Happy Easter...Mmmm Banana Cake

This Easter I went over to my sisters for Easter dinner and some Easter fun with the kids. I had alot of fun with my neices and nephews dying the easter eggs. Here we are showing off their works of art.

We also had a scavenger hunt. My sister and I carefully hid the plastic eggs with hersheys kissess and other treats contained inside the eggs all around the house. The kids had so much fun finding the eggs and the winner was jordan who was able to find 25 eggs...he won $5 bucks.

The hunt is On! Find as many eggs as you can...

Jason finds some in a bush...

Alicia jumps up to reach the egg on the window sil...

Mia finds one...

Jason gets to one before Jordan...

Everyone Count your Eggs!

Mia 15 Eggs

Alicia Finds 22 eggs

Jason 15 eggs

The winner...Jordan with 25 Eggs

For Easter dinner my sister asked me to make a cake for dessert. I asked her what kind and she said she didn't care, it was up to me. First I thought of making carrot cake, it seemed appropriate for the easter bunnies. Then while speaking to my boyfriend about it he gave me the idea for banana cake. I haven't had banana cake in such a long time and I do have fond memories of the banana cake I made while in camp years ago. I remember having to triple the recipie and do all the math to figure out the correct measurements. So banana cake with cream cheese frosting it was. This cake came out so good. It was extremely moist and oh so delicious. Tastes really good with coffee, tea or a cold glass of milk.

My sister decided to do what I usually do and take pictures of me making the banana cake. I got to use this Kitchen-Aid mixer we borrowed from my sisters neighbor downstairs. I loved using this mixer it made my job much easier. I have wanted one of these mixers since I was a little girl. One day I will get one.

Saturday I went over to Deborah's so she could help me with my Odessa hat problem. Weeks ago I put down this hat because I did something wrong...I don't know what I did but I didn't want to mess it up further so I put it down and had not touched it. Deborah was able to get me back on track and hopefully I will finish this hat soon and post updated pictures. I also started a fingerless glove with Koigu yarn. This is my first glove and I find it a bit difficult working with double pointed needles but otherwise so for so good.

The First Spreads in My 2008 Scrapbook Album

Here are the first entries into my 2008 scrapbook album completed this weekend. The first titled "Snow Day" includes the pictures I took the day we got the first real accumulation of snow in the city. Unfortunately, it was a work day so I took these pictures on my walk into work.

This spread took me so long to complete for some reason, but usually the ones that take some time turn out really well. Iam very happy with the way this turned out. I originally had completely different colors picked out. The color scheme I originally had was brown and white (which I kept) with a dark pink and a light mint green patterned paper. It looked nice although I didn't have enough of the pink paper and the colors weren't really cold snowy type colors so I changed it to this ice blue colored patterned paper from my old world paper pack. All-in-all it turned out well in the end.

The second spread includes the pictures I took on my niece Mia's 3rd birthday. She is getting so big and she is very mature for her age. This is a pretty simple spread. I printed all the pictures the same size and just ran them across the page. Since the Snow Day spread took me so long, I opted for super simple on this spread.

Let it Snow...and Project Updates

I have been wanting to capture some pictures of the winter snow, but since mother nature decided to snow on a workday instead of the weekend, which would have been more convienient for me to trek out to Central Park to take some really nice shots of fresh snow, I decided to capture my walk to work in this morning. So here you go...

In scrapbooking news, I have been working on a 8x8 gift scrapbook album to give to Lenny, that includes pictures of some of the things we did together during our first year together. I had the chance to get about 5 spreads done this past President's weekend. I took advantage of the three day weekend. So here are some pics of the spreads I have done so far.

Here is the album itself. It opens like two doors from the middle and is secured closed by magnets.

Below are all the spreads completed thus far.

Odessa Hat Update. I haven't had much time to knit, otherwise this hat would probably already be complete by now. After finishing the one inch ribbing I began the Odessa hat pattern which is pretty simple. I had a felling I was doing something wrong after after rows. I either had to be doing the yarn over (yo) or the slip, slip, knit (ssk) wrong. I have done both of these before but obviously Im getting old because I forgot what I learned. I found a video online of someone demonstrating how to do both techniques and was able to easily fix my problem without bothering my teacher. So here is where I am so far. I have about an inch and a half to go before I have to start the decreases. Looks good so far and it is a simple pattern despite my short term memory loss...lol.

Oh and here is my valentine's day gift delivered to my job from my sweet valentine.

Mmmm.... Brownies

This weekend I made some valentines day inspired brownies. These are raspberry cheesecake swirl brownies. I got the idea to make these brownies from reading one of the many food blogs I read occasionally. I can't remember which one at the moment though. In any case, Friday night I was watching the Food Network and guess what... Alton Brown was making brownies. Wow, how did he know I was thinking about making brownies? I watched him make his recipe and it seemed simple enough so I decided to use his recipe. Iam a visual person so I pick things up faster if I see someone do it first. All I did was add the raspberry creamcheese swirl to turn these brownies into valentine brownies. They came out delicious....very chocolatey.

mmm...so rich and silky smooth

Don't they look pretty?

Nice n thick...so so so goood

I know you want a piece....

In other news, I also visited a yarn shop which happens to be in my old neighborhood and since I was in the neighboorhood on Saturday at my sister's place making the brownies, I decided to check it out on my way home. Downtown Yarns is located at 45 Avenue A between 3rd and 4th Streets. It's a cute little shop and the people running the shop were very friendly and helpful.

Here are some pictures I got of the shop for your viewing pleasure. They were so nice the even

balled the koigu for me for free and gave me a free fingerless glove pattern.

I bought some Koigu for the fingerless gloves I want to make and I bought some Zara extra fine merino in a chocolate brown for the Odessa hat.

Koigu

I was able to cast on for this hat on Sunday and have completed the one inch rib so far and started the Odessa hat pattern.

Here is a picture of a completed Odessa hat from Chazari's photos. This is the picture that made me want to make this hat, so back in December, I left a comment, asking her for the pattern and she recently emailed all those who left comments, the pattern. Which is available here.

Needless to say I had a full weekend. Hope everyone also had a great weekend.

Six Hats in about Six Months

Since late September early October I have completed 6 hats. The latest hat to come off my needles is the Basic Hat in Patons 100% wool in a olive green color. Basically, this hat is pretty simple; however, in me thinking this hat was so simple, I underestimated the fact that no matter how simple something is you can always mess it up. I ended up having to fix at least three times, a slipped stitch a twisted stitch or something...Im new to knitting and although I don't know what was exactly wrong when I did encounter a mistake, I was always able to at least recognize that there was something wrong. I just starred at the problem for as long as I needed to in order to be able to try and figure out how to fix the mistake. Eventually I was successful and able to move forward and complete the hat. At times though, I thought I would just have to wait and have Deborah fix it for me but I just kept trying and was able to fix the problem myself.

Newsboy Cap Complete

Here I am proudly wearing my Newsboy Cap that I completed on Saturday with Deborah's guidance of course. Thanks Deb! I knitted an extra round of the stitch pattern which makes my hat a bit longer so it had room to sort of flop over a bit instead of being more fitted like Deborah's hat. I like how it turned out and I think it looks pretty good on me if I do say so myself...toot toot.

Again, this was my first time learning a few techniques. First, cabeling, which is not as intimadating as it may sound or look. I found it to be very simple once I got the feel for it. It's always a bit akward when you first try something new like this. It just takes a little time to get comfortable with the way you hold the needles. I also learned how to increase (M1) and how to pick up stitches for the brim in this case. That to me was the most challenging of all but as I kept doing it it wasn't so bad. Although, if I have to do it again for a future project Iam sure I will be calling on Deborah for a refresher...lol