outfit post: mint and cherry

So, what happens when you're having a good hair day, you're wearing your Easter dress (with purple tights), and there's nobody around to take photos?

Well, you dig out the tripod and just do it yourself!

It was quite the adventure figuring out how to position myself in the frame, how the heck I was supposed to get the focus right, and pretend like the neighbours weren't silently judging me.  I mostly figured it out (although there were 

a lot of 

hilarious outtakes), and these are the results! 

dress: uo // tights: h&m // shoes: charlotte russe

p.s. 

♥

 kelsey

3-layer angel food peeps cake

We're eating this tonight and I can't wait.  It seriously took A LOT of self control not to chow down on this cake while photographing it.

Jordyn baked this cake last night (I helped by sifting and showing her weird things on tumblr...), and then my mom and I finished decorating it with buttercream layers, 7-minute frosting, and peeps!

Does anyone out there actually even like peeps?  I had my first one today...and I'm not a huge fan.  But they are kind of cute, so I guess I can handle them once a year. Ha!

This cake was inspired by Tieghan from

halfbaked harvest

, who created a gorgeous

6-layer coconut creation

with peeps on top!  If you don't follow her

blog

....hop to it!  She's insanely talented and so creative.

Now this cake has a lot of icing going on, so it's definitely for those of you that have a major sweet tooth!

I love the idea of putting coloured icing inside cakes.  It's such a nice, fun surprise when you finally cut it.

The recipes for homemade angel food cake and 7-minute frosting are below, but if you'd like some step-by-steps photos as well, you can click

here

for our original post including both of them!

Angel Food Cake

from: Fayrene De Koker (allrecipes.com)

Ingredients:

1 1/2 cups of Egg Whites (approx. 10-12 eggs) - *it's important that your eggs are at room temperature before you start!

1 1/4 cups of Icing Sugar

1 cup of Flour

1 1/2 tsp Cream of Tartar

1 1/2 tsp Vanilla

1/2 tsp Almond Extract

1/4 tsp Salt

1 cup Sugar

optional (but not really optional): 

1 TBSP

nonpareils (sprinkles) - to make your cake colourful!

Directions:

1)  First, separate the egg whites from the yolks, being careful that no yolk contaminates each egg white.  Make sure that you have 1 1/2 cups of egg whites, and place in a mixing bowl.

2)  Next, in a separate bowl, sift your icing sugar and flour together three times, and set aside.

3)  Add cream of tartar, vanilla and almond extracts, and salt to the egg whites.  Beat on high speed, and gradually add in sugar.  Mix until all of the sugar is dissolved, and stiff peaks have formed.

4)  Very gently, fold in flour mixture, 1/4 cup at a time.  Then fold in nonpareils!

5)  Gently spoon into an ungreased 10-inch tube pan.

6)  Bake for 40-45 minutes at 350 degrees.

7)  Immediately invert pan onto a cooling rack, and let the cake cool completely before removing from the pan.

7-minute Frosting

from: Company's Coming: Cakes - Jean Pare

Ingredients:

2 egg whites

1 1/2 cups Sugar

1/3 cup Cold Water

1 1/2 tsp Light Corn Syrup

1 tsp Vanilla

Directions:

1)  Set up a double boiler (ie. one pot sits on the burner with a bit of boiling water, and another pot/metal bowl sits on top of it.) and bring water to a rapid boil.

2)  In your top pot/bowl mix together egg whites, sugar, water, and corn syrup until well mixed.

3)  Place it over boiling water, and beat constantly on high for 7 minutes, or until the frosting will stand in peaks when the beaters are raised.

4)  Remove from heat, and beat in vanilla.

5)  Immediately frost your cake, as this frosting will set very quickly.

Buttercream

Ingredients

1/2 cup Butter or margarine (at room temperature

3 cups Icing Sugar

1 tsp Vanilla

2-5 TBSP Cream

Directions

1)  Begin by beating your butter on medium-high until well mixed.

2)  Add icing sugar, vanilla, and a couple tablespoons of cream.

3)  Beat on medium until combined.

4) Here's the tricky part: use a spatula to test the consistency, and stick a spoon in to do a taste test.  Adjust the taste and consistency by adding any of the above ingredients!

Once our angel food cake was completely cooled, I carefully cut it into three layers using a large serrated bread knife.  Then I made a batch of butter cream, coloured half pink and half purple, and iced each layer one colour.  After the cake is reassembled, we made 7-minute frosting and iced the rest of the cake, and added the sprinkles and peeps.  Be sure to add your peeps on quite quickly, before your frosting sets!

And props to my mom for letting me cut this cake up before we served it at our family's Easter dinner! I put it back together and nobody could even tell.  Ha!

p.s. 

♥

 kelsey (&  jordyn & momma)

diy: glitter Easter eggs

So here's a super last minute Easter diy!

I just really love decorating Easter eggs.  I don't know if it's because of all the memories that it brings up, or just the general fun of turning things pretty colours that makes me love it so much.

This year I decided to do something a bit different, and to my mom's horror, chose to add glitter!  Seriously, I'm sure we'll be finding glitter forever in our kitchen from now on.  Sorry family!

In the photo above you can see Jordyn's genius way at doing ombre eggs without your hand cramping!  She just used a shallow bowl, taped the egg in place, and added the dye to the desired height on the egg.  So awesome.

The glitter eggs don't need much instruction.  You just dye your eggs as usual, and let them dry completely.  Then mod podge wherever you want the glitter, sprinkle glitter generously over top, and then let dry completely.  You can now do an optional top layer of mod podge over the glitter if you don't want it coming off everywhere!

Happy Easter!

p.s.

 ♥ kelsey

Paska (Easter Bread)

Sometimes you eat sweet bread for breakfast, and pretend like it's not actually dessert.

No judgement, right?

It's Paska season!!!

Now, if you're of German, Ukrainian or Russian descent....then you probably know what's up with Paska.  If you're not, then you might be a bit confused.  Paska is a sweet bread that is made for Easter, and is often topped with icing and sprinkles!  (You can read more about it here)

All you really need to know is that it's white bread with sprinkles.  That gets an A in my book any day!

My lovely momma helped me whip up this batch of paska, as she is the expert bread maker in our house!  She's a pretty swell teacher, and I hope one day I can bake bread as well as her!

If you're a bit nervous about yeast baking....don't be!  Homemade bread always wins.

This recipe comes from my Auntie Irene (who technically isn't my aunt, but is best buds with my mom....you know how it is).  She has such a generous spirit, and is known for baking batch after batch of this stuff and gifting it away to everyone she meets.  She's the best!

---

p a s k a

recipe from: Irene Claassen
yield: approximately 5 loaves, or 40-45 buns (this will depend on the size)

Ingredients:

2 1/2 tsp yeast

1 cup warm water

2 tsp sugar

2 cups milk

3/4 cup butter

5 eggs

1/2 cup sugar

1 tsp salt

1 tsp vanilla

1 lemon (juiced and zested)

9-10 cups flour

.

Directions:

1)  In a small bowl, mix together yeast, warm water and sugar.  Set aside for about 10 minutes to let rise. (If it doesn't get nice and puffy, try again.  If your yeast is old and not rising, you'll want to buy some new stuff!)

2)  Add milk and butter together in a small saucepan, and heat until butter is melted.  Remove from heat and cool.

3)  In a large bowl, beat eggs until frothy.

4)  Slowly add the sugar to your eggs, then add salt, vanilla, lemon juice and lemon zest.

*Now this is when you'll want to pour the mixture into a Bosch bread mixer (or attach a dough hook to your beaters).

5)  Add yeast mixture, as well as the butter and milk to the egg mixture.

6)  Start adding flour, and stop when the dough starts to pull away from the sides of your bowl.  For us, it was around 9 3/4 cups, but it'll be a bit different every time depending on the size of your eggs and lemon.  This is quite a sticky dough, so don't be tempted to add any more flour than you really need to....otherwise you'll get tough paska!

7)  Once your dough has pulled away from the sides, keep mixing for another 8 minutes.  (Or you can always knead by hand!).

8)  Transfer into a large, greased bowl, cover with a clean tea towel, and let rise in a warm place for 1 1/2 hours (or until doubled in size).  Then punch down, and let rise for another half hour.

9)  Form dough into loaves (or buns) and place on greased pans to rise for another 1-2 hours.

10)  For loaves: bake at 325 degrees for 10 minutes, and then at 275 degrees for 15-20 minutes more until nicely browned.  If you're nervous about them not being done, you can always cut a loaf open to make sure the inside isn't gummy!

For buns: bake at 325 degrees for 13 minutes.

Optional:  You can choose to serve these with icing and sprinkles, or toasted with butter.

---

Butter Cream Icing

Directions:

In a medium bowl, mix together butter, icing sugar, and two tablespoons of cream.  Add more cream until desired consistency is reached.

Ingredients:

1/2 cup butter (room temperature)

3 cups icing sugar

2-4 tablespoons cream (or milk)

1 tsp vanilla

---

Paska is best fresh, so we pop most of ours into the freezer (sometimes we slice our loaves before that),
and then take them out whenever we desire!

Some people like icing the top of their bread, others like to slice it and then ice the face of the bread.  My family loves toasting it and topping it with butter!  Sweet and salty.  So good.

There really isn't a wrong way to do it.  So whatever floats your boat is just fine!

All of the sprinkles that were used in the making of this post made me insanely happy.

What didn't make me happy was walking on sprinkles, and sweeping up sprinkles forever and ever.

They're kind of like glitter....you can never really get rid of them all!

♥ kelsey

blossoms and yellow pants

So, after an eternity (aka: maybe a year) of searching....I finally have a green military parka!  Seriously though, it's been on my must-have list for so long, and I never could find the right one.  I actually got this one for Christmas (after picking it out...hehe), and I'm pretty happy with it.  Of course nothing ever quite lives up to "the one" you've built up in your head, right?  Haha.

Anywho....it's Spring!  And here it actually feels like Spring.  We even hit 20 degrees this week.  Pretty stoked about that.  Oh ya, and the cherry blossoms are also in full bloom and are ridiculously gorgeous.  I'm thinking someone needs to engineer an ever-blooming cherry tree.  Who's with me? 

parka: the garage // chambray top: plenty // pants: clothing swap // shoes: target

I love Spring.

Also I got these pants at a clothing swap.  Those are just the best.  You get to "chuck" clothes you don't want, and then go home with new, free stuff.  It's a win win!

p.s.

 ♥ kelsey

chicken vegetable soup (aka: clean out the fridge soup)

My family loves soup.  In addition to our "What's new Wednesday" - the day we try out a brand new recipe, "Fish Taco Friday" - the day we have fish tacos (

recipe here!

), we also have "Soup Saturday".

Yeah we really like alliterations.  And food.

If you haven't figure it out yet, "Soup Saturday" is the day we have soup. It is also bun day, (hmmm do we need an alliteration for that? Wheat Weekend?)  so we often have soup to complement my mother's delicious home made buns.  

We made this recipe when my parents were vacationing in Arizona (with our Grandparents, no fair!), so we didn't have any fresh homemade buns to enjoy.  So, on her way home from work, Kelsey stopped by a local farmer's market and picked up a fresh baked baguette!  It was delicious, and we even added some cheese and broiled it to make some cheesy bread.  It was the best.

Chicken Vegetable Soup

by: Jordyn Siemens

Ingredients:

2 tbsp oil

1 sweet onion

3 cloves of garlic

4 carrots

4 celery stalks

3 red potatoes

1/2 zucchini

1/2 large yam

1 can of black beans

1 cup of corn

1 tsp thyme

2 tsp oregano

salt and pepper to taste

6 cups chicken broth (more or less)

2 chicken breasts (chopped and sauteed)

Directions:

1) Chop everything into bite size pieces (finely chop your garlic)

2) In a large pot on medium heat, heat one tablespoon of oil.  Add onions and saute until translucent, then add garlic and stir to incorporate.

3) Add chopped carrots, celery, potatoes, and zucchini and saute until they start to get soft, then add the chopped yam.

4) Once everything is tender, add black beans and corn.

5) Stir in spices, and add chicken broth.  Bring soup to a boil, and let simmer to fully cook the vegetables.

6) While soup is simmering, heat one tablespoon of oil in a large frying pan, and saute the chopped chicken breast until cooked all the way through.

7) Once the vegetables are fully cooked, add the cooked chicken.

8) Serve!

This soup recipe is super easy, and you can add/subtract any of the ingredients quite easily.  Add any random veggies you have in your fridge - broccoli, cauliflower, chopped brussels sprouts, or add chickpeas instead of black beans. Whatever suits your fancy!

p.s.

 ♥ jordyn &

 kelsey

holga // 1

I purchased a Holga camera a couple of years ago after falling in love with the uniqueness of lomography.  Imperfect photos and light leaks stole my heart, and I knew that I wanted to try my hand at creating film images of my own.  

Now it took me forever and a day to actually fill up two rolls of film and have them developed....as in, it took me a good year and a half.  Yikes.  One of the biggest things that kept me from taking my Holga along with me on more adventures is that I was terrified the shutter being released inside my bag, and ruining potential photos!  So I tried taking it with me when I knew there would be an opportunity to be carrying it in my hands for most of the day.

*And because I'm a noob and was in a rush to load my colour film into my Holga, the frames didn't line up...therefore resulting in some strange double and triple exposures!

The images below are a few that I grabbed in a rush during my dear friend Jenna's wedding day!

I love all of these messy memories, and I can't wait to give my Holga another go with my newfound knowledge!

p.s. ♥ kelsey

hair tutorial: double braided half updo

Now I've been asked by several people to start doing hair tutorials here on the old blog, so I thought I'd

finally

 give it a shot!  Honestly, I have no idea what I'm doing, and it turns out that taking photos as you do your hair (as well as thinking about how you're going to explain what you're doing) is actually quite difficult.  Kudos goes to Jordyn for being my human tripod!

So, here's my first hair tutorial, and hopefully not my last.  If I'm feeling extremely brave in the next few weeks I might even try filming a proper video for a more difficult hairstyle.  We'll see!

Anyway.....this is a super simple and feminine hairstyle that I love dressing up or down.  I wore this hairstyle in

this

 outfit post, with my hair straight (and one of the braids falling out. ha!).

Also, my hair is naturally curly, very fine, and on the thinner side.  So, future tutorials may work a bit better for girls with that hair type, but I'll try and be inclusive!  Hopefully Clara and I will get our act together next time we see each other, and get some tutorials going for you lucky thick haired girls out there.

For this tutorial I curled my hair beforehand, and I also used a small section of clip-in extensions to help give me a bit more thickness.  I love the look of a thick braid, although small braids can be nice and delicate as well.

1)   Whether you're going to wear your hair straight or curly, make sure it's brushed through and ready to go.  Gather up two small elastics, and several bobby pins. 

2)  Separate a section of hair near your face.  The thickness of this section will determine how thick or thin your braid is.

3)  I like to start with a bit of French braiding, and then I move into a normal braid, but starting with a normal braid here works just fine as well!  Braid all the way down your hair, and secure with a small, preferably clear elastic (unlike my glaringly white ones).

4)  Repeat steps 2 & 3 on the other side.

5)  I like to gently tug on my braid strands to loosen up the braid and add a bit of volume.  If you have super thick hair, then you may want to skip this step.

6)  Bring the end of one of your braids across the back of your head, and pin just above and behind your ear.

7)  I then twist up the rest of the braid into a loop, and pin it in place.  

If your hair isn't long enough to reach to the other side, just pin it in place wherever it ends.  

If your hair is much longer than mine, then you might have trouble hiding the end.  I suggest pinning very securely, and then doubling the end back over to the other side!

8)  Finally, bring the other braid over the end (and loop) of your first braid to hide it, and then repeat steps 6 & 7, making sure to hide your second loop under the first braid.  

You'll probably need to check it all over in a mirror to make sure no ends are sticking out.  Bobby pins are your friends!

9)  Hairspray your masterpiece, and you're good to go.

If you have any hairstyles that you'd like me to attempt, please leave a comment below.

I'm thinking that Elsa's epic braid from Frozen is next on my to-do list!

p.s.

 ♥ kelsey