Chocolate Chip Cookie Cake

Josh and I have been dating for 11 months today. We started off strong with celebrating all of our monthly anniversaries. Josh totally surprised me by sending me flowers at work for our 6 month anniversary.

Since the six month mark, we have really slipped and stopped even mentioning that another month went by. We are planning on going out to dinner tonight but I wanted to make him a little treat to show him how much I appreciate and love him.

Here is my Chocolate Chip Cookie Cake Recipe or how to throw together some stuff from the store make one!

For this project you will need:

• An 8 inch pan, any shape you would like
• A batch of chocolate chip cookie dough. You can make it or buy it. I bought mine because it was  8pm when I thought about creating this and  I wanted to get to bed at a decent time!
• A tube of decorating icing. Again you can make your own. 
• Sprinkles, chocolate chips, M&M's, go crazy!

Step 1: Press your cookie dough into the pan. I nuked mine (with the metal ends cut off!!!) for one min just to soften it up.

Step 2: Bake according to directions on package. I baked mine at 375 degrees for 11 min. While baking you might want take the time to do your dishes and wipe your counters off. That's how I used my time!.

Step 3:  Once cookie cake is done baking let it cool somewhere. I wanted to get to decorating so I put my in fridge for about 45 min.

Step 4:  Once cookie is cool it's ready to be "written on". Make sure that your cookie really is cool. If it's warm, the icing will spread everywhere and it won't be pretty! Pipe on whatever you want to say on your cookie cake. 8 inches isn't a lot of room. I thought that I had enough room for "month" but I didn't! Oh well!

Step 5: Decorate with your decorations. If you want your cookie cake to be understated and not too busy, skip this step. I choose to accent my letters with M&M's. Josh loves chocolate. I can do without it just fine. Boys love crafty details so I made sure that I added a little something!

Step 6: Enjoy your chocolate chip cookie cake. I have yet to cut into it yet so I am not sure if you should use a pizza cutter or knife. Any ideas?

Next month will be the big ONE YEAR! We are going to Washington D.C. to attend the Rally to Restore Sanity and hang around the city!

Fall Table Decor- Nesting Place Fall Mantel Party



Because I don't have a mantel to load knick knacks on, I am linking up pictures of my Fall table decor for the big party! This is sort of a repost of a previous Fall table decor post, I posted. I added a couple more pics for the link up.





This is the table right when you walk into my apartment. I try to just keep pretty things on this table. I throw junk, keys and other things elsewhere.

I keep my shoes in a basket underneath the table, along with my CD player/Radio. Those cords need to be wrangled.





Desktop in diningroom. I not crazy about this but it will change pretty soon when I put out the Halloween decor.

Close up of "pretty pumpkin" I think that my Mom bought it from Kohl's. So pretty and it stays out until the Christmas Decor goes up. I spray painted some old books. You have to check out Tracy's post about this on her blog.

 I pulled an old lamp apart and I have been playing around with putting different things in it. Come back later on for hopefully an awesome Pottery Barn hack!

Thanks for dropping by my apartment! Can't wait to see everyone's fall table and mantel decor!

Something New for an Old Frame

I bought this old chippy frame about a year ago. It was only $5.00. The thrift store that it came from will put a $2 sticker on something that still has the Dollar Tree sticker on! So this was an amazing find. I had big plans to turn it into it giant chalkboard. Its 2 ft by 3 ft so it's a good size. I went to Lowe's and had some wood cut to go in it. I had to dig through a bunch of pieces to find one that wasn't warped too bad. The board that I used turned out to be warped and it never fit into the frame all that well. I used glue dots, hot glue, nails
So the frame sat empty for a couple of months until I saw this idea over at Jones Design Company. She used a canvas but I thought that I could use a big moving box. The box was just big enough.

I don't measure or do a lot of math in my life. I just sort of traced out how big I needed the cardboard and cut it with a box cutter. I did all of this on carpet. Maybe not the best idea but I didn't mess anything up!

Then I cut out pages out of some old books with an exacto knife. I just kind of lined them up to cover the cardboard. You could do it messier or artsy-er but I didn't want it too busy. I always use cheap-o brushes when I use Modge Podge. I could only find a tiny brush so most of  podge was applied by me pouring it on the cardboard and dragging the pages through the puddle and then placing them where I wanted. I got pretty good coverage with this method. I also tucked some newpaper behind my project to protect the carpet.

I am smooth like Keith Stone so the project came out great of course! I did layer some pages with cute drawnings on top of the other larger pages.

I used the shiney or I think they call it "luster" Modge Podge. I like the light shine to it. I think that it turned out pretty cute. A lot better than staring at a blank wall while we eat! I think that I will layer wreaths and other junk on top of this later on.

Holly Anne Photography

My friend Holly was having a photoshoot with a real model and I crashed the shoot! She graciously took pictures of my dogs and I. Most of what I know about modeling has come from Tyra Banks but I am mainly self taught! The dogs weren't really into the photo session but it was still a lot of fun. Thank you Holly for taking pictures of my babies and me! Check out Holly's photography at her blog. 

The Master and the only bedroom!

I am doing my first linking up post today with Kelly's Korner. She hosting a Show Us Your Life Party. This week is Master Bedrooms. It's a good thing that this week's cleaning zone with Flylady is Master Bedrooms so mine was already pretty clean for taking pictures! I live in a one room apartment. I am pretty happy with my bedroom. I am a single girl so I can have whatever I want to have in my room. It's awesome!

I used to have a cute curtain rod and curtains up but my other Jack Russell pulled down the curtain rod and I never got around to putting it back up!

This is the view from the door. It's a good thing that you can't see all of the dog hair on the duvet! The little guy below sleeps with me every night.

Tre

My attempt to organize my little things. It kind of works but not really!

My American Girl Doll and a bear that was made from a coat of my Grandma's. I usually don't like stuffed animals and dolls but these are exceptions!

Getting my piles of paperwork and magazine tear outs under control!

Fall Table

I dug out some of my Fall decor this weekend. When I was digging things out of the box, I thought that some of the "junk" would look good somehow mashed up together. I have a lot of little bits of decor for Fall. I gathered some of little pumkins and the cute plate together in a basket.

Usually I think that silk flowers are gross but I like the leaf garland. It's fake and everyone knows it but it's fun draped over the mirror.



Freaking Out

We have a house under contract in Louisiana. We both really like it. We had the home inspection done and the house got very minor dings but one of the problems is the A/C unit drip pan has water in it. I didn't know that this is a problem but the home inspector said that there shouldn't be any water in it. My house in Virginia Beach had a similar issue and the closet underneath the pan always had moisture problems and mold growing on the ceiling. I couldn't store anything good in that closet.
Anyways, we told the homeowners that we want a pro A/C person to come out and look at the unit and tell us what's going on with it. The homeowners are dragging their feet on it and can't seem to get an appt set. I just want to know now what's going on with it in case we need to start looking for another house. It feels like this has being going on forever but Josh says it's been a couple of weeks. I started crying when I was talking about it with him. I am just nervous about it. I told him I won't worry about it or cry about it again until October 15th. I had a diet coke and ate some lunch at home. I am feeling better for now!

New Blog

Hey! I started a Tumblr blog a while back but I don't think that it will do everything that I want it to do. So I moving most of blog to blogger. If you want to see some of my past posts go to somewhatcouture.tumblr.com