Nate Berkus: No Money Makeovers

We rarely ever get to catch The Nate Berkus Show, but today we caught the show over breakfast. In his first segment, Nate, an interior decorator, took some old, unused household objects and items of furniture and transformed them into new, useful, and unique pieces for the home. The best part was that he used hardly any additional money! Nate does a lot of projects like this and this same spirit of ingenuity and resourcefulness is what our blog strives to capture.

You can watch this segment of the show here. The three projects mentioned in it are a little bit bigger than the projects we attempt to tackle here, but I really liked this idea of rope shelving. The only things needed are rope and scrap wood. This is definitely one of those ideas to store away for later!

The Nate Berkus Show

He also mentioned that has used this idea to hang a bed - which we think is really neat. Not sure how comfortable it is, though! We think it would look best in a beach home, vacation cottage, or in a room with rustic-looking design elements.

Coastal Living

But it can also look quite exotic-looking!

freshome

Cookies Inspired by Barbie!

Have you heard!?! Barbie and Ken are back together! If you've been following their story, you're just as excited about this as I am. I've been a huge fan of Barbie since I was a kid, so I was incredibly excited for the chance to make these Barbie-inspired sugar cookies for a friend's party!

For additional posts about our sugar cookies see:
Purple, Purple, Purple
Sugar Cookie Recipe
Holiday Baking

Purple, Purple, Purple

A friend of ours LOVES purple, so for her birthday party we decided to make our basic sugar cookies in two simple whimsical shapes with two shades of purple icing. I love the way they came out!

For additional posts about our sugar cookies see:
Sugar Cookie Recipe
Holiday Baking

Sugar Cookie Recipe

We always get tons of compliments on our sugar cookie recipe. It's pretty basic--we wish we were able to credit someone for the recipe, but we've been using it since we were kids and have no idea where it came from. We just found it on an index card in our mom's old recipe box! Here's the recipe. It's a definite company-pleaser and there's an infinite way to customize these cookies for any occasion!

Ingredients:

• 2/3 cup shortening
• 3/5 cup sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1 egg
• 4 teaspoons milk
• 2 cups flour
• 1 -1/4 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon salt

Oven temperature: 375 degrees

Makes about 2 dozen.

Cream shortening, sugar, and vanilla. Add egg and milk; beat until fluffy. Sift together dry ingredient; blend into creamed mixture. Divide dough in half. Cover and chill at least 1 hour. On floured surface, roll to 1/8 inch thick. Cut into shapes. Bake on ungreased cookie sheet 8 to 10 minutes.

Happy baking!

For some of our sugar cookie designs see:

Holiday Baking

Hawaiian Themed Party!

We've always wanted to do a themed party. And surprisingly, we already had a lot of Hawaiian-themed stuff. I made these simple and beautiful hanging decorations that I adapted from a Martha Stewart Halloween craft.

For dinner, we made coconut shrimp and chicken coated in panko breadcrumbs on skewers. Also, as an afternoon appetizer, we made crab rangoons. Aloha!

Birthday Cupcakes

It was just our mother's birthday, and this year we decided to make cupcakes instead of a traditional cake because a) over the summer we got a wonderful cupcake stand and b) we couldn't decide between 2 cake ideas--with cupcakes we could do both!

So, half of the cupcakes are plain chocolate cake and frosted with a chocolate-orange gnache. The other half are the same chocolate cake infused with cream of coconut (like a poke cake) and frosted with plain chocolate gnache, topped with shredded coconut. YUM!

We recently purchased Make 'n Mold decorating bottles and discovered how easy it is to make fun decorative chocolate shapes. We did a simple flower design here. (White chocolate probably would've looked better against the dark gnache.)

Here they are all lit up!

Home-made Marshmellows!

What's better on a cold, snowy day than a cup of hot cocoa with a nice BIG marshmallow floating on top?

Maybe a big peppermint marshmallow? Yum, right? Chocolate and peppermint is one of my absolute favorite flavor combinations! Since I don't know where to find a mint marshmallows in a store, I recently learned how to make them myself!

I've been wanting to try out this recipe ever since last year, when I saw it on an episode of the Martha Stewart Show. This year, I finally did it! And they were so much easier than I anticipated!

The video on MarthaStewart.com is so great that I wont bore you with my instructions. Instead, you can watch Martha's video and read their instructions here. I will say, however, that the instructions are a little confusing in places. For example, they say to spray the baking pan and then cover it with plastic wrap. Instead, don't spray the pan, spray the plastic wrap!

For my marshmallows, I added a tiny bit of green food coloring to the recipe to be extra festive! Tip: If you decide to add a hint of peppermint, keep in mind that peppermint oil is not the same as peppermint extract. I learned this the hard way. My marshmallows came out almost too minty, by using peppermint oil instead of peppermint extract, like the recipe calls for.



Before the confectionary sugar coating. Very sticky!

 

Enjoy in a nice cup of hot cocoa! Yum!

If you watch Martha's video, you'll see that she mentions that some trendy gourmet restaurants actually serve marshmallows as dessert! I was very intrigued by this and had to investigate for myself. These two bloggers write about their meals at Jean-Georges in NYC - here and here - they even include photos of their marshmallow desserts. I also found some companies that make and sell gourmet marshmallows - plush puffs and Manna Mallows - with wonderful selections! I'm sure there are many more too!

Well, this has been my marshmallow journey! Does anyone have any favorite marshmallow flavors or recipes? Besides cocoa, what do you like to eat with marshmallows?

PS- We hope your NEW YEAR is off to a great start!