luxielou.com

11/11/11 is Luxie Lou’s two year anniversary of the first Blythe sale on Etsy.  To celebrate I’m doing my first giveaway here on my blog.  All you have to do to enter is leave a comment below.  You can get two bonus entries by tweeting about the giveaway and/or liking Luxie Lou on facebook.  Be sure to include @luxielou in your tweet on twitter and leave an additional comment for each bonus entry.

Entries will be accepted until 11/11/11 at 11 pm MST.  I will pick a winner using random.org for the dress set pictured below.

I will so be offering FREE SHIPPING worldwide in my Etsy shop until 11/15/11 with coupon code 111111 at checkout.

Thank you all for the love and support, you have made this a wonderful year!

First, I would like to say a huge thank you to everyone that stopped by my booth at Blythecon! I really appreciate all of you and I can’t wait to vend again at the next Blythecon.  I met so many wonderful new people and finally got to meet so many that I have been talking to online for years.  It was such a blast!

I’m currently in the process of posting the left over items from Blythecon on my Etsy.   The left over dress sets as well as some skirts are currently in the shop.  I will be adding the rest of the skirts in a couple of batches.

I have some new fabrics with new items to follow shortly.

As always commissions are welcome! If you would like to be added to the list info can be found here .

Thank you! <3

I love zucchini muffins but I’ve never made them.  I decided today was finally the day!

I made them as follows -

• 3 eggs
• 1 cup vegetable oil
• 1 cup soft brown sugar
• 2 cups grated zucchini
• 2 tsp. vanilla
• 3 cups flour
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1 tbsp. cinnamon

Beat the eggs until light and foamy, add oil, sugar, vanilla.  Mix lightly to blend.  Add the zucchini and mix lightly to blend again.

Mix all of the dry ingredients together.  Mix with the wet ingredients, a cup at a time.

Spoon batter into paper lined muffin tins, about 3/4 of cup.  I over filled a bit.

Bake at 325F for approximately 20 minutes.  They are done when a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

This got me 14 muffins.  They came out very moist and they were delicious served warm out of the oven.

I’m proud to be part of a community that has come together so strongly to help those in need following the horrific events in Japan earlier this month.  So many people have stepped up in the Blythe community to organize raffles and raise amazing amounts of money solely for Japan.

10% of all Luxie Lou sales are going to Japan on top of the money I have been donating personally.  In addition, I have created a few items that the full amount will go towards Japan.  The shipping amount will go towards shipping & fees but the full price of the item will go towards helping Japan.

I will have a few more items from these fabrics in the next few days listed as well.  They can be found in my shop.  As always customs orders are welcome!

After watching the heartbreaking coverage of the earthquakes in Japan and Pacific Tsunami on Friday I immediately knew I wanted to do what I could in the form of a donation. I decided I would donate to the American Red Cross disaster relief effort to help those affected by the earthquake in Japan and the tsunami throughout the Pacific. In addition to my personal donation I will donate 10% of all sales in my Etsy shop along with the orders I receive through email and twitter to the American Red Cross.

If you are able to you can also text REDCROSS to 90999 to donate $10 to Japan’s emergency relief.

My workspace right now -

I’m excited to be a vendor at Blythecon 2011 and my first batch of skirts for the event are ready to be sewn together.  I’m also working on a few things for my shop and my donations for the Blythecon 2011 raffle today.

I have my ipod on shuffle, rocking out as I sew! This is my favorite way to spend the day! It also makes me realize I should really go through my ipod in the near future.

I just realized I haven’t posted anything in 2011 yet!  I’ve had a wonderful start to the new year and I have high hopes for the rest of the year.

I had a fabulous birthday weekend back in January filled with lots of fun and amazing gifts.  The best gift I received was this new camera from my hubby.

Although this was technically a wedding gift, we also finally got our red kitchen-aid mixer the same weekend.

I love how the kitchen looks  now and I know I am going to have tons of fun playing with this for years to come.  I broke it in making some fresh bread.  It’s everything I hoped for and more!

Now I’m sitting in my favorite spot working away today.

I hope everyone is having a wonderful start to their year!

Yesterday I made fudge that was both super easy and delicious.

I began by gathering my ingredients -

• 1 c. milk chocolate morsels
• 2 c. semi-sweet morsels
• 1 can of sweetened condensed milk
• 1 c. walnuts
• a pinch of salt.

You will also need a baking dish lined with tin foil and a spatula.

I added all of the ingredients to a saucepan except for the walnuts.

I began to melt them over a low heat, stirring frequently.

Once all of the chocolate was melted and the sweetened condensed milk was incorporated I mixed in the walnuts.

I then smoothed it into an even layer in the baking dish.  I put in the refrigerator for about an hour until the fudge was set.

Once it was firm I removed it from the baking dish, peeled off the tin foil and cut it into chunks.

I put it in a festive tin lined with wax paper and brought it to work for everyone to enjoy!

It didn’t take much prep time at all to make this delicious holiday treat!

This time of year is very busy for my husband at work.  He works long days and doesn’t really have any time off.  So I try to do things to make it a little better for him.  I decided to make Christmas cupcakes for him and all the guys at his work.  I was going to make the strand of Christmas lights from the Hello Cupcake book but apparently green lace licorice is hard to find.  I went to multiple candy stores, the grocery store and no one had any.  I’ll have to plan better next year and order them online.  So at the last minute I changed my mind and decided to improvise on the Christmas ornament cupcakes instead.  I had already bought the colored sugars so I just picked up some things to decorate with at the candy store.

I made the cupcakes last night and this morning I gathered my ingredients for decorating.

• cupcakes
• colored sugars
• icing
• candies (mini m&m’s, red, white & green mini jawbreakers, red & black licorice, dots)
• gumdrops

I put each of the sugars in a shallow bowl to make coating the cupcakes easy.  I began with a little of each color and added more to the bowl if needed as I went.

Then one by one I frosted and coated each cupcake.  I coated them in the sugar right after adding the vanilla frosting.  I rolled them around until they were fully covered with each color.

Once they were fully covered in sugar I began to decorate them.  I added some frosting to a zip lock bag and cut the corner so that I could use it for piping.  I stuck the candies to each cupcake by piping frosting dots on top and I piped designs.

I just made it up as I went.  I really had nothing in mind when I started out.

After the cupcakes were all decorated I began to assemble the tops of the ornaments.  I made two holes in the top of each gumdrop candy with a toothpick.  Then I cut black licorice to size and inserted each end into the gumdrop.  I attached the gumdrops to each cupcake by piping some frosting on the bottom and pushing them into the cupcake.  You could push a pretzel stick into the bottom of the gumdrop and then into the cupcake but I didn’t find it necessary.

I packed them into my cupcake carrier and headed to my husband’s work.  I set them out on the table on tinfoil for the guys and scattered the remaining gumdrops around for them.

I hope they’re enjoying them this afternoon!

Every year we get a real Christmas tree but they’re kind of a pain living someplace dry.  I love real trees but we constantly have to make sure it has water and clean needles up off the floor.  Plus it’s pretty unfortunate that they don’t last long here for us.

I’ve wanted a white tree for quite some time and have had the vision with only red ornaments.  Well we decided to go for it this year.  We found an amazing deal on a pre-lit 6.5ft white tree.

I couldn’t be happier with it and the fact that we get to have it up all month instead of just a few weeks.

It’s amazing how little fuss a fake tree is.  We had no idea!