Welcome!

Welcome to my blog :D

My name is Isabelle, I am a 28 year old young woman who is has lives in Ottawa and who is looking to transform her life. I created this blog years ago with a focus on health, cooking and crafting but decided to give my blog a new life by inviting you to follow my new personal development challenge. I sincerely hope that my blog will inspire you in some way and hope to discover many new things along with you!

Isabelle xo

Holiday Coffee Cake

Hi everyone,

It's Christmas time which means it's baking season :) For the past week or so I have been baking all types of holiday goodies. Everything turned out quite well! Well almost lol

This morning I decided to prepare my Sour Cream Coffee Cake! It's baking currently and smells amazing! For those interested in making something simple and delicious here is the recipe:

Ingredients:

1 and 1/2 cups granulated sugar
3/4 cup (1-1/2 sticks) butter, softened
1 tsp. vanilla
2 eggs
2 cups flour
1 tsp of Baking Powder
1/2 tsp of baking soda
1 cup of Sour Cream
1/2 cup of chopped Pecans
1/3 cup firmly packed brown sugar
1-1/2 tsp of ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp of ground ginger

Step 1: In a large bowl, mix sugar, butter and vanilla. Then add the eggs one at a time until well blended.

Step 2: In a medium-sized bowl, combine flour, baking powder and baking soda. To this I added 1 tbsp of cinnamon and a tsp of ginger for extra flavor :P It's optional of course.

Step 3: Incorporate the dry ingredients to the wet ones gradually, along with the sour cream. Set aside.

Step 4: In a small bowl, mix pecans, brown sugar and spices.

Step 5: In a greased pound cake pan (mine is a Holiday tree one), sprinkle 1/3 of the pecan mixture at the bottom.

Step 6: Using a cookie scoop, pour half the cake batter in the pan.

Step 7: Sprinkle another third of the pecan mixture and cover with remaining cake batter.

Step 8: Sprinkle the rest of the pecan mixture and bake the cake for 1 hour at 350 deg.

Step 9: Make sure the pan is not crooked - see video for explanation lol. While playing with my ipod camera, I realised that my cake was not leveled in the oven. My reaction made me laugh afterwards :)

Step 10: Using a sifter, sift powdered sugar over your cake once cooled. It's will give it a beautiful winter forest look (picture to come) :)

Halloween Charity Bake Sale Outcome

Hi everyone,

Being the organized type, I gathered all my ingredients the evening before. I am not one to use pre-made icing or cakes but seing as how it was a week night and that the cupcakes had many steps I decided to make things simple :)

Step 1: I prepared a Spice Cake mix following the instructions. I made larger cupcakes as I wanted them to bubble up on top which it did. It made a total of 19.

Step 2: Once baked, I set the cupcakes aside so that they may cool. Meanwhile, I prepared the caramel icing. The recipe is available here: http://www.grouprecipes.com/52290/caramel-icing.html

Step 3: Then using a Betty Crocker French Chocolate Icing, I added food coloring to make a darker (blacker) shade of brown.

Step 4: Now the cupcakes cooled, using a spreading knife, I covered the top of each cupcake with my caramel icing. I would suggest keeping this icing a bit liquid as I found it hard to sprayed. Next time I will put less icing sugar.

Step 5: Using a piping bag, I made a spiderweb design with the dark brown chocolate icing on top of each cupcake.

Step 6: I then placed a Peanut M & M on top of the cupcakes and used the black icing to make legs.

Step 7: I used the black gel icing to make the spiders eyes. So cute :)

Step 8: Voilà! This is how you go about making spider caramel spice cupcakes for a Bake sale.

Until next time!

Isabelle

Charity Halloween Bake Sale

Hi everyone,

I feel I am always baking and to be honest I love it. Every week it seems a new occasion arises where baked goods are required. If it's not for a Birthday, it's a Holiday, a special life event, a charity and so on.

This week, a colleague of mine is hosting a Charity Bake Sale for which the theme is Halloween. I was asked to bake something special to help raise money for our community. I was glad to accept. My only problem was choosing what to bake.

After much research I stumbled upon this cake picture:

I just have to try making this. I decided to adapt this concept to make cupcakes as it will be easier to sell. Using a cake mix, caramel icing, black icing, black gel icing and peanut M&M's, I will attempt to make this cake in the form of cupcakes tomorrow. I am excited but a little nervous. Wish me luck!

Isabelle

Party Favors!

I love planning parties! From the shopping involved to the baking and of course the decorating. The most recent party was my fathers! To make the day a little bit more special and to make my guests feel welcome I decided to prepare Party Favors. Here is how I went about it:

1) First, I thought long and hard about what I wanted to give away. I thought of my fathers favorite things and came to the conclusion that I would go for a caramel popcorn theme.

2) I went to my local bulk food store and purchased a large bag of caramel popcorn.

3) Then, I thought of how I wanted to go about presenting this party favor. I chose small plastic bags but glass containers would have been a great option as well.

4) I made a list of all the supplies I needed to package the popcorn:
- small plastic bags;
- ribbon (red, green and beige);
- caramel lollipops from Laura Secord (to decorate and enhances the caramel theme);
- scissors;
- and caramel popcorn.

5) Steps to assembling the party favors:
a) Fill the bags with one cup of popcorn (I made five bags);

 

b) Then, use the ribbon of your choice to tie the bags. I used two ribbons as it adds an extra touch.

c) Now, insert a caramel lollipop in between the ribbon and bag. Voilà, you have your party favor.

 

d) Simply place the party favor on the plate or in the bowl of each guest.

These were a hit at my fathers party :)

Hope you enjoyed!

Isabelle



Seasonal Storage Container Labels

I am back! Since I was in the labelling mode, I decided to make labels for my Rubbermaid storing boxes. I have a lot of seasonal decor and want to identify each box as I never know which box contains what type of decorations and for which Holiday.

I decided to make a seasonal label for each box. I made two labels for boxes containing different seasonal décor.

Step 1: Gather the required material. Here is what I used:

- cardstock paper ( 1 red, 1 orange, 1 blue, 1 red, 1 beige, 1 Christmas themed);

- scissors;

- glue;

- 1 black pen;

- Ribbon (I used scraps of plaid linen I received with candles and bowl fillers I ordered);

- Embellishments (seasonal in this case as my bins contain holiday décor and kitchen linens);

- single whole punch;

- packing tape;

- paper trimmer.

Step 2: Select the color of cardstock you want the base of your labels to be, in this case I chose orange, red and blue. With your paper trimmer, cut the paper 3" and a half by 2" and a half.

Step 3: Now, using the paper trimmer cut the beige cardstock into smaller dimensions: 3" by 2" and a quarter. Make one per label.

Step 4: Using a writing style of your choice write (with your black pen) the content of your box on the beige labels.

Step 5: Glue the beige label onto your colored label. Then cover your label with packing tape.

Step 6: Now decorate your label with embellishments relating to the content of the container. In this case I used pumpkins to reflect that the container has Fall/Harvest decor.

Step 7: Then, make a hole in the outer corner of your label and using ribbon or plaid material of your liking, make a bow.

Step 8: Lastly, secure the label onto your container. In this case, I used tape to glue the labels onto the container. Feel free to make more then one label to identify the content of your container.

If you have any questions in regards to this project don’t hesitate to provide a comment! More projects to come, I am thinking they will be more baking oriented.

Isabelle

Kitchen and Pantry Country Style Labels

Hi there everyone,

I decided to finally tackle and share my first project on my blog. As explained in the introduction, I love decorating and organizing my house. In fact, I am constantly moving and reorganising my things. My favourite room being the Kitchen. In order to have a better pantry sorting system, I purchased a few baskets that I was planning on using to sort my various cooking tools and food items. I filled up 3 baskets and decided I wanted to label them. Therefore, my first project is how to make country style labels to identify the categories in each basket. Here are the steps:

Step 1: First, look online for inspiration. Find a label pattern you like, print it and cut it.

Step 2: Gather the required material. Here is what I used:

- cardstock paper ( 1 plaid blue, 1 brown, 1 beige);

- scissors;

- glue on glue tape;

- transparent packing tape;

- 1 black pen;

- Small scraps of linen Material ( used burgundy plaid material);

- Ribbon (I chose a beige shade);

- single whole punch;

- scrapbook embellishment ( I chose a country style kitchen embellishment @ Michaels);

- paper trimmer.

Step 3: Now, trace the label shape you chose onto the brown cardstock and cut how ever many labels you want to make. Follow the same instructions with the bleu plaid cardstock.

Step 4:Glue the blue labels onto the brown ones.

Step 5:Now cut the linen material you would like to glue onto your label and glue it on top.

Step 6: Cut the beige cardstock the size you would like to be able to write the label information on for each label you are making. Using my paper trimmer, I cut the label into the size I desired.

Step 7: Write down in the font of your choice, the information you would like. I chose to make a label called:Baking supplies, Canned Goods andSugar and Spice. Once done, glue the beige paper onto the labels.

Step 8: Using the packing tape, cover the label for protection.

Step 9: Next, using the embellishments of your choice decorate your label.

Step 10:Make a hole in the dent of your label and use a ribbon to secure your label to the basket you want to label.

Step 11:You’ve completed your project! It’s time to store those baskets in there place and admire your end result.

I hope this inspired you to make your own labels.

Until next time!

Isabelle