twitter field just can't do them justice.

I am going back and forth about whether to continue on with this blog (and a major revamp) or start up something completely new. I have been blogging here since 2005, but I want to go in a different direction and not focus on The Creative Cupcake as much. I am taking my daily creativity in a whole new direction, and I'd love to be able to share what I am doing. Naturally there will be talk of shopping, great reads, DIY craftiness, tasty eats, and all things pink and preppy. So if you like photos of yummy baked goods, or are dying to know my very biased opinions on cheesetastic television , stick around!

Are You Kidding, Private Practice Edition

I just had to break my unintended hiatus with the following:

Pete and Violet? Really??? Am I the only one who is on the fence with this one?