Lemon Coconut Loaf Cake

There isn’t a loaf cake that I have ever said no to,   especially new ones (how have I never heard of Lemon Coconut?). When Rhonda at Southern Hospitality showed off hers earlier this month, I immediately added it to my list of monthly “to-try” recipes. She credits Southern Living magazine for the recipe, and having never heard of this variety before, it struck me as quite quintessentially Southern and oh-so spring appropriate. So while the weather this weekend here in the great Pacific Northwest involved grey clouds and inches of rain, I pretended spring was just around the corner.

1/2 cup butter
1 1/3 cups sugar
3 large eggs
1 1/2 cups flour
1/2 tsp. salt
1/8 tsp. baking soda
1/2 sour cream
2 tsp. lemon zest (I used 2 tsp. lemon juice instead)
1/2 cup dried coconut flakes

Glaze
2 cups powdered sugar
3 tbsp. milk
2 tsp. lemon juice

1/2 dried coconut flakes

 

Preheat oven to 325. Beat butter until creamy. Gradually add sugar until mixed. Add eggs one at a time, beating until just mixed.

Mix dry ingredients (flour, salt, and baking soda). Add mix to butter mixture. Add sour cream. Stir in lemon and coconut flakes. Pour into a greased and floured 9x5 loaf pan.

Bake for 1 hour. Let cool for 1 hour. Mix glaze ingredients together and pour over loaf. Sprinkle with coconut flakes.

Cheapest Makeover Yet

Alternate post titles include:

Why Did I Not Do This Sooner?
What Would I Do Without Target?
The Joys of Leftover Paint
From Ugly to Not Too Bad in Three Easy Steps

Stage One of Master Bathroom Redo: Option One is done. Thanks so some must-have stripped blue-green towels from Target, an almost entire gallon of soothing grey-green paint left over from another bathroom, two of the absolute cheapest yet fairly snazzy DIY projects I’ve come up with in recent months, and a few accessories I already had on hand I can honestly say it all came in well under $100 (with the towels being the massive bulk of it all).

Recap of the already mentioned towels and paint:

Inspired by the mighty classic subway tile (which sadly was not popular in circa 1990 suburban housing) and the absolute beauty of recent design choice of glass tile laid vertically,

   (taken from Apartment Therapy)

I created some “art”…

From the much underappreciated, humble paint chip.

I could have easily snipped the ends that out their original use, but they are so subtle you don’t even see the marking sunless up close, and I think it leads itself  to being a little quirky the way it is.

Super easy, this was. The wonderful Martha Stewart has the best chips- long, straight edges, great colors. I grabbed a few in several different greens, blues, and creams. I also used several from my stash at home. To alleviate the guilt, I tell myself over and over how many thousands of dollars I’ve spent there over the last year; that helps a little. Only took about an hour and a half to cut and glue all those strips into position. The frame came out of the crawl space, where it was waiting for a new purpose. So it came out to be….. free.

The window “treatment” also was about as easy as could be too.

I stole this basic white canvas valence (yes, Target striking again)from the laundry room (where I am thinking about finding some colorful, patterned fabric to sew my own valence anyway to make it more interesting down there). So besides the lightweight “cafe” curtain rod (from.. you guessed it!), it was only few bucks on a grey slate blue roll of ribbon to match the hand towels (no way I was going to match that bright teal in the tile work). Measure, pin, sew, hang.

Idea came from all the “hotel” stripped bed and bath linens:

Lastly, a few accessories already all on hand (of course, except the towels):

Glass jar with sage green bath salts, olive green vase (which eerily has the same vertical, glass tiling design), faux succulent, rolled towels, fresh candle all in a beachy basket.

Done and done.

Bathroom Makeover: Option One

Okay, okay. I know that the hall bathroom remodel isn’t more than a month over (after lasting nearly a year:), but my mind has been working on the final bathroom: the master. Now I swore I wouldn’t be touching that one myself and will dutifully save up the money to pay for someone else to do the full reno, and I have no desire go back on my word. However, that day will be years off, and probably will be the very last of the teal to leave this house.

Which calls for a mini,  live-with-what-you-got redo and I had an idea brewing for a little while. So I’m going with Option One: make it pretty on the cheap.

Option Two will most certainly have a stone countertop and tub deck, porcelain tub, tiled floor… the works.

But first, the before shots (which except for some towel bars, nothing new from move-in day):

 
Thanks to these towels from Target, I began having hope I could do some with those teal stripes:

Which got me thinking…. ya know what a great wall color would be? A pale, grey-ish, very cool green… a lot like the exact color I loved and put on the walls in the hall bathroom, Valspar’s Roasted Garlic. And… there was tons left over. Hello, free wall color.

So, away I painted. 

Now, I’m working on some wall art and a window valence to help make the make all the colors feel more deliberant… not just like I bought some towels to try to desperately “go” with the permanent teal accents. (How did this happen? I swore February was going to be the month I focused on just my quilt and not succumb to Crafty ADD)

In the next few months, I hope to find a pair of mirrors, install a new light, and swap out the light switches to crisp white.

This bathroom and I might actually start to become friends with the way this mini redo is going.

Snow Day = Quilt Day

Some surprise snow called off work, which meant I didn’t have to wait until the weekend to finish the top of my quilt. What do ya think?

All Laid Out

With a long holiday weekend that began with a quick delivery of my sashing and backing linen fabric, I was able to cut, layout, and begin sewing together my quilt top. I was quite surprised how easy it is coming together (granted it’s a total beginner’s pattern) and I ahve been able to get this far without a single mis-measure or mis-cut. As much as I love, love, love my fabrics, I love that fact even more.

Here’s my final layout spread over the dining room and coffee tables. No chance I’d try laying this out on the floor- my dogs would think it was fair game within 3 seconds. I hope to have the top completely done this weekend and be ordering my quilting foot.

 

References:

Quilt pattern and directions via Stitched In Color
Fabric choices via my previous post

Washed, Ironed, and Ready to Begin

Finally, yesterday my fabrics came that I ordered for the Colorbrick quilt I am doing. My goal this weekend is to cut all my bricks out and purchase a taupe-y, traditional linen that will serve as the sashing and backing.

To come to my final decision I read a bunch of different recommendations for how to choose the right collection of fabrics, because I knew there had to be a science to making it seem so natural.

Of course I can’t seem to find the article I liked the best now to link to, but essentially I found the *one* fabric that sang to me (the flower one in the middle) that (usually) contains the entire color family, then built off of that.

The plaid has all the same colors, but with a white base it looks more complementary than a repetition. Then I picked two darker and two lighter fabrics. I love how I have a mix of natural elements and geometry patterns too. The light blue herringbone print will be the binding and an emergency back-up choice should there be a problem :)

Fabric and designer names listed here, purchase was from Fabric.com.

My First Quilt

One of the things I wanted to push myself to do this year was at least one crafty/sewing project a month. For January, I made a tote bag for library books and a ruffle jersey knit scarf (which clearly looks like I still need to photograph and brag about on here). I wanted to get a little back into the swing of my sewing machine before plunging into the ultimate project I wanted to try this year- my very first quilt.

I wanted something modern and stylish in a home decor kind-of-way since I wanted to make a throw blanket sized quilt for our family room. I spent quite awhile browsing online patterns and tutorials and found nothing quite right. Eventually, I found an almost perfect Amy Butler Brick Path pattern:

She has several tutorials for all sorts of amazing sewing projects, which I definitely bookmarked for future reference. I loved the brick/subway tile pattern, but it seemed too “busy”.  After some Googling of “subway tile quilt pattern” , I found my long lost, meant to be pattern- Color Brick by Rachel at Stitched in Color. It’s even outlined as a step-by-step “quilt-along” for total beginners- even more perfect. Serendipity.

I searched high and low at all the local fabric stores for a collect of fabrics I liked, and…. nothing. I had a very specific color scheme in mind of navy, light blue, white and had spoiled myself by pre-browsing online all the juicy designer quilting fabrics, like Amy Butler and Michael Miller. Suddenly, Joann’s just wasn’t cutting it. So I went with Fabric.com and ordered:

From Free Spirit’s Modern Meadows Collection:

 

And from Westminster’s Chestnut Hill Collection:

Oddly enough, the same design created both collections and even more odd… double-checking my fabric quantities against the Color Brick tutorial, I realized that Rachel also used the Modern Meadow collection for the majority of her “bricks”. Clearly her choice in fabrics influenced me in loving her pattern :)

However, my cart was just $9 short of free shipping, which is how a yard of this entered my cart:

From Kaufman’s  Metro Cafe collection:

Perfect for some dish towel and hot pad trim. I guess I know now what March’s project will be.