Toilet Top Tray

 

Here is an ad for an item I own...that's similar. 

 The ad is for Rubbermaid but mine is made by Rubber Queen!

I have mine also on the tank lid but it's way too hard to get a decent photo of it since we have one of those storage cabinets directly over it.  So here is a photo of it with a toilet on it, rather than it on a toilet.

And for funzies, here is a photo of it styled if I had the upper room for that:

Planter TV lamp 4.98

I came across this page from a vintage catalog out in internetlands who knows when, who knows where but something on the page caught my eye:

Well that looks familiar!

Mr. Husband Sir got it for me for Christmas several years ago from an antique mall.

I think it's so much fun to find listings from old catalogs of items I own!

 

Calico Quilt Cake

"Haven't you just wished you could make a cake that would look-and taste-just stunning?  Here is the opportunity you have been looking for.  For this cake is "different".  It's a marble cake-gay and colorful inside-and with an icing "patterned" to resemble a "sprigged" calico quilt...the whole as lovely as sun through rain."

What else could I possible say? 

Only there's bad news for the folks of 1940...and today.

These Gold Medal bastards are tricky! They supply the ingredients list without amounts and then as they start the instructions they trail off to "....." 

If you want the full recipe you'll have to buy the bag of Gold Medal Flour which has the full details...along with a time machine!

This kind of nonsense has never stopped me before when making an interesting dish.  As a matter of fact, I didn't realize the recipe was missing until I had the cake done.  I just use these vintage ads as a 'serving suggestion" and then I do it my way, meaning I'm using a boxed cake mix!

I took a white cake mix and divided the batter into 3 bowls.  I added some cocoa powder to one and some red dye and a pack of strawberry powdered drink mix to another.  The plain white batter I poured into the pan first and smoothed it flat.  I then dropped blobs of the other two batters into the white and swirled them. 

The white icing is, as always, just prefab tub cream cheese.  I made the chocolate icing myself from this recipe (still working on perfecting it though).

On the 1940s cake they added crushed peppermints as the decorative flare but I haven't been to Sonic lately so I am all out.  

I used chopped up gum drops instead.

 

Here is the cake's gay and colorful innards!

From what I can tell from the vague original ingredients list, the pink portion of the cake was only white-cake -flavor so I took the risk of doing some experimental flavoring with it by using the strawberry sugar free powdered drink mix.  It turned out ok, but I always think those fake mixes taste a bit chemically.  I'll have to try out some sugarfull stuff or maybe Kool Aid.  I can't be "normal" and just use strawberry extract!

Oven Chicken Bar-B-Q

Today I have a vintage savory dish for you all! 

 I tend to veer more toward making desserts because they have the pizzazz... marshmallow flowers and the likes.  However, Oven Chicken Bar-B-Q had a neat looking recipe card and nice plating so I gave it a whirl:

I found this image out in internetlands years ago so I am not sure of the circa.  I would guess by the awesome looking Pet Milk jar it's from the 50s.

I followed the recipe except for leaving out the heaping 2 Tbsp of sugar.  I did a pinch just to make the tomato sauce happy.  I despise and detest barbeque sauce on a level most can't comprehend.  The big picture of this is actually I hate sweet put on savory...baked beans, honey ham, pineapple on pizza.  Absolutely disgusting.  I am fine with savory on sweet though...bacon on donuts, potato chips on cake, pretzels on brownies....gimme!

But back to this, ya'll!  This was absolutely delish!  We liked it so much it's going to be put into regular rotation.  

But you know it's got to have a fun quirky name tie-in to a day of the week...hmmmm...

How about Oven Chicken Bar-B-Quesday?

 

Peach Melba Cake

Does this cake look like a gynecologists nightmare or is it just me?

I find the cake's design quite interesting along with it sounded like it would taste pretty good so I gave it a try on Mother's Day... in keeping with it's blatant theme.

This cake is easy to put together.  I used a Jiffy yellow cake mix, canned peaches, some candied cherries I bought on Christmas clearance, and red plum jelly. (the full recipe is on the vintage ad above)

Serve crotch cake warm with a side of vanilla ice cream at your next Betty Friedan book club meeting!

 

Springtime Fancy Cake

 Doing Springtime fancy my way!  

Prefab boxed cake mix, prefab tub icing (tinted it myself) and decorated it with some "fancy" flowers using marshmallows and yellow gumdrops.

I couldn't quite get how Dexo made the pointy daisy marshmallow petals.  As always, the recipe leaves out the most important instruction, the whole point of making the cake!

Dexo sures does want to help you get a man though.  They focus on that a bit much!

While my petals are not much to look at I will not leave you in the dark as Dexo did.

I made my petals by cutting about 4 disks from a large marshmallow and then cutting the disk in half.  To help with all the gooey stickiness I kept a little dish of canola oil nearby to dip into.

My petals may not be good enough for a young man's fancy but you better believe they will get you someone in the 65-95 year old balding, widow department.

Pres Kloth

Before home irons came with a steam feature there was Pres Kloth.

I happened to acquire one recently with it's nifty pamphlet: 

Apparently the Pres Kloth isn't just a simple piece of fabric...it's permanently sealed with chemicals!

Here is the package from another brand of press cloth  (all of these items were together) and it claims silicone as the chemical.

I wanted to give it a quick try so I used it on some super wrinkly flannel fabric.  It worked just as well as my steam iron did.  I'm not really sure if this thing is just a vintage unnecessary gadget or not.

It seems to me you could just dampen a flour sack towel and get the same results...but you would miss out on all the steamy chemical goodness!

Vogart Embroidery Transfers

Here are several newly acquired sets of vintage Vogart embroidery patterns for you all to enjoy the fab graphics!

The cats are my favorite.

There is some serious sadness going on with this set of penguins:  Single mom needs a sitter, one is out of work, and another has been evicted!

These are nice and grandmacore.

The pink swans are bathroom perfect!

Chefs be cheffin'!  I like the cute housewife in her "Come and get it" bib apron.

I made something similar years ago: 2005 "Come and get it" Apron

If you need a bit more embroidery goodness check out my past sets posts.

Hello out there from Birthday Land!

"Hello out there from TV Land, a beautiful place to be!

Nick at Nite, Better Living through good TV!"

For Mr. Husband's birthday theme this year I decided to go with one of our favorite things, Nick at Nite!  Nick at Nite of the 90's shaped who he and I are today.  We love the shows but the hilariously clever ads and promos are where it's at!

I decorated the sideboard to resemble the top of a large furniture style television set complete with doilies, framed photos and an antenna.  I also made prints of vintage televisions featuring the title cards from several of our favorite N@N shows. The remotes are made from prints mounted on super thick foam core.

 

"Take away my house and car.  You can have my VCR.  Leave that 12 inch black and white so I can watch my Nick At Nite!"

" Nick at Nite, those TV classics.  Nick at Nite, No fatty acids! Powerful TV that you can count on! Nick At Nite!"

" Just give me some of that Nick at Nite!  It's television for viewing delight! It's guaranteed to make you feel alright! Just give me some of that Nick at Nite!"

"If television sets could talk and they would tell us the shows they like to play, they'd all agree for viewing delight, they'd rather be tuned to Nick at Nite!"

  

"Sent forth on a quest from TV land, bringing truth and justice in his hand... Delivering milk and hope to a world gone sour...It's Milk Man!"

Nick at Nite's Milk Man is just an epic series of promos!

For Mr. Husband's birthday cake I made a bottle of milk!

I baked a large loaf cake and sliced it into several layers, stacked tall and held together with icing.  I then carved it into a milk bottle shape and iced it.

TV Land citizen: "Hey! we're not paying for that!"

Milkman: "Be kind to your fellow man, that's all the payment I ask!"

TV Land citizen: "What a loon!"

In modern times Nick at Nite is a travesty of it's former self (Good Lord...Friends?!).  MeTV is the best you can get now (but no fun promos).  We own just about all of the classic shows on DVD so we just watch them that way.  But whenever we need to hear the old familiar jingles we pull them up on youtube.  And we do this... a lot!

And don't even get me started on "How to be Swell" A public service from Nick at Nite to help you, the viewer, experience better living through television...

Star Wars Day: Princess Leia Rolls

 

Happy May the Fourth!

I came up with this cute, quick and easy dessert representing Princess Leia from various premade rolls/buns!

Her face is a honey bun, her hair is pecan twirls sweet rolls, and her facial features are icing.  The honey buns are generic from walsmart and the rolls came from 1.25 Tree.

To make the hair for her brain I just snipped off an inch or so from the end of each roll.

These are the other Star Wars treats you are looking for:

Wampa Arm Cake

Han Solo S'mores

Wampa Donuts

Han Solo in Jellonite

Wookie Cookie Hairballs

Death Star Cookie

Casa Bonita Birthday

 

For PB's birthday this year I went with the theme of South Park, his current binge.  Mr. Husband and I used to love watching South Park when it first aired in the 90s and thought it was absolutely hilarious.  I haven't watched it since then so I don't really know much about what's been up with it lately. Meaning I was going to need some help working out how to pull this into a party theme.  Surprisingly the internets were of no help as not a living soul has ever done this as a theme.  I found a few cakes (that were lame ornate fancy bakery decorated deals) but that was it.  I did remember that at one point there was an episode about a Mexican restaurant called Casa Bonita (which happens to be a real place).  I then discovered the episode was about Kyle's birthday, so perfect!

I turned our dining room into South Park's Casa Bonita by painting scenes from the episode on pieces of foam core. 

Cliff Divers!

"C'mon, c'mon dive!  Dive asshole!"

Black Bart's Cave

"Oohh!  Scary! Look a skeleton! Ah man, I'm so scared!" 

Mini set up on the table.

On top of the china cabinet I decided to represent the underlaying part of the episode which involves Cartman tricking Butters into thinking the world has gone through an atomic zombie attack resulting in Butters believing the town dump is South Park.

I made an old timey western jail prop as seen on the episode for photo ops.

For the snacky food I strayed from the Casa Bonita episode.

We had Chef's "Go Fudge yourself" And "I don't really give a Fudge" fudge.

And of course you have to have Cheesy Poofs!

"Hell yeah, I want Cheesy Poofs!"

For the cake I based it after one of Cartman's favorite treats his mom makes for him called Powdered Donut Pancake Surprise.  It's a surprise alright.  The base inside is actually a small round tall cake and then it's encircled with a bunch of pancake rings I made (that was a bit of a bitch to do).  I topped the cake with a large whole pancake.  There's also icing involved on the cake to hold everything together.  Lastly I flourished it with mini powdered donuts and a big pat of butter...and syrup.

Here is PB going down to South Park and having himself a time!