fancy box cake hack

A while ago I found this "recipe" for making a box cake taste like it came from a bakery.  I was intrigued so I repinned to try it out on a later date.  I had some frosting left over from making pumpkin cupcakes and a spice cake with maple cream cheese frosting sounded like a good idea, so I bought a box of spice cake to test it out.  I didn't make a control group cake of undoctored box cake, so I can't really compare how it would've tasted sans doctoring, but it was indeed delicious.  I'd be interested to try it with something richer like a red velvet cake.  Unfortunately I don't really go to many events that require bringing cake and I'm certainly not going to just bake a whole cake so it can sit in my kitchen and tempt me.
I bought this vintage cake stand for our wedding cake but it ended up being too small for the cake to fit on, so we used it for caramel apples instead.  I'm glad I got to use it to hold a cake finally!  It's been sitting on my desk holding mason jars full of pens and other office supplies for the past year.  It needed something a bit more glamorous to sit on top of it for a bit.

Basically what you do is take your box cake and make it how it says on the box, except...
*Add one more egg (or 2 if you want it to be very rich),
*Use melted butter instead of oil and double the amount,
*Instead of water, use milk.

...and then just bake the cake how it says to on the box.  I think a spice cake would be a great cake to bring to Thanksgiving, and this box cake hack is a great option if you ran out of time and want to whip something fancy up to bring.

remix archives // plaid top

This free people top is definitely my most worn item in my wardrobe, simply because I wear it way more than it ever appears on the blog, and it clearly has appeared on the blog tons of times.  A plaid button down top is one of my wardrobe essentials.  I love that I can wear it in a cute outfit, or just throw it on with a pair of jeans when I'm feeling lazy.  This one is a bit more cropped than the other plaid tops that I have, so it's a bit more versatile.  Although, it's probably less cropped on me than someone who is more like 5'7".  I've worn it in all four seasons, buttoned up, unbuttoned, over dresses, under dresses.  I'm actually wearing it with some high waisted skinny jeans as I'm typing this!

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dress :: purse :: bracelet :: earrings

I really love this time of year-the crisp, fresh mornings, cosy knitted jumpers and lovely feeling of coming home to hot chocolate and warm socks after a walk through the crunchy, colourful leaves.
Colours always seem to be more vibrant this time of year as well, with the changing leaves and the way the sun catches the cobwebs and frost in the early morning.

A new season is always a great excuse to buy new clothes, accessories and little treats for the home. No matter how many jumpers and gloves I have, I always seems to need to buy new ones each new autumn (its like starting a new notebook at school!) and of course you can never have too many scented candles to light up the dark nights.

My boyfriend and I have just bought our first house, so my wishlists at the moment are full of pretty things to make our new house into a home. I love scouring places such as Etsy, or Folky in the UK, to find quirky little pieces!

dress :: purse :: bracelet :: fascinator :: brooch

late night thoughts

You know that thing where you go on vacation, it doesn't have to be a long vacation, just long enough to make you forget about your daily grind and all the shit you somehow manage to fit into a day, and then you come back from vacation and you're all of a sudden behind on everything, even though you knew you were going on vacation, and the prospect of tackling the pile of things-to-do is so stressful that instead of doing any of it, you do the opposite and pretend it doesn't exist?  That.  Oh, and also that thing where you need a vacation upon coming back from vacation.  I'm mostly exaggerating, but still, that stuff is annoying, amirite?  It's also kind of amazing how just a couple days in the rainforest can make you totally forget about all the stuff you do every day.  All that stuff that can get piled up if left for just a couple days unattended.  The unread emails, the tweets unseen, the comments unread, the posts un-composed, etc. etc.  It's kind of crazy.  And bizarre that all of that is just normal life.  Sometimes it makes me want to just unplug permanently.  Find some job that's 100% offline, live in a place where there's only dial-up, and just breathe in the fresh air.  It's so weird to me that all of this internet stuff has only just begun in the last couple decades.  That cellphones weren't even a thing until the late 80's, and that if we wanted to communicate we did it via mail, landline, or face to face.  I kind of want to go back.  And I'm a little sad that my kids will never know what it's like to live in a world without cell phones and mobile internet.  While I love the connectivity, especially as someone who lives thousands of miles from family, I'm afraid we're addicted to the connectivity.  We can't even imagine life without cell phones any more.  I don't know.  I should add a disclaimer that this is sleepily written, stream-of-consciousness style, at 1 am.  But really, maybe our ultra-connectivity isn't that healthy for us?  Are we addicted to the connectivity?  Is the internet giving us a false sense of connectivity to other human beings?  We tweet, and blog, and facebook, and instagram, and text but we're not meeting our neighbors, or the other regulars at our local coffee shop.  We're chatting with thousands of random people around the world, but walk down are local streets with our faces buried in our cellphones.  We "communicate" in 140 characters, whittling our language down to abbreve's to fit our ideas in.  Sounds a little double plus ungood, to me.

Anyway, all that is to say, I guess, that I like blogging and this whole online community internet thing, but I'm a little afraid of it at the same time.  It's probably a bit too conspiracy theorist to get all Orwellian about it, but I value things like true communication, and real live human interaction, and long theological discussions late at night in art buildings, and dates where no one checks their phone or instagrams food pictures.  Blogging and online communities are meant to bring people together, but I think they can also do the opposite.  I have no neat conclusion to tie up this basket of thoughts, just thought I'd throw that out there and let you do with it what you may.  Enjoy some rainforest induced thoughts on your Thursday.

chunky beef stew

Dan and I just got back from a little getaway to the Olympic National Park the past couple days.  We spent a couple nights at the Lake Quinault Lodge and drove up to the Hoh Rainforest and the Washington coast beaches.  It was so beautiful.  The day we showed up it was absolutely pouring rain, and it was supposed to continue all week, but we woke up the next day and it was sunny!  So we got to spend the day walking around with out being drenched in rain.  We took a bunch of photos, but those will have to wait.  
Today I'm here with a recipe that would've been a perfect rainforest meal, to warm up your core after spending a day out in the rain.  I love stew.  It's so hearty and filling, and is perfect to reheat later on.  A big pot of stew can feed me all week!

(recipe via Season with Spice) Serves 3-4

Ingredients:
1 lb of beef stew cubes
6 carrots
5 stalks of celery
1 large white onion
3 cloves garlic - minced
1 bay leaf
2 cloves
1 tsp salt
1 tsp black pepper
3 cups of water
4 potatoes - cut into large chunks
3 tbsp flour

1. Cook up your beef cubes in a frying pan until browned, then transfer both the beef and juice to a large pot (or slow cooker, which is what I used).
2. Cut carrots, celery, and onions into chunks. Add to pot (or slow cooker), along with garlic, bay leaf, cloves, salt, black pepper, and 3 cups of water.
3. Cover, and simmer on low fire for 3-4 hours.
4. Add potatoes to the pot. Simmer for one more hour, or until potatoes are softened.
5. Scoop out a bit of the broth into a small bowl. Mix in 3 tablespoons of flour. Then pour the mix back into the pot and stir well. Remove cover and cook on medium fire for another 20 minutes to slightly thicken the broth. Add in more salt and pepper if needed.
6. Serve hot by itself, or get some nice crusty bread to soak up all the goodness (I used a bit of cheddar bread, so good!)