Whip It Up Wednesday: Glazed Lemon Zucchini Bread

This past weekend Eric and I took a trip back to our hometown to visit our parents.  My mom shared with us that she had some zucchinis in her garden this year.  She had already baked 16 loaves of zucchini bread and still had TONS of grated zucchini left over.  I told her that I really wanted to make Glazed Lemon Zucchini Bread, so she offered me some of her zucchini.  I gladly accepted the zucchini and planned on making the bread for none other than Whip It Up Wednesday!  You can find the original recipe here.

Glazed Lemon Zucchini Bread

Ingredients

2 c. cake flour (for those of you that don't know, cake flour is different than regular flour--it has more of a powdered sugar texture)
1/2 tsp. salt
2 tsp. baking powder
2 eggs
1/2 c. canola oil
1 1/3 c. sugar
2 Tbsp. lemon juice
1/2 c. buttermilk
1 c. grated zucchini

(Note: the original recipe has the zest of 1 lemon.  I did not have a lemon, so I did not add this)

Glaze Ingredients

1 c. powdered sugar
2 Tbsp. lemon juice
1 Tbsp. milk


The How To:

1. Set oven to 350 degrees.  Grease a 9x5 loaf pan.
2. In a medium sized bowl, combine the flour, salt, and baking powder.  Set aside.

3. Next, whisk eggs in a large bowl.  Mix in oil, sugar, lemon juice, and buttermilk (if you are adding
    the lemon zest, do it here) until well blended.

Whisked eggs pictured above.

Oil and sugar added to whisked eggs.

Lemon juice and buttermilk added into mixture.

4. Fold in zucchini.

5. Little by little, pour the dry mixture into the wet mixture and blend together.

6. Pour batter into greased loaf pan.

7. Bake bread for 40-45 minutes.

8. While the bread is baking, mix the Glaze ingredients together.

9. Spoon the glaze over the bread while it is still warm.  Let the glaze set for a little while before cutting into the bread.

10. Enjoy!!! It is mighty delicious! :)

Do you have a favorite kind of zucchini bread?  Tell us about it! :)

Making Ohio Sparkle

Remember when we shared this wall collage inspiration?  Well I finally completed our first piece of symbolic art to put on the striped wall.  Hooray!  I wanted to craft a piece that showed where we reside.    We love the city we live in--it has so much beauty and character.  So why not share how much we love it by making it sparkle?

The first thing I did was find an outline of Ohio.  I printed it out on copy paper.

Next, I cut around the outline.

Instead of framing a plain piece of paper, I decided to glue my outline of Ohio onto the back of a pizza box.  I used super glue to glue it onto the cardboard.  I wanted it to be sturdy and raised from the background.  After gluing it to the cardboard, I cut around the outline a second time.

The above picture may not be too pretty, but I promise the end result is worth looking at.  The next step was to paint a heart where Dayton lies in the state of Ohio.  I used a toothpick and teal blue paint that I had on hand.

Then came the fun part!  The part that made me say, "Oh la la!" and of course it involved glitter!  I used a Q-tip to apply glue to the top of the paper outline, making sure to work around the heart and not on top of it.  Then I sprinkled gold glitter on top.  LOTS OF IT!  

After shaking off the excess glitter, my sparkling state looked like this:

In order to make the background for my frame, I took a coral colored envelope and cut it to size.

My envelope was 5 inches tall, so I made a mark with my pencil next to each inch.  I then took gold chevron washi tape and ran it along each of the four lines I made with my pencil.

Next I glued my glittery outline of Ohio onto my background.

The final step was to put my sparkling beauty in one of our IKEA frames.  This particular frame measures 5 x 7" and is from the RIBBA collection.  

I believe this will be a nice addition to our wall once we get it all pieced together.  

Do you have a gallery wall full of homemade art in your home?  Share it with us!  We still have lots of work to do before our gallery wall goes up, but we are already excited to see what it'll look like when it's finished! :)

Gallery Wall Inspiration

Yesterday Eric and I had a long trip to our nearest IKEA.  While in the car, we started talking about our front hall and how we have taken a break from it.  Now we are ready to get back at it!  Eric is anxious to put up crown molding, baseboard, etc. I on the other hand have been dying to put up our photo gallery wall.  Not sure what a gallery wall quite looks like?  Check out the pictures below that we are using for inspiration.

Found here

Found here

Found here

From my favorite blog YHL

Found here

Imagine a fabulously white and bright gallery wall on our striped wall in our front entryway. Thinking about making ours just gets me in the mood to jump up and down over and over again.  Ahh!!  In order to get started on ours, we needed some frames.  Guess what we ended up getting at IKEA yesterday?  Frames!  We got a few different sizes and plan on playing around with them to figure out exactly how we want them situated on our striped wall.  Here's a snapshot of the frames.  They are all a part of the RIBBA collection.

My one main goal for this wall is that I want it to hold special meaning to us.  What I mean by that is that I want to incorporate things like our wedding pictures, lucky number, map hearts of where we were engaged, married, and honeymooned, etc.  I fully expect that this wall will take us awhile to complete, but I can't wait to see it done.  

Do you have a gallery wall in your house?  What kinds of things do you have in your frames?  Tell us in the comment section below, or better yet, send us a picture! :)

A Quarter of a Century

Ladies and gentlemen, I am officially a quarter of a century old.  That's right, I'm halfway to 50.  That seems crazy to think about!  Today has been a busy day full of fun: a doctor's appointment, a trip through IKEA,  and a romantic dinner at an Italian place that just so happened to have a pianist playing beautiful background music.  Hubby took the day off of work to hang out with me.  He is the best!  He threw me a little pre-birthday celebration party last night with some of our closest friends.  He surprised me with a chocolate cake that he made himself (let me just throw it out there that I am the cook and baker around this place, so it really made my heart smile when I saw this cake).  Here's a picture of the awesome cake he made me:

Isn't he amazing?!  I sure think so!  Here's a picture we took before going out to dinner:

In honor of my birthday landing on a Thursday this year, I figured it'd be fun to close with a few "Throwback Thursday" pictures. :)

What did you spend your Thursday doing? Fill us in! :)

Whip It Up Wednesday: Cinnamon Applesauce Pancakes

This past Sunday Eric and I overslept and didn't make it to church, so thankfully we were able to watch the service online.  As Eric turned on the service, I was making breakfast.  We were out of basic ingredients like milk, eggs, bread, etc. so I had to figure out something to make that didn't require these items.  I quickly found this recipe and decided that we were going to have Cinnamon Applesauce Pancakes for breakfast! :)

Cinnamon Applesauce Pancakes

Ingredients:

2 c. flour
4 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
2 Tbsp. sugar
2 c. water
1/2 c. cinnamon applesauce
1/4 tsp. vanilla extract

(Sidenote: If you would like to make waffles instead of pancakes, add 3 Tbsp. of oil to the batter)

Topping:

cinnamon, to taste
syrup, to taste


The How To:

1. Mix all dry ingredients together. Slowly add wet ingredients and beat together.

2. On an oiled pan, spoon the batter by Tbs. to make your pancakes.  Wait until you see bubbles on top and then flip pancake.  Cook for around 2-3 minutes or until golden brown.

3. Remove pancake from pan.  Sprinkle with cinnamon and add syrup to the top.

Hubby had his pancakes without cinnamon on top and he said they were kind of bland.  I agreed, so I put cinnamon on top of mine and they were great!  This is for sure an easy recipe if you are without basic ingredients and just haven't made it to the store yet.  Easy pancakes when you are in a pinch!


I feel like I've made pancakes in so many different ways.  Do you have a special pancake recipe that you favor?  What are your favorite pancake toppings?  Tell us below! :)

A Date to Donate

Yes, I took myself out for a donating date.  You see, this Thursday (the 24th), I will officially be a quarter of a century old.  The one thing I wanted to do for my birthday this year was donate my hair to Locks of Love.  I have donated twice before and I find it to be such a great cause.  All my life I've been told how beautiful my hair is, so why not give something beautiful that I have to someone who is beautiful and in need?  It breaks my heart to think of all of the children and adults out there who are ill and have no hair.  I cannot imagine the pain those individuals go through on a daily basis.  If my hair can be made into a wig for someone to wear, then by golly I'm going to do it.

I thought it would be fun to share my previous donation pictures before my current one.  Here's a little back story to my first trip to donate.  Ever since I was a little girl, I've had seriously long hair.  I'm pretty sure there were a few years when my hair quite literally touched my behind.  My parents always took me to get my hair trimmed, but never allowed me to get it cut off.  The older I got, the more I'd beg my parents to let me get it cut off the way I wanted to.  I hated how hot I'd get in the summer with my long, thick hair.  I'd sweat, my hair would get frizzy, and then I'd always look like a hot mess.  Well finally my parents made me a promise after hearing me complain for 8 years straight.  They told me, "Mary, you can get your hair cut off however you want on your 18th birthday."  It seemed like FOREVER before that birthday came, but when it did, I was SO HAPPY!  Here are some pictures from that day:

It is hard to believe that 7 years ago, I donated my hair for the first time.  After this year (2007), I continued to get my hair trimmed, but couldn't quite work up the urge to cut it off again.  That is until last June.  I got the "donating itch" again. Here's a before picture from last year:

All of those years letting it grow back out, and it was almost down to my behind just like when I was a kid!  Crazy!  Here's the picture I took after donating my hair the second time:

Believe it or not, it was still long even after cutting 10 inches off! Unfortunately I didn't let my hair grow as long this time around.  I thought it was time for a change.  This morning I didn't think twice about going and getting it cut.  How can you back out when all you can think about is the smile on a child's (or an adult's) face when they put on the wig made with your hair?  Without further ado, I present to you a before and after of my current do:

I forgot to take a before shot of myself, so I had to find a picture that was current.  This picture is from the end of last month.  Here's my after shot!!!!

And here's me excitedly showing off my pigtails that will be sent to Locks of Love:

I'm still in shock at how short my hair is.  This is the shortest it has ever been and I am SO pleased with it!  I'm in donating heaven!  :)

Have you ever donated your hair?  How long was it before you cut it?  Have pictures?  Show us!!! :)

Where My Guests At?

Happy Monday!  Hope everyone had a wonderful weekend!  We spent our weekend resting and taking in the sights of our new coffee table.  We are still getting used to seeing it in our family room.  Since we didn't get into anything crafty over the weekend, I'm bringing you a post about our upstairs guest bathroom.

Here's what she looks like:

It is hard to tell, but the walls are pale yellow and around the top there's a flowery border.  Not our style at all.  You can't see it, but the light switch that is right next to the door is covered in this wallpaper as well.  Every time I turn on the light in here, I want to barf.  The sheet vinyl flooring from the picture above doesn't look too bad, but the closer you get to the tub, the more you will see that it is starting to peel up (Sorry, forgot to snap a picture of it!).  The door to the left in the above picture is a closet.  We keep our guest towels, sheets, and dog washing supplies in this closet just because this is normally the bathroom where we wash our fur baby.  Oh and if you look closely at the ceiling, you will see that it has popcorn texture.  Oh boy, more popcorn ceiling!

Now to the vanity.  Not entirely sure if we'll replace the wooden vanity or if we'll just paint this one and add new fixtures, but something's got to happen with this thing!  Oh and don't even get me started on the medicine cabinet and chunky beauty salon lighting.  This area of the bathroom just looks so chunky and outdated.  Since there isn't a window in this bathroom, we have no natural light coming in.  The light fixture we have produces yellow light and makes the room feel dark and small.

  We've lived here for about 9 months and I'm STILL trying to figure out why there is a giant towel bar between the medicine cabinet and the sink.  There is a towel bar on the left hand wall.  Who needs THAT many blasted towels?!  If you look closely at the right side of the above picture, you can see two holes in the wall (well there are technically four holes, but the other two aren't shown in this picture).  There used to be a metal shelf that hung above the toilet.  We hated it, so we took it down.  

Needless to say, there are quite a few things that we want to do to update this bathroom.  Someday this will be our kid's bathroom, so whenever we get around to updating it, we need to make it kid-neutral.  Here's our list of "To-Do's" for this bathroom:

Upstairs Guest Bath To-Do's:

-Scrape popcorn ceiling/prime/paint

-Remove vinyl flooring and put down tile

-Paint walls (kid-neutral color)

-Replace exhaust fan with a quieter one

-Put in new baseboard and put up crown molding

-Possibly put in a wider shower

-Replace toilet seat

-New hardware for doors (door handles, hinges)

-Possibly buy new vanity that is higher (Eric wants to build a step stool into the new vanity for the kids)

-Fill holes in wall above toilet

-Replace off-white electrical outlet wall plate with a white one

-Replace light switch wall plate with a white one

-Take down long towel bar between mirror and vanity

-Replace medicine cabinet/mirror with either a recessed medicine cabinet or fancy mirror

-Put in new light fixture (Can't wait to get rid of that wooden beauty salon styled fixture!!!)

-Re-do closet completely and organize

So there you have it.  You have now seen two of our four bathrooms.  Right now we are all about making to-do lists for each room in our house.  Completing all of these projects is a different story.  I'm sure it will take YEARS to complete every room in this house, but slowly (very slowly) we are making progress.

Are you updating certain rooms in your house?  What is on your to-do list?  Fill us in! :)